Written by:	Nefarious, nikarg, Starvynth, RaduP
Published:	June 08, 2019

Clandestine Cuts Volume 9, Issue #5
The Metal Storm Demo/EP Spotlight



Is independent, unsigned, and underground metal what you seek? Weary traveller of the metal world, rest here a while. Clandestine Cuts are the best demos and EPs from these bands, the heart and soul of metal music. These musicians are slaves to their passions, and their blood keeps the metal machine alive and turning. Support them with a simple listen, and discover the future.

Metal Storm users: you can vote in the poll below to choose your favourite demo/EP of the issue. The winners each year are nominated in our annual Metal Storm Awards so exercise your rights: this is the one category chosen completely by YOU the readers. Make sure your favourite independent metal is recognized each year!

(Think your band has what it takes to be featured in the Cuts? Email demos@metalstorm.net to submit your music.)

In case you're new at this, go back and enjoy our last few issues:

Clandestine Cuts Vol. 9 #4
Clandestine Cuts Vol. 9 #3
Clandestine Cuts Vol. 9 #2

And now to the new music...

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Tryptamyne - Tryptamyne Listen at Bandcamp In the area of psychotropic drugs, tryptamines are known to be a broad class of classical or serotonergic hallucinogens. Well-known tryptamines are contained in Aztec sacred mushrooms, South American psychoactive beverage ayahuasca, and LSD. Now Tryptamyne are aptly named since their brand of extreme metal messes up the brain with avant-garde music that bears influences ranging from early '90s death metal and grindcore to '70s progressive rock to black metal to funk and jazz, and finally to modern day tech-death metal. This bass-heavy and guitar-driven mixture is strengthened by great variety in the vocal department and is bound to cause profound changes in your sensory perception, mood and thought, just like its bonkers cover artwork suggests. by nikarg

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Levendleed - Demo Listen at Bandcamp Levend means living, leed means sorrow. Levendleed is a depressive one-man black metal band from the Netherlands. This is the project's first demo and it features lyrics in Dutch that are supposed to revolve around themes of abandonment, the end of the world, and death. The music is mid-paced, sorrowful and atmospheric, with hypnotizing, repeating riffs, and almost ever-present synths that at times send out an industrial echo, while in other instances they form a dark ambient sonic environment. Droney passages and clean vocals are also employed and all these elements make the four songs memorable and different from each other, even though the general feeling of the demo is one of being slowly sucked into a quicksand of melancholy. by nikarg

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Gorebringer - The Cabin Listen at Bandcamp The Cabin is a three-track demo and the first sign of life of London's latest Melodeath export Gorebringer. Melodic death metal, despite of that moniker and the gory, comic-styled cover artwork? Are you sure? Good point! To do the gore obsessed Englishmen justice, they play some slightly blackened and somewhat technical, but melodic and yet dirty death metal with gory themes and on the dissecting table, you may even find some small traces of grindcore. So musically and lyric-wise, albums like Nocturnal and Everblack from The Black Dahlia Murder and Carcass' Heartwork come to mind rather than the latest releases of bands like Amon Amarth or Insomnium. The production of The Cabin is flawless and so is the performance of the band members. As yet, little is known about the involved musicians and one may wonder what Gorebringer (vocals), Stench (guitars & bass) and Carrion (drums) have been busy with prior to the founding of Gorebringer in 2017. Maybe their recently announced, upcoming album A Craving For Flesh will bring some clarity, so let's stay tuned. by Starvynth

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Overwhelmed - Virtue Of Persistence, In Certainty Of Death Listen at Bandcamp Despite of their self-released and self-titled 2015 album, Overwhelmed are still a quite unknown factor within the scene of blackened doom metal. Hailing from Kennesaw, Georgia, they are walking the path that has most prominently been defined by representatives like Usnea and Atriarch. But rather than blindly following a determind path, Overwhelmed are definitely leaving their own footprints, supported by a very diversified vocal approach and thanks to strong, memorable songs with an individual touch that are anything but never a carbon copy of their fellow countrymen's pattern. The five members of Overwhelmed are right now looking for a label or distro support to help with physical releases and it is to be hoped that the three tracks of their demo Virtue Of Persistence, In Certainty Of Death will soon be found on a regular album. For this seamless blend of melodic doom and black metal is just to good to be missed and it's the right fuel to overhaul others rather than following them. by Starvynth

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Bleeding Majesty - Esthétique Macabre Listen at Bandcamp Yes, OSDM is all the rage and people still lose their shit over any growl-heavy riff-fest as long as it sounds like it was made in the early 90s. But there's a problem. A lot of them don't really sound like they were made in that era, instead they benefit a lot from being produced in the modern age. Here comes Bleeding Majesty's Esthétique Macabre, which sounds as weirdly primitively produced as an album made in the early 90s should, complete with slight occasional sloppiness in performance to make everything feel even less polished. This is obviously not a bad record because of it, because all of its flaws actually work in its advantage. Even the fact that it's in Italian reminds me of the 90s when the death metal scene was starting to expand into new countries and every country tried to have their own copy of Morbid Angel or Death, so this album makes me feel nostalgia for a period of time I never actually experienced. by RaduP

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Black Candle - Demo 2019 Listen at Bandcamp The cover art and band name seem to indicate that this is a black metal record, the Bandcamp page tags this as "heavy metal", so what gives? Well a bit of both. I'd rather call this something closer to speed or thrash metal, but the black impression isn't completely lost either. While there are no blast beats or tremolo picking riffs, the vocals are clearly fit for black metal, more so on the first song, as on the second they could pass for a brutal death metal one as well. So there is a bit of a disjointed feel, but I feel like Black Candle are on the right path to do something with their mix of styles, since they knew not to overstay their welcome of crude ideas, so there's just two songs here to make sure that we're paying attention and will give the refined thing a shot once that's done. by RaduP

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