Written by:	nikarg, musclassia, Nejde, Starvynth
Published:	August 04, 2024

Clandestine Cuts Volume 14, Issue #7
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 to this, go back and enjoy our last few issues:

Clandestine Cuts Vol. 14 #6
Clandestine Cuts Vol. 14 #5
Clandestine Cuts Vol. 14 #4

And now to the new music...

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Burnt Lung could very well be Green Lung had the latter been burnt after smoking too much green. This trio coming from Canada serves some big bong riffs on their self-titled debut EP, mixing stoner, doom, and sludge, adding some grunge, and topping it all up with a whole lotta groove. The attack of heaviness is nicely interacting at times with some light and shade moments, and in other instances with some punk-ish aggression. Burnt Lung are not doing anything out of the ordinary, but the swagger is real, the riffs are killer, the performances are great, the aim is to get as high as possible, and the cover art is dope. To be devoured greedily when the munchies kick in.

by nikarg

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My introduction to Vower came when they opened for Karnivool last month; it seemed a rather auspicious billing for a band without any recordings to their name, but the revelation that the band was comprised of current or former members of Palm Reader, Black Peaks and Toska clarified the situation. That pedigree does come through on debut EP Apricity, which exhibits elements of Palm Reader’s post-hardcore, albeit filtered through an progressive metal framework that bears a resemblance to recent TesseracT. Although the songs are mostly on the shorter side, their rhythmic complexity and songwriting twists take them beyond standard verse/chorus fare, while there’s also a pleasant balance of atmospheric textures and melodic hooks (with a guitar lead or two that takes my mind to bands such as Killswitch Engage) contrasted with some hefty, crunching riffs and accompanying harsh vocals.

by musclassia

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In Scandinavian folklore, a 'myling' was a revenant of an unwanted child that was killed by its mother and buried in an undisclosed location. It could be heard singing in the night, thereby revealing the mother's crime. Filled with rage and seeking revenge, the myling was considered one of the most menacing types of ghosts in Scandinavian folklore. The only way to help the myling was to give it a name or to find the corpse and bury it in holy soil. With that in mind, this short EP starts off with a haunting and ominous intro, "Délibération", with thunder rolling in the background. You can easily imagine a mother out in the forest on a dark and stormy night, burying the child she just has murdered. After that, we get two songs, "Novembre" and "What Remains...", filled with pain, strongly enhanced by the agonizing vocals and a guitar hitting those high notes, almost like it's screaming out its grief and anger. The final song, "...Of Alice" begins with a beautiful piano melody that gets suppressed after half a minute behind blast beats and those agonizing vocals, but still going in the background throughout the song, until it takes over again at the end, while the screams fade out. There are no lyrics available, so this is my personal interpretation of the EP's title, the song titles and the haunting music, so it might not be correct: the intro is the mother's crime, then the myling seeks revenge to finally be found and be given a name, thus finding solace and peace. For me, it strengthens the listening experience.

by Nejde

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Twelve minutes and three songs isn’t a whole lot of time, but it’s long enough to show off a few different sides to Tellmarch, a new band featuring members from Nesseria, Dragunov and a few other bands. Both Nesseria and Dragunov feature elements of post-metal to varying degrees, and “Le Vieil Homme Et L’Amer”, the closing song on Tellmarch, also does. However, before reaching that point, Tellmarch unleash some grim, throat-shredding blackened sludge, and also some morose doom. Whether they’re abrasive, melancholic or atmospheric, the French quartet have a firm handle on what they want to achieve and how to go about doing so.

by musclassia

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Beyond The Pale formed in Utrecht back in 2020, but tragedy hit them when their guitarist, main composer, and founding member died on stage in 2022 following a cardiac arrest. The band decided to continue in his memory, and exactly two years after Jeroen van Donselaar’s death, they independently released Monument In Time. This EP is a melodic death metal beast, with aggressive and thrashy riffs, pissed off vocals, and strong songwriting from “a hungry pack of wolves, headed to the top”. Every song on here is worth singling out, but the chorus of “The Age Of The Pariah” is as addictive as they get, and the hardcore punk-influenced “Payback Is A Bitch” is admirably both brutal and melodic, while also boasting a crushing death doom outro.

by nikarg

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Dan Ozcanli, primarily known as the longtime guitarist of Nucleus, has played various instruments in various bands across different subgenres of metal, and his experiences in power, thrash, black, death, and grindcore benefit his latest project, Aetos. Except for a short guitar solo provided by Garrett 'Wandering Mind' Johnson (VoidCeremony), multi-instrumentalist Ozcanli recorded the self-titled EP of his solo project single-handedly, and the result is quite impressive. The basic framework might still be considered heavy metal in terms of song structures, and the numerous solos are also inspired by traditional heavy metal. However, enriched by the speed of thrash metal and the heaviness of death metal, Aetos (Greek for 'eagle') sounds more like what early melodic black/death metal might have sounded like if the Scandinavian pioneers of these sub-genres had listened to a little less Iron Maiden and more speed metal and thrash in their youth. The only minor flaw of this EP is the somewhat buried vocals in the mix, which is a bit unfortunate because, whenever the sparsely used vocals emerge from the riff storm, they fit very well into the overall picture.

by Starvynth

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