Mining Metal: Apep, Eccentric Pendulum, Geisterfaust, Marrow of Man, NightWraith, Öxxö Xööx, Pyrrhon, and Trelldom

The post Mining Metal: Apep, Eccentric Pendulum, Geisterfaust, Marrow of Man, NightWraith, Öxxö Xööx, Pyrrhon, and Trelldom appeared first on Consequence .

Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts.

Guilt is a funny thing. While shame is often considered in some circles a teaching emotion, it more often has a deeply toxic effect, poisoning the image of the self and the trust in self to such a degree that it leaves people emotionally withered at best and likely to lash out at random at worst. Guilt, meanwhile, is the bedrock emotion behind that one. It is a mark, in a certain sense, of a true recalcitrance, a repudiation of past selves. There are many aspects of our heavily Christianized culture that are, to put it mildly, loathsome (shocker coming from a metal column!), but the notion of penitence and the grace of a penitent heart is not one of them. We all make mistakes; it is important when thinking of this to not be flippant, to think of mistakes as mere annoyance of others but sometimes very real and sometimes very deep harm. Sometimes, we tell ourselves this great harm is virtuous, that we are carrying out some celebratory and justified tas by hurting others so much. Other times, the farce of that logic is laid bare to us. It’s only a deliberately cowardly eye that never has to sit with this someday.

I had a discussion with a therapist a long time ago now about my ardent love of death metal. Given my lifelong struggles with guilt and shame, often outsized either from my wrongdoings (which, to be clear, are real) and indissolvable in time, she felt that perhaps engagement with such tremendously negative music was not the best for my mental well-being. It was then that I told her a thing I think we all know in heavy metal space. Death metal is not negative. It may dress itself in the macabre images of corpses ripped apart and the abyss of death itself, but most often this is a jubilant thing, ebullient, something almost marked more by joyous laughter than anything resembling guilt or shame. I did not tell her about doom metal. It’s that which I throw on when I either want to, in the spirit of grace and responsibility, explore my complicity in the harms of people around me or, in the spirit of malicious self-harm, tear myself apart for things now past that cannot be undone. I think a lot of people of a certain stripe, a political bent like mine, cleave to heavy metal in part for a virtuous sense of rebellion against oppression. It is harder and in many ways more necessary to use it to explore yourself, both the worthwhile and the ugly parts, and to make peace with that complex image.

Because we likewise tend, socially, to make the conditions of grace and forgiveness an already-perfection, which nullifies the fact that there is something to forgive at all. In this model, we do not allow people to change; the functional operation is discovering someone never was to blame, not that they were, that we still love them through their real flaw, that we work to rebuild and restructure things out of that care. There is a capriciousness and childishness to making your world around tedious neo-liberal images of self-care, cultivating a safety that is more often a lack of discomfort, and to avoid challenges that ultimately come down to language sets: how do we convey our boundaries and comforts to others in ways they might understand and how do we navigate the brackish water between each other in a meaningful and communal way. These are, admittedly, challenges not only of a lifetime but also challenges as-yet unsurmounted by mankind in general. We would not have one of our oldest discovered documents be mullings of law and justice, these topics would not form the functional root of nearly all religious and political spaces, were we comfortable in the idea that the problem is solved.

I say this because the other common thread for a lot of people in metal space is misanthropy. As much as it can be gleeful and cathartic aesthetic, driver of a lot of great art exploring a very real and ugly part so many of us carry, it’s something I see far too many people indulge either openly or clandestinely as the bedrock of their worldview. It is the fundamental thing that says me versus you, us versus them, that discomfort equals being unsafe and that being unsafe equals imminent threat. I, like many others, have PTSD from, well, things; the first lie of the traumatic mind is that we are always under maximal threat and that any response that quells that terror is justifiable. This wild traumatic misanthropic terror, whether justified or not, is the driver of current genocides in the Middle East, now spreading to more borders. Not that working on the perennial endless task of solving our troubled hearts would immediately create conditions of a ceasefire. But what else can we do? We are motes soon erased, dimming fires in cooling air.

– Langdon Hickman

Apep – Before the Deathless One

If you, like me, simply can’t stop spinning the new Nile, look no further than Apep. After their excellent debut, they got a slight reputation of being “more Nile,” something that to some might seem a bit reductive of their admittedly strong work, but it’s not really inaccurate either. Thankfully, death metal in this stripe (of which I’d count Hate Eternal and Vader as well) is both relatively rare and among the best the genre has to offer, so playing a keen study to those groups who have drastically slowed their output actually fills a pretty satisfying niche. And let it be known that they don’t ape little quirks; Apep are smart writers and players, able to do the other, greater trick of Nile, having progressive metal tracks on the same album as brutal death metal, technical stuff next to groove stuff, knowing when to let instrumental work take the stage and when to let vocals lead the way. They’re an unabashedly great band and this is a great album. Buy it on Bandcamp . – Langdon Hickman

Eccentric Pendulum – Perspectiva Invertalis

Sometimes, losing your power during a hurricane can be a good thing. The very brief production delay that caused was just enough for me to discover this Indian group from the Discord server of a fellow metal blog, who dropped their second record just this month. You wouldn’t guess it was only the second, though; between the rich and flourishing production and a songwriting ethos that sees the group plucking ideas from everyone from Mastodon to Behemoth, Death to Ulcerate, they come across like a group a decade-plus in already. The only mild complaint I have? While the elements combined here are really lovely, it misses that final fatal X factor, that aggression or brutality or technicality or progressive sweep that would finish the group’s songwriting off. To be this close to the complete package this early though is already more than enough proof that they can do it. Buy it on Bandcamp . – Langdon Hickman

Geisterfaust – Geisterfaust

What if a metal album could bully you? What if it could shove you into a locker and spit in your lunch? In that case, that album would be Geisterfaust’s self-titled debut, which rips all the atmosphere out of the black-metal-meets-sludge equation and replaces it with red-blooded excitement. As a crossbreed of the two styles, the German trio pair the unholiest and most immediate portions of each, namely, crunchy riffs and unrelenting tempo. Take the riff halfway through “Doorless Doorway”; it’s so potent you can smell it, yet there’s no room to breathe around it. It’s merely one example of how Geisterfaust deny you anything but adrenaline. Although, if there’s a single element driving this point into the outfield, it’s the vocals, which are equally hoarse, throaty, and incomprehensible. Metal is inherently angry, but Geisterfaust are downright mean. Buy it on Bandcamp . – Colin Dempsey

Marrow of Man – Ancient Hymns of Apocalypse

At first, Ancient Hymns of Apocalypse is melodic black metal with meaty vocals, but fortunately, Marrow of Man don’t stop at just the vibe. Every section of every track is balanced and considered, not to the point of sterility, but to exuberance. Notice how the one-man act implements a standard drum beat on “Upon Mighty Planes of Ash.” They could’ve slapped a blast beat onto it and done just fine, but that basic drum rhythm spreads your ears to witness the rest of the track’s repugnancy. It asserts that the goal isn’t to overwhelm, but to humble. Sometimes, overanalyzing robs music of its fun, but it’s a sugar rush to flip through Ancient Hymns of Apocalypse ’s nooks and crannies, trying to understand the jubilant heavy metal conclusion of “Beyond the Frozen Meadows,” for example. There are heathens who only need black metal made for bastards, and this record is for them. Buy it on Bandcamp . – Colin Dempsey

NightWraith – Divergence

As far as melodic death metal goes, NightWraith have to be one of the nerdiest bands on the block. Granted, the subgenre is already the geeky nephew of the acne-ridden linebacker that is death metal, but Divergence takes it even further by embracing progressive rock and heavy metal. It gets to the point that songs like “Whispers of Dragonflies” and the title track edge closer to the melodic and emotive progressive rock of the ’70s, albeit with tighter runtimes and the looming promise that NightWraith can crank up the aggression at any moment. They adopt the mindset that jam sessions can happen whenever and build their tracks around that potential. Therefore, songs tend to begin slowly and unspectacularly, but then venture down the tri-forked path of harmonic noodling, death metal riffing, and big metal energy without a compass. Divergence is September’s most unassuming album, easily. Buy it on Bandcamp . – Colin Dempsey

Öxxö Xööx – +

What a bewilderingly strange band, like Devin Townsend hired Deathspell Omega as his backing band, or if Magma and Therion made a collaborative record. This is supposedly the second record of a second duology, following a complex and perhaps schizotypally-informed post-Christian metaphysical set of anonymous treatises from many years ago. You can safely ignore that part, though; what matters is that edge of ethereal strangeness, a sense of prog as a means of accessing a compositional form deeply counter to what you expect, is the real generative core here. The guy said some nonsense during COVID, as many who should know better did, but he’s since settled back into making deeply adventurous heavy metal records that push a conceptual-compositional envelope I wish more groups had the balls to tackle. It’s always a joy to process one of these. Buy it on Bandcamp . – Langdon Hickman

Pyrrhon – Exhaust

Unlike a certain black metal band I had to yank at the last minute, I know this group is kosher politically speaking. For those not in the know, this group has always been on the cutting edge of death metal and noise rock, combining the arthouse mindset of someone like Glenn Branca with the intensity and avant-garde panache of Morbid Angel at their peak, all meshed against something between the Jesus Lizard and Don Caballero. If you don’t intuitively know what that would sound like, good; Pyrrhon might have once been a technical death metal band but these days they blend so many ideas into a very voiced style that feels incredibly distinctive that they, along with Krallice, Couch Slut and Imperial Triumphant, become the core of what a “New York extreme progressive metal” might sound like. Buy it on Bandcamp . – Langdon Hickman

Trelldom – …By the Shadows…

A Trelldom comeback in name alone, …By The Shadows… will not please Gaahl fans who were hoping that his first band would rekindle the raw black metal flame. Furthermore, it may only please Gaahls Wyrd fans slightly more. That being said, this is one of the best albums of the year, flat out. It makes what Gaahls Wyrd accomplished appear like a blueprint by pushing black metal into an island for misfit toys, where a smoke-filled lounge sets the decor and saxophone both jumpscares and coddles. That component comes from Kjetil Møster, and it’s hard not to love his performance when he injects streaks of orange into blue compositions like “I Drink Out of My Head.” He adds characters to Trelldom’s mise-en-scenes, which is to say that much of …By The Shadows… is mood-oriented and punctuated by outbursts of oddity. Traditionalists may hate it, but when have they ever been fun? Buy it on Bandcamp . – Colin Dempsey

Mining Metal: Apep, Eccentric Pendulum, Geisterfaust, Marrow of Man, NightWraith, Öxxö Xööx, Pyrrhon, and Trelldom
Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey