Elitist is a four-piece band from Portland, Oregon, but for all intents and purposes, you may as well just think of the band members as four spiky signposts pointing the quickest road to Hell. This is nasty, incendiary stuff, a rotten brew of sludge, doom, black metal, crust, d-beat, and whatever the fuck else kind of distressing noise these crabby SOBs can find to throw in the pot. Truth be told, there is something of a glut of bands taking a similar mix-and-match approach to extreme metal in recent years, but Elitist’s debut full-length is one of the most convincingly ugly and consistently compelling albums among an increasingly crowded field. To put it bluntly, Fear in a Handful of Dust hates you and wants to taste your tears.
The band appropriately cites Eyehategod as an influence, which shines through less in the band’s sound than in the drug-spent nihilism of its aesthetic. Opener “Burning the Unspoken Gospel” takes its time working up to a full band crush, making excellent use of waves of thick guitar carrying the vocal savagery up until they can take no more, and the full band must man the ramparts and scale the walls. Still, sometimes it’s nice to just let a guitar hang around and be nasty for a while, like for the first few seconds of “Black Wool,” before a fat, stumbling bass serves as midwife to horrific vocal expulsions. Elitist calls to mind fellow luminaries of fuck-your-labels-this-is-METAL metal such as Coffinworm or a much less grindy (and much better) Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire, but fans of Withered, Black Breath, Gaza, or basically anyone else who is taking a fistful of recognizable genre signifiers and lining them up against a wall to face a firing squad of angry bees and mistreated tigers should quake in all the right ways from these bad vibrations.
Many of the shorter songs run through a sort of diseased, ultra-thick d-beat tar pit (“Cult Malevolence,” “A Howling Wind”), while the longer tracks make a greater use of dynamics and stylistic switch-ups, like the stuttering drums that lead a clattering blast into “Human all too Human,” which has been transformed by song’s end into an elastic Sleep-y dirge. With vocals ranging from guttural death/grind to higher-pitched rasping that doesn’t quite approach black metal shrieking, Josh Greene is a suitably feral frontman, while the remaining members of Elitist play this gritty, woozy, and ill-tempered racket like their instruments have been soldered to their hands, with a “the world’s shit, so let’s keep playing” attitude that really elevates their brand of style-fuckery to grimly satisfying heights.
The album’s true masterstroke comes early in the form of “Ivory Shavings of the Tools Unknown.” A nasty Pantera-meets-Celtic Frost beatdown eventually transitions to a lovely, black-metal-influenced midsection that strongly evokes the latest Tombs album, then finally into a feedback-drenched outro that is the closest approximation of a star imploding this side of Skullflower’s Tribulation. Fear in a Handful of Dust covers an awful lot of ground in just under 35 minutes, but never feels like the amateurish exercise in cut-and-paste that often afflicts bands trying to chew up and spit out as many extreme metal styles as possible. The wonderfully-named “Tower Of Meth” closes things out on a slightly downbeat note where I wish it would have stormed out in a, well, towering rage of shrieking and stomping, but this is a relatively minor complaint. The numerous styles that get thrown together throughout the record are balanced and well integrated, and any misgivings about the slight lack of memorable songwriting chops are quickly erased when one remembers that this is the band’s first album. If subsequent efforts see them maintaining the red-line intensity while cramming this maniacally-unhinged blend of styles into tighter songcraft, we had all better watch the hell out. This is filth-caked noise for a filth-caked world: just what the doctor ordered. (www.metalreview.com)
1. Grovelling Within the Zenith of Perversion 04:07 2. And Once My Eyes Had Forgotten the Sun 07:42 3. Bound in Flesh 07:47 4. Hail Terror 07:17 5. Nameless One 06:31 6. A Scarring Quest of Purity in Form 05:53 7. The Essence of Nothingness 08:16
Rosetta's fourth full-length album. Music for Astronauts ! "It’s a coalescing of strengths into a tightly executed and emotionally charged post metal album that may be their best yet, given time to sink in. The band’s sludgy intonations, monolithic soundscapes, lush ambience and pepperings of shoegaze paired with Mike Armine throaty vocals are all in tow."
Debut album from Denmark's SERPENTS LAIR, expanding upon the groundwork laid forth on their superb 2014 demo with 7 tracks of dissonant, kaleidoscopic black metal. Digipack
A fusion of European influences such as HATE FOREST, DRUDKH or SEIGNEUR VOLAND Available on transparent jewelcase CD 8 tracks / 45 minutes with 8 pages booklet.
Sermons Of The Infidel’ contains a selection of 15 songs from Countess’ past. These tracks were selected by the band and all – save two live songs – were recorded again specifically for this album, throughout 2013 and 2014.
Eight of these tracks were released in 2013 as a digital-only EP. Due to popular demand, the band decided to release a physical version as well. The original eight tracks have been remixed and remastered and seven tracks have been added: five more new versions of Countess classics – including a Manilla Road cover – and two live songs, recorded at the ‘Metal Magic’ festival in Denmark this year.
Fading is an atmospheric, psychedelic, approximately hour-long black metal journey inspired by a specific event: Witnessing seemingly endless migrating water fowl at a local wildlife refuge that supports the Pacific Flyway. The album consists of one approximately hour-long song. All drums, vocals, and guitars were performed and recorded by A. Field recordings are from the Pacific Flyway refuge.
1. Fallen Upon The Shores Of Inferno 03:53 2. Eternal Slumber 04:17 3. Eden Shall Burn 02:50 4. Reign Of The Goatlord 03:10 5. Path Of Old Dominio 04:10 6. Savage Damage 03:06 7. Devil Wolf 01:38 8. Black Fire 03:52 9. Sent Forth To Conquer 04:58 10. Venomous 03:16 11. Advesary of God (live in Helsinki) 02:36 12. Night Hag (live in Tempere) 04:03 13. Obey The Beast ( live in Bergano) 03:24
Time Before Time
