Mining Metal: Abyssal Rift, Gorod, Hesperia, Mind Affliction, Mindwork, Rapid, Static Abyss, Unadorned

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. One of the most tedious things in the world of the arts is a self-conscious and insecure fixation on sophistication and intelligence. Good work will often become both and there is no shame in achieving either. But so too is there no shame in the naïve, the amateur, the frankly at times dumb knuckle-dragging fun, especially in the worlds of punk and metal. A defensiveness around that appellation tends to come when we feel like we are being typified, either in our work or in our taste, but the truth is so much life contains so many facets, and this kind of idiotic splendor is one of them and a blessed one at that. When you are swilling beer and blasting speed metal, headbanging around a bonfire in your yard, is this an act of peak intellect comparable to Goethe alone at his desk reading the last published novel of his age? No. But does this diminish its joyfulness, its raw humanity? Absolutely not. Art exists not to exalt our virtues or our vain self-image but to both lift up all these polymorphic aspects of human life and allow us to entertain and conceive of things outside that sphere. That shoe cobblers and fruit pickers have flashes or sometimes even full internal universes of wisdom and philosophers and savants have a tendency toward intense private foolishness isn’t something to be ashamed of or mock; neither wisdom nor idiocy is inherently better than another and both are part not just of the tapestry of life in the abstract but each of our specific individual lives as well. You learn to laugh at your own foibles with your spouse, make in-jokes about common errors and oversights. And yet we see a remarkable tetchiness at this being pointed out from artists who can’t conceive of it as a compliment. This occurs often in the world of black metal, where the natural inborn theatricality is taken sometimes with an apocalyptically funny sense of self-seriousness. Belief in one’s own art is paramount, of course; no one will take your work seriously or let it move them if you fling it out like its a dumb joke. But this sense of intensity vanity, itself a mask over deep insecurity, manifests itself when a band like Lammoth or Agriculture now or Deafheaven before emerge, bands that play with black metal and transpose it into different environments or poke and prod at its edges with different genre tools. The experiments and play of these groups doesn’t undermine the real triumphs of Emperor, Ulver, Darkthrone and the raw black metal underground, doesn’t inhibit their existence, but those within that world often act as though the mere existence of these different approaches to art profanes the existence of, um, wampyric indolence. Art captures life and imagination. It captures our ugliness as well as our beauty, our deep faults as well as our virtues, and shows the absolute flatness of these elements in ways that can discomfort us in their shocking wisdom. At funerals, we tell joyfully stories of being dumb and silly as equal alongside flashes of profound sympathy and achievement; they are considered additive, not competing and certainly not negating. So too it is in art. The idiot splendor of certain punk records and rough-edged metal albums is the point, the joy, the might and magic of the steel! – Langdon Hickman Abyssal Rift – Relics of Great Ash On Relics of Great Ash is death-doom that moves forward to conquer a specific point on a map rather than thrive in itself. Abyssal Rift’s sophomore record plays death metal Risk, planting flags in as many stylistic territories as they can and uniting them under their own banner. For instance, “Surrealistic Visions” presents as a (albeit clearly produced) Portal and Incantation send-up, until it reveals its latter-day Death interests in the third quarter. On the whole, Abyssal Rift play a more conscious brand of cavernous death metal–they push the cavern’s outer walls–with doom metal acting as a spice, like on “Sphere of Perpetuity,” though this imbalance works in their favor. They’re nearly always driving towards the next surprise, the next unturned rock, even when they crawl into single-digit tempos. Relics of Great Ash is assimilation at its finest. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey Gorod – The Ember Gone Despite coming up on 30 years as a band since their founding under the name Gorgasm, Gorod’s The Ember Gone reads more like a wild and hungry debut or perhaps those career-defining fourth albums of bands of certain degrees of ambition. They sound utterly reborn; check the Petrucci-isms of the guitar work on opening track “Signs” or the Haken riffing on “Devise.” Gorod made the turn toward more explicitly prog metal directions since their previous record The Orb, correctly reading that their contributions to tech death had reached their maximum. But while that previous record sounded like a cautious testing of a new direction, The Ember Gone is riven with supreme confidence alongside the best production I’ve ever heard from the band. Sometimes a band plateaus, finds a limit to their ability to meaningfully explore. I had thought Gorod had hit this wall. I was wrong. The Ember Gone showcases a brilliant new series of vistas for the band, as though they were born again. Listen to it on YouTube. – Langdon Hickman Hesperia – Picenum (True Marchigian Black Metal Renaissance) While smitten by Hesperia’s previous record, its flaws revealed themselves as time passed. The scales were tipped too heavily towards renaissance fair simulation, undercutting the black metal and storytelling. Hesperia’s newest record resolves this by indulging black metal and its many forms. Which is to say, the Italian one-man act builds upon the genre by following logically (and kvlt-approved) theses, like “what if Darkthrone got into synths?” He is an obvious steward of Immortal, yet sees where their sound can expand, not towards thrash but into the symphonic and cinematic. The Darkthrone comparison is apt because Hesperia keeps his riffs relatively simple, not getting into the high drama, high tension, and high technicality of Emperor. This sort of black metal came not from Helvete’s basement but from Quorthon and “A Fine Day to Die,” converting nihilism into widescreen epicness divorced from the personal and into the anthropological. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey Mind Affliction – No Future, No Light Mind Affliction wield bizarre and amateurish elements, like shouted vocals that seem pinched from a German industrial record or riffs that seem to have no conscious view of tonality or tuning. There is, however, a clear sense of deliberacy to these choices, a reaching into the avant-garde to produce a sound that genuinely feels unhinged and damaged in a way a great deal of extreme metal without avant-garde elements can’t do anymore. After a certain amount of tape fuzz trem riffs and heavy chugs and vocals shrieked and belched, these elements because genre tropes rather than strictly emotional tools. Mind Affliction live up to their band name, which here acts like a decoder ring, orienting you as they weave between atonal and naive art elements and more traditional black/death metal, as they drag you through amorphous hallways of madness. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman Mindwork – Adrift Mindwork return with their second studio album after a 14-year gap, not including the scant EP they released early in the lockdown. Adrift combines a wide-ranging approach to progressive death metal, evoking everyone from Cynic to Death to Origin, with a clean progressive metal sound that calls to mind certain early titans of the genre like Fates Warning with Ray Alder, Shadow Gallery or Vanden Plas. There is a tendency in some circles to “embrace cringe,” a still self-hating way to say they have given up on cool, which in turn belies that they do not at heart think what they love is or can be cool. Mindwork take the problem the other way, imbuing heavy metal magic into realms that others might consider nerdy and ending up with an album took me pleasantly by surprise. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman Rapid – Enter the Realm of Fire Rapid’s debut album is undoubtedly a Dying Victims’ record; charred and crispy heavy metal. Arriving three years after their previous EP, the sci-fi themed Blackstar Oppression Regime, Enter the Realm of Fire is true to its title. Though tuneful and varied (note the tempo changes on “Wielder of Might”) the record is a bit cursed, as if it would’ve incited the Satanic Panic at some point in history. It could be the ghastly backing vocals or the way Rapid pervert speed metal just enough to blur it into a faintly demonic form. Luckily, Rapid still play like a speed metal band in proto-extreme metal robes, so there’s noted attention towards immediacy and listenability. Even riffs that could sound evil, like that on “Necromantic Warriors,” are rocking under the band’s mandate. Rapid are recruiting for Satan’s Army here, and they’re giving you the chance to join via a trial by fire. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey Static Abyss – The Dying Hunt Static Abyss stagger drunkenly through their riffs, turning on a dime from direct punk rock, intricate technical death metal and more abstract Voivodiad prog with a dash of grindcore to book. This collision of high and low brow wings of death metal, of punk and metal, makes for an absolutely thrilling listen, akin to the first time you hear Van Halen or Napalm Death for the first time. See, the haphazard kitchen-sink songwriting isn’t a fluke; it’s fun, a sign of radical passion. There will be a psychedelic doom section with Geezer Butler style bass fills, like in “Lobotomized at Last,” only for the band to open the very next song (the title track in this case) with a Neanderthalic riff which itself breaks immediately into funeral doom. So many metal bands can be so uptight about their sense of songwriting, of wanting to avoid looking stupid, that they forget that maniacal sleazy punk edge that rims the genre. Static Abyss revel in it, just as much as the cerebral, because they know this art is both. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman Unadorned – Malwizardry The debut album from Texas’ Unadorned operates under the youthful belief that there are no bad ideas, only bad executions. Riffs, melodies, and solos stack atop and beside one another, rather than forming a cohesive whole, so Malwizardry comes off as disjointed and, crucially, charming. A progressive rock melodic death metal album could come off as drinking a litre of Pepto Bismol to some; Unadorned are lighter on the stomach. The lack of refinement adds an edge to Malwizardry and makes the fantastical ornamentation endearing. “Perfect Clairvoyance” is a prime indication of this. It balances an ambition unburned by outside pressure with an adoration for rougher death metal. The contrast is made obvious by the opening three minutes, wherein Unadorned cycle through riffs and melodies like it’s band practice. To further edit and perfect Malwizardry would remove the rough exterior that makes it metal–an imperfect exterior to those unlearned in the art of not giving a fuck. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey