Stuck in the Filter: June 2024’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
Managing this Filter is a full-time job. Or it would be if I paid anyone, or got paid myself. I doubt anyone in this godforsaken facility has seen a greenback in the last two decades.1 Nonetheless, I grabbed my clipboard and my flogger and I made my way to the lockers, where my dutiful minions await my first order of each day. It’d been a minute since we cleared out the ducts in the south wing of AMG Headquarters, so that’s where I ushered my team first. The poor souls shivered at the thought of tackling a highly neglected section of the system. But, as always, work needs doing and this is the work.
At long last, just when I started considering replacing my whole crew outright and leaving the current one for dead, they returned, battered and winded, but alive. And they brought wares! O blessed day! Without further ado, I bring you our June Filter!
Kenstrosity’s Medieval Mutton
Aklash // Reincarnation [June 20th, 2024 – Self Release]
Proving the unlikely flexibility of black metal as a medium, tales of knights, castles, and fantastical clashes of class marries with charred extremity so effortlessly that it comes at no surprise to me how UK Medieval melodic black metal troupe Aklash came to be. Kicking fourth record Reincarnation off with an incredible one-two punch, “Reincarnation” and “Communion with Ghosts,” Aklash’s melodic black metal-meets-Vulture Industries-meets-Modest Mouse-meets-Æther Realm concoction charms its way deep into my very being. These songs, burgeoning with lush compositions, incredible guitar work, and multifaceted personalities, evoke imagery of the ancient and the arcane so vividly that it often feels like traveling through time in an alternate universe of magic and mirth. The rabid “Babylon” takes this initial salvo and stabs yet another 1,200cc of pure adrenaline into my veins.2 As my neck swings and spirals with great velocity, giant mugs of mead spontaneously manifest in both fists. What is a sponge to do but imbibe? Against all odds, such infectious energy sustains into the magnificent closer “My Will Made Manifest,” making this record a wall-to-wall festival of sound. If it weren’t for a couple of frilly interludes and the teensiest spot of bloat in a couple of places, I could see Reincarnation growing into a year-end contender. In the end, it might do just that.
Thus Spoke’s Forgotten Findings
Cainites // Revenant [June 21st, 2024 – Scarlet Records]
It was once rumored across Eastern Europe that those who rebelled against the Orthodox church were cursed to become vampires after they died. Revenant, however, follows an Orthodox priest, whose induction into the class of bloodthirsty monsters happens irrespective of his religious devotion. Crafting a spooky tale with Scandinavian-inspired melodeath and flourishes of synthy blackened death, Italian duo Cainites strike a little like a less-polished Tribulation, but with bags of their personality. These guys know how to write a riff that shivers its way up your spine (“Theotokos,” “God’s Wrath,” “Redemption”) and dance around in your belly (“Darkness Awaits,” “Forgive Our Sins”), and damn, can it be catchy. Using a dueting mixture of growls and moaning cleans, choruses jam their way into your brain and don’t budge (“Vampire God,” “We Lost Our Sanctity”), amplifying the gleefully malicious bounce of the riffs with tongue-in-cheek melodrama. Solos have just enough yearning depth while staying grounded with a gritty tone, and not outstaying their welcome. The album generally treads the line well between camp and serious, discounting, perhaps, the extended spoken-word Bible recitation where God curses Cain (“Cainites”). In all, it’s a very good time and only grew on me the more I listened. One to check out for true fans of melodeath.3
Inherits the Void // Scars of Yesteryears [June 21st, 2024 – Avantgarde Music]
Scars of Yesteryears took me so much by surprise that I had to be informed by another staff member that it even existed. Having reviewed last year’s The Impending Fall of the Stars, and finding it quite an uplifting piece of melodic black metal, I was keen to see where the project had gone, musically, in the intervening time. The answer is nowhere, but that’s not entirely negative. This is still soaring (“L’effigie Du Déclin”), epic (“Scars of Yesteryear,” “L’eternelle Course Des Astres”), blistering (“Celestial Antler”), and sometimes beautiful (“The Endless Glow of Twilight”) meloblack. With lightning-fast and stormily dynamic riffing and enough of a melodic through-line to keep things going. The highs are not as high as they were on the previous record, the slower moments lacking the atmosphere and grandiosity that former work showed (though coming closest on “L’eternelle…” and “The Endless…”). However, the whole feels more consistent and steady, with the first half whizzing by on the tailwind of “Celestial Antler,” “The Orchard of Grief,” and “Ashes of Grievance”‘s bubbling energy, and the second dipping in intensity only to be saved by the final couple of tracks. Above-average, fiery meloblack, and worth taking for a spin even if it won’t be making any lists.
Dear Hollow’s Dumpster Disturbance
Bilmuri // American Motor Sports [June 28th, 2024 – Self Release]
Everyone loves easycore.4 In an alternative universe where easycore is a natural progression of pop country rather than pop/punk, it becomes an international treasure and that treasure is American Motor Sports. Of the crabcore alum of Attack Attack!,5 Johnny Franck is least likely to be featured on Octane Radio,6 as the Bilmuri project has been a means for musical exploration since his departure. Offering the most streamlined homage to the three M’s (‘Murica, memes, and the Midwest), get ready to crank your hog to ten songs of heartbreak, beer, and landscaping through arena pop country with needlessly heavy djent guitar riffs – alongside Franck’s signature insanity coursing through all the movements. From the deathcore-meets-honkytonk and sub drops of “Better Hell” and “Spinnin’ You Around,” the blaring and sexy sax solos of “2016 Cavaliers (Ohio),” “Straight Through You,” and “Drunk Enough,” the blazing fiddle of “Talkin’ 2 Ur Ghost,” to the Kevin James breakdown call out of “Emptyhanded,” Bilmuri creates an infectious blend of the safely predictable and the utterly apeshit. It features guest artists from country scenes (Dylan Marlowe, Mitchell Tenpenny) and indie pop spheres (Knox, Arizona) who all add yearning and theatricality to Franck’s already emotive performances. American Motor Sports is twenty-eight minutes of catchy melodies, scathing grooves, and tastefully tragic lyrics with a penchant for memes. We’re all supposed to hate it, but much to my assigned promos’ dismay and Steel Druhm‘s chagrin,7 I haven’t been able to listen to much else.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Maritime Musing
Houle // Ciel Cendre et Misère Noire [June 7th, 2024 – Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions]
We all know that black metal hits harder when it’s actually something else wrapped in a blackened and shrieking package. France’s Houle offers Ciel Cendre et Misère Noire as a one part Iron Maiden, one part Immortal, and two parts unstoppable siren screaming as vocalist Adsagsona shreds throat through each of the blazing numbers on this debut (minus the beer-swinging sailor intro). Her ear-stabbing cries tally high, and if it weren’t for her glottal punishments and accompanying guitarists’ breaks into tremolo melodies, tracks “Sur Les Braises de Foyer” and “Sel, Sang et Gerçures” could be instead the backdrops to something of the dark power metal world, replete with Maiden bass gallop and anthemic flair. She has a fine narrative croon too, but it’s her flagrant vocal flayings that sell the extremity of what Houle packs as ballast. With terraced guitar lines and thrashed-out drum breaks (“La Danse du Rocher,” “Mère Nocturne”), Ciel Cendre has the forward energy of battle and doesn’t let go to the very end, joining bands like Aorlhac and Passièsme in the modern melodic black metal field fit for castle raids. But as long-form closer “Née des Embruns” reinforces with calls of the ocean in its open and fade, Houle attacks from the sea. En garde!
Mark Z.’s Musings
200 Stab Wounds // Manual Manic Procedures [June 28th, 2024 – Metal Blade Records]
Following a rapid rise to fame during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio death metal troupe 200 Stab Wounds thrust their Slave to the Scalpel debut onto the masses in 2021. While I was about as mixed on that one as Felagund was, their second album Manual Manic Procedures has proven these wounds cut far deeper than originally thought. The beefy chugs that the band has become known for are still here in full force, but now they’re paired with sharper hooks and a heightened sense of maturity. On Procedures, you’ll hear acoustic plucking, immense Bolt Thrower riffing, grooves that will blow your guts out, and even some melodic death metal influence—and that’s just on the first song. The band also knows when to give you a breather, be it a well-placed atmospheric instrumental (“Led to the Chamber / Liquefied”) or an extended ride on a great groovy riff (“Defiled Gestation”). With a monstrous guitar tone, plenty of killer moments, and a track flow that’s smoother than liquefied human remains, Manual Manic Procedures feels like modern death metal coming into its own.
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