Features
17 Emerging Irish Artists You Need To Hear Right Now
From crushing death metal to dulcet death-folk, we honor St. Patrick's Day by looking at Ireland's best up-and-coming rock, punk, and metal acts.
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What Lies Beneath
Wild-eyed metal mania, space-bound doom, a dark abyss, and a dose of disturbing weirdness: This month’s highlights from the underground
Rounding up the latest killer sounds from the underground, including Deathhammer, Slomatics, Crippling Alcoholism and more…
- Words:
- Nick Ruskell
Summer’s disappeared, and September’s gone straight in with both autumnal feet. How best to accompany the chill in the air and darkening nights? Pumpkin spice? Get off. Have a proper vibe setter with a load of new death, blackness and doom. Not sitting in front of the news. Underground music, we mean.
First up, an always-welcome dispatch from German black thrash maniacs Desaster, who come screaming back with their 10th album, Kill All Idols. As ever (and reassuringly so), it’s all sharp, barbed speed, killer evil hooks and wild-eyed satanic fury, detonated with the pride of dyed-in-the-wool lifers. Which Desaster are, having been plying their excellent, blasphemic trade since 1988. Like Motörhead, the song hasn’t changed too much, but the spirit of bangers like the quick-fire Great Repulsive Force, Towards Oblivion and chugging Ash Cloud Ritual is exactly what this stuff’s all about.
Similarly prepared to die for metal, Swedish fiends Deathhammer are back with Crimson Dawn. Surprise, surprise, they’re charging through their satanic, thrashy racket like they’re in Hell and their arses are on fire. It’s absolutely fantastic. Basically mainlining Bathory’s first album with even more fuck-you aggression, Satan’s Sword and the fantastically-named Nocturnal Windz Of Fire are perfect slices of scrappy, clattering old-school speed for those who preferred it when everything didn’t sound like it was written and played by a computer. Never change, Deathhammer.
For those looking for something with a bit more claustrophobia and dissonant darkness, The Summoning Bell, the third album from Ireland’s Malthusian, is just the ticket. Spinning through an abyss of twisting death metal, there’s a weird, cavernous quality to the production that brings out the acid-y madness in their moments of Morbid Angel-ish peculiarities, such as on Amongst The Swarms Of Vermin and brilliant Red, Waiting. Eccentric without being overly obvious about it, Malthusian are masters of morbidity and madness, whether going full pelt and dizzying you with a maze of riffs and satisfyingly unorthodox leads, or sinking into something more doomy and funereal. If you’ve had your ear to the ground then you’ll already know they’re great, and this might be their finest hour.
Staying across the Irish sea, it’s time for something slower and more crushingly heavy, courtesy of Belfast riff experts Slomatics – Atomicult. They’re the sort of band where you can just hear how loud the guitars were when they recorded them, giving your speakers a proper workout when you turn it up. Somehow, they manage to create the massive walls of fuzz of Night Grief and Obey Capricorn without a bassist, although that would probably be dangerous. What makes Slomatics such a consistently great band, though, is that behind the enormous tone and subterranean tuning, they actually turn their riffs into belting songs, like the thunderous, fist-pumping chug of Auto-Skull, and Biclops – surely the first doom song named after a short-sighted Simpsons comic character. They’re further helped by drummer Marty’s excellent vocals sounding not a million miles from YOB man Mike Scheidt, and their touch with a cool, retro psych noise when needed, as well as losing the fuzz entirely for a breather on the strummed, mellow Relics. Slo, certainly, but brilliantly invigorating as well.
After five years, Geordie doom trio Goblinsmoker are bringing their Toad King trilogy to a close with The King’s Eternal Throne EP. Daft? Get digging into the actual plot about a rebellion against a toad king by drug-smoking goblins. Or something. It’s complicated. Anyway, they’re proper heavy, and the three fuzzed-up tracks here are appropriately swampy and sludgy, with a good sense of dread. And when they pick up the pace on the rollocking Burn Him, it’s hard not to get caught in their spell. Goblin or not, it’s probably good for a smoke to…
It’s sad that after a decade and change of heaviness, Manchester sluggers Barbarian Hermit are hanging up their guitars. As a parting shot, they’ve done a two-track EP, Redux, featuring a new version of old ripper Burn The Fire (the one from 2015 with the video that had a badger in IKEA), and Del Toro, a reworking of the original idea that would become Beyond The Wall on their Solitude And Savagery album. Both are fantastic examples of their brand of heaviness, and as final waves go, they’re louder than a 21 gun salute.
Like EyeHateGod via Birmingham, Voidlurker deal in big sludge, feedback and abrasive screams that you could sand a floor with. Their new EP Loathe For Life lives up to its title, with big bursts of nihilism and aggro flowing through its thick riffs. There’s even moments on Green Ghost and the title-track where the guitars enter a similar postcode to the antisocial wrecking ball that drove Electric Wizard’s Come My Fanatics… High praise (read that however you like) indeed.
And finally, regular listeners to 2 Promoters 1 Pod will have heard Damnation Festival big boss Gav McInally going off about Crippling Alcoholism, booked to play this year’s fest. The New England sextet’s new album Camgirl offers a disturbing but compelling explanation as to why he’s become so obsessed with them. Telling the story of an online performer, Bella Pink, it’s a mix of pop and gothic unpleasantness, as alluring as it is unsettling. The smeared-lipstick hooks of Mr Sentimental pulse with sleaze, while the way the electronic waves of bedrot give way to something darker is a proper headfuck. As is the discordant Pliers, which almost feels like a carsick version of Deafheaven at times. Definitely ones to catch at Damnation next month.