Blackened Folk Metal band Thrawsunblat has offered an update on their new album, Thrawsunblat IV: Great Brunswick Forest, due out this fall. Featuring members of Woods Of Ypres and Immortal Bird, the new album will be the follow-up to the acclaimed 2016 album Metachthonia and their 2018 Fires In The Mist EP. The band has started pre-orders via their Bandcamp page below. Continue reading
Blackened Death metallers Immortal Bird kick off a new US tour with Glacial Tomb (Khemmis, ex-Abigail Williams) tonight at The Sinkhole in St. Louis. See confirmed dates below.
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Just back from their European trek with MOSHPIG, Immortal Bird has booked a run of dates with Falls Of Rauros. Support on dates to come from Infera Bruo, Cavernlight, Mavradoxa among others. Continue reading
Chicago blackened metal quartet Immortal Bird has booked a European Tour, kicking off in a week and a half. Opening all dates will be Moshpig. Tickets are on sale now and the full slate of tour dates can be seen below.Continue reading
Underground sludge band Immortal Bird, on tour with Withered, had their van with all their gear and personal belongings robbed last night in New York City, after playing Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus Bar. Police are investigating the theft and a GoFundMe campaign has been launched. So far 99 fans and friends of the band have raised over $4000 for the group, hoping to continue their tour. Continue reading
Withered unleashed their Grief Relic record last Summer via Season of Mist, and it’s time to bring that devastatingly heavy material to the masses. Continue reading
Withered unleashed their Grief Relic record earlier this Summer on Season of Mist, and they will be bringing that devastatingly heavy material with them on their new headlining run in 2017. Continue reading
Writing this review on the heels of the news that Archeron will cease to be as a venue, I may get a bit misty-eyed for this place before too long. I headed down to the cool Brooklyn venue/bar/eatery to see some excellent metal bands on a Friday. As I walked around the up and coming Williamsburg neighborhood before the show, I reflected on how cool it is that New York once again has all these cool venues for live music, especially so for metal right now. Just ten years removed from when a shitty former mayor shuttered classic venue after venue and outcries the fans of live heavy music as a “nuisance”, it seems to be alive and kicking it at night in The Big Apple.
Getting to the bar early it was prime people watching from the bar. While I drank a smooth Pale Ale from Bronx Brewing Company and took note of the nice selection on tap, the food at the bar and restaurant was reflective of the bill tonight, excellent.
Brooklyn’s Anicon’s thick sound blew up the small rectangular space early with their instrumental black metal. Progressive, yet classic sounding USBM, Anicon performs with no pretense beyond their music. They want you to feel it as much as they do, so all their songs are more like a journey than a song. Little chatting to the crowd with very little moving around; they just showed up, played beautifully, acted like old pros, and bounced. The way it should be. Their new album drops in early July from Gilead Media, so please be sure to support them.
Chicagoans Immortal Bird returned to NYC will a bag of new jams from their Empress/Abscess long player and a reconstituted lineup. Having followed this group from its inception, to the stunning début EP Akrasia, to now, this is the tightest and best lineup of the band they have had to date. Led by vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Rae Amitay (Thrawsunblat), the band ran through tracks both recent and old. The entire room was feeling it and having many “holy shit” moments, as was I. Coming into their own now and gelling with the new players, it is exciting to see the growth of an up and coming band mirror that of the greats of the scene. Once they get off the road later in the year, they’ll be writing a new album with this lineup in tow. Big things are coming from this camp in the future, so don’t sleep!
False, man. False. I am tempted to just leave it at that, because words will likely fail to do justice to the six-piece crew from Minneapolis. OK, I will try to take you there with me after all. False is not a band, but a force. Seemingly put together by some cosmic chess-master selecting all the members exactly to compliment each other seamlessly, they hit your heart and mind simultaneously. Avant-garde, progressive or whathaveyou, False simply rules. One thing you notice right away about the band is their fantastic sonic mix live, perhaps better than on record. Even in a tiny room, they sounded immaculate from several vantage points I had. They wring every emotion out of their music and themselves, and ultimately you too. This was my second time seeing them, and honestly I am sad for that reason alone.
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Theories frontman Rick made a vow to the crowd about crushing your enemies and enjoying their downfall early in the night during their set. That pretty much sums up the tenor of their well-crafted, but savage grindcore anthems. If you want to slam, spill your beer, and exorcise your demons, Theories has the elixir for what ails your soul. Just in your face, well-played grind that has no fatty parts, just streamlined sickness. There were a few people right at the front of the pit, spilling their beers and exorcising said demons, but really the drama was all in the speakers to me. They were having a lot of fun on stage, which some bands in the scene seem to forget about these days. They were so powerful and provocative, that the fierceness is smarter than other bands in the genre. Theories is thinking people’s’ angry music, which is one of the best compliments I can give to a band.
KEITH CHACHKES
Thrawsunblat initially started as a side-project of Wood of Ypres members Joel Violette and later, David Gold. Thrawsunblat became the Joel Violette’s main project since the passing of Gold and the end of Woods. Sadly, until being asked to review this I’d not heard anything by them, something which was rectified very quickly after hearing this.
Metachthonia (Ignifera Records/Broken Limbs) is their latest album and is released on Ignifera records. The title Metachthonia is Greek for “the age after that of the earth” and this concept album addresses that which we are yearning for and has been taken away in the modern world. Describing the style of the new album as ‘folkened black metal’ the anticipation is that Metachthonia shifts from their folk sound to a much blacker sound.
Opening track ‘Fires that Light the Earth’ begins sombrely with cello courtesy of Raphael Weinroth-Browne, before being joined by the guitar and drums which begin a short-lived lament but then branches into blackened blasting drums from Rae Amitay (Immortal Bird) and the bass of Brendan Hayter (Obsidian Tongue) and the tone for the album is set, and it is considerably blacker.
The folk elements and blackened parts juxtapose well, and give a better balance to their sound than before: emphasised by an ebb and flow to the track. The more subdued folk elements provide beauty and the enhanced blackened elements combining with excellent production which gives it an immediacy and a very satisfying sound.
Whilst very much a different band from Woods of Ypres, their enhanced blackened style creates sections where the similarities in tonality and pacing are very difficult to ignore. This can mean that if already familiar with woods it can take a few listens before appreciating Thrawsunblat in their own right. Those few listens however, are truly worth it as this album is incredibly well-crafted and a wonderful listen.
They display a much more palpable sense of optimism and rebirth in their work, which is further emphasised by the organic feel of the folk elements woven throughout. A yearning to what has been lost in the modern era and the desire for its return. The feeling being similar to seeing nature reclaiming abandoned places, that sense that no matter what the natural world can and will survive humans be damned.
Ultimately, Metachthonia is a fantastic album from opener ‘Fires that Light the Earth’ right up until the phenomenal final track ‘In Mist We Walk’, highly recommended!
8.5/10
RICH PRICE
In just a few short weeks this year is already proving to be full of tectonic level shifts in the musical and metaphysical landscape of our lives. We often start looking at the calendar for the next year of releases in late fall with a mix of anticipation and at times, bracing anxiety. Before we hear one note of new music, the questions start gnawing at us. What new alliances are formed? What new music to pick up first? What about my old favorite bands? Will anything challenge the status-quo of typical sub-genre doldrums. If your tastes are anything like ours, these questions can all be answered with two words: Eight Bells. Hailing mostly from Portland, OR and made up of members of SubArachnoid Space, Curezum, Immortal Bird, and Thrawsunblat; their musical make up is an uncommon mix of spacey psychedelic rock and brooding, otherworldly heaviness. Eight Bells kicked off 2016 with a string of shows to support their new album Landless out on February 12th from Battleground Records, one of the must hear underground releases 2016. Melynda Jackson and Haley Westeiner trade riffs and parts intermingle like a dank, earthy swamp. When they sing together, it’s outright majestic. Recent addition Rae Amitay brings in her considerable range behind the kit. In the run up of west coast dates before joining up with Voivod and Vektor across the rest of the country, we caught the trio at The Yucca Tap Room in Tempe, AZ. Their intimate show was captured here by Melina Dellamarggio of Melina D Photography for Ghost Cult.
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