Category Archives: New Releases

Necropsy – Exitus (2020)

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Necropsy – Exitus (Xtreem Music, 21 January 2020)

 

It’s hard to believe, but here we are in mid-February and once again the temperature here in Pittsburgh is right around 50° (that’s 10° to you non-Americans)! Believe me, I am not complaining one bit, but we’ve really had an atypically mild winter so far. But we can still get into the winter spirit if we so choose, by tailoring our musical selections accordingly. Frigid black metal often helps, but another way to embrace a similar mood could be with Scandinavian doomy death metal. That’ll be our agenda for today.

Formed over 30 years ago in the city of Lahti (southern Finland), and having undergone a couple name changes, several line-up changes, and even a decade-and-a-half hiatus; Necropsy re-emerged in the late ’00s, finally following up a long series of 1990s demos with full-length albums in 2011 and 2015.

This January ushered in the release of a brand-new 4-track EP, that showcases the band putting the brakes on its typical death metal tempos, transitioning into a somewhat slower and doomier style. And now that you’re all caught up on historical facts, let’s check out Exitus!

 

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Rat King – Garbage Island (2016), Vicious Inhumanity (2020)

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Rat King – Garbage Island (Within the Mind Records, 24 June 2016)

 

Rat King – Vicious Inhumanity (Within the Mind Records, 17 January 2020)

 

As much as I hate to admit it, during the almost eight and a half years I’ve been administrating this website, I have amassed a list of literally hundreds of albums I’ve hoped to find time to write about and share with you folks. Realistically I know I won’t ever get through ALL of them, but at the moment I am striving to keep up with the new ones as well as I can so it doesn’t get any worse; and if I can knock off an older one here and there while I’m at it, wonderful.

So having said that, here’s a record that just came out within the past month, as well as one that’s been sitting on my to-do list far too long. Both are by Seattleite trio Rat King, released on their own label Within the Mind, and both were recorded by the legendary Mr. Tad Doyle — but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. As you will soon discover. Please to enjoy!

 

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Body Void / Keeper Split (2020); Keeper / Sea Bastard Split (2015)

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Body Void / Keeper – Split (Tridroid Records [cassette] / Roman Numeral Records [vinyl], 15 January 2020)

 

Keeper / Sea Bastard – Split (Medusa Crush Recordings [N.A.] / Dry Cough Records [U.K.], 03 February 2015)

 

Hello there! Today we’re going to take a look at a split record that’s been generating a little bit of buzz since it came out last month, but not nearly as much as it should — considering the caliber of the two bands who released it (Californians Body Void and Keeper).

The first of those is surely familiar to even occasional readers of this website, as we’ve discussed their work multiple times before — and they’ve managed to land on our Top ## of 20## lists each of the past three years.

But I realize at this point that we have never mentioned Keeper previously, which is really a shame because they were involved with another fantastic split LP that came out about five years ago, along with Brightonian band Sea Bastard. Somehow we just never got around to covering it, so to rectify that error, let’s revisit that one today as well. So you can have a little “bonus review” as a treat.

 

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Ether Coven – Everything is Temporary Except Suffering (2020)

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Ether Coven – Everything is Temporary Except Suffering (Century Media Records, 10 January 2020)

 

Ok, first things first — isn’t that a fantastic title? Really sounds like it was lifted straight from some Woods of Ypres lyrics or something, doesn’t it?

Well technically, it was lifted from Ether Coven lyrics, as the phrase appears a few times in the opening track from the Floridian band’s second album, released exactly one month ago today, which we will be diving into starting right now…

 

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Yatra – Blood of the Night (2020)

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Yatra – Blood of the Night (STB Records, 31 January 2020)

 

Hello again! If you were here yesterday, you would have noticed we shared the news about the Shadow Frost Music & Arts Festival coming up later this month in central Maryland.

One of the acts scheduled to perform at that event is Yatra, doom-drenched trio from the extreme eastern part of that state, whose second album — just released last week — we will be studying today.

 

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Kassad – London Orbital (2020)

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Kassad – London Orbital (Hypnotic Dirge Records, 10 January 2020)

 

Hello there, readers. Was it just my imagination or did the first month of this year just totally fly by? Anyway, here we are a few days into February and finally this is the first time I’m getting around to writing about a 2020 release. I don’t feel great that it’s taken so long, but here we are. And, notwithstanding any change in the status of the creek, with regard to it rising or not, this should be the first of many.

This is also the first 2020 release from one of our favorite Canadian labels, Hypnotic Dirge. Those familiar with the record company will recall that many of their releases originate in or around the same frozen northern tundra of their homeland, and often (fittingly) fall within the umbrella of frostbitten atmospheric blackness — but today we’ll be focusing on something that strays ever-so-slightly outside of those stereotypes…

The abode of Kassad, as name-checked in their sophomore album’s title, is the capital of England (rather than the somewhat smaller city located on the Thames River in the province of Ontario); and while the record does still operate within the black metal milieu, the band has described its style as “urban” black metal.

 

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Vesperith – Vesperith (2019)

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Vesperith – Vesperith (Svart Records, 22 November 2019)

 

Well, here we are yet again: another year all wrapped up, another stressful holiday season all wrapped up, and all that’s left to do is to suffer the disheartening and depressing effects of the sun rising well after arriving at work and setting almost immediately after leaving for home.

Feels like an appropriate time to talk about some music that is also dark and chilling — as well as being based in (or at least, near) the land of the midnight sun: Finland’s Vesperith. Although not an actual word in English or Finnish (as far as I can tell), it would appear that this name (which is also the title used for this debut full-length album) bears a relation to the words for vespers, the evening star, or simply eveningtime itself.

Even more difficult to accurately put into words is a description of the music itself: distilled to its purest essence, this could be considered a single-member atmospheric black metal band (the only person credited on the album is Sariina Tani, identified as the primus motor), while often sounding far more atmospheric than metal.

 

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The Night Watch – An Embarrassment of Riches (2019)

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The Night Watch – An Embarrassment of Riches (self-released, 15 November 2019)

 

Hey, everybody. It’s time to check in on instrumental quartet The Night Watch, whose members include violinist Evan Runge and guitarist Nathanael Larochette (both of whom are also part of the neo-folk trio Musk Ox, featured here), plus Matthew Cowan on bass and Daniel Mollema on drums/percussion.

As you may recall, we wrote about Boundaries, the thirty-plus-minute piece of music that was their second album (here), when it was released back in 2016.

Anyway, that same cast of characters is back (with the drummer sometimes hitting the ebonies and ivories as well, this time around) with a third full-length, just released last month: An Embarrassment of Riches. Still essentially an instrumental venture, although this one does occasionally feature some choral vocals — credited to all four instrumentalists plus a host of guests, this record is sequenced a little more traditionally than its predecessor, in that it’s broken into several individual tracks rather than a single album-length composition.

 

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Forest of Tygers – I Will Die of Violence (2019)

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Forest of Tygers – I Will Die of Violence (Acteon Records, 08 November 2019)

 

Here at Valley of Steel HQ, we’ve been big fans of the husband and wife duo Forest of Tygers ever since they released their first EP Bruises over five years ago. We’ve written about these Nashvillians each time we’ve heard something new of theirs, and we’ve been anxiously awaiting the full-length record they’ve been talking about for a couple years — and (as of about a month ago) it’s finally here!

Guitarist/vocalist Jim and drummer Rachel Valosik have established themselves quite a reputation for creating superlatively black- and ugly-sounding conglomorations of hardcore/sludge/doom/metal, and newly-released I Will Die of Violence will only increase that…

 

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Lapsarian – Ruminant (2019)

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Lapsarian – Ruminant (self-released, 22 November 2019)

 

Last time we took a look at the latest release from a multiple-platinum artist whose discography dates back many decades. Naturally, today our focus turns to an album that just came out last week, from a band who just formed last year.

With just over 100 Facebook likes so far (does that still even count as a metric in 2019?), and without a huge marketing campaign backing them, it’s probably a safe bet that Washington, DC’s Lapsarian is a new name to most of you reading this. So go check out Ruminant, and then once the word gets out, you can brag to everyone else about how you’ve already been on that bandwagon way longer than they have …

 

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