Much like the Christmas shopping season, sometimes it seems like the end-of-year album lists come earlier and earlier each year. Inevitably, this means some otherwise excellent albums released in November and December get lost in the shuffle. I'm here to educate you on what you weren't paying attention to: two outstanding splits from bands known and unknown and a full-length from a newcomer.
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In late November, black metal bands Barshasketh and Outre released a split called Sein / Zeit. We haven't talked about Barshasketh around here since way back in 2011, which is a shame because they've made some fine albums since then, including their latest full length, Ophidian Henosis. For this split, Barshasketh contribute the Being ("Sein"). Their black metal here has a touch of dissonance and a driving energy. The rhythm is sometimes chunky, sometimes galloping, but always addictive.
Outre brings the Time ("Zeit") and an additional track, and from the first off-kilter, thrashy strains of "Zeit," you can tell that they're a bit more zany in their approach. Is zaniness allowed in black metal? I say yes. The jangly chords and manic vocals add a bit of playfulness to the full-speed meanness in the riffing, and it's a great combination. I wasn't familiar with Outre before this, but I'm going to check out their back catalog.
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Siberian Hell Sounds has, thus far in their career, produced short blasts of blackened, crusty noise, with songs usually hovering around the three-minute mark. When I saw that they contributed one, 20-minute-long song to a split with Convulsing, I was worried. Could their signature sound be extended to funeral doom lengths without getting tedious? The answer is yes. Who would have guessed that the band had ambitions to make a damn mini-epic with what I'd actually call legitimate movements while never taking their foot off the gas in terms of intensity?
Convulsing's track is similar in scope and sound, although if anything, their rough parts sound even nastier, although perhaps that's just in contrast with the delicate, barely-there ambient sections, doomy sections, and slow-creepy-death sections, to name just a few of the fascinating interludes contained in this one, long track. Like Outre, Convulsing is another band I need to check out in more detail. This split was another late November release that I feel like slipped by too many people.
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In December--if you'd been paying attention--Dsknt brought war to your ears (and sometimes to vowels) with their album PhSPHR Entropy. Their style is definitely bottom heavy, pairing low growls with a bass-heavy production. For reasons I probably can’t defend in a musicological sense, I’m put in mind of Portal--I think they share a dense muscularity, but the big difference is that Dsknt doesn’t employ Portal’s suffocating impenetrability and focuses on songs that mere mortals can comprehend. I couldn't resist the dissonant jabs of guitar overlaying the black-death churn on album opener "Exhaling Dust," and the rest of the album is equally compelling.
