Triumvir Foul - Spiritual Bloodshed

By Kaptain Carbon. It has been a wild ride for Triumvir Foul since the project's debut in 2015. In these two years, not only has recognition washed over this act but its label / hivemind, Vrasubatlat, has also received considerable praise. I wrote glowing reviews regarding projects from Vrasubatlat

By Kaptain Carbon.

Artwork by Timo Ketola.

It has been a wild ride for Triumvir Foul since the project's debut in 2015. In these two years, not only has recognition washed over this act but its label / hivemind, Vrasubatlat, has also received considerable praise. I wrote glowing reviews regarding projects from Vrasubatlat and even did a feature on the labels output. With 2016 already seeing a heavy amount of great releases from Dagger Lust, Uškumgallu, Serum Dreg, and Utzalu, the label waited a few months into 2017 to release something very special, the second offering of Triumvir Foul. If things were not bleak enough for the world, then prepare for a rain of filth.

Triumvir Foul, out of the Vrasubatlat roster, is the most traditional death out of the bunch, but concerns itself with chaos and general mayhem rather than death metal’s traditional themes of death and demise. While there are certainly old school riffs that run through this record, Spiritual Bloodshed is much more interested in rot and ruin, on a worldwide scale than it is in mimicking any legacy band. Starting with the aptly named opener, “Asphyxiation,” this is a band that does not waste much time getting to their point. Death, destruction, and endless suffocation are the core values that are a part of Spiritual Bloodshed and, while this record is not as oppressive as bands like Revenge or Teitanblood, Triumvir Foul has found a medium in which complete and utter destruction can be entertaining and dynamic for its running time.

Comparing the project's two records side-by-side shows a similarity in not only the sound but also the outlook. Aside from the aforementioned penchant for destruction and grim atmosphere, Triumvir Foul poises itself as the aggressor in some mythical battle, either for or against whatever forces of darkness are set to consume the world. With not that much separating the two records, aside from small changes in production, the band proposes a second chapter in a gross looking book. From the doom ridden breakdown of “Serpentine Seed,” to the riotous opening of “Disemboweled Pneuma," to the punk influenced grooves in the colorfully named “Vomitous Worship in Rotting Tombs,” Triumvir Foul captures the essence of the grime that lays caked on the headstones of an endless underground cemetery. Yes, you heard me right.

Triumvir Foul, and that associated bands of Vrasubatlat, have always been one of my favorite answers when people ask about the state of current heavy metal. While this sounds like gushing praise, the fact that Triumvir Foul and its label are experiencing popularity for basically independent releases is truly the current state of heavy metal. When fans can connect with labels directly, and be impressed for months and years with the output, it is that sort of relationship driving the current aspect of lesser known parts of the genre.

Perhaps one of my favorite aspects of Triumvir Foul, and the rest of Vrasubatlat in general, is both the forward thinking nature of the bands and the ability to take worn tropes of the genre and make them frightening. Lyrical themes of death, destruction, and occult lore are heard in a dozen bands from this year, and perhaps every year stretching back decades. The ability of Triumvir Foul to mix what is expected and what feels unexpected is fantastic. Add to that the growing hype around this label, and a stream of releases that seem to add to a library of rot, and Spiritual Bloodshed is a victory lap around the nine circles of Hell.

Kaptain Carbon moderates Reddit's r/metal as well as writes reviews for lesser known black, death, and doom metal for Tape Wyrm as well as Dungeon Synth, Tabletop, and Movie Reviews for Hollywood Metal.

Walpyrgus - Walpyrgus Nights

By Karen A. Mann. North Carolina’s Walpyrgus play classic heavy metal that recalls the period in time when British Steel and Number of the Beast ruled MTV, and a bevvy of European and American bands popped up with variations of that raw, aggressive sound.

By Karen A. Mann.

Artwork by Gustavo Sazes.

North Carolina’s Walpyrgus play classic heavy metal that recalls the period in time when British Steel and Number of the Beast ruled MTV, and a bevvy of European and American bands popped up with variations of that raw, aggressive sound. The band’s reverence for the era of Denim and Leather is obvious from the outset: Think screaming dual leads, ripping melodies, and singer Johnny Aune’s powerful voice wailing creepy odes about dead girls, ghosts, witches and woe.

Formed in 2012 by veterans of long-running regional acts Twisted Tower Dire, October 31, Daylight Dies, Heaven Wept and Viper, Walpyrgus has teased listeners with several singles and two live albums. And just in case you doubted where their musical interests lie, two of those singles were faithful covers of Riot’s “Outlaw” and Mercyful Fate’s “Doomed by the Living Dead.” Now the band offers the most complete illustration (literally and figuratively) of their full metal power on Walpyrgus Nights, their first full-length.

Photos by Karen

Ripping through eight songs (including a cover of Witch Cross’ “Light of a Torch”), Walpyrgus Nights weaves a spooky, Lovecraftian tale that’s macabre, but in an almost light-hearted way. Aune’s voice is passionate and emotive, even when the lyrics turn a little campy. A sample:

Dead of night, come to life. You’re the Queen, got no equal.
But you’re cold, and you’re dark and you’re evil

Adding to the fun factor: Vinyl versions of Walpyrgus Nights includes a 56-page comic book that illustrates the stories behind the songs with drawings of sexy witches, clawing goblins, foreboding palm readers and dire warnings.

While the majority of the album is straightforward, meat-and-potatoes classic metal, the band veers into pop-punk territory on the first single, “Dead Girls,” a fun, furious four-chord ripper that features chanted backup lyrics and even an organ solo. It’s a standout song on an album that marks Walpyrgus’ as one of the best bands in the New Wave of American Traditional Metal scene.

Dynamic Metal Roundup

By Calen Henry. Metal is loud and abrasive, but metal fans like it that way. Over the past 25 years, there has risen a pernicious side to the loudness of metal (and music in general). Dynamic range compression has

By Calen Henry.

Metal is loud and abrasive, but metal fans like it that way. Over the past 25 years, there has risen a pernicious side to the loudness of metal (and music in general). Dynamic range compression has drastically increased in a phenomenon called the Loudness War.

Simply put, during mastering much contemporary music is altered to raise the volume of all parts to the same level as the loudest part, often the drums. The resulting loss of dynamics decreases the overall impact of the music; when you turn it up everything gets super loud, instead of some parts being accented.

A loud master doesn't necessarily ruin an album, and poorly produced dynamic albums can still sound terrible, but there are essentially no examples of more dynamic masters sounding worse than the louder version, provided other factors are not also drastically altered.

Thankfully, since I started paying attention a few years ago the trend has been toward more dynamic masters for metal, though it's far from standard. That being said, a few artists really stand out in both their commitment to dynamics and their excellent music.


I'm a sucker for concept albums and Vainaja take it even further; they're a concept band. Comprised of The Preacher, The Cantor, and the Gravedigger they play absolutely crushing death doom, in Finnish. The concept revolves around Wilhelm, a mysterious (and fictional) cult leader believed to have risen from the dead to corrupt the townsfolk with his blasphemous sermons. The albums are based upon unearthed excerpts of his writings.

Musically, their first album Kadotetut is pretty straightforward death doom while the second Verenvalaja expands the sound with more interesting arrangements and some guest guitar work by Hooded Menace's Lasse Pyykko. On music alone Vainaja have made a name for themselves, but going above and beyond, they've released digital versions of the vinyl mixes for both Kadotetut and Verenvalaja and they sound incredible. Vainaja was the catalyst to write this roundup.

Death doom is far from the first genre one thinks of in relation to dynamics, but the dynamic mixes sound incredible. The drums in Verenvalaja are absolutely thunderous and every filthy guitar note is clearly audible. Plus the dynamic master makes it positively easy to blow through the whole album in one sitting. It will make you yearn for a vinyl mix of every album

Bordering on a household name, at least in the metal community, Horrendous inject just the right level of "progressive" into Old School Death Metal to make super interesting albums without leaving the bounds of "OSDM". In contrast to full on progressive death metal Horrendous stick to the OSDM sound but shake things up with truly interesting melodic compositions. Their two most recent albums, Anareta and Ecdysis were some of the earlier of the "New Wave of Dynamic Metal" and they sound fantastic. Everything from the buzzsaw guitars to the powerful drums and lush acoustic passages sounds phenomenal.

Like Vainaja, Be'lakor made a name for themselves based on their music, then released vinyl masters of older albums. Widely praised for injecting new life into the somewhat stale Melodic Death Metal scene, the vinyl masters of Stone's Reach and Of Breath and Bone sound stellar. Each individual part of the music, right down to the individual drum and cymbal hits comes through with amazing clarity adding another level to already fantastic albums.

Kuaun's latest album, Sorni Nai, sees the Finnish singing Russian band craft a concept album about the Dyatlov Pass incident. In 1959 a group of 9 skiers in Russia disappeared then were found dead with bizarre injuries and the whole story is still unknown. Sorni Nai is a cinematic album flowing through doom, black metal, post rock and even sections broaching on classical. It's all delivered with a huge dynamic mix and is Pay What You Want on Blood Music's Bandcamp (like all their releases).

Auric are another fantastic anomaly on this list. The Arkansas based band play blackened sludge with echoes of early Mastodon (they use the same tuning) and Pallbearer. Their most recent full length, Empty Seas, is absolutely jaw dropping and criminally underrated. They employ an Elder-like ability to incorporate aspects of Stoner metal, sludge, black metal, and post-rock into a cohesive whole, and bless it with a hugely dynamic mix. The drums, though have an oddly compressed character which stands out strangely during slower passages, but helps preserve clarity during the some of the lightning fast sections. Of particular note is the track "Backlit", where they take a filthy sludge riff and build all sorts of levels of melody over top of it. So good.

If this list piques your interest in dynamic metal it's worth noting that Earache records has a large back catalog of classics ranging from the death metal triangle (US, Sweden, Britain), to grindcore available as Full Dynamic Range versions; digital versions of the vinyl mixes. It's worth revisiting classics like Carcass' Heartwork and Entombed's Left Hand Path to hear the dynamic mixes.