Hey there, tech fiends. It's that time of the week again. Before we dive into today's focus, here's the usual reminder that all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
Close to the tail end of 2021, and Hadal Maw comes roaring back with Oblique Order, their latest killer release. Officially dropping on December 31st via Blighttown Records. As a fan of the group since their 2014 debut album, Senium, it's exciting to help launch today's single and music video for "Vile Veneration" today.
If you're new to Hadal Maw, the Melbourne, Australian hellraisers have carved out a pretty interesting and unique path in the tech-death scene. The group blew a lot of people away up the release of Senium, myself included when I covered them two times at NoCleansinging in 2014. Then their atmospheric, groovy, and dissonant-focused style of tech-death went down a different path on 2017's sophomore album, Olm. As if it was something sentient, music that was consciously expanding, and evolving out from their established style out into a number of new forms. Although I've gathered over time that it wasn't for everyone, I still find it to be a fantastic and interesting release even now. This is precisely why we premiered it here in this space prior to its release.
In many ways, every release for the band has followed this same throughline musically, one of exploration and refinement amid a skilled focus on multiple forms of technical death metal and plenty of ideas not derived from the genre as well. So then when the group dropped their most recent effort, 2018's Charlatan EP, which we premiered here, it felt like an exciting new moment for a band who I already felt was on to something special.
Now in the present moment, before 2021 closes out, Hadal Maw is gearing up to drop another mini-sized mindfuck entitled Oblique Order. The song we're launching today, "Vile Veneration", is the closing cut of this four-song EP, and is quite easily one of the finest distillations of everything the band is capable of ever and all in one chameleonlike ever-shifting song. The song is a frightening mix of obscene heaviness and massive grooves, skull-crushing dissonance, bursts of alien-like leads, and faster ravenous passages, with all of its volatile mix coalescing around a dual hard to describe aura of strangeness and refined bleak beauty. Which is woven into every second of "Vile Veneration" in a way that makes the entire experience very fucking epic. Epic and unique is par for the course for Hadal Maw, yet this song, and the full release, does once more fulfill the group's odds-defying (in the world of tech-death) desire to continually reinvent and remold their complex sound into some new yet no less enjoyable end product every time they release something.
For a bit more information on today's single launch and Oblique Order as a whole, Hadal Maw eagerly shared that: "Vile Veneration is the latest offering from Death Metal enigmas Hadal Maw, sonically capturing our world's race to extinction. Eden is on fire and we are sifting through ash to fight our apathetic elders. Unfettered by logic, science, or humanity we are facing a future every bit as hellish as the music these tech masters offer. Writhing forth, HM delivers groove-infected DM anthems with venomous intent. Vile Veneration is the first single off their hotly anticipated EP "Oblique Order" and is their most concise and vital piece to date."
So be sure to give "Vile Veneration" embedded below a few spins. If you're into it, Oblique Order and associated merch bundles for it can be pre-ordered through the label (here, here, and here) and through the band's Bandcamp. So I'll update that once I get new ones later today, hopefully. If you're not already following Hadal Maw online, you can do so on Facebook and Instagram.
