Gimme Metal Program Director Brian Turner delivers the week's top 5 office buzz-worthy tracks.
BENOTHING – Engrossed Inside Compulsions
Recorded in their practice space over the pandemic, Benothing's 'Temporal Bliss Surrealms' is a death metal opus of excellence. Garbled, dense, elastic movements that crawl and thrash at the appropriate opportune moments, relentless, kinetic, and full of tension-and-release.
INSECT ARK – Oral Thrush
Back with a new EP, this enduring project of Dana Schechter takes a solo turn after last year's replacement of drummer Ashley Spungin with Andy Patterson. This move strips the project back to an atmospheric core, deeply meditative washes of exotic dark sounds shifting and changing colors. Be sure to join Dana for her third guest DJ takeover on Gimme on December 20 at 12pm PT/3pm ET!
APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE – Union
Lush doom from Indiana, crawling yet melodic (especially vocal-wise) with a crispness and forthright mix that stands apart from your usually-suffocating stuff which is a bit of an abnormal quality for most of the genre. Still, the combination of rhythmic plod and guazy atmosphere sits alongside sweetened guitar excursions and emotional lyrics.
BONDED – Watch (While the World Burns)
With Assassin vocalist Ingo Bajonczak and two ex-Sodom members Berndt Jost and Makka Freiwald, adapt their German trash pedigrees into something more melodic and unpeggable, perhaps not to purists' liking but definitely marking the need to stretch out into something new and different. Worth a dive in.
SPIRITWORLD – Unholy Passages
"Death Western?" Right into the Gimme heavy rotation bin. Lemmy-esque yawp atop some latter-era Ministry robothrash knocks some teeth out, and Metal Blade honcho (and Gimme DJ) Mike Gitter aptly describes it all as parts "Slayer, Louis L'amour and Sam Peckinpah". It's not exactly honkytonkin' stuff, but definitely dipping into dark American folklore and, like a Peckinpah flick, guns are blazing pretty much every second here.
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