TERMINUS: extreme metal podcast

Terminus Interview - Oldowan Gash

On Episode 16, we reviewed the ripping new record by Oldowan Gash, whose punkish, Western-outlaw black metal captures all the strengths of the emerging North American underground. In this followup interview, we knock back some e-beers with sole member Forlorn Spirit, who walks us through his deliberately intuitive songwriting process, his wide-ranging influences, and his unhinged, immediate vocals, along with a closer look at a few songs off the new record. One theme runs throughout: F.S.'s insistence on unchaining his own hubris, recklessly striving for completion and clarity in an age of lowered expectations and diminished returns.

Hubris Unchained on the Drakkar Productions Bandcamp (CD and digital - LP sold out).

CD version on the Drakkar webstore.

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Terminus Episode 19 - Evaporated Sores, Dephosphorus, Katavasia, Sale Freux

On this week's Terminus, we bring you some properly gnarly and eccentric sounds, punctuated by what may be the most catchy, accessible record we've yet covered. And as with Ep. 17, the whole batch gets the Terminus seal of approval!

The Death Metal Guy leads off with Evaporated Sores' industrial-grade skronk attack, a serious bid to up the ante in the extremity wars. These guys play all the wrong notes in all the right ways, with an open-form approach to writing that makes a virtue of collapse. The Black Metal Guy answers with Dephosphorus, a long-running Athens band who push their self-created subgenre, 'astrogrind',  toward its most epic, atmospheric potentials -- without compromising on sick riffs.

And the Greek streak continues with Katavasia (ft. mem. of Varathron), whose Magnus Venator may be the ultimate Hellenic BM party record, fully embracing the scene's proud heavy metal roots without forsaking core black metal riffing and belief. Finally, in the longest segment of the day, your hosts wander through the windy, rainsoaked fields of Sale Freux's native Brittany, clinging for dear life to bottles of cheap booze, and loving every second of it. Melancholy tremolo abounds, and the ravens flock to the eerie sound.

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / rundown of bands and labels

12:46 - Evaporated Sores - Ulcerous Dimensions (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

51:39 - Dephosphorus - Sublimation (Nerve Altar, 7Degrees Records, Selfmadegod)

01:23:20 - Interlude - Antigama, "Division of Lonely Crows," fr. Depressant (Selfmadegod)

01:26:09 - Katavasia - Magnus Venator (Floga Records)

02:04:03 - Sale Freux - Le Dernier Corbeau Du Monde (France d'Oïl Productions)

02:50:45 - Outro - Mutiilation, "To The Memory of The Dark Countess," fr. Remains of a Ruined, Dead, Cursed Soul (reissued by Osmose)

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Terminus Episode 18 - Meslamtaea, Cultum Interitum, Hymn, Dumal

After two episodes of virtually nothing but sword-and/or-sorcery-oriented pagan black metal (no bad thing!), we're back to a more eclectic lineup. The Death Metal Guy sets the tone with a couple great choices, both black metal bands remaining faithful to the basic impulse of the genre while pushing toward weird new horizons -- exactly the kind of originality we want to promote. Meslamtaea (ft. mem. of Asgrauw) blends the windswept Northsea melodies of traditional Dutch BM with authentic screamo and post-punk, seeking traces of green growth in the 21c city. Cultum Interitum (ft. mem. of Lunar Ascension??) bring the ugliness and evil back to BM, stripping it down to a skeleton and making the bones dance -- a ghastly, lurching march through Satanic industrial wastes.

In Part II, The Black Metal Guy checks up on two promising bands that last released full-lengths in 2017. First is the young Norwegian band Hymn, who play rhythmically dynamic extreme sludge. We've virtually ignored sludge so far, and this gives us a chance to talk over the perils and potentials of the genre. Last but definitely not least is Dumal, who've taken their sweet time distilling triumphant Norse and Finnish BM into 100-proof Pennsylvanian forest riffs. The Terminus USBM squad will want to check this one out for sure!

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / thanks to Grizzlybutts et al. / rundown of bands and labels

12:24 - Meslamtaea - Geketend in de Schaduw van het Leven (Babylon Doom Cult Records)

55:32 - Cultum Interitum - Poison of Being (Godz of War)

01:21:05 - Interlude - Archgoat - "Whore of Bethlehem," fr. Whore of Bethlehem, reissued most recently on Debemur Morti.

01:25:25 - Hymn - Breach Us (Fysisk Format)

01:57:44 - Dumal - The Confessor (Folkvangr/Vigor Deconstruct)

02:34:40 - Outro - Bak De Syv Fjell - "From Haavardstun," fr. From Haavardstun EP, available digitally from the original label, Edged Circle Productions in Norway.

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Terminus Episode 17 - Macabre Omen, Nihil Obstat, Ikotka, Svederna

This week on Terminus, we continue reaping this fall's bumper crop of pagan black metal, punctuated by some extremely catchy brutal death. And it's one of those rare shows where we both really like every record!

We start by singing the praises of the new Macabre Omen, which easily transcends its unusual format -- one vast but tightly-woven epic, plus a bunch of tracks from raw 90s demos and splits you almost certainly haven't heard. You'll hear missing links to the early Hellenic scene, strange relics of Nordic influence, and forays into psychedelic pastures -- all still as bright as they day they were forged. After this sprawling, Bathorian segment, The Death Metal Guy leads us through Nihil Obstat's catchy, streamlined evolution of early-00s Colombian brutal death. The songwriting here is killer, and it's more like Greek black metal than you might think....

On Part II, it's all Slavonic spellcraft and Swedish steel. We start with a fan submission of sorts -- the debut of Ikotka (Икотка), from the wilds of the Ural Mountains in northeastern Russia. Their actually-ritual summoning songs draw freely from Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish sounds, but don't really sound like any of them. Finally, we close with the return of Svederna, who don the grim hauberk of full-spectrum 90s black metal, striving for the title of Most Swedish Band of All Time. This is the chance The Black Metal Guy has been waiting for to sperg out about forgotten late-90s Svensk BM, and especially one of his all-time favorite bands....

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / social media plug / rundown of bands and labels

12:57 - Macabre Omen - Anamneses (Van Records)

55:56 - Nihil Obstat - Antimatter (Rotten Cemetery Records)

01:26:26 - Ikotka - Zagovor (SoundAge Production)

02:08:53 - Svederna - Hard (Carnal Records)

02:57:35 - Outro - Sorhin - "Skogsgriftens rike," fr. I det glimrande mörkrets djup, reissued most recently by Helter Skelter Productions (a top-shelf underground sublabel of Regain).

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Terminus Interview - Crushing The Scepter

On Episode 14, we explored Crushing The Scepter's disciplined and demanding new record, which drifts forlornly through the vast expanse between funeral doom and black metal. Today, The Death Metal Guy gets in touch with Taylor, the lone anchorite behind Echoing Screams of Madness and Delusion (out now on Transylvanian Tapes), to talk abstract cover art, black metal influences, and the grueling toil of composing and recording extremely long, slow songs.

Echoing Screams of Madness and Delusion on Transylvanian Tapes

Crushing The Scepter on Bandcamp

Terminus Episode 16 - Precambrian, Encoffinized, Borda's Rope, Oldowan Gash

On this week's fukkin sikk episode of Terminus, we've got a whole lot of stern heathen black metal, and... some punked out brutal death from the Maggot Stomp scene. The Black Metal Guy leads off with the reincarnation of one of his all-time favorite bands as a rabid, ripping power-trio called Precambrian. We contextualize it alongside Roman Saenko's other projects, and link it back to forgotten influences on the margins of the Nordic Second Wave. Then, The Death Metal Guy comes in caveman arms a-swinging with Encoffinized (not Encoffination!), whose promising debut channels the most ignorant strains of primordial NYDM through shamelessly grooving mosh breaks.

In the second part of the show, each of us contributes a raw, stomping USBM record. First, we take the measure of Borda's Rope, weighing BR's considerable strengths -- stunning Big Riffs and ambitious long-form songwriting -- against the self-imposed limitations of this rapidly developing project. Then, we check out Oldowan Gash, and Hubris Unchained unchains our brains, bringing us back to the idea of American BM we explored in our Mortum review (Ep. 13). It's worth sticking around for this one, dudes.

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / plug for Patreon and Subscribestar / rundown of bands and labels

17:58 - Precambrian - Tectonics (Primitive Reaction)

01:03:50 - Encoffinized - Chambers of Deprivation (Maggot Stomp / Sevared Records)

01:33:42 - Borda’s Rope - Nearer the Shores of Kothal (Black Gangrene Productions)

02:24:12 - Oldowan Gash - Hubris Unchained (Drakkar Productions)

03:10:22 - Outro - Hate Forest - "Cenotaph" (live Bolt Thrower cover!), fr. Dead But Dreaming, also on Primitive Reaction.

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Terminus Episode 15 - Prosanctus Inferi, Incantation, Imha Tarikat, Reverorum Ib Malacht

This week on Terminus, "big release" season kicks off with each of us bringing records that the other is sure to year-end. In Part 1, it's the long-awaited return of Prosanctus Inferi, and the less-awaited return of Incantation. There's some common ancestry here, via one of The Death Metal Guy's old favorites, Profanatica -- founded by three defectors from Incantation. Prosanctus starts from the Profanatica template to build fiercely disciplined and fluidly melodic extreme metal, at once "before" and "beyond" the black/death divide -- and "sword-oriented" enough for The Black Metal Guy! Incantation literally rewrites their old songs, with predictable results. TDMG walks us through a side-by-side comparison.

In Part II, we shift gears to two very, very different heirs to the anti-cosmic Satanism or chaos-Gnosticism of mid-00s Sweden. On Sternenberster ("starbursts?" "star-destroying?"), one-man project Imha Tarikat makes good on the promise of his earlier releases, flattening the cosmos with a punkish, high-T take on ultramelodic BM. This is exactly what TDMG wants in a black metal record, but he's even more impressed with the new one by Reverorum Ib Malacht, who started at the heart of the Swedish Orthodox scene, before finding their way to Catholicism. We pore over the details of this literally-frightening 90-minute masterpiece and, in this week's (somewhat abbreviated) Autism Hour, we try to puzzle through what Reverorum means by "Roman Catholic Black Metal." This starts a conversation on religion that we'll carry on in an upcoming, patrons-only episode of Terminus Prime.

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / updates and patronage plug / rundown of bands and labels

11:12 - Prosanctus Inferi - Hypnotic Blood Art (Nuclear War Now)

48:08 - Incantation - Sect of Vile Divinities (Relapse Records)

01:10:07 - Imha Tarikat - Sternenberster (Independent)

01:49:00 - Reverorum ib Malacht - Vad Är Inte Sju Huvud? (Rubeus Obex)

02:23:21 - Autism Hour - Roman Catholic Black Metal: not as crazy as you might think...

02:46:33 - Outro - Reverorum ib Malacht - “Evangeliet går ut,” fr. Vad Är Inte Sju Huvud?

Prosanctus full-album stream on Grizzlybutts.

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Terminus Interview - Oncology (Northern Irish brutal death)

On episode 11 of Terminus, we reviewed Oncology’s “Omniversal Antigenesis,” a brutal death record that stands out from the pack due to its high energy structural variation and devotion to older styles of death metal riffcraft. Today, The Death Metal Guy sits down with Connor Brown, guitarist of Oncology, to pick his brain on brutal death, amp sims, and the Northern Irish scene.

Terminus Episode 14 - Moulderyawn, Crushing The Scepter, Terminal Nation, Verhängnis, Oppress.

Early August is supposed to be slow for new releases, but Terminus never slows. Instead, we hunted over rock and under root for new records that are slow -- not just in tempo, but in pacing and more abstract, "naturey" senses of time. Moulderyawn's entish black metal plows ahead at speeds once thought impossible for trees, but syncs with the seasonal rhythms of growth and death, the millenial life of the Everwood. Crushing The Sceptre tests the limits of patience and pain, rewarding it with a feeling The Death Metal Guy likens to "being stuck at the bottom of the grand canyon."

Terminal Nation prepares for the next mass exinction, reworking powerviolence as a downtempo deathmarch. Verhängnis crawls up from the caverns and the soil itself, filling the Teutoburg Forest with echoes of wardrum-grooving, Gothic death. And last, but not least, our first-ever fan submission from the UK's Oppress. -- psychopathic decadent BM that is the opposite of slow.

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / thanking fans and podcast plans / rundown of bands and labels

17:23 - Moulderyawn - And What Lie 'Neath Its Shade (IV) (Independent - Old-Mill-associated)

01:01:22 - Crushing the Scepter - Echoing Screams of Madness and Delusion (Transylvanian Tapes)

01:31:31 - Terminal Nation - Holocene Extinction (20 Buck Spin)

02:02:21 - Verhängnis - Verhängnis (Indp, tape by Fucking Kill! / Kellerassel)

02:25:23 - Oppress. - No. Pity. (K.V.N.T Kolektiv)

02:58:26 - Prophecy of Doom - "Insanity Reigns Supreme," fr. Acknowledge The Confusion Master. Pretty sure it's way out of print, so to support the band, consider the Total Mind War comp on the quality Polish grind label, Selfmadegod. Cover is pretty dank, too.

Terminus Episode 13 - Induced, Siege Column, Disavowed, Mortum

After last week's wall-to-wall death metal special, we return to our normal BM/DM balance, but with a BM slant. This time, we've placed our featured bands first (Induced) and last (Mortum) on our lineup. Induced's ultra-brutal, drum-driven "mecha-death" is so stripped-down and abstract that it's got a lot in common with the lunatic fringes of black/war metal. This section gives us a chance to build on our notion of "music-adjacent" extremity, with some help from Finland's Concrete Winds.

Mortum's rugged, mountainous Atlantean Ouroboros sparks an extended conversation (and/or autistic rant) on how to make authentically American-sounding black metal. This section doubles as a guide to some of the best USBM projects currently going. Between these two longer segments, The Black Metal Guy and The Death Metal Guy review new records that are solidly in their respective wheelhouses, but come in for some substantial (constructive) criticism.

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / rundown of bands and labels

10:21 - Induced - Coproporeal (New Standard Elite)

39:31 - "Music-adjacent" riffing - Induced and Concrete Winds' Primitive Force

48:45 - Siege Column - Darkside Legions (Nuclear War Now)

01:17:10 - Disavowed - Revocation of the Fallen (Brutal Mind)

01:39:41 - Mortum - Atlantean Ouroboros (Independent / Folkvangr)

02:31:51 - Outro - Mi'Gauss - "Open Fire," fr. Open Season