Ohio-based old-school thrash outfit WAR CURSE will unleash their third full-length, Confession, on October 20th via Blacklight Media!
Having built a devout fan base for their thrash-oriented metallic attack starting with 2015’s Final Days and cemented with 2019’s Eradication, WAR CURSE returns in 2023 a more refined animal. In fact, it could be argued that the ten tracks of Confession stand as WAR CURSE‘s Black Album, having the courage to move beyond what they’re known for and to focus on songwriting, groove, dynamics, and melody, without compromising on muscle one iota.
“We experimented with new sounds, old sounds, took in new influences, old influences, and let the songs come together as organically as possible,” notes guitarist Justin Roth. “As far as our current direction, the music we consume is all over the map, a lot of it way outside of the metal sphere. I hear bands doing new, interesting things with their music and I want to be able to do the same with mine. If I lose my thrash card for it, oh well, I’ll hand in my battle vest.”
With extensive touring plans in 2020 falling apart due to the pandemic, WAR CURSE spent several months in purgatory before deciding to dust off their instruments and start writing a new album. With the uncertainty of not knowing if they would ever get a chance to play music again, it was speculated that this could be the band’s swan song. With the world in a strange place, motivation came and went, reflecting the tumultuous day to day change in information. This led to the writing process taking a year however it was time well spent.
“We demo recorded every song two or three times, picked them apart, edited them, and then rehearsed them in a room together. We allowed the process of collaboration and experimentation to take us wherever the wave carried us. Compared to previous releases, we were a lot more critical of ourselves during the writing and recording of this album. We set out to make an album in the truest sense of the word, not just a collection of songs.”
This is very much apparent when listening to Confession, from the agitated, muscular title track with its widescreen chorus, to the driving “Power Of The Powerless,” or the equal parts triumphant and steamrolling “Sowing Division,” every track standing on its own while taking its place in the overall picture. A major aspect in pushing their sound forward is the vocal contributions of Blaine Gordon, who emanates confidence in ways he has not previously. “On Eradication, Blaine replaced our previous vocalist in the studio, on very short notice, and mimicked what was already written. This was the first time he got to add his creative input. He pushed us in a more melodic direction, and [guitarist Joshua] Murphy and I backed him up with guitar parts that felt harmonious with his vision. Likewise, when a part called for heavy or dirty vocals, Blaine returned the favor tenfold.”
In advance of the release of Confession, today the band unveils the record’s first single, “Miracle Broker,” and its accompanying video. A hard hitting, vibey, melodic stampede that throws back to the band’s hardcore roots, “Miracle Broker” takes on shady televangelists. Manipulative figureheads create mass psychosis through masterfully crafted brainwashing campaigns and suckers fall into the trap.
Elaborates Roth, “‘Miracle Broker’ is an unapologetic knife to the chest of corrupt religious figureheads, masquerading as modern day Gods. For years I’ve tried to disguise my hardcore roots, keeping our songwriting far away from outside influences. ‘Miracle Broker’ is the result of breaking that rule and writing a song for myself, not for an audience. It’s moody, it’s heavy, it gets straight to the point, and it’s catchy as all hell. Consider it ‘crossover reimagined.’“
All songs on Confession were recorded, mixed, and mastered by Neil Tuuri at Amish Electric Chair Studios. The album art, layout, design, and photography were handled by Justin Roth. As an added bonus, the record includes a cover of Grip Inc.‘s “Rusty Nail.” Notes Roth, “Covering ‘Rusty Nail’ was our way of honoring our former bassist Jason Vie Brooks (Grip Inc., Exhorder). Blaine was tasked with filling the massive shoes of late Grip Inc. vocalist Gus Chambers, and the remaining band members agree that he did so with flying colors.“
Confession Track Listing: 1. The Nothing (That is Me) 2. Fortress Of Agony 3. Confession 4. Miracle Broker 5. Power Of The Powerless 6. The Convoy 7. Return To Dust 8. Sowing Division 9. Rusty Nail * Grip Inc. cover 10. Illusion Of Choice
WAR CURSE: Blaine Gordon – vocals Justin Roth – guitar Joshua Murphy – guitar James Goetz – drums Johnnie Wallace – bass
Cathartic post black metal masters GAEREA are now revealing a secret screening to kick start their upcoming tour in North America! The clandestine event will take place on Thursday, September 28, at the original Kuma’s Corner in Chicago, IL! The event is free to attend and starts promptly at 7:30 P.M. and band will be present for a meet and greet with fans who dare to enter the vortex. Plus, fans can enter a raffle in which one lucky winner will be given a pair of tickets to see the band’s performance at Metro on September 30.
Gaerea comments, “This is the death of ‘Mirage’ and the moment we start to let go of our world just so another one can be born. This unique event will showcase everything Gaerea has ever stood for. Get ready to witness something truly special, crafted specially to each and everyone of you who wishes to join us for an evening we shall never forget.”
In addition, Kuma’s has collaborated with Gaerea for a signature burger, which is inspired by the Francesinha sandwich, a comforting dish that is native to the band’s hometown of Porto (PT). The Gaerea burger is modeled after Kuma’s famous Slayer burger with a Portuguese twist. The sandwich has a bed of fresh house-cut fries, texas toast, an angus beef patty, sausage, uncured ham, shredded monterrey jack cheese, and a fried egg, all smothered in a decadent Francesinha sauce.
Following the event, Gaerea will be kicking off its North American tour with Wolves in the Throne Room, Blackbraid, and Hoaxed on September 29 in St. Louis, MO, which will then conclude on October 24 in Denver, CO. Tickets are now available and can be found below along with the full itinerary!
Photo of Kuma’s signature Gaerea burger, available September 28, 2023!
Gaerea will be supporting its incendiary 2022 release, ‘Mirage,’ debuting a new live aesthetic! ‘Mirage’ was ranked among the best records of last year by Decibel Magazine, A&P Reacts, Ghost Cult Magazine, Sick Drummer, and more! The album is available HERE.
GAEREA (w/ Wolves in the Throne Room, Blackbraid, Hoaxed) Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge North American Tour
09/29: St Louis, MO @ Red Flag [TICKETS] 09/30: Chicago, IL @ Metro [TICKETS] 10/01: St. Paul, MN @ Amsterdam Bar & Hall [TICKETS] 10/03: Detroit, MI @ El Club [TICKETS] 10/04: Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace [TICKETS] 10/05: Montreal, QC @ Theatre Fairmount [TICKETS] 10/06: Boston, MA @ Big Night Live [TICKETS] 10/07: Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom [TICKETS] 10/08: Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Monarch [TICKETS] 10/10: Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts [TICKETS] 10/11: Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage [TICKETS] 10/12: Richmond, VA @ The Canal Club [TICKETS] 10/13: Greensboro, NC @ Hangar 1819 [TICKETS] 10/14: Atlanta, GA @ The Loft [TICKETS] 10/15: Tampa, FL @ Orpheum [TICKETS] 10/17: Dallas, TX @ Echo Lounge & Music Hall [TICKETS] 10/18: Austin, TX @ Come And Take It Live [TICKETS] 10/20: Albuquerque, NM @ Sister [TICKETS] 10/21: Tucson, AZ @ Encore [TICKETS] 10/23: Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall [TICKETS] 10/24: Denver, CO @ The Oriental Theater [TICKETS]
Behind black shrouds of obscurity and desolation, the men of GAEREA deliver their odes in cascading maelstroms of aggression and beauty. Emerging from the age of pandemic to whatever awaits humanity next, the Portuguese horde remains on the frontlines of the next generation of extreme metal. With an EP and two albums to their name, GAEREA has rapidly distinguished themselves from the thousands of bands toiling away in the underground. Brewing their cauldron of sound from a recipe of pounding black-metal blast mixed with a touch of harrowed, reflective longing, many devotees of the darkened arts have flocked to their banner. With the emergence of third full-length album Mirage, those numbers are sure to grow.
Underground metal itself is a strange and cyclical beast. Trends come and trends go. But at no point in the genre’s history have we borne witness to what happened to the world in 2020. GAEREA met this challenge by releasing their second album, the aptly titled Limbo, to excellent world reception. In the meantime, they found the total suspension of interactive life as it was previously known to be the perfect breeding ground for further creation and making. As the troupe’s main songwriter elaborates, “I lost two precious years of my life, years that I would rather have spent touring and growing as an artist. But they were crucial for us, these years, because not too many bands stayed relevant and productive. The pandemic gave us the time to make the best release we could. All the promo-shoots, interviews, videos, we all had time to prepare for everything. Mirage was the product of a sudden inspiration. The basic parts were written over about two weeks.”
Such a stunning admission goes to show that art is fickle, and the artist is merely a vessel through which the sweet sorcery we call music may flow. It can mute itself to frustrating silence – or it can explode into being regardless of all consideration. For this band on the rise, it is most certainly the latter. Sizzling with ambition from day one, GAEREA may present one unique face to their audience, masked and enshrouded, but the truth is they have not remained changeless. “We are not the same band who recorded Limbo,” he insists. “We are more eager to take on the world. If the pandemic taught us anything it is that nothing is certain.”
This lack of certainty plays heavily into newest creation Mirage. As its name suggests, the inability to trust what our senses are telling us could be construed as one of the album’s central themes. Rather than constrict their art to mythological references or anti-religious tropes, GAEREA instead plumb the depths of the human experiences of isolation and suffering. “The concept, the subject, of each song is everyone, you, me . . . if people were alone together in Limbo, in Mirage they are truly alone. Nobody is truly real until they are alone.”
If existential dread could be turned into sound, GAEREA have carved their own philosophical path through its stygian tunnels. It isn’t Satan, demons, death, or even suicide that is waiting for us there. “What if people finally reached their goal,” he posits, “to end their suffering, and instead of dying they find themselves in a new reality, lost in a big city they were once a part of – they don’t know if anyone else is still alive. They are alone inside their own world.” This theme of being alone in a world full of familiar scenes, unable to end things and unable to reach anyone else, might well terrify the listener more effectively than any glimpse into the imagined hellscapes of our nightmares. Being isolated in your own world is the real nightmare, and GAEREA strum the chords of this horror with nuance and a miserable grace.
Boasting a superior production that threads the needle between clarity and causticness, GAEREA unwaveringly admit their loyalty to countryman and producer Miguel Tereso of Demigod Recordings. “Miguel is fantastic,” enthuses the band’s primary composer. “He comes from a brutal death metal background. I thought if this guy can pull off a punchy, modern, but still authentic production with a slam / death metal band, I wonder what he can do with a band like GAEREA. He has a vision for a sound, and that is what I really like. He is not a black metal fan, but it’s this very external set of ears and eyes from a guy who really knows his craft, and he brings all of that to our sound.” The fruits of this union are quite evident, as the turbulent moods of the title track are so wonderfully tossed between tension-building moments, and the explosive payoffs which set GAEREA apart from so many who try but come up short.
Tormented leads and building riffs sit atop some seriously explosive drumming, waxing and waning, on “Arson,” a tempest of moods and one of the album’s centrepieces. Emotion, at times sounding triumphant in brilliantly wrought guitar leads, is skewered by vocals that bustle with shattering despair. The dichotomy is magnificent to behold. GAEREA’s composer makes no mistake. “I want to hear the throat on the album, and if we are a vocals-driven band, I don’t want to over-process them during the recording. Striking that balance is one of the beauties for me in this record.”
In a world that increasingly elevates the shallow and the narcissistic, GAEREA pursues an artistic struggle of inward isolation, honest self-examination, and a dogged refusal to bow to the void that awaits. Thus, the persistence of their shadowed visages, draped in the masks which codify their anonymity while also creating a reliable extreme metal brand that fans can appreciate, especially in the live setting. “GAEREA are truly ourselves when we put these masks on, and we transcend into something different, and primitive,” he asserts. “It still makes total sense, and this band would not be a band anymore if we ever dropped the masks.”
As GAEREA prepares the release of Mirage, the world has resumed functioning, and as it lurches onward into its bleak future, one could stipulate that the pressure may be on to continue its rise amid the clamor of this renewal of activity. Does this challenge intimidate GAEREA? “We want to do better, but I don’t feel any pressure because we are in very good hands with the people we work with. We are building a strong team that really cares for us, stage-wise, promotional-wise, website and sales-wise. We are building a very structured confident teams that aims for the same goals we do. What I truly care about is continuing our ever-growing concept of the band GAEREA, and not becoming sterile, and I would not want people to be unaffected by our music. In the end we’re trying to express something within ourselves, and I don’t want it to be too complicated.”
The beauty of GAEREA lies in the directness and simplicity found within their florid tapestry of extremity and aggression. Whether it is in the less-polished aural dynamite of their self-titled EP, or in the lustrous textures of Mirage, GAEREA is building a mighty edifice of underground metal. With talons dipped in the inky blood of black metal and scraped across the flesh of human suffering, GAEREA is leading a charge into the future of darkness, and all those who find beauty and power in the dark side of existence would do well to take heed.
WE ARE GAEREA.
Bio: Nic Franco
Recording Studio: Demigod Recordings Producer/Sound engineer: Miguel Tereso Mix/Master: Miguel Tereso (Demigod Recordings) Cover artwork: Saros Collective
Greek atmospheric death doom metal band ON THORNS I LAY are releasing the second new track ‘Fallen From Grace’ of their upcoming album “On Thorns I Lay”. The new full length will be released on October 13, 2023 via Season of Mist. ‘Fallen from Grace’ is now available in the form of a lyric video HERE.
Pre-orders are available HERE. Pre-save the album HERE.
ON THORNS I LAY comment on the new track: “‘Fallen From Grace’ is a song about all those who have suffered from wars and genocides. All the pain, the suffering, the murders and the rapes of the innocents and the memory of all those still haunt us and will never be forgotten. Remember the fallen!”
Track list: 1. Fallen From Grace (8:07) [LISTEN HERE] 2. Newborn Skies (4:44) [WATCH VIDEO] 3. Crestfallen (8:08) 4. Among The Wolves (7:38) 5. Raise Empires (7:18) 6. Thorns Of Fire (7:23) Total: 58:54
Cover artwork by Dimitris Tzortzis
ON THORNS I LAY started as a death metal band together with other cult bands in Greece in the early 90’s such as Rotting Christ, Septic Flesh, Necromantia, Nightfall and started to spread their name in the local and global underground scene.
ON THORNS I LAY have released 9 albums so far such as Orama, Crystal Tears, Aegean Sorrow and Threnos gaining great reviews in (Scream Norway, album of the month, Inferno Finland 5/5, Metal Storm Top 5 albums of 2020 and many others…). The have shared the stage with great bands such as Dream Theater, In Flames, Anathema, Amorphis, Katatonia, Rotting Christ, Tiamat, The Gathering, Satyricon, Septic Flesh and many more…
Their music style is pure atmospheric melodic doom death metal!
ON THORNS I LAY’s last album “Threnos” followed the path of atmospheric, yet emotional Doom Death Metal – paying tribute to the roots and representing the trademark sound of the band once again. ON THORNS I LAY continue to tell dense stories of loss and despair.
After their mini tour at the Baltic states with Rotting Christ they signed a deal with the world famous record label Season Of Mist and they have finished the recordings of their 10th album entitled ‘On Thorns I Lay to be released in 2023.
Recording studio Devasoundz Studios Producer / sound engineer Fotis Benardo
Mixing and mastering studio and engineer Fotis Benardo
With well-produced, doom-groovy, stoner/sludge Swedish metallers VAK were highly praised for their previous albums! And on September 1st, via Indie Recordings, VAK are back with their highly anticipated third album “The Islands”.
VAK is often noted for their ability to incorporate more than just one style and genre in their music, drawing inspiration from a great variety of bands and artists. The band is known for their exhilarating and dynamic soundscape, where elements from sludge, progressive metal and synth are flawlessly mixed together.
VAK states: “With this album, we have continued to develop our multifaceted version of what has been called our style of progressive sludge. We wanted it to result in an almost unbearable tension between the powerful and sludgy dimensions and the progressive aspects. We are very happy with the album, although the writing and recording turned out to become a very lengthy process.
Lyrically, the album engages in conflicting visions of the city of Stockholm and its “Islands”, both presenting fundamentally critical aspects and winkling out hopeful notions of the city, and thereby mostly, and literally, focusing on underground dimensions of the city, such as ideas of sewer cafes and underground cinemas.”
ABOUT VAK from Stockholm, Sweden consists of experienced musicians, who fuse seemingly uncompromising genres into a new and powerful blend. Their last album “Low Wind” got rave reviews.
UK Magazine Zero Tolerance wrote that it was; “one of 2019’s contenders for best stoner metal album! […] It’s one thing to pack an album full of crushing riffs, memorable hooks, and passionate performances, but VAK truly evoke a unified togetherness that beams throughout”, while Metal Temple (UK) gave it a 9/10, stating that; “VAK is its own unique breed, one that has hints of the past but is focused solely on the future.”
Praised for their ability to incorporate more than just one style and genre in their music, drawing inspiration from a great variety of bands and artists,
VAK’s upcoming album “The Islands” is something to look forward to!
BAND MEMBERS Tobias Alpadie – Guitars Anders Bartonek – Drums Patrik Engström – Guitars Jesper Skarin – Bass, Vocals Robin Skarin – Keyboards
Italians thrash masters GAME OVER have released a video for their first single ‘Synthetic Dreams’, taken from the new album ‘Hellframes’ to be released on October 20th via Scarlet Records.
‘Hellframes’ is a neck-breaking album where Game Over keep delivering their rabid, insane brand of thrash metal and pushing the songwriting out of the comfort zone at the same time.
A frantic mix of thrashing madness, punk attitude, infecting melodies and some creepy obscure atmospheres.
Lyrically-wise, a couple of tracks are intricately woven together, telling the tale of a 15th century priest who birthed an occult cult, re-discovered in modern times through technology and unleashing unspeakable evil from hell.
Other songs delve into the depths of human existence and mind – exploring pain, fear, and the relentless struggles we face every day.
recorded at Raptor Recording Studio (Destrage, Slander, Dufresne)
cover & artwork by Mario López (Evil Invaders, Toxik, Crystal Viper)
for fans of Death Angel, Megadeth, Suicidal Tendencies, Cro-Mags, Mercyful Fate
Summer passed with in a flash but FIGHT THE FIGHT haven’t spent it slacking around. Their new single – the mighty and enigmatic 12800 has already attracted massive attention online.
The video, unveiling the drum recording of this single with the charismatic and energetic Baard Kolstad (Leporus) behind the drums, has now gone viral on Instagram. Boosting followers both there and on Spotify. At 01:28 minutes – 12800 is effective, kicking, and catchy as hell!
The single brings you further into the ventures of Fight the Fights melodic deathcore and digs even deeper into the spiritual awakening Fight the Fight went through whilst creating this album.
Fight the Fight comment:
“”12800″ is a short and intense song about our Ancestry on earth. We cant wait for you to hear it”
Fight the Fight are Tord Statle Larsen – Guitar, backing vocals Fredrik Teig Bergstrøm – Guitar, main vocals Hans-Magnus Endestad Hermansen – Bass, backing vocals Baard Kolstad – Drums
THE ROCK ALCHEMIST – Italian Rock Band from Turin with a strong sonic identity that blends modern rock with progressive, hard, alternative, and pop elements!
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
