Review by Jason Guest
Iron Bonehead Productions are unstoppable. Three more releases have come our way. From New Zealand’s Heresiarch comes their second EP and first in three years, Wælwulf; from Belgium’s Possession comes their second release, the 7” Anneliese; and from Finland’s Cemetery Fog is their eerily entitled third demo Shadows From The Cemetery. Read the lot or click the band names to go directly to the review.
If you want to find out more about Iron Bonehead Productions, you can pay a visit to their website, take a listen over at their Soundcloud page, or get up-to-date info on their Facebook page.
Anyhoo, mighty and dreadful, death, be proud…
Heresiarch – Wælwulf 7″ EP
Release date: 31 March 2014
New Zealand’s Heresiarch does a nice line in brutal chaos. The soundtrack to the apocalypse, press play on this three-track EP and pandemonium will flood from the speakers without mercy or compromise. Heresiarch aren’t playing their instruments, they are flogging them, beating the living shit out of them, and the suffering and torment echoes in the disconcerting atmospheres, oppressive riffs, pummelling drums, wailing feedback, and the demonic vocals. Barbarous and serrated, the EP breathes an aggressive, contaminated air, its heaving might and menace palpable in every last foetid exhalation. Recommended.
8 out of 10
Track listing:
- Wælwulf
- Abrecan
- Endethraest
Possession – Anneliese 7”
Release date: 12 April 2014
The debut release from Belgium’s Possession, the 2013 demo His Best Deceit (reviewed here), introduced to the underworld a vicious band, their black/death horror-fuelled ferocity declaring their desire for destruction and obliteration. Though the band’s own identity was in evidence, it was insufficient to distinguish them from the mass of genre worshippers wallowing in its filth. Five months later and Anneliese has appeared, the two tracks here indicating that though the band are still some way from producing something wholly their own, their own sound is beginning to emerge. If old school be your thing, you could do a lot worse than nabbing this.
6.5 out of 10
Track listing:
- Anneliese
- Apparition
Cemetery Fog – Shadows From The Cemetery
Release date: 31 March 2014
Finnish trio Cemetery Fog love it old school. Their doom-laden death metal reeks of the rotting corpse of the bands of ye olde underground, the gouged-out riffs, the recorded-in-a-cardboard-box bludgeoning drums, and the glass and gravel gargling vocals are rendered in an opaque and murky production that even the best of the demo tapes of that era could only aspire to. While it may be far from the best, the sound is dense, the atmospherics dark and depraved, and the tracks have something about them that indicates there may be better to come. As a demo, Shadows From The Cemetery certainly has its moments – the doom aspect of the band has much promise – but it demonstrates, as do most of this ilk, a band still finding their feet.
5 out of 10
- Website? Don’t be silly.
Track listing:
- Into The Beyond
- Shadows From The Cemetery
- Voices From The Dark
- Old Gates
- Outro
