Terminus Episode 31 - Mongrel’s Cross, Hadopelagyal, Thorybos, Catherine Wheel, Gravkväde

2020-12-09

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As the days grow short and the nights grow long, The Black Metal Guy drags himself out of bed to Storm of The Light's Bane and Welcome My Last Chapter, pulls up the hood on his wizard's cowl, and prepares for a Terminus write-up..... Though this week's show tends towards all sorts of swirling, low-end chthonic gloom, we lead off with a flash of sunlight on plate armor, and the gleam of a witch's eye from a scrying stone. After two years of silence and preparation, along with a pivotal line-up change, Mongrel's Cross return with a mighty work of...

As the days grow short and the nights grow long, The Black Metal Guy drags himself out of bed to Storm of The Light's Bane and Welcome My Last Chapter, pulls up the hood on his wizard's cowl, and prepares for a Terminus write-up.....

Though this week's show tends towards all sorts of swirling, low-end chthonic gloom, we lead off with a flash of sunlight on plate armor, and the gleam of a witch's eye from a scrying stone. After two years of silence and preparation, along with a pivotal line-up change, Mongrel's Cross return with a mighty work of effortlessly flowing, magisterial black thrash. The Death Metal Guy is a longtime skeptic of the Aussie sound -- can the soaring leads and viciously jabbing vocals win him over?

We follow that up with a close listen to a split from two German bands with intensely complementary takes on High IQ War Metal. Hadopelagyal channel their obsession with the ocean's deepest nightside zones into the "cavernous black/death" aesthetic, but show a greater interest in composition than guitar tone, and treat their extended atmospheric passages as real music rather than filler. Thorybos plays more minimalistic, barbarian attack riffs, but with equal if not greater influence by ritual-industrial sampling procedures. Between these two bands, there's real potential for a new sound.

On the second half of the show, we check out the debut EP from a rumbling, droning black/death band that bills its sound as "Hate Forest meets Bolzer." But if that's the conceptual starting point, what is this project actually doing? The Death Metal Guy has some interesting advice. Finally, we close with an even bleaker record, the blastbeat-driven funeral doom of Sweden's Gravkväde. I try not to call things "crushing" in these writeups, but it's pretty damn crushing -- and not in the way you expect. This leads us into a broader discussion on the coolness of classic 90s funeral doom, a sound yet to be processed by the modern underground.

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting

02:58 - Terminus News ft. a Filipino band called Asgardsrei (Hessian Firm)

16:38 - Rundown of bands and labels

19:44 - Mongrel’s Cross - Arcana, Scrying and Revelation (Hell’s Headbangers)

01:01:58 - Hadopelagyal / Thorybos - Conjuring Subterranean Vortex (Amor Fati Productions)

01:33:43 - Interlude - Ayat - "Raw War (Beirut Unveils Her Pussy Once More)" fr. Carry On, Carrion! (Moribund Records, 2017).

01:41:31 - Catherine Wheel - The Procession of Flagellants (Blood Boiler Studios)

02:17:40 - Gravkväde - Grav|Ruin (Transylvanian Tapes / VGDK Records)

02:51:30 - Outro - Thergothon - "Everlasting," fr. Stream from the Heavens (Avantgarde Music, 1994). LP and CD reissue available from Peaceville.

Terminus links:

Terminus on Youtube

Terminus on Patreon