This week’s Thank Satan It’s Friday is a pretty cool one in that it features some groups you might not have heard of. Yes, I kick things off with Cavalera Conspiracy, but there are also some seriously sexy instrumental grooves courtesy of Intervals, weird stoner prog from Somnuri, and a hardcore band called Sect with Fall Out Boy‘s drummer.
It’s also probbaly pretty obvious that this week is all over the place. To the metal (and rock, and sorta funk)!
Cavalera Conspiracy – “Spectral War”
When Max Cavalera started comparing Cavalera Conspiracy‘s then-upcoming album Psychosis to older Sepultura, he’d set a semi-dangerous precedent. People were then expecting some seriously good metal from the project’s latest, but fortunately, Max and Igor could deliver with ease.
“Spectral War” is just bone-mashing riff after bone-mashing riff in that simply grooving, crushing way it seems only the Cavalera brothers can deliver on. Basically, dudes nailed it. Psychosis is out November 17 and it seems like everyone’s gonna need to pre-order this one.
Intervals – “Touch And Go”
Intervals started off as an instrumental djent-type band in 2011, briefly recruited ex-The HAARP Machine vocalist Mike Semesky in 2014 for an album, and then dropped the dude and went back to being instrumental. The Way Forward features guitar wizard, songwriter, and Intervals mastermind Aaron Marshall alongside Protest The Hero bassist Cameron McLellan and Auras drummer Nathan Bulla, and holy hell is it funky.
Intervals return to making exclusively instrumental music in 2015 with The Shape Of Colour was funky and extremely technical, but “Touch And Go” is just downright groovy and a touch sexy.
Try not to get pregnant when you pre-order the album due out December 1. It’s a feisty one, that.
The Body & Full Of Hell – “Farewell, Man”
The Body and Full Of Hell are teaming up for the second time in two years for a collab album, and frankly, the duo really ought to make this a yearly occurrence. The music is noisy, terrifying, inaccessible by and large, and absolutely worth your time to dissect all its distorted-to-fuck layers.
“Farewell, Man” features a video of someone getting drowned in slow motion, and that’s basically what the music makes you feel like too. It’s nonstop bludgeoning heaviness with shrieking vocals overtop that seems to incorporate every distortion module known to man, though if you’ve heard Full Of Hell then you’d know that’s par for the course.
Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light is out November 17.
Somnuri – “Welcome The Stranger”
Somnuri sounds like High On Fire can’t decide if it wants to stay sludgy stoner metal, go in a punk route, maybe incorporate some psychedelic elements, or just straight up go progressive metal. So instead of deciding, they’ve just done it all and made it work.
I know that sounds like a lot all packed into one song, but Somnuri clearly knows how to write a song that’s all over the place yet feels like one cohesive unit. Plus it’s super heavy and generally headbang-worthy, which is why I’d imagine you’d be coming to this column on Pop Break in the first place.
Somnuri‘s debut album is out November 10.
Sect – “Open Grave”
Sect features vocalist Chris Colohan (Cursed), guitarist James Chang (ex-Catharsis), guitarist Scott Crouse (Earth Crisis), bassist Ian Edwards (Earth Crisis), and drummer Andy Hurley (Fall Out Boy). Hurley might be the most surprising name on this list, but the dude is incredibly good at drums and has voiced his love of heavier music in the past. The Damned Things, anyone?
Sect is dropping its new album No Cure For Death on November 24, and the new song “Open Grave” seems to be more of a tease than anything else. It’s a solid 80 seconds of hardcore that cuts off right at the end, which sounds like it should go into whatever the next track is.
Oh, and yes – Converge‘s Kurt Ballou did produce this.
