Welcome, friends, to the series that never ends… it’s Metal Morsels Number Twenty Six! Four bands, great music – let’s get involved!
ILIENSES
If north Europe has Wardruna, Heilung and Forndom, Italy has Ilienses. This could not be possible but from Sardinia, the island of the ancient Nuragic civilisations, whose traditions and languages still live nowadays. The band’s new album, Jae, releases at the end of this month.
Keep in mind what follows: although the style is ritualistic and Folk-driven, such as the one developed in Northern Europe which often makes of the “Nordic” matrix the only possible one, Ilienses do not make any syncretism. The language, sounds, traditional instruments, themes and inspirations sticks only to Sardinian lands, history and culture, especially the one of Barbagia – the vast mountainous region in the inner Sardinia.
Ilienses’s dark folk music is ritualistic, thickly atmospheric and deeply evocative of Barbagia’s mysteries and spirits. The band plays with self-constructed traditional instruments, sings in the Sardinian language and makes use of A Tenore chants, a Sardinian autochthon kind of throat singing. Lyrics are strictly in the Sardian autochthon language, and speak about poetry, legends, facts and stories of Sardinia’s popular culture, an ancient culture which is still alive today thanks to oral transmission and the island’s semi-isolated kind of society and culture.
A few words about Jae from the band itself: “Lost in the undefined time and space of visions that manifest themselves in their primal sacredness, we felt the importance of searching for our roots. In particular, we tried to understand how the forms that make us up also make up earth, water, fire and stars and how they reach us through an audible and silent language. We recognise their vibrations but not their location in our mind, and hence the need to find the key, the “Jae” of the mystery that opens hidden portals. Stones, woods, tombs, Domus, wells and Nuraghe, our primordial homes, are all thousands of years old living matter and are the places where we started chasing the thread of time, attached to both life and death. At the other end of the thread, we found esoteric figures, some appealing and some ominous, who hold with the same thread the extremes of everything, the beginning and the end of every being and every form, of men and even of time itself.”
CODESPEAKER
Codespeaker, a post-metal band from Scotland’s sombre capital Edinburgh, released their self-titled debut in October 2022. Their arrival on the UK scene was solidified with a tour in 2023, along with supporting acts such as Pound, the Sentinel Daily-approved Sylvaine, and Hundred Year Old Man. Now, with their second album, Scavenger, set to be released on November 8th via Ripcord Records, Codespeaker delves even deeper into the human experience through their atmospheric, dark, and heavy post-metal sound.
Featuring thunderous drums and colossal guitars reminiscent of titanic bands like Neurosis and Cult of Luna, Scavenger marks a new chapter for Codespeaker. This massive-sounding record offers a towering and immersive experience, ebbing and flowing between hypnotic, mammoth-sized riffs and intense vocals, while also embracing atmospheric and contemplative moments. The band explains:
“Scavenger was an interesting album to write for us. With three out of five members joining since the last album, we wanted to craft something that reflected this new incarnation—new influences, new styles—while still feeling like Codespeaker. Blending such diverse influences into a cohesive sound has been a challenge, but we’re incredibly proud of the result.”
“While our self-titled album was only released two years ago, we started writing it five years prior. A lot has changed since then. Scavenger is more pointed and aggressive, influenced by the new members, evolving tastes, and the darkening sociopolitical landscape we found ourselves in. The first album had anger, but also a warmth and wonder about the human experience. Scavenger doesn’t have that same warmth—it’s much more vitriolic and desperate. The lyrics focus on the faults of power structures and the struggles of those who bear the brunt of them, lamenting the lack of any real alternative. It’s an ode to the powerless, a fitting theme for these times.”
ALARUM
Alarum have nothing to prove in sheer technical prowess on their instruments, or superlative proficiency in progressive metal songwriting. They’ve demonstrated for over twenty five years that they are masters in complex time signatures, virtuoso guitar and bass chops, and layered sonic landscapes. Their music can be deliciously delicate and lovely, cheeky jazz fusion fun, or brutal death metal heavy.
The band’s new album Recontinue packages this in eleven new tracks – weaving in and out of heavy and soft, dark and light, in-time and off-time – the lyrical and instrumental metal music that Alarum is well known for.
Recontinue delves into the theme of regeneration: growth from what’s seemingly dead or damaged, resilience to adversity, and finding strength in hard times. Lyrically, Recontinue explores questions and concepts on humanity’s self-destructive behaviour towards ourselves, our social connections, and our planet. It’s a call to arms for all people to Recontinue: find better ways to connect, resolve and prosper – while accepting the inevitable ups and downs of the human experience.
The band comments, “With first single Imperative we explore lyrical themes relating to the growing urgency for humans to make better decisions on how to treat our planet and environment, and how to represent this theme with powerful impact in Alarum’s music. The strong and pushing rhythms of Imperative create the urgency and discomfort that the lyrics represent, setting the tone for the album Recontinue.”
Recontinue gives you all of those elements that you know and love about Alarum, with the addition of the weight of an anvil…
STEEL INFERNO
Steel Inferno has been, slowly but surely, cementing their name in the European speed metal scene in the last decade. Since the band’s formation in 2012, the quintet released three studio albums, each one stepping a bit forward in terms of popularity and intensity: Aesthetics of Decay in 2016, …And the Earth Stood Still in 2020 and Evil Reign In 2022.
The latter, which was Steel Inferno’s debut at the From The Vaults label, took the band in a slightly different direction. If the Steel Inferno’s early material was akin to European metal like early Accept and Judas Priest, the material in that record was closer to some of the earliest US power metal bands such as Helstar and Jag Panzer – all mixed with a fundamental inspiration from early thrash and speed metal.
With this new-found approach, the band toured like crazy to support Evil Reign, until the time came to record new songs again. Angioni Studios was booked, speed riffs, solos were recorded, thunderous rhythms were taped and raging vocal takes were captured. The result is Steel Inferno’s new album, titled Rush Of Power. A thunderous monster of a record, which will hit you like a hurricane, adrenaline-pumping and will leaving craving for the next speed metal fix. Rush Of Power adds more speed, as well as complexity, to the Steel Inferno arsenal, while retaining a sense of creating good melodies.
Are you ready for Rush Of Power?
That’s it for this time – see you again in two weeks!
Leave A Comment