Shrapnel: Little Shards of Metal

Hello, your Texan pal Hideous Destructor here! Ready for the latest dose of heavy metal news? Let’s get amongst the shrapnel!

EMISSARY
First up we have reactivated American metalheads Emissary, and the news that the band have just unleashed a new video clip for the track Hypochondriac! The song comes from the band’s upcoming new album The Wretched Masquerade, which is set to emerge on German label Underground Power Records!

Vocalist Jym Harris has this to say about the track: “Hypochondriac was an unfinished song when Emissary broke up in ’96. With the band reforming last year, I thought we should finish that song we started twenty five years ago! I came up with a lot of the musical ideas then (guitarist) Tim Dahlen improved certain riffs, and added all the melodic lead guitar parts. When the other members jumped in, it really became a new Emissary song. I don’t want to spoil any listener interpretation of my lyrics but let’s just say there are likely a lot of people right about now that will be able to relate to this song. The music video was compiled from footage taken at our shows at Redwood Metalfest and our first reunion show, when we were asked to be direct support for Tesla on the opening night of their summer tour.”

The Wretched Masquerade is comprised mostly of new recordings of the band’s classic material, but a deluxe version of the release will feature a bonus disc full of remastered nineties demos. There is even a guest appearance by guitarist Claudeous Creamer of Bay Area legends Possessed on one track. It was produced by Doug Hill (Helmet/Neurosis/Mastodon), mastered by Jamie King (Between The Buried & Me/Cro-Mags/Flotsam & Jetsam) and features the artwork of Donald Yatomi (Megadeth/Tourniquet/Sylent Storm) on the cover. Both the CD and vinyl are being released in the (Northern) spring of 2022.

BURNING SISTER

Next we’ve got some ‘Mile high downer rock’ for you courtesy of Denver’s Burning Sister! The band have just released a new single, Cloven Tongues, with a new full-length album to follow, which was mastered by the legendary Tad Doyle! You can watch the video for the track below!

Comments the band: “2022 seems like an appropriate time to release a song about the unavoidable and impending end of everything as we know it. So it may come as a surprise that this is one of the earliest songs we penned, dating to early 2018, far before the recent apocalyptic-like realities the world has dealt us. Appropriate to the theme, the song is a long plodding march to an end that simply is. Employing ample amounts of space, Cloven Tongues entreats us to play it slow and sombre, gaining and growing until it ultimately tapers off, leaving us wondering if it’s all really over. Fuck it, it’s over.”

VULCANO

To Brazil! Brazilian metal Titans Vulcano have announced a new album is on the horizon, with the record, entitled Stone Orange, set for an April release through Danish label Emanzipation Productions!

On Stone Orange, Vulcano revisits their four-decade dedication to metal. The thrash, speed and old-school black metal fusions flow perfectly and naturally throughout the record, guaranteed to give the listener involuntary headbanging movements!

On one hand the album showcases Vulcano’s sheer intensity, speed, and cruelty; on the other hand, complexity, feeling, and even some flirting with ingenuity – and above all, a great sense of honesty in all they do.

Produced by Zhema and Ivan Pellicciotti at O Beco Estúdios and mastered by Marco Angioni at Angioni Studios, Stone Orange is a trip to different rhythms, one of Vulcano’s trademarks, moving freely between traditional heavy metal and the most extreme death/black metal, working amazingly well.

The themes in the album range between obscure hermeticism and cliche, where the subjective language and the suggestive power of words is as important as their actual meaning. Guitarist and band founder Zhema Rodero has a unique ability to deliver short sentences that get across the message in a perfect way.

“Stone Orange brings the early eighties atmosphere closer to the band’s maturing without sounding bored or seasick”, Zhema declares. “It’s really a storm of common riffs laid out in a brilliant way”. Vulcano is a band that, by now, doesn’t need any introductions to any metal fan. It’s enough to say they got together in a middle of a turbulent socio-economical turmoil in Brazil, in 1982, in the city of Santos. Thus it’s a forty-year career, with thirteen studio albums, four live records, and two 7” EPs, that just couldn’t be summed up in a few lines”

They were pioneers in Brazil and even in South America as a whole, putting in the most extreme metal stepping stone for bands that came after them and continue being formed. Their importance is also capital in the formation of the Norwegian second wave of black metal, with few of its key members citing the Brazilians as a direct influence.

Stone Orange is the band’s nineteenth overall release in their career. How many bands can get to this mark and still be as relevant as the Brazilian extremists are today?

HYPERIA

Finally this week we head North to Canada, and Hyperia, a band led by husband and wife thrash team Colin and Marlee Ryley!

You might be familiar with the band from their 2020 debut album Insanitorium, which was released on Sliptrick Records or their 2019 EP Fish Creek Frenzy but for this second album, Silhouettes of Horror sees guitarist Ryley behind the soundboard producing and mixing the record with mastering done by Mika Jussila at Finnvox Studios in Helsinki, Finland (Children of Bodom, Nightwish, Battle Beast). Album artwork was created by Andrei Bouzikov (Vektor, Municipal Waste, Skeletonwitch, Toxic Holocaust).

Energetic, melodic, fast, psychotic, and dynamic are just some of the elements that make Silhouettes of Horror an album that old and new fans of thrash, NWoBHM, and power metal will appreciate. The band even included a cover homage of Abba’s Gimme Gimme Gimme. For the recording of Silhouettes of Horror, Hyperia also recruited good friend and session drummer Gord Alexander (Tessitura, Tides of Kharon, Immunize). Most of the lyrical themes on Silhouettes of Horror revolve around inhumane government experiments, sleep disorders, and night terrors. It’s a smorgasbord of easy listening vibes!