Music musings 4/22/22: My current binges

‘Music musings’ is a new little update I’ll likely start adding to this blog every month or two. Basically, it’s a guide to a handful of songs or bands/artists that I’m currently enjoying, what I think is good about them, and some further recommendations or notes on my part. Some of what you’ll see here, I may have reacted to on my channel, Nuclear Reactions, so spoilers ahead if you’re not up to date on my videos. While others, I’ve listened to privately, as I tend to do with a lot of black metal, for example. Anyway, here are some of my current binges.

Lena Scissorhands ft. Death Dealer Union – Borderlines

As I said in my recent reaction to this, “Borderlines” is the song of the year for me so far, and one of the best representations of Lena’s vocal talents. Not only are her cleans and harshes equally outstanding, but the melody and main chorus really deliver on the memorability and catchiness, something that I enjoyed so much I was nearly caught off guard by it, because this isn’t Infected Rain – it’s simply Lena collaborating with Death Dealer Union, a band I had previously never heard of, but one that I’ll certainly be checking out now.

The band itself provided me with a spectacular introduction to their craft on this song, with fast-paced, chugging riffs and drumming that really leans into both groove and power in the way that it’s done throughout the song. The song as a whole is a perfect combination of heavy and melodic, without either of those attributes being negatively affected or watered down by the other. As I’ve stated so often on my YouTube channel, it’s a delicate balance to strike, but when it’s done the right way, the payoff is immensely rewarding for the listener. This was definitely the case for me, or I wouldn’t have replayed this song about 20 times since I first heard it. The song, along with its music video, dropped about two weeks ago, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, set aside everything else you’re doing and go listen to it now.

Theotoxin – Somnus Profanus

I’ll be honest, the album artwork caught my attention before anything else. Theotoxin is a band that I’ve listened to a bit over the past year, but I had mostly forgotten about them during the last several months – not because the music wasn’t excellent, but because it simply got lost in the seemingly endless pile of music I consume. Sometimes things get buried, only to be rediscovered and enjoyed later on. But yeah, the photo of a nun with her head in a noose immediately stood out to me, and when I recognized the band name, “Somnus Profanus” was the first song I listened to a few nights ago, followed by every other song off that record, Consilivm, which was their second full-length, released in 2018.

Between the threshing, militant guitar riffage, the artillery fire blastbeats, and the harsh vocals defined by ferocity and delivered in roars and shrieks, “Somnus Profanus” is a mind ravaging, exhilarating, and appropriately hellish entry point into Theotoxin’s music. The song dances on the periphery of bestial black metal, but really goes full tilt into traditional black metal territory, with a twinge of death metal mostly represented by the percussion and vocals. Excellent stuff that I’ll be replaying for a while.

Yungblud – The Funeral

Speaking of ‘something different’ – let’s get completely away from metal for the moment with Yungblud, who put out this weirdly appealing gothy, semi-pop-punkish, 80s-esque song called “The Funeral.” I have to admit, I’ve never really sat down and listened to Yungblud’s solo work; I’d previously only ever heard him doing guest vocals with MGK or Bring Me The Horizon, and here he employs a completely different style of singing. He comes off like an eyeliner-wearing, modern version of Billy Idol with red hair, that familiar snarky pop punk attitude, and – perhaps most interestingly – the presence of Ozzy Osbourne in the official music video for “The Funeral.”

Look, there’s no way around it: the song is catchy as hell; it makes you almost instinctually bop your head whether you want to or not. So you can be a faux-unimpressed, judgmental metalhead all you want, folding your arms and frowning with uncertain trepidation – it’s going to fade about half a minute into this song, giving way to an almost mandatory sense of enjoyment for the cadence to which Yungblud sings and the contagiously melodic oddity that is the song itself.

Yungblud does the whole thing seemingly with tongue planted firmly in cheek, being ready for any and all haters with a bit of self-deprecation (see the end scene where Sharon Osbourne runs him over with her car, after which she and Ozzy dismiss him as a “poser”). The whole thing is good, bizarre, unexpected fun. Don’t take it too seriously, just let the music take over and do its thing, you won’t regret it.

Leviathan – The Smoke of Their Torment

Alright, in case I’ve scared anyone reading this away with the song above, let’s get back to some orthodox black metal. I’ve always said that this genre has a darkly spiritual quality for me; that its palpable black energies make me feel something beyond drug-like and almost euphorically astral. Certainly, Leviathan is up there with those bands that deliver on that for me, even though this one-man-band (Wrest does everything, vocally and instrumentally) has never directly professed a purposeful connection with the occult.

Leviathan is more so one of those bands that descends into an abyss of depressive thought and philosophy, misanthropic notions, and existential terror (at least, if you think about it long enough and dwell on the perceived meaningless of everything). There’s nothing deliberately in these songs about black magick, Satanism, or demonic evocation, but I’ve always felt that this band’s music is a superb choice for channeling inhuman spirits; something in Leviathan’s morbidity must attract those otherworldly energies that I find myself craving whenever I binge black metal.

While Leviathan has gone spiritual in the technical sense, playing with themes that are Lovecraft-adjacent (there’s a record called Tentacles of Whorror), most of its songs really do exemplify the aforementioned lyrical themes, with album titles like The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide and Unfailing Fall Into Naught. My personal favorite track at the moment, “The Smoke of Their Torment,” is an over 6-minute long song from the record Scar Sighted, released in 2015. The lyrics are sinfully vitriolic prose (“march toward wicked transformations, slither from mine pallet that I might maintain your living ash, consume them with your fire, rejoice”). The harsh vocals are nightmarish, agonized savagery, and the raw, caterwauling guitar is caustic enough to make the brimstone walls of Hell weep and sputter plumes of thick, black smoke. Highly recommended.

Honorable mentions:

Motionless In White – Masterpiece

Inverno – Hollow

Red Handed Denial – Cloud 9

Gaerea – Whispers

Absent In Body – Sarin

Gorlock – Used Hallucinations Baritone

Violet Orlandi – Don’t Fear The Reaper

Deicide – Kill the Light of Christ

Enslaved – The River’s Mouth