Three artists, three completely different takes on slow and extreme music.

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Eagle Twin premier «Heavy Hoof»

photo by: Russel Albert Daniels

The expression “highly anticipated” gets thrown around with quite some ease these days. However, given the sheer impact that 2009’s «The Unkindness of Crows» and 2012’s «The Feather Tipped the Serpent’s Scale» had on those who heard them (granted, that number is probably smaller than it should), the upcoming third full-length by Eagle Twin, «The Thundering Heard (Songs Of Hoof And Horn)» has indeed been highly anticipated. To put it bluntly, there are very few bands who have managed to create as unique of a sound as the duo of Gentry Densley and Tyler Smith. The former’s costume made guitar and bass hybrid has an immensely personal sound, equal parts low-end thundering and groovy fuzz, whereas the latter is a frantic, fantastic, if unsung drummer. Yesterday, the duo unveiled a song from the upcoming record, the third of four tracks entitled «Heavy Hoof», which you can stream below. Suffice it to say that it is indeed an infectiously heavy beast and that you might end up humming something like “the heavy hoof clips, the heavy hoof claps and the heavy hooves dance your grave”.

«The Thundering Heard (Songs Of Hoof And Horn)» is set for release on March 30, via Southern Lord. Pre-orders are available here (US) and here (Europe).

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Mournful Congregation unveil two tracks from upcoming record

Funeral doom can’t be anything if not glacially slow and that’s exactly how Mournful Congregation have been approaching their craft in their twenty five years of existence. Not only have their compositions been genre defying, but their output has been steady but paced in the same manner. Prove of that is that their upcoming record, «The Incubus of Karma» and first to feature drummer Tim Call from acts such as Nightfell and The Howling Wind, will only be their fifth full-length. Ephemerides and new formation aside, a third of «The Incubus of Karma» can already be heard, with the album’s second track «Withering Spiritscapes» available over at Legacy, whilst the fifth, «Scripture Of Exaltation And Punishment», can be heard below.

In a time of short attention span and quick dishing out of short singles, the Australian funeral doom masters keep doing things their way, with the two aforementioned songs comprising around thirty minutes and yet revealing less than half of the record. «The Incubus of Karma» is set for release on March 23 via Osmose Productions. Digital pre-orders are available at the label’s bandcamp while the cd, tape, and vinyl versions are available at this location (as well as a t-shirt and a hoodie allusive to the record).

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The Body forgoes traditional instruments in «Nothing Stirs»

The ever prolific The Body are set to release their sixth full-length «I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer» in May. Similar to what they did in their European tour last year, the band has decided do ditch guitars and drums for samples and synthesisers. As can be heard below on the record’s first single «Nothing Stirs», the different means used to express their experimental heaviness do not result in a loss of identity, quite the contrary: this does not sound like anything other than The Body. Never ones to shy away from collaborative efforts, in «I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer», the duo invited Chrissy Wolpert from Assembly Of Light Choir and Ben Eberle from Sandstorm. Moreover, Lingua Ignota‘s Kristin Hayter voice features on «Nothing Stirs» (the combination with Eberle’s growls is fantastic), whilst «Sickly Heart Of Sand», part of which can be heard in this trailer, is set to feature both Hayter and Uniform‘s Michael Berdan.

«I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer» is set for release on May 11 by Thrill Jockey. Pre-orders can be found here.