On this week's episode of Terminus, we try out a new format. Sort of by accident, we ended up with two EPs and a very short full-length, plus a fan submission and a debut album. We're thinking that every month from here on, we should do a roundup of demos, EPs, and maybe some full-lengths by very new projects. Let us know what you think....

Anyway, to the music. TBMG leads off with a pair of EPs steeped in one of his favorite sounds, the marginal true-BM classics of late-90s Scandinavia. Chicagoan war metal gang Malthusian Kommand has way more to do with Sweden than Ross Bay, while Swiss hermit Goifer traverses towering peaks and shadowed valleys with an eccentric spin on Norwegian melody.

TDMG follows up with a band that embodies the wild, willfully nerdy imagination at the heart of heavy metal. Sol Draconi Septem, a supergroup of dudes from the French BM scene, aims for a "swords and planets" atmosphere with a soundtrack-y, almost electronic variation on stuff like Summoning. As usual, TBMG gripes about riffs, and TDMG comes up with one of his left-field comparisons.

After the break, we're back with a 20-minute ripper / gripper from Polish ____-grind band Zatrata. TDMG hears deathgrind, TBMG hears crustgrind, and for once, everyone's opinion is valid. Zatrata's fiercely condensed, craft-intensive attack handily outdoes the legion of American "darkcore" bands who've long struggled to achieve something like this.

We close out with an in-depth review of the debut by Exsanguinate, a Terminus listener (and now patron) who sent his record in a few weeks back. It's difficult to describe how this band sounds -- we do our best on-air -- so let's just say it's an extremely original take on high-plains American black metal. As TDMG says, "he's got the hard part done first," so our job is to help C.J. zero in on the center of his music.

0:00:00 - Introductory bullshitting / rundown of bands and labels

0:16:19 - Malthusian Kommand - Unravelling the Purity Spiral (Independent)

0:42:32 - Goifer - Grabschlöfer (Repose Records)

1:03:38 - Sol Draconi Septem - Hyperion (Time Tombs Production)

1:45:08 - Interlude - Sear Bliss - "A Mirror in The Forest," fr. Letters from the Edge (Hammerheart, 2018)*

1:49:59 - Zatrata - Zatrata (Selfmadegod)

2:11:55 - Exsanguinate - Violence Is The Natural Law (Independent)

2:54:57 - Outro - Earth - "Raiford (The Felon Wind)," fr. Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method (Southern Lord, 2005)

*As far as The Black Metal Guy remembers, this is the very track that inspired the term "Cool Wizard Music."

Terminus links:

Terminus on Youtube

Terminus on Patreon

Terminus on Subscribestar

Terminus on Instagram

Terminus on Facebook

thetrueterminus@gmail.com