Barnaby Keen is looking for a little faith, Zumbi show you their fear, Cop Kid hit the beach, Karmacoda are one with E39, Hildegard makes your day — and she’s not the only contender for that crown in your Wednesday Roundup. Keep calm and carry on:
17 | Barnaby Keen | Trust Me
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “London songwriter and producer Barnaby Keen has shared his new single Trust Me. It has a timeless feel having begun life years ago whilst the artist was living in Eastern Europe. “I was seeing a Romanian body builder for a while, she was a tree surgeon and used to come up with songs whilst working,” Keen recalls. “She used to hum this melody but didn’t know where it had come from and assumed it was an old folk song.” Years later when living in a disused petrol station, Barnaby found an organ and the familiar tune returned to him, transporting him back to Eastern Europe. “I took part of it and then wrote the song, remembering our time together. I ended up doing the most simple, stripped-back arrangement and in the end that’s what fit.”
18 | Zumbi | Fear
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “L.A.’s Dimitri Craven and Jerry Andrews have been friends for over 25 years. Dimitri and Jerry met when their bands played in the same musical circles. A few years later, Dimitri also met rapper/keyboard player Jason Soto, and they all started jamming together. Years later, Dimitri, Jerry, and Jason started a band. Their love of electronic music was just starting to hit the scene and it became really big in all the hottest clubs. They loved trip-hop/electronic, alternative and downtempo music. They just released their new album titled Ahead Of Time.”
19 | Cop Kid | Reservoir Beach
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Utah duo Cop Kid share Reservoir Beach, the next track from an upcoming EP. Reservoir Beach is more of the duo’s bright & playful glitch-pop, riddled with Gen-Z lyricism of general anxiety. “We wrote this song about a reservoir that we both live by. It’s the summer spot that you go to and hang around, getting high with your friends. Utah is landlocked, so this the closest thing we have to a beach. Anyone who lives by the ocean would laugh at it. It’s not a lake or much of a beach, but it’s the closest thing we have. The song is a catchy pop tune about losing track of yourself and time and getting into the loop of aimlessness. It’s like that movie Groundhog Day — everyday kind of starts to feel the same, but you don’t really mind it too much.”
20 | Karmacoda | Make Me The One (E39 Summer Club Mix)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Karmacoda share the remix of Make Me The One by Peter Tanico (E39). The original single appears on their upcoming album Slow Down, Melt and Catch Fire, which will be released May 28. Drawing the single onto a dark dance floor and covering it with renewed electronic touches, Tanico takes Make Me The One into a new territory of dance reminiscent of Daft Punk. However, the modern production style and unusual vocals quickly set the track apart and listeners journey into a world of dark romance and unstoppable dance rhythms. He says: “Having the opportunity to reimagine this amazing song is like finding the new perfect setting for a diamond.”
21 | Hildegard | Jour 3
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Hildegard — the electronic duo of experimental singer-songwriter Helena Deland and multi-instrumentalist/producer Ouri (Ourielle Auvé) — have shared a track from their upcoming self-titled debut LP. Deland and Ouri describe Jour 3 as “a playful, winking hymn to sexual fantasy and solo pleasure,” and the track is accompanied by a self-directed video. Hildegard will be released on June 4. Deland and Ouri recorded over just eight days in the studio, uncovering their innate creative connection while developing an intuitive approach to composition and sound. The eight tracks on Hildegard fuse together into a sonic sphere, and are named for each day Deland and Ouri spent together.”
22 | Erika de Casier | Busy
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Erika de Casier releases the single Busy, with a video that presents fierce CEO boardroom realness. Assuming her alter-ego Bianka — a character who has featured in the visuals for previous singles Polite and Drama — the Danish songwriter and producer is working hard and taking nothing for granted. Busy is the fourth single to be taken from de Casier’s second full-length studio album Sensational, out on May 21.”
23 | Scar Of The Sun | Quantum Leap Zero II: Transition To Turbulence
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Greek modern metal outfit Scar Of The Sun drop their third studio album Inertia this Friday. Today they set free Quantum Leap Zero II: Transition To Turbulence, along with a captivating live video. Scar Of The Sun’s Terry Nikas adds: “The third video of Inertia — the second installment of the Quantum Leap Zero trilogy — Transition To Turbulence is the most indicative song of the album in my eyes! This was filmed at our last show before COVID hit, a magnificent sold-out show as direct support to the legendary Rotting Christ in front of 2,700 people in Athens, Greece.”
24 | Soul Grinder | Night’s Bane (Nyktophobia)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bremen death metal trio Soul Grinder will release their new EP Lifeless Obsession on June 4. Night’s Bane (Nyktophobia) is the first single from the upcoming EP and features a guest appearance by Nachtgarm (Negator).”
25 | Brother Against Brother | Deadly Sins
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Brother Against Brother features co-lead vocalists Nando Fernandes and Renan Zonta (Electric Mob). The band just released their third single Deadly Sins. Brother Against Brother are meant to showcase these two amazing vocalists to a larger global audience outside of their homeland of Brazil. Nando Fernandes is one of the most established, popular rock/metal singers in Brazil; here he is paired here with one of the hottest vocal talents of the new wave of hard rock bands: Renan Zonta. Together, they are on fire on this magnificent melodic metal album written by none other than Alessandro Del Vecchio (Revolution Saints, Edge Of Forever).”
26 | Anthropophagus Depravity | Temple Of Sacrifice
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “From Yogyakarta in Indonesia, a country known throughout the metal world for its array of bands addicted to the rush of savagery and brutish violence, come Anthropophagus Depravity — a band whose music is steeped in blood and terror beyond all hope of redemption. Their debut album is a gory tale of human sacrifice and mutilation delivered with fearsome musical prowess and ruthless, relentless force. Spawned from nightmares, Apocalypto is upon us. This record radiates fear and panic, it reeks of the cold sweat of bad dreams and each track seethes with wicked cruelty and ignites into lung-burning explosions of vehement ferocity. Hear Temple Of Sacrifice now.”
27 | Inkar-Nation | To Begin With
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Inkar-Nation are a new melodic doom/death metal band with four musicians from four different countries: A singer-guitarist from Syrian, a Brazilian bassist, a Spanish guitarist and a Dutch drummer. They are currently working on their debut album and they just released the first single To Begin With. Watch the lyric video.”
28 | Ghastly | Perdition
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Perdition is the horrifying new single from Ghastly’s third LP Mercurial Passages, arriving in late May. All the elements that made Death Velour album a rarefied jewel return on Mercurial Passages; the memorably eerie slow burn buildups, the frantically vivid outbursts of speed, and dramatic trance-inducing doom fragments that create a hypnotic psychedelia akin to being lost in infinite labyrinthine corridors perpetually folding in on themselves. Andy Gordon reveals, “Writing the lyrics on this record, I tried to push myself to a sort of liminal state, to blur the line between being awake and asleep. This was also the vibe I got listening to the demo versions of the songs on this album. As a result, this song, like most on this record, is a fairly unfiltered stream of consciousness. Needless to say, there are many ways to look at this song. Partly, it tells about the strong disconnect I feel with the modern way of life. It also borrows elements from a very lucid dream during which I felt actual physical pain but also weirdly felt revitalized unlike after an ordinary night of sleep.”
29 | Death Of A Dryad | Enter the Piper
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Enter the Piper is a track taken from Death Of A Dryad’s album Hameln. Death of a Dryad are an atmospheric dark metal duo from France. Their universe mixes metal riffs with atmospheric ambiances. Hameln is a concept album loosely based on the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and suggests a succession of musical tableaux.”
30 | Bólido | Angel In Black And White
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Chilean metallers Bólido have just released a lyric video for the track Angel In Black And White, the second advanced single from their upcoming third album Against the World, due on June 15. Formed back in 2010 in Santiago, their self-released their debut album We Are Rock in 2014, gaining a solid reputation in their native country thanks to their powerful live performances. In 2017, the band released their second album Heavy Bombers, after which, they began working on their next album Against the World.”
31 | Madman’s Lullaby | In Your Mind
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Madman’s Lullaby have released their debut single In Your Mind, from their upcoming album Nocturnal Overdrive Part 1, out May 27. They say: “In Your Mind was the very first song written for Nocturnal Overdrive. The song has always had such a great flow to it, so we had to sneak it into the live setlist at some select shows. The crowd response was enough to tell us, this song deserves to be the first single.”
32 | Dead Romantic | Yesterday
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “U.K. four-piece Dead Romantic have unveiled a stunning acoustic version of their latest single Yesterday, complete with video of the band in session. The new video, filmed at guitarist and producer Mike Krompass’ The Outlook Studio in Yorkshire, gives fans a taster of what’s to come. Vocalist Dan Taylor says: Yesterday is “a song about refusing to be consumed by negativity or darkness from a toxic relationship. It’s a message to anyone who feels down or stuck in a dark place to break free from it and move forward, it says ‘I’m not going to allow you to make me feel like this, you’re not going to drag me down.’ ”
33 | Gost | Coven
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “As a first taste of the album Rites Of Love And Reverence, due for a release on Aug. 13, Gost releases Coven, a deep dive into the aesthetics and concept of the upcoming album. Gost says: “Coven is a piece which seemed to write itself, flowing almost effortlessly from some unexplainable source. This song is told from the perspective of a persecuted witch who is proud of her coven and will die before she betrays her sisters. In memory of the many victims throughout history, by which mere accusations of witchcraft condemned the innocent to death.”
