Madder Mortem

2 weeks ago

Avantgarde summer sale at DARK ESSENCE RECORDS!Avantgarde campaign!🧐

We continue our summer sale campaign and this week we focus on some of our unique, avantgarde, hard to put in a box kind of bands.

In lack of better word, we name this the avantgarde campaign. Most of the releases here have been released on the Dark Essence imprint, but some are to find on KARISMA RECORDS as well.

Dark Essence Records sort of started with the more extreme or black metal bands, but our love for the more eccentric or avantgarde bands have always been there, and that led us to the Bergen based band Vulture Industrieses. With them, we were lucky enough to release their 2 first fabulous albums, before they went on to our friends in Season of Mist. But not only that, frontman and vocalist Bjørnar Nilsen started working for the label right after they got signed, and he quickly became one of the co-owners as well. So, we have both their first album and the latest 7” release from Vulture Industries in this campaign. As that isn’t enough, Bjørnar Nilsen had a long lasting project (it took forever to get the album done at least) called Black Hole Generator (Official)nerator, where he focused on the more extreme sides of industrial and avantgarde metal, and we included this gem here too.

A band that certain people running the label has had contact with more or less since the beginning of the bands career, is the mighty Madder Mortemem. The band had been silent for several years when they contacted us regarding the release of “Red in Tooth and Claw”, and we were very happy to welcome them back. A few years later, the excellent album “Marrow” followed, before we could help the band celebrate the 20 years anniversary for the debut album “Mercury”. Madder Mortem is a truly special and unique band, both in sound and performance, and we’re looking forward to see the upcoming documentary film that is coming soon.

One of the most wonderfully weird and unique bands we’ve ever worked with, was Virus - Norway. We had a discussion about if they should be released on Dark Essence Records or Karisma Records, but we ended up doing it on Karisma since they probably are the most progressive rock band in the world, in the true sense of the word progressive. We’ve been friendly with the band for years, and after a fantastic concert at the great Roadburn Festivalal in The Netherlands, we signed the band for the amazing album “Momento Collider”. The band is now on hiatus, but we hope to hear something new sometime in the future.

Another band there are old connections to are the Trondheim weirdos in ATROX. They’ve been through several different styles and directions within the metal genre, starting with doom metal and ending in quite modern and futuristic madness on their latest album “Monocle”. Then we have Avast from Stavanger, who arguably could have been in the Black Metal campaign we had some weeks ago. However, as they constantly gaze onto their shoes and have a much more modern approach to the Black Metal genre, they ended up in this campaign.

We haven’t just picked up Norwegian weirdness, but have worked and still work with several bands from around the world. After a nice meeting and seeing a great concert at the Roadburn Festival back in 2014, we signed the Icelandic band Momentum and released the album “The Freak is Alive” the year after. Which is also an album with some nice, heavy, atmospheric and quite progressive tunes.
One of the very few bands we have signed because they sent us an e-mail, is the British band Five The Hierophanthant. The e-mail simply said; “We play doom jazz”, and there was a link to some tracks. We had never heard about doom jazz before, so had to check this out and got blown away. The album “Over Phlegethon” is a great and psychedelic doom metal album with a jazz flavour, and the rumour says they are recording a new album these days. We are very much looking forward to that!
Several of the bands in this campaign, are bands that someone at the label has had a connection to earlier, and this goes for the Greek avantgarde black metal band Hail Spirit Noirir as well. They were looking for a new home for their 3rd album, “Mayhem in Blue”, and we took that opportunity. The band has moved on to our friends at Agonia Records, and they will release their new album this week.

Last but not least, a man who has done quite a few album covers, music videos, t-shirt designs, tour posters and so on for both labels, is Costin Chioreanuanu. When he approached us about the album he was doing with Greek vocalist Sofia Sarri, we got intrigued about the whole story and concept and of course about the music. “Afterlife Romance” came out last year, and this spring he made the story into a virtual reality game too.

From Wednesday the 17th of June till Tuesday 23rd of June (at 23.59 CET), you will get the following items with an avantgarde 10 x Pi = TiPi, 31,4159265359% discount.

www.darkessencerecords.no/avantgarde/ ... See MoreSee Less

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Madder Mortem

1 month ago

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