Wagars-Sidrabenes lāsts

Latvian black metallers/crust punks Wagars strike again with Sidrabenes lāsts, their fresh new release after the eponymous cd,(posted here) which was awarded as the Best Debut of 2013 at Latvia’s Metal Music Awards (an annual event which took place earlier this year in Riga at “Melnā Piektdiena” club.). This thing sounds strange for a crust related band but wtf here is Sidrabenes lāsts: The title  refers to one of the pre Christian castles destroyed by crusaders twice in the territory of today’s Latvia. The recording is currently available on bandcamp and there is no any release in physical copies. The release consists of ten tracks and this time there is translation of lyrics in English. Music wise they seem to made a step closer to metal area and this is obvious in most of songs but they kept the crust flavor and the D-beat driven force that appears in a nice way in tracks such as Zem Sventes, Dārd debesu pamale and Nemiera ugunsputns while in Bezgalīgā ātrumā they sound like covering an Altare demo song. The vocalist is completely in the black metal territory and the lyrics deal with ecological issues, admiring nature power, downshifting movement (as they said in their post in Anarcho-Punk Net. All and all this is a nice follow up to their first cd, maybe less primitive and rough since they worked on sound quality and added some melody in some songs. I preffer the D-beat driven songs and  Bezgalīgā ātrumā which tends to be my fav. from this release. As i said this is on bandcamp. wish 'em to release it as cd soon.

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Kapakmens-Anti Pozitivs

Kapakmens (tombstone) was formed in March, 2013. Band members come from many Latvian metal / hardcore / punk bands and have been involved in the scene since late 90ies / early 2000. Most distinguished other acts where members are currently involved in are the Latvian extreme thrash metal band Collide, the crust/black metal band Wagars and the punk/hardcore band Kastete. Lyrically, Kapakmens could be described as affected by inevitable death, deceived by oppressive artificial positivity, weary of capitalist realities, struggling for conscious responses to the world. Anti-Pozitivs comes in cd format and consists of sixteen tracks of metal driven hardcore or extreme metal with hardcore influences. Because of the metal driven guitar riffs, this stands rather in the metal than the punk/hardcore side of things but there is a heavy hardcore feeling floating over there. Anti-Pozitivs is available on bandcamp along with the lyrics (in Latvian language, unfortunately there's no translation in English). Song titles are in Latvian, some titles translated in English are: Zombies of Positivism, Disco of Death, Burried, Marionettes, Strange Book etc etc

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Wagars-Demo 2012

I discovered the quartet of  Wagars from Rīga, Latvia while i was browsing the crust and D-beat tags in bandcamp and yeah this blending of crust, D-beat and black metal was a nice surprise to my ears: "By admiring the wilderness and untamed, mysterious power of the nature, we chime post-apocalyptic moods – in a simple, fast, and sharp manner. Like a hail spurt driven by the Northern winds.Drop the delusion of civilization and return to the primitivism and bosom of the wild nature!"  I think they said it all in this statement. Members were/are in several bands such as Kastete, Ocularis Infernum, Dehydrated Goat, Collide, Huskvarn and others. Their demo consists of ten tracks of of dark blackened crust blending Dark Throne's crust sides with black metal guitar works and punk/hardcore rhythm section while some  blast beats appear here and there. Sometimes the crust punk dominates and sometimes black metal overcomes in song writting. The use of writtings of poet Imants Ziedonis, one of the heroes of Latvia's national awakening, may rise some worries about being right wingers but as they say in farcebook "Wagars is not a political band, We do not represent any kind of political views, religious systems, any particular school of philosophy. We celebrate diversity of people’s ideas, political views, ethnicity, race, gender, age etc." Give it a listening, it  is good enough, for fans of black metal orientated crust (or crust influenced black metal). And don't get fooled by the foto: They are a quartet and not a three man band.Lyrics are in Latvian language (no translation in English). This was released as cd by P3lican Partisans.

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