New Zealand Music Month: Trepanation

**It’s New Zealand Music Month this May. **New Zealand’s **annual celebration of homegrown music. Generally, that involves a lot of mainstream media highlighting a lot of mainstream acts. So I’m here to try and redress the balance a bit.  **I’ll be posting a link to some rowdy New Zealand music for you to check out every day over the next month. Some bands will no doubt be familiar; others I hope will be fresh to your ears.

Trepanation

You know you’re in for a hell-hammering good time when a band’s members describe themselves as, “Void Summoner – Battle Axe Savagery, Bestial Howls”, “Sadistic Flesh Torturer – Pestilent Bass Slaughter, Hateful Snarls” and “Black Wizard of the Southern Winds – Ritualistic War Drums, Battle Shrieks”.

That’s the line-up of grinding black and death metal trio Trepanation. At least, it was until a few weeks ago, when the Black Wizard left the fold. Back in 2013, Trepanation released their 666% vicious and vitriolic first demo, Hideous Black Abyss. That demo was stacked to the gunnels with bleeding raw and chaotic metal, and it came with a fair amount of pitch-black crust punk putting the steel-capped boot in too.

*Hideous Black Abyss *is highly recommended if you’re a fan of that brain-battering and abrasive war/death/black metal arm of New Zealand metal (see Diocletian, Witchrist, Heresiarch, Verberis et al). I’ll post the Bandcamp link to *Hideous Black Abyss *below. But I’m also including Bandcamp links to Trepanation’s truly excellent split release with Sabbatic Goat from 2014, which was released on Iron Bonehead. And a link to a brand new track Trepanation posted today, from their upcoming split with punx Spiteful Urinator, which looks set to be another perfect meeting of similarly misanthropic and murderous minds.

Hideous Black Abyss Demo

Sabbatic Goat/Trepanation Split

Trepanation/Spiteful Urinator Split