Although this horde of black metal brothers have existed as a unit for 13 years, OCCVLTA have two short recordings to their name, the 2010 ‘We Command The Wolves’ demo and a 2012 split 7” with the UK snarlers Salute. Having existed mostly as a live unit, with legendarily primal, in-your-face appearances at Live Evil, Muskelrock and Metal Magic, the time has finally come for Occvlta’s first full-length to surface from the depths of the German underground. Iron Fist have been given an exclusive stream of ‘Merciless Hammer’ so we caught up with vocalist Hord to find out more about the song and upcoming album ‘Night Without End’…

“‘Merciless Hammer’ was our first attempt at writing a d-beat song. Most of the album comes in at a much slower pace. None of us were ever into d-beat punk bands but we are all big Motörhead fans, so when Torm [drums, brother of Hord] came up with the main riff we decided to write a whole song in that punk style. It just felt right. It gave some sort of primal satisfaction. I had the title in my head for a while and wanted it to be primitive and brutal. Occvlta is evil … Read More

Accurately labelling themselves “Old Metal”, that broad but effective term came when Natur overheard an old rocker trying to describe their sound to a friend. The New York via Rhode Island four-piece formed in the dark days of 2008 when only a valiant few were playing unapologetic straight ahead heavy metal in the US. On top of the band, two of the guys run a weekly classic metal radio show called the Metal Inquisition and you can safely predict that they will spend any spare cash on vinyl, you can certainly hear in the music that the band have a broad knowledge of heavy rocking history.

The band’s charmingly raw and heavy self-released CD demo stood out immediately from the increasingly genre specific metal world. Darkthrone’s Fenriz noticed and gave his seal of approval early, which led to a slot at London’s Live Evil Festival supporting Ghost and Angel Witch back in 2010. Featuring the highly entertaining Tooth Log on drums, main axe attack from Dino Destroyer and lead bass now coming from recent addition, Henry Yuan, aka Sound Mound, who replaced the brilliantly-named Damien The Mexicutioner. Singer/guitarist Ryan Weibust adds a natural, cool vibe and a fittingly underpowered NWOBHM-style vocal. The eponymous … Read More