Tucson newcomer Azauriel impresses with a clean metal-step banger, ‘PUT EM UP’, featuring Wandermere.
[Tucson, Arizona] I’m a pretty new writer here, so it’d probably be news to most of you that I would probably describe myself as being a listener way more on the metal side of things than either the style of my music or the fact that I write for an EDM blog would lead on.
I was raised on metal’s teat and given to bass music like a sacrificial lamb in my late teens, and since then I have been an absolute sucker for anything that finds itself in the middle of that particular Venn diagram. Fortunately for all of us, this fixation is shared by Azauriel, who has made one of the smoothest blends of the two I have heard in ages.
Last week, on October 10th, 2024, Defiance Collective, a record label based out of Salt Lake City, Utah released the latest volume of their “Insolence” compilations, just barely less than a year after Vol. 2.
Coming in touting twelve tracks, compared to last year’s eight, the latest entry, Volume 3, absolutely delivered on its fresh, dark bass music – there is not a weak track on this release.
Defiance regulars like Odiax, Jubokko, and DAWPLEGVNGER all bring heavy madness to the table in their tracks, but considering the white-on-black, hand-drawn hooded figures, almost classic black metal look of the compilation’s cover, I’m fairly surprised Azuauriel was the only to bring something with overt metal influence forward, but I am remarkably glad he did.
The gigantic metal intro features vocals from Azauriel himself, as seen this video from his X.
The thing I most want to commend this track about, and the thing that made me want to do this write-up in the first place, is just how seamless this track is.
An easy place to fail in merging styles like this is having either one or the other being even just that much lesser in quality, having some flaw that tips the hat to “Oh, this is a metal guy doing his best to put some dubstep basses in his tracks for interest,” or “This is a producer who can also play guitar, but can’t mix it.”
Azauriel and Wandermere cleared that gap effortlessly; with guitar tones of equal quality to the distorted basses, and dub drums which are just as clean as the metal drums, there is no weak link in this track.
The clanging metallic bass pitching up and down was delightfully industrial, and the whole drop is, oddly – and delightfully- just as metal as the intro, even without the guitars or screams.
Huge tune, that’s the only way to put it – I love the sound design, the style, all of it.
I’m greatly impressed by this track and everything I’ve heard from Azauriel so far. I reached out to him for comment and he had this to say about the track:
“Well for starters, my name is Gabe and Azauriel is a character I want to create! I have a story I’d like to tell about hatred and love which I find to be reflected in my orchestral and/or metal intros. Something about aggressive music [with] pretty stuff behind it has kind of always been my thing. But I’m a metalhead (specifically metalcore/deathcore/beatdown/slam) to my core. I always just wanted to be a guitar player until Mitch Lucker from Suicide Silence came around, and as time went on I wanted to be a vocalist more and more. I always liked dubstep back in the day but it wasn’t anything I was interested in making until around 2019 and have been making it since, although I started off as a melodic dubstep guy until around 2021
I started making tearout around 2 years ago and it’s definitely been the sub genre of dubstep I feel like helps me get my point across the best. I think metal and dubstep were always meant to be together, and not the like sing songy corny metal w dubstep but the heavy brutal pig squeeling(sic) metal. I’ve been doing vocals for a while now, I’ve been able to pig squeal since I was like 12 but I feel like just in the last year I’ve gotten good enough at gutturals and false chord screams to start documenting the rest of my journey to become a real brutal vocalist. It’s a blast to make all sorts of sounds [with] your throat and just play around and all the sudden you make a new sound you’ve never made before!
Yeah it was my defiance debut and I did wanna release [with] them but wasn’t entirely sure if they’d like my stuff [because] they do a lot of riddim especially [with] their paracosm shows. But my good friend bloodpvct said they had just picked up one of his songs for a comp(sic) and told me I should send some stuff so I did and they picked up put em up!Wandermere helped me compose the metal parts and played the guitar for them. He’s an incredible guitar player
I had an old project called Half Dead that me and Wandermere did a ‘Let Me Be Sad’ – I Prevail cover and so when I started this new project about a year and a half ago we knew we needed another original collab as both of us had gotten a lot better since that cover came out.”
– says AZAURIEL regarding PUT EM UP
This was hands-down my favorite track on this compilation, and I am very much looking forward to what both of these artists do next. If you’re in the Tucson area, look out for Azauriel playing live!
I leave you with a warning from him:
“Let ’em know I’m here to help bring crowd killing and hardcore culture to dubstep. Violence is self expression, so express yourself!”
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Written by:
Monsoon Season’s
Team Writer & Content Creator
Kevin D. Vowell
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