Confessor has been booked to play May’s Maryland Deathfest, an annual metal-prilgrimage in Baltimore. It’s a coup for the fest, too. The cult-favorite band, first formed in the late-80s, and then reformed in the early-00s, became known for its musical technicality and was an early practitioner of what would later become the “progressive” offshoot of death metal.

Music.MyNC.com has a fun video of Confessor drummer Steve Shelton offering a drum tutorial for “Condemned,” which turned 20 in October. Check it out here.

Loincloth

Loincloth, the instrumental metal trio composed of Confessor guitarist Cary Rowells (playing bass) and drummer Steve Shelton, plus Koszonom guitarist Tannon Penland, will release its first full-length album, Iron Balls of Steel, via Southern Lord on Jan. 17.

That’s the same day Gauchiste, Penland’s dark and ambient doom-metal — or, in their words “extreme minimalist abstract metal” — band with Tomas Phillips and Craig Hilton, releases its own self-titled debut via Little Black Cloud Records.

(Of note: Gauchiste’s album is already streaming on Bandcamp. See below.)

—Bryan C. Reed