Mar 282012
 

Kartikeya are a Russian melodic death metal band we’ve written about frequently at this site (use the search box on this page and you’ll see what I mean). The leader of Kartikeya is a very talented dude named Roman “Arsafes” Iskorostenskiy. We’ve previously explored a few of his other musical projects besides Kartikeya — a Russian pagan-metal band called Nevid (Невидь) and Arsafes’ own solo effort, with a 2010 EP called A New Way of Creation. But there’s still more:

Arsafes and a Serbian singer named Aleksandra Radosavljevic have collaborated to create a project called Above the Earth. Together they’ve recorded a demo of music described as “Atmospheric/Ambient/Progressive Metal”. The first piece of music I heard was an excerpt from a song called “All Our Dreams”, which they posted on YouTube as a preview of the demo. The first thought that popped into my head as the music began was, “this sounds like Devin Townsend!”

And then today, they posted the first full song, and guess what? It’s a cover of “Supercrush” from DT’s Addicted album. Now, you know we don’t include much clean singing on this site, because it’s mainly my site and I don’t have much patience for clean singing in metal. But there are exceptions, to be sure, and Devin Townsend is one of them — and “Supercrush” happens to be one of my favorite DT songs.

So, I approached this cover with both excitement and fear — excitement, because I know Arsafes is one immensely talented guy, and fear, because how can a cover of a song like “Supercrush” do anything but pale in comparison to the original? Well, it turns out that my fears were groundless, because Above the Earth nail that fucking song. Continue reading »

Mar 282012
 

Work, work, work.  That’s me right now, though I would rather be blog, blog, blog. So this will be short.

MARDUK

You know Marduk. They’re from Sweden. They play tumultuous black war metal. They have a new album coming on May 28 called Serpent Sermon. The album cover is after the jump. So is the first song from the album, which premiered yesterday on Metal Hammer. It’s called “M.A.M.M.O.N.”

It’s not exactly what I was expecting from Marduk, which is not a bad thing at all. Yes, there are bile-vomiting vocals. Yes, there are weapon-like blast beats and double-bass. Yes, the guitars come in menacing waves. But there are changes of pace in which the guitars also ring out slow, chiming melodies while the bass audibly bounds along beneath them in a jazzy progression. Interesting. Continue reading »

Mar 282012
 

Yesterday, I wrote about an exciting new band named Crator who have finally surfaced some new music after first being cryptically mentioned in an update written by John Longstreth for Sick Drummer magazine in 2010. In addition to being one of the members of Crator and the drummer for Origin, Longstreth is also the current drummer for Gorguts.

When it comes to technical death metal, Gorguts occupies a place in rarified air. It has gone through several iterations divided by long periods of inactivity, with legendary vocalist/guitarist Luc Lemay being the only constant.  The band’s last album, From Wisdom To Hate, was released 11 years ago, but word surfaced about three years ago that Lemay was reviving Gorguts yet again — this time with the line-up filled out by Longstreth and by Dysrhythmia bandmates Kevin Hufnagle and Colin Marston.

Since then, Gorguts die-hards have been waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting for new music. It appears we will finally get to hear some of what the new line-up have been creating, because it was announced yesterday that Gorguts have been added to the U.S. DEATH TO ALL TOUR 2012. Continue reading »

Mar 282012
 

 

Record Label: Deathgasm | Year: 2012 | Genre: Black Metal

By Willard Shrapnelspear

I always feel awkward reviewing an album sung and written in a language that is not English. Maybe it is because it makes me feel like I’m doing a half-assed job. Oh well, here I go again.

Apart from not being able to read a single word in the track titles (as they are all in Bohemian, the main language of the Czech Republic), obviously, I can’t figure out a single word vocalist and talented multi-instrumentalist Honza Kapák is spewing forth either. You might be thinking that that’s a pretty pointless statement, since who the hell can actually figure out harsh vocals. Well, seasoned listeners of extreme metal can actually make out a word or two from a set of harsh vocals even without first looking at the lyrics or track titles (but of course, some badasses like BadWolf can make out Carcass’ lyrics… wait wut?), and of course, I’m referring to extreme metal sung and written in English.

But guess what? When it comes to listening to foreign extreme metal and being so damn clueless as to what the vocalist is singing about and whatever the hell the lyrics are saying, it’s really not that bad a thing! It actually accentuates that feeling of exoticness found only in exotic metal, which is kind of like being lost in a random Vietnamese village (after watching a hungry village kid gobble up your tasty-looking map) and not having a clue as to what your next move should be.

In musical terms, your next logical move should be allowing the foreign music to wash over you and take you places; and boy does this fourth studio album from Avenger wash over you like a murky wave filled with bits of rotten leaves and soggy twigs, and carry you all the way to some twisted, paganized version of the Caribbean. Continue reading »

Mar 282012
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: In September 2011, Andy Synn reviewed Brutalitarian Regime, the most recent album from Norway’s Blood Red Throne and ultimately named it to his list of 2011’s greatest albums, summing it up in these words: “This is a brilliant and unflinchingly brutal record, start to finish, standing as a testament to the seemingly boundless talents and uncompromising nature of the Norwegian death metal war-machine.”

Andy recently had the chance to interview the whole band in the flesh during one of the UK stops in their European tour with Suffocation, and he delivered the interview in two formats for you, because we know some like to read and some like to watch: Above is a video of Andy’s interview, and then a transcript of it is after the jump.
Continue reading »

Mar 272012
 

Through the miracles of modern wi-fi technology, I am writing and posting this piece from a Boeing 737-800 airplane crossing the vast, imbecilic American continent on my way from one coast to the other, because my fucking day job demands it.

My traveling conditions aren’t ideal. The tight-sphinctered woman sitting next to me is grumpy. I am nearly deaf, and even though I have the volume turned down, noisy metal is apparently still leaking from my earbuds and polluting her personal space. Fuck her, I can handle the acidic looks, because I’m doing this for you.

The man across the aisle from me has been using a nasal inhaler, and I don’t think he has a cold. His pupils are now the size of pin pricks. I know this because he is staring at me. Fuck him, too, if he doesn’t try to fuck me first.

Worst of all, I haven’t started drinking yet . . . but I intend to make up for lost time as soon as I click the “Publish” button on my blog software.

Here’s what I found this morning that I thought worth sharing: A band from Australia named Ocean of Zero, a band from Germany named Black Shape of Nexus, and a band from parts unknown named Crator (whose creepy artwork is up above and whose membership is very intriguing). All of these bands are new to me. Continue reading »

Mar 272012
 

My fucking day job is making me get on an airplane shortly for a long trip. The airplane may have wi-fi, in which case there will be more posts today. However, it may not, in which case I will most likely drink myself into a stupor and have to be removed by federal air marshals in a fireman’s carry.

I just didn’t want you to think I had fallen into the loris compound and been consumed (slowly) by the (patiently) waiting hordes.

In the meantime, I recommend you listen to High On Fire’s new album, De Vermis Mysteriis, which began streaming yesterday at NPR. I’ve not been a huge fan of HOF, but this sounds different and more varied from what I remember on their last album, and it’s good.

Or you could just spend hours pondering the layers of meaning in the photo up above and leave your interpretations of its message in the comments. Continue reading »

Mar 272012
 

Goatwhore’s 2009 music video for “Apocalyptic Havoc” is one of my all-time favorites. It’s not terribly fancy, though it’s well-made. There’s no story. It’s just the band playing in something that looks like the interior of a church (except for the inverted crosses), with assorted close-ups of spark-shrouded Ben Falgouth looking badass (which is not difficult, since I bet Ben Falgouth looks badass even when he’s asleep) and Sammy Duet looking serious and cool, carving those tasty riffs with the neck of his guitar almost vertical.

I’m sure the song has something to do with how much I like the video. To be honest, Goatwhore could have been filmed playing dominoes and eating shelled pecans in a NOLA icehouse and I still would have loved it, as long as “Apocalyptic Havoc” was blasting out of the speakers.

But now Goatwhore have gone and gummed up the video works. Yesterday, we witnessed the debut of the video for “When Steel and Bone Meet”, which is a track on their most recent album Blood For the Master (reviewed here by Andy Synn). They could have just let the song carry the video again, as they did for “Apocalyptic Havoc”, because the song is great. To borrow Andy’s word, “When Steel… is a bar-room brawl set to music, chains and fists flying in a drunken, grooving orgy of violence that manages to cram in a swaggering groove, pummeling power-riffage, and some switchblade soloing in barely more than 3 minutes.”

But no, they had to throw in brief shots of two unclothed chicks licking blood off each other. I mean, really, who wants to see that? Bor-ing. Continue reading »

Mar 262012
 

The first two bands featured in this round-up have been the subject of previous features at this site, so we already know and like their music. But what we have here are new music videos that are worth a gander. And then the third piece of this triad is a new song from a band called Vorkreist (sans video).

OUROBOROS

TheMadIsraeli reviewed this Australian band’s latest release, Glorification Of A Myth, back in June 2011. He described the music as “a mix of PestilenceDark Angel, some slight Cannibal Corpse-isms, Vader, and a good dose of neo-classicism in the melodic moments” — a powerhouse collection of “killer riffs” and “face-melting guitar antics”.

The new video is for a song from the album called “Sanctuary”. It confuses me. It’s clearly telling a story, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Are the children at the end younger versions of characters we’re seeing at the beginning? Why the leap off the cliff? And what’s the snake man chopping with that cleaver? If you get it, leave a comment.

The YouTube version of the clip includes the lyrics, which are much better than average for a metal song, but they haven’t helped me figure out the video. I’ll link to them after the video. Continue reading »

Mar 262012
 

This morning, TheMadIsraeli tipped me to the fact that Dying Fetus had just released a teaser clip for their new album, Reign Supreme, and then I got a press release with more detail about the album, plus I found the album art.

Relapse Records has now confirmed a June 17 release date for the album. According to the release, it will feature nine tracks and is a “return to roots” with “production focused slightly more on slam than in the band’s last few works.”  Thematically, “the album is set to be a good old-fashioned piece of social and political commentary in the style of DYING FETUS as we have come to know.”

The album artwork, as you can see, features lots of skulls, because of course nothing says “metal” like a fuckton of skulls. Or so I’ve heard. Maybe we should put a fuckton of skulls all over NCS. Oh, wait  . . . yeah, we already did that. Maybe we need more skulls. Or worms.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the teaser track. It’s less than a minute long, but as TheMadIsraeli noted when he wrote me, it’s long enough to give you rabies. And if you don’t get the full infection from it, Metal Injection recently put up a video of the band performing a new song from the album called “Invert the Idols”, which is an awful nice piece of head-smashery. Continue reading »