SEEN AND HEARD: KATATONIA, KRODA, ASMODÉE, AND TAKEN BY THE TIDE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Aug 292012
 

As mentioned in today’s last post, the last 24 hours have brought a torrential flood of news and new music that I care about, and because I care about all this shit, I’ve been grinding my talons down to nubs on the keyboard, on the assumption that you will care about it, too. And if you don’t, please keep that to yourselves, because I bruise easily. Without further ado, here are four more items to add to the long list that has already filled up our site today.

KATATONIA

We published a very, very early guest review of Katatonia’s new album, Dead End Kings, in this post. We also were fast in posting about the wonderful music video for the first song to debut from the album, “Dead Letters”. For reasons I haven’t figured out, we’ve been getting a ton of hits on both of those posts over the last 3 or 4 days despite the fact that both of them are two months old. We might as well add something a bit more current.

This afternoon, DGR alerted me to the fact that the entire album is now streaming at the Canadian Exclaim.ca web site. HERE is the link for that. Dead End Kings was released yesterday (August 28) via Peaceville.

KRODA

We’ve written so many times about this Ukrainian black metal band that I’ve lost count (actually, I could count them if I had more fingers, because all the previous posts are collected here). Schwarzpfad was probably my favorite 2011 black metal album of all the ones I heard last year. It also showed up on Andy Synn’s list of the year’s Critical Top 10 albums, as well as his list of 2011′s Great Albums, and I included a song from Schwarzpfad on our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GLOWSUN, TOMBS, P.O.O.R., AND TOTAL VOMIT EXPERIENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 292012
 

For someone of my tastes, this has been an action-packed 24 hours in the world of metal, and hence the flood of posts on our site today. But the new videos from Enslaved and Kvelertak, the new song from Daylight Dies, the new free download from Impureza, and . . . uh . . . the new video from Baby Metal . . . have just been the tip of the iceberg. I’ve seen and heard a lot more things that have got me really pumped up at the moment — so much so that I’ve written two of these “seen and heard” posts. This is the first one.

GLOWSUN

First things first: that colorful album art caught my eye in a big way. It wasn’t the name “Glowsun”, because I hadn’t heard of that band (or their music) before seeing the artwork. It turns out that Glowsun are from northern France, and their second album Eternal Season is scheduled for release by Napalm Records on September 28. It also turns out that the cover art was created by Glowsun’s own singer and guitarist Johan Jaccob.

So, having been hooked by the cover art, I listened to a track from the album that Napalm debuted today, not knowing what to expect. What I got was . . . completely bowled over by the song. Stylistically, I suppose you’d classify “Reverse” as psychedelic stoner metal, with a real retro feel, but for those of you (like me) who don’t immediately start salivating when you see that genre label, just bear with me a moment longer:

Glowsun have ultra-mad guitar chops. Their guitar chops have guitar chops. The song’s opening riff got my head nodding quickly . . . but that proved to be just a small appetizer for the soloing explosion to come on the back half of the song. Fuckin’ caused my hair to start smoking. Listen: Continue reading »

BLOODSTOCK 2012 – A REVIEW AND MUSIC FROM THE FESTIVAL (Part 2)

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 292012
 

(Our UK correspondent Andy Synn, who is a lucky devil, attended the mammoth BLOODSTOCK festival earlier this month and delivered a report on the performances. You can find his review of the festival’s Friday and Saturday shows at this location, and today we’ve got his write-up about what he saw and heard on BLOODSTOCK’s final day — plus a collection of videos (some of which are full sets) at the end.)

SUNDAY

Unfortunately, the first band to assault my ears on the last day of Bloodstock were the generally uninspired Kobra & The Lotus, a band who the metal media have been trying desperately to ram down our throats for some time now, but who don’t have the songs or presence to justify it. Not the worst band in the world by a long shot, but memorable only for how forgettable they were, and for the singer’s often flat, often forced, vocals.

So it’s a good thing we had Nile! After some admittedly hilarious sound problems (where you could hear the sound guy shouting and swearing at everyone to ‘Fuck off! We’re not ready!” after Nile tried to start their intro a tad early), the quartet finally kicked into a sterling set of challenging death metal mechanics. The new songs are definitely finding their place in the complex algorithm of Nile’s set, while a run-in by members of The Black Dahlia Murder for the climactic chant-along of “Black Seeds of Vengeance” helped add to that special “festival-feeling”.

Speaking of The Black Dahlia Murder, they were up next and also faced the unappealing task of presenting their razor-sharp melodic death metal to a crowd that had seemingly greeted their announcement with either measured ambivalence or outright hostility. But with good natured aplomb, and some hilarious stage banter, the quintet were definitely up to the challenge, packing an impressive number of songs into a short time slot in an effort to win over as many with their music as possible. Kudos for the handling of the naked guy (“Raise him up, I want to see his penis… no wait, keep him away from security… oh no, they got him. Enjoy jail dude!”), and well done on ending the set with more people in the field than they started with. Continue reading »

DAYLIGHT DIES: “INFIDEL”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 292012
 

“Normally, we like to pen a few lines of senseless drivel to entertain before you click that orange button thingie, but today—as August rightfully wanes into oblivion—our digital inkwell is virtually dry. Parched, if you will. That being said, we’re going to let Daylight Dies dash your hopes and weather-make your sunny day outright cloudy. They can do that, you know. It’s time to enter an overcast state of mind.”

With those words of introduction, DECIBEL today began streaming a new song from Daylight Dies’ forthcoming album, A Frail Becoming, which is out October 9th on Candlelight Records USA and is available HERE for pre-order.

The song is “Infidel”. As you might expect if you know this band’s fantastic previous music, it’s a combination (on the one hand) of the deep, the dark, and the crushing, and (on the other) the sublimely beautiful. A Frail Becoming has been very high on our site’s list of most anticipated fall releases, and I can tell you that the rest of the album is every bit as strong as “Infidel”. A review is forthcoming . . . .

THIS is the link that will take you to DECIBEL to hear the song.  On that page there’s also an interesting interview with the band’s bassist/vocalist Egan O’Rourke. GO!

NEW FROM NORWAY: ENSLAVED’S “THOUGHTS LIKE HAMMERS” LYRIC VIDEO AND KVELERTAK LIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 292012
 

The new album by Norway’s Enslaved, RIITIIR, comes out Sept. 28 in Europe and Oct. 9 in North America on Nuclear Blast. It’s already available for pre-order in a variety of bundles at this location. The deluxe digi-pak edition comes with a bonus DVD that includes segments on the making of RIITIIR, the band, the recording studios, and the artwork. But the coolest looking bundle is the one with the bone-and-charcoal-splatter double-LP gatefold, which is limited to 1,000 copies.

About three weeks ago NPR debuted a long new song from  RIITIIR called “Thoughts Like Hammers”. Now the band have debuted a lyric video for the song, which you can watch after the jump. The song is such a trip. It’s part stoner metal, part indie rock, part prog, and the whole package is wrapped up in a blackened skin. It’s also an exception to the rule around here, because it includes clean vocals as well as scalding rasps, but man, the clean vocals are really good.

I usually find lyric videos to be distracting and annoying. Most of the time I’d rather just hear the music. But at least the words to “Thoughts Like Hammers” aren’t ridiculous. To the contrary, they’re interesting. So yes, I think the video is worth seeing, especially if you haven’t yet heard this song.

But the “Thoughts Like Hammers” video isn’t the only goodie from Norway we’ve got in this post. Last night I also watched a professionally filmed and edited video of Kvelertak’s live performance at the AREA4 festival in Germany on August 18. It’s about 22 minutes long, and I ate up every minute. To be fair, I’m already a Kvelertak fan, but I have a feeling that even people who haven’t yet gotten into their recorded music will rock out to this jam. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT FROM IMPUREZA

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 292012
 

(photo credit: Nicolas Abraham)

It occurs to me that human beings have never been content to simply feel emotion. We are social creatures, and so we’re driven by the impulse to share our emotions with others, to convey to other people what we’re feeling. I think that impulse drives artists in every field, whether it’s pictorial art or writing or music. And it goes beyond that. Artists not only want to communicate their own emotions through what they create, they also want other people to feel what they (the artists) are feeling.

Music has always been a vehicle for this two-fold drive, a vehicle for expressing what the musician feels and for changing the listeners so that they experience it, too. And one of those experiences is the very human desire to be wild, to let go of responsibilities, to defy order, to throw off the very conventions that make it possible for human beings to co-exist without tearing each other’s throats out, to dive headlong into unbridled passion.

There’s probably some connection between this and orgasms, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Anyway, the appeal of music that makes you want to be wild is one of the reasons I really like high-speed death metal. But that’s a comparatively recent form of music, and definitely not the first kind designed to sweep up the listener and take them on the Wild Hunt. Flamenco music is a much older art form that, at least as I hear it, does the same thing. It lights a fire and then fans it into a wildfire.

And I’m thinking these thoughts today because of Impureza. I think it’s a very safe bet that if you’ve ever heard the music of this French band (pictured above), you haven’t forgotten it. They seamlessly and beautifully combine technically oriented death metal that brings to mind bands such as Nile, Krisiun, Decapitated, and Fleshgod Apocalypse with flamenco music. They combine old and new ways of kicking out the fuckin’ jams. Continue reading »

MURDER CONSTRUCT: “RESULTS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 282012
 

 

The fucking brutals are everywhere again.

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli provides a pithy review of the second album by Murder Construct, which is officially out today.)

We’ve talked about this band and this album quite a bit at NCS (e.g., here).  Why?  Because the line-up of this band is pretty stellar.  Among other luminaries, it has Travis the-fucking-man Ryan on the vocal spot, and the music is sludgy, crusty, filthy, fucking foam at the mouth deathgrind of intestine vaporizing proportions.  Murder Construct’s sophomore album Results will decimate you into a fine bloody mist. the kind of which is usually radiated only from the most putrid of freshly undead skin-eaters.

I MEAN FUCKING LISTEN TO THAT:


 
Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: SAM NELSON, BUNCH, STOIC DISSENTION, KITEZH, HANDSEL

 Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 282012
 

One thing leads to another. In late July, I came across an awesome album cover by Denver-based artist Ken Sarafin (Sarafin Concepts) for a death metal project created by Sarafin called Bunch (and posted about that here). Though it isn’t available yet, the album will be titled Otero.

Then yesterday I saw the amazing artwork you see above, which appeared on the Bunch Facebook page. It’s an alternate cover for Otero (Bunch will eventually have three alternate covers for the album, with the third one coming from Mark Cooper of Mindrape Art — and one day I’ll devote a post to him, too). The artist is Sam Nelson, who’s also in Denver and calls his graphics business Stigma Art.

Well, having seen that killer Otero cover, I had to find more of Sam Nelson’s work, which I did — and holy hell, is he good. Some of his most striking recent works turn out to be covers for forthcoming albums by metal bands whose names were new to me. So of course I had to find some of their music, and it turns out to be worth sharing — and voilà, this post came together!

So, after the jump, feast your eyes on Sam Nelson’s cover art for Stoic Dissention and Kitezh, listen to some of their past music, and also check out a couple tracks from a music project between Nelson and Sarafin called Handsel (yeah, it’s really annoying that these dudes also have musical talent in addition to being fine artists), plus a few more examples of Sam Nelson’s creativity. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MATHIEU PASCAL OF GOROD

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Aug 282012
 

(A Perfect Absolution, the 2012 album by Gorod, has been one of the highlights of the year for us. Our brother groverXIII (a/k/a Professor D. Grover the XIII) reviewed that album for NCS here, calling it “the best tech-death album of a year that’s been very, very good for tech-death.” Today, we’re pleased to give you groverXIII’s e-mail interview with guitarist and principal Gorod songwriter Mathieu Pascal.)

Greetings. For the record, please state your name, rank, and serial number.

Mathieu PASCAL, guitar player and composer, 100% Heavy Cotton Made in France, no drywash.

 

With Neurotripsicks, Leading Vision, Process Of A New Decline, Transcendence, and now A Perfect Absolution, you’ve created five of the most memorable, catchy tech-death releases that I have ever heard. How do you guys manage to craft such intricate melodies without having the songs descend into mindless chaos?

Mat : Woow, thanks !! Actually, I usually try to focus on groove and melodies, because I think those are the things everyone can understand and record. I always try to make simple music, that you can headbang to easily. Intricacy comes in a second time. The music must be clear the first time you hear it, with rhythm and harmony. Then, when you come closer, you can hear details and layers and actual intricacy. Even with odd time signatures or overstrung harmony, there’s always a way to make the song consistent, clear and logical. You can’t just pick random notes and queue them on a time grid. Maybe it will sound new and original like « no one has ever made this before », but you’d lose energy and emotions. And people are mostly sensitive to these points in a first listen.

 

Was it a challenge to replace two band members and still maintain that distinctive Gorod sound?

Mat: It was a challenge for Nico [Alberny] and Julien [Deyres]. Julien had to replace Guillaume [Martinot] for the tour with Cattle Decapitation like two weeks after Guillaume decided to leave. We were looking for someone who could bring something new to our sound, and something that would serve the music. We didn’t want a clone of Guillaume, maybe it was just the right time for us to evolve. Julien has a really wide range of vocals and he’s able to enhance each ambiance in the music, to illustrate more closely the lyrics, etc… Continue reading »

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