Thanks to Black Shuck for the tip on this news item. I’d seen the news about this tour last week before any details were available, but now we’ve got the schedule.

Three-quarters of this line-up get me hot and bothered — the quarters that consist of Death Angel, Krisiun, and Havok. I’ve been lucky enough to see Death Angel before, and I can testify that they are a blast to hear and watch. Krisiun is, well, Krisiun — some death metal heroes of mine that I’ve been hoping to see for years (and who ought to be at the top of this tour instead of a “support” act). And Havok is one of the few new thrash bands whose music doesn’t make me yawn after a while.

And that leaves Krisiun’s countrymen in Sepultura. If this were the Sepultura of the Cavalera brothers at their peak, the band that created albums like Arise, that would be one thing. But it’s not. I was so underwhelmed by A-Lex (2009) that I didn’t even listen to last year’s Kairos. Maybe that was a mistake, because I’ve since heard that it was a big step up (was it?). So, while I may not yet be hot and bothered by the idea of seeing Sepultura, I’m at least interested, and this tour will give me an excuse to see what Kairos is all about before it hits Seattle.

Yes, it’s coming to Seattle, and to 18 more cities in the U.S. and Canada (though it seems to be spurning the entire southern half of the U.S.). The schedule is after the jump.

SEPULTURA, DEATH ANGEL, KRISIUN, HAVOK tour dates:

Apr. 10 – Yost Theater – Santa Ana, CA
Apr. 11 – DNA Lounge – San Francisco, CA (no DEATH ANGEL)
Apr. 12 – Branx – Portland, OR
Apr. 13 – Studio Seven – Seattle, WA
Apr. 14 – In The Venue – Salt Lake City, UT
Apr. 15 – Gothic Theatre – Englewood, CO
Apr. 16 – Manny’s – Billings, MT
Apr. 17 – The Exchange – Regina, SK – Canada
Apr. 18 – Pyramid Cabaret – Winnipeg, MB – Canada
Apr. 20 – Majestic Theater – Madison, WI
Apr. 21 – Mojoe’s – Joliet, IL
Apr. 22 – Water Street Music Hall – Rochester, NY
Apr. 23 – The Opera House – Toronto, ON – Canada
Apr. 24 – Imperial Theater – Quebec City, QC – Canada
Apr. 25 – Club Soda – Montreal, QC – Canada
Apr. 26 – Bogies – Albany, NY
Apr. 27 – Sonar – Baltimore, MD (no DEATH ANGEL)
Apr. 28 – Best Buy Theater – New York, NY (no DEATH ANGEL)
Apr. 29 – Higher Ground – South Burlington, VT

Death Grips isn’t metal in any conventional sense (shit, did I just use “metal” and “conventional” in the same sentence?!?), but they’re still definitely metal. If you ain’t up on Death Grips yet, you can find a good introduction in BadWolf’s NCS post about them here. That post pushed me to explore Death Grips’ music, and the music made me a believer. Based on the comments we got and the page hits on that feature, there are lots more believers out there, too.

It goes, it goes, it goes, it goes 
It goes, it goes, it goes, it goes
Guillotine – YAAAAAH!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, so, for all Death Grips believers and those who will become believers, we have some news from the Death Grips facebook page: “we’re releasing two full length albums this year world-wide .. first one drops in April ”

We also have some new Death Grips 2012 music . . . after the jump.

I close my eyes and seize it 
I clench my fists and beat it 
I light my torch and burn it 
I am the beast I worship… 

Oh hell, here’s “Beware” too [and it's all still free at this location]:

Only two days ago we featured news about Rise of the Phoenix, the next album by Finland’s Before the Dawn, which prompted some speculation in the comments about whether the music would be up to the high standards set by the band’s previous releases. After all, it does follow pretty quickly on the heels of 2011′s Deathstar Rising, it does come from a band whose principal creative force (Tuomas Saukkonen) has his fingers in many other projects at the same time, and it will be the first BtD release in six years not to include the distinctive clean vocals of Lars Eikind.

Thanks to a tip from fireangel of the Finland-focused Night Elves site, much of this anxious speculation can be laid to rest. She pointed us to an album teaser uploaded by Nuclear Blast today. Based on the short song excerpts in the teaser, I can’t argue with what Tuomas Saukkonen says in the clip. It does indeed sound epic, fast, heavy, and awesome. Also, I can feel the music having a positive effect on my manhood.

Teaser clip after the jump . . .
 

Cannibal Corpse will be headlining SUMMER SLAUGHTER this summer and they’re about to leave for a tour of Europe. But in between those events, they’ll be headlining a 23-city tour of the U.S. beginning in April.

Today, the band announced the U.S. Torture Tour 2012, sponsored by Metal Blade Records, Good Fight Entertainment, and dB Drum Shoes. It starts on April 5 in Jacksonville, Florida, and ends in Gainesville, Florida, on May 3.

Their support on this tour is first-class: Exhumed, Abysmal Dawn, and Arkaik. That will be a must-see show for death metalheads within spitting distance of any tour stop. Sadly, yours truly will be missing this tour, because the closest it will get to the Pacific Northwest is Colorado, and I can’t spit that far.

The full schedule is after the jump.

CANNIBAL CORPSE U.S. Torture Tour 2012
w/ Exhumed, Abysmal Dawn, Arkaik

4/05/2012 Freebird Live – Jacksonville, FL
4/6/2012 The Soapbox – Wilmington, NC
4/7/2012 Lincoln Theater – Raleigh, NC
4/08/2012 V Club Live – Huntington, WV
4/9/2012 The Orange Peel – Asheville, NC
4/10/2012 The Canal Club – Richmond, VA
4/12/2012 Higher Ground – South Burlington, VT
4/13/2012 The Club At Water Street – Rochester, NY
4/14/2012 The Cincinnati Metal Fest @ Bogart’s – Cincinnati, OH w/ CANNIBAL CORPSE, The Black Dahlia Murder, Nile, Exhumed, Skeletonwitch, Abysmal Dawn, Hour Of Pennance, Arkaik
4/15/2012 The Intersection – Grand Rapids, MI
4/16/2012 People’s Court – Des Moines, IA
4/17/2012 Slowdown – Omaha, NE
4/19/2012 The Scene-ary – Wichita, KS
4/20/2012 The Black Sheep – Colorado Springs, CO
4/21/2012 Mesa Theater & Club – Grand Junction, CO
4/22/2012 Top Deck – Farmington, NM
4/23/2012 The Rock –Tucson, AZ
4/24/2012 Tricky Falls – El Paso, TX
4/25/2012 Jake’s – Lubbock, TX
4/27/2012 The Blue Note – Columbia, MO
4/28/2012 Diamond Ballroom – Oklahoma City, OK w/ CANNIBAL CORPSE, Behemoth, Watain, Exhumed, The Devil’s Blood, In Solitude, Abysmal Dawn, Arkaik
4/29/2012 Newby’s – Memphis, TN
4/30/2012 Exit In – Nashville, TN
5/1/2012 Zydeco – Birmingham, AL
5/3/2012 Double Down – Gainesville, FL

I guess every carnivore knows by now that Torture, the next album by Cannibal Corpse, is slated for North American release through Metal Blade Records on March 13, 2012. One song has already premiered, and today Metal Blade gave the honor of releasing a second track to that bible of bile, that everyman’s guide to the filthy underbelly of the underground, that harbinger of hellish death metal . . . REVOLVER magazine.

Yeah, go figure.

Anyway, the new song is called “Scourge of Iron”. It’s an exclusive premiere, so I’m unable to embed it here — which means that to listen, you’ll have to hold your nose and go visit the Revolver site (HERE), where you will be greeted by two of “the hottest chicks in metal” flanking the Cannibal Corpse audio player, along with links to the latest news about Modern Day Escape, Shinedown, and Guns ‘N’ Roses. Sigh.

But in my humble opinion the nose-holding trip is worth it, cuz the song is a brain-stomper. It’s the flip-side of the first song (“Demented Aggression”) — slow, grisly, pounding, putrid, and featuring a truly diseased guitar solo. Truly diseased.

If someone were to ask me, “Why is Finnish metal so awesome?”, I would answer, “Because it’s metal from Finland, you dork!” — and then I’d give the Nerd Laugh, the one that’s part snort and all-knowing. And if I were being asked by a big hairy dude with no nerd sense of humor, I’d follow that quickly with some examples, one of which would be Before the Dawn.

The band was started in 1999 by the prolific Tuomas Saukkonen (also a member of Black Sun Aeon, Dawn of Solace, and RoutaSielu), and their 2011 album (their sixth), Deathstar Rising, was one of our favorites (I also named a song from the album to our list of 2011′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs — here).  Their combination of hard-driving riffs and dark, beautiful, hook-filled melodies is a great example of the kind of gothic melodic death metal at which the Finns have excelled.

Part of the band’s appeal has been the one-two vocal punch delivered by Saukkonen (whose harsh delivery is killer) and bass player Lars Eikind. Elkind is gone, unfortunately, but of course that hasn’t stopped Saukkonen for a minute. Here’s a January 25 note posted by the band (which I only just saw, thanks to a tip from KevinP):

Finnish melancholic melodic death metal outfit BEFORE THE DAWN returns after living through a phase of changes and uncertainty – cleansed, renewed and stronger than ever! Leaving pieces of both the musical and personal past behind, mastermind Tuomas Saukkonen, lead guitarist Juho Räihä and their new companions get ready for conquering your ears with the finest blend of northern gloom and harsh melodic death metal.

Their seventh studio album and at the same time second release via Nuclear Blast Records is entitled “Rise Of The Phoenix” and will arise from the ashes on the 27th of April 2012!

Very welcome news indeed. After the jump, the track list . . . and news about the next Marduk album.

RISE OF THE PHOENIX – Track List

01. Exordium
02. Pitch-Black Universe
03. Phoenix Rising
04. Cross To Bear
05. Throne Of Ice
06. Perfect Storm
07. Fallen World
08. Eclipse
09. Closure

And here’s a nice, new promo pick of the new line-up:

And now this, from Sweden’s Marduk.

This news isn’t long on volume, but it’s high in content value. Per Marduk’s Facebook page today:

“Marduk is currently in the studio finalizing the recording of their 12th studio album. The title has been set for “SERPENT SERMON”!
The album is set for a late spring release. Tracklisting and more info will be unveiled shortly.”

Rest assured, we’ll be following developments about this album and will bring you what we find faster than a three-toed sloth.

(Thank you Andy Synn for this tip.)

Most serious death metal addicts I know rank the early albums of Montreal’s Cryptopsy (recently inducted into DECIBEL’s Hall of Fame) among their personal favorites, especially None So Vile (1996), recorded at a time when the “classic” Cryptopsy line-up was in place — vocalist Lord Worm, Jon Levasseur on guitars, Flo Mounier behind the kit, and Éric Langlois on bass. But I doubt I’ll get much argument when I say that more recent albums — and especially 2008′s The Unspoken King — have greatly disappointed the band’s long-time fans.

The band’s musical decline (at least compared to their early glory days) can be traced to Levasseur’s departure in late 2004. He left, and we got Once Was Not (which was not all bad, in part because Lord Worm was back in the fold, briefly) and The Unspoken King (which just plain didn’t measure up to this band’s legacy).

Well, the great circle of life spins, or some shit like that, and Jon Levasseur is now a Cryptopsian again (since May 2011). My fairly simple mind fairly boggles at the contemplation of what he and co-guitarist Chris Donaldson are going to cook up for the band’s next album. Neuraxis bassist Olivier Pinard replaced Youri Raymond (who replaced Langlois last year), and he will be strong, and of course the paranormal Flo Mounier will continue to be his otherworldly self. And then there’s vocalist Matt McGachy, who will ne’er replace Lord Worm in the hearts of the Cryptopsy faithful, but he’s really not bad, and in any event he will be overshadowed by the instrumental extravagance of his bandmates.

And speaking of instrumental extravagance, after the jump, I have a few tastes of what we have in store for our greedy selves from the “new” Cryptopsy, plus a few more morsels of news about the next album.

In January, Cryptopsy started releasing play-through videos by most of the band’s current members of songs from past Cryptopsy releases, and I’m collecting them here. First, here’s a video released late last month of Levasseur performing “Serial Messiah” from Cryptopsy’s debut album Blasphemy Made Flesh, which was originally recorded before he joined the band.

Now, was that sweet or what? Next up, Chris Donaldson with a play-through of “Worship Your Demons” from The Unspoken King:

Continuing with the new videos, here’s new bassist Olivier Pinard doing a bass play-through of “Cold Hate Warm Blood” from Whisper Supremacy.

Last, but certainly not least, we have Flo Mounier just fucking around before a band rehearsal in January. Jaws will drop:

To close out this feature, here’s a video of Jon Levasseur talking about his tuning and his gear (and doing a few demonstrations), and along the way there are small bits of info about new music. I’ll also quote this comment from Matt McGlachy in a press release about one of his side projects (The Era Of): “Cryptopsy fans need not worry: With the return of Jon Levasseur, we have been writing some of the most brutal material I have ever heard. Jon has been a pleasure to play with, and the connection between him and Flo is undeniable. We are now hard at work preparing a new Cryptopsy album to be released in 2012.”

(Almost exactly one year after we first wrote about Eschaton HERE, BadWolf reports today on the projected release of their next album and a brand new Eschaton single.)

Eschaton have been on my personal radar for some time, first because they operate completely independently and second because they make some killer tunes. These four (unnamed) Austrian heathens play a very modern style of blackened death metal with melodic death metal influences. I know, it sounds ho-hum. Fear not! Their interpretation of the sound recalls Behemoth, and Andy Synn’s 2010 band of the year, Dark Fortress.

Unfortunately, Eschaton’s record is quite sparse. They released an album called Godmode in 2004, and then a two-song single called An Instrument of Darkness in 2010. I’ve been waiting for a second album ever since.

That wait is over. Eschaton’s second album, Isolated Intelligence, will be released on March 3rd. In anticipation, the band released a single, “Current Void”, this morning. Oh boy.

It’s an eight-minute vamp-fest, completed by some female co-vocalizations that bring a more In Flames inspired sound into the mix. Usually such things would be a turn-off, but I find myself quite enjoying “Current Void” and eagerly anticipate Isolated Intelligence.

Oh, did I mention it’s free?

Yes, it’s all free, “Current Void” and Eschaton’s complete back catalog. Just check their BandCamp HERE: http://eschatonchaosworks.bandcamp.com/

They even provide mediafire links in case any of their records exceed BandCamp’s free download limit. What nice guys.

I was a relatively late-coming fan of Sweden’s Naglfar, discovering them through their 2007 release, Harvest, but I’m now solidly in their camp. Their skillful intertwining of melodic black metal and death metal elements creates music that is both memorable and viciously scathing.

I’m happy to report that as of today, we now have more details about their next album on Century Media, Téras. First, we have the album’s killer cover art by Niklas Sundin (Dark Tranquillity), who has previously designed artwork for bands such as In Flames, Arch Enemy, and At the Gates.

Second, we have specific release dates: March 26th in Europe and March 27th in North America. Third, we have a track list:

1. Téras
2. Pale Horse
3. III: Death Dimension Phantasma
4. The Monolith
5. An Extension Of His Arm And Will
6. Bring Out Your Dead
7. Come Perdition
8. Invoc(H)ate
9. The Dying Flame Of Existence

Since Naglfar and this album cover are on my mind, I decided to collect all of their previous album covers, which are equally eye-catching. That’s after the jump, along with a replay of the first song from Téras.

Here’s the song (previously featured at NCS here). The album art collection follows it.

Another ugly duckling has left the nest, venturing into the cold, cruel outside world to spread its wings. An NCS reader, commenter, and e-mailer of reliable tips on metal news and new music who I’ll call Ben C. has gone off and started his own blog with the thoroughly awesome name of: CHURCH OF THE RIFF.

In Ben’s words, the musical focus of the new blog is “oriented around big manly ball-swagger riff rock”, though I’m sure Ben will be most welcoming to both non-balled and balled readers as long as they’re interested in “face melting and skin blasting” — in other words, readers with good taste in metal.

The blog went live yesterday with three posts. They’ll give you a further idea about the musical direction of the blog. Their subjects are these three bands: Whores, Barn Burner, and Graveyard. I especially liked the title of the second post: “Barn Burner: If Iron Maiden Drank More Beer, Smoked More Weed and Ate More Poutine.”

I also liked the fact that Ben created this tag for the post about Whores: motherfucking. I wish I had thought of that. He also has tags for beer and bongs. All these words will come in handy when searching Church of the Riff for music in future months.

Please show Ben some love. Go visit Church of the Riff today and leave the kind of ridiculous comments you post here at NCS.