Between my vacation in November, trying to catch up on what I missed while I was out of action, and planning for year-end Listmania at NCS, I’ve gotten ridiculously late in doing another MISCELLANY post. The last one was during the third week in October, which already seems like an eon ago. But rather than moan about my tardiness, I decided to just knuckle down and get ‘er done. Or at least get one done.

MISCELLANY started as a bit of a goof. I decided to do something with music kind of like what some people do with their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, when they obnoxiously tell you hour-by-hour (or minute-by-minute) what they’re doing — except I limited my disclosures to metal and hoped it would be more interesting than describing what I just ate or read or watched on TV, or the pleasures of the man-sized dump I just took.

To be more precise, on July 5, 2010, I posted a log of exactly what new metal I listened to and watched on that particular morning, regardless of whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. I didn’t plan on it being any kind of continuing thing, but I got enough encouragement from readers that I decided to just keep on keeping on.

I’ve been thinking back about how this started because this post is now the 40th in the series, which I guess is some kind of milestone. The first band covered in the first MISCELLANY post was an Austrian act called Mastic Scum, and I wrote about a video they’d released for a song called “Construcdead”. I introduced the video with these words: “If it’s been a while since you snorted coke, shot-up with heroin, cavorted with oiled-up dominatrixes, stuffed your face with food, been bull-whipped, had a golden shower, took it up the bunghole with a black dildo, or dribbled snot uncontrollably — well, you can relive those fond memories by watching this.” Good times. No wonder I decided to keep doing this.

Anyway, here we are again, and the rules haven’t changed: I keep a list of bands who contact us or who I’ve read or heard about somewhere, I pick some names at random and listen to a song or two from each pick, and then I write about the experience. It has turned out to be a good way to discover new music, and I’ve had extremely good luck with the picks. But still, you never really know what’s coming.

Today’s picks: Erupted (Sweden), Foul Body Autopsy (UK), and Absence of Light (Kenya). As it turns out, free downloads are available from all three bands

ERUPTED

I read about Erupted just a few days ago. This is a young band — young enough that when they formed in 2010 they decided to call themselves Carnivore, not realizing that the name already had a pedigree. Using the name of the band that the late Peter Steele (Type O Negative) formed in 1982 was a bit of a faux pas, but it hardly mattered until quite recently, when Carnivore was signed by Abyss Records for the release of their debut album. Of course, that led to a name change, and on November 30, they announced the new name — Erupted.

To date, Erupted have produced a three-song EP (under the name Carnivore), titled Faces of Death. In early 2012, they’re going to get a reissue of the EP, courtesy of Abyss, but for now it’s still streaming and available for free download on the band’s Soundcloud page (here). Since there are only three songs on the EP, I decided to listen to all of them — a live track called “Blazing Fall From Heaven” and two studio tracks, “Hell Recreated” and “Faces of Death”.

Of those three, I liked the two studio recordings best: hammering, jagged, catchy riffs with old-school distortion, booming drums (with a muffled, un-triggered sound), a morbid atmosphere, and gore-vomiting vocals. They stuck around my head after I heard them, which is always a positive sign.

“Blazing Fall of Heaven” has a more galloping pace than the studio recordings, but the vocals differed — a mix consisting of alternating bursts of acidic scalding and cracked roaring — and I didn’t find them as effective. The production quality is also not as good, and the song as a whole (including a guitar solo that grated more than satisfied) didn’t do much for me. But the first two songs are promising, and because of them, I’ll be interested in hearing the full-length when it comes.

In order of preference, here are the three songs on Faces of Death:

“Faces of Death”

“Hell Recreated”

“Blazing Fall From Heaven”

Erupted has a new Facebook page here. Now, moving on to my second pick, it’s time to jump over to England . . .

FOUL BODY AUTOPSY

One of our other writers mentioned this band to me recently, and I figured that with a name like Foul Body Autopsy, the music would be rancid and disgustingly filthy (plus, it’s the name of a Necrophagist song). In other words, just my kind of thing. So, not knowing anything more, I decided to check them out. Except it’s not a “them”, it’s a “he” — a dude in Leicester City, England, named Tom Reynolds. It further turns out that in addition to writing and recording all the music himself, Tom also performs.

By himself.

For example, he performed at Bloodstock 2011, he performed last night in Derby with Cerebral Bore, and he’ll be sharing the stage at a gig next March with Decapitated, Aborted, and Cyanide Serenity. Not too fucken shabby. Full Body Autopsy isn’t the only one-man death metal band out there — Putrid Pile comes to mind first — but still, they’re not a dime a dozen either, and certainly not as plentiful as one-man black metal or djent projects.

And yes, death metal is the name of his game. How do I know that? Because Foul Body Autopsy has a Soundcloud page that includes download links for the songs on FBA’s self-released, self-titled 2010 EP, as well as songs on a more recent release called Full Body Autopsy – Vol. 2. I downloaded everything, but because of the rules of MISCELLANY, I only picked two songs to hear — “Left To Rot” off the newer release and “Come What Ever May” off the first one.

“Left To Rot” has some good things going for it. Tom can play some guitar, that’s for sure, and he’s got a credible death-metal growl to go along with his speedy riffing. Plus, the song is addictive as well as barbarous, and the drum programming was well done, too. My one complaint was the breakdown at the end. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good breakdown (unlike some of my -core hating compadres), but this one didn’t seem to fit the rest of the song; it had a tacked-on quality. I would have preferred to hear Tom continue to deliver the jolting riffage.

“Come What Ever May” got my head nodding with the snappy, elastic guitar work. It’s punchy, invigorating, technically proficient, and diseased. The worm in my head was feeling happy after these two songs, so I decided to cheat a bit and listen to another track from the newer release and randomly picked “The Beholder”. Good choice by me, because this baby is a flamethrower of Origin-style tech-death, all bullet-spitting picking and full-auto percussion. Nice.

From snooping the FBA facebook page, it appears that Tom has another EP in the works for release during the first quarter of next year called And the World Looked On In Horror. I’ll be in the market for that one.

Here are the last two songs I heard, followed by the official video for “Left To Rot” (unfortunately, the song has exceeded its download limit on Soundcloud):

“The Beholder”

“Come What Ever May”

And now for my third and final pick in this MISCELLANY expedition, a detour to Kenya . . .

ABSENCE OF LIGHT

Absence of Light was a late addition to this MISCELLENY listening session. They were mentioned by E.G in his (or her) list of the year’s best albums in response to our Listmania Invitation No. 2 (and go HERE right away if you don’t know about our Listmania invitations). E.G’s explanation for including the album was this: “solely for being the first extreme metal album released by a Kenyan band.”

We’ve listened to and featured the music of bands from North Africa and from South Africa here at NCS, but this is would be the first metal band I’d heard from the great middle part of the Continent, and so I really couldn’t resist. I guess I was expecting (or maybe hoping for) something along the lines of D-FE, something that combined metal with traditional African rhythms and music. What I got instead was not exactly what I expected.

The music I checked out appears on an EP released by the band in November called Vyom Chakra. The Sanskrit title of the EP was my first clue that the music probably wouldn’t sound like D-FE, and Absence of Light turns out to be a trio of Indian dudes in Kenya named Shiv Mandavia (vox and bass), Angad Gupta (lead guitar), and Jay Patel (second guitar) (with drums tracked by session musicians). The entire EP clocks in at less than 16 minutes, so I cheated (yeah, what else is new) and listened to the whole thing.

It may not have been what I expected, but it is a damned sweet collection of music, capturing the kind of infernally majestic intersection of black and death metal perfected by Behemoth, with wisely employed keyboard enhancements.

After a dark, stage-setting introductory track with a submerged eastern melody, “Daksha” sweeps in like a cloud of wraiths, with cascading sheets of distorted guitar and bass, non-stop thunder from the drums, and horrifying, deep gutturals. The prelude to “Arkasodara” features an Indian melody with a sitar-like quality, but it’s simply a moment of relative calm before the blackened storm strikes again. The wall of guitar noise moves in, with jagged, pulsing, ripping riffs, and interludes of melancholic lead-guitar briefly appearing.

“Kalasamhara, I” exults in the blackened majesty of Behemoth-like chord-stomps and tainted guitar leads, with a grandiose keyboard accent swimming in the background. The closer “Samadhi” has a more symphonic air, but the air is cheese-free and bestial, conveying an ominous sense of great red-eyed things rising up from the earth or spreading giant bat wings from on high and sweeping down to harvest humankind. The last song also includes another ethnic musical interlude with traditional instrumentation — but it costs the song none of its darkness.

Absence of Light have a Facebook page here, and the Vyom Chakra EP can be streamed in its entirety and downloaded for free at the band’s ReverbNation page. Rather than pick any one song to play for you, here’s the whole EP, which really functions as a single musical work anyway. Very nice.

This is really a MISCELLANY post, but I couldn’t resist using this post title, (a) because I’m a Bugs Bunny fan (is there anyone who isn’t?), and (b) because I happened to chance upon both of the featured bands yesterday, and their names are Rabid Rabbit and dropbunny.

Since this is a MISCELLANY post, I picked these bands to feature without hearing their music first. Once I make that choice, the self-imposed rules of MISCELLANY require that I forge ahead in writing about the selected bands even if the music turns out to be something I wouldn’t normally recommend. To be brutally honest, with names like Rabid Rabbit and dropbunny, I didn’t really expect to dig the music. I would have been more optimistic if they’d been called Rabbit Viscera and fuckbunny. Anyway, here goes!

RABID RABBIT

Bruce Lamont is probably best known for his vocal and saxophone work with Chicago’s Yakuza, though he has recorded with dozens of other bands over a prolific career. Rabid Rabbit is one of those bands. At the core of Rabid Rabbit is the husband-wife team of Andrea Jablonski (vocals/bass) and Mike Tsoulos (drums), and they’re complemented by Arman Mabry (bass) and new guitarist Dan Sullivan on the band’s forthcoming second album, Czarny Sen (which means “black dream” in Polish). Lamont makes a few guest appearances on the album, as do a variety of other musicians from Chicago’s noise, metal, and free-jazz scene. Or at least that’s what I learned from the press release I received recently.

Czarny Sen, which will be released by Bloodlust Records on December 6, consists of five long songs, topping out with “Suicide” at almost 12 minutes in length. Two of the songs (“Suicide” and “Goliad”) are now available for download as singles via the Rabid Rabbit Bandcamp site. Under the usual rules of MISCELLANY, I only listen to a song or two from each selected band before reporting the results and moving on to the next pick. So, although I was allowed to hear the whole album by the band’s PR supporters, I limited myself (for now) to those two tracks, since anyone can now stream (and buy) them.

I started with “Goliad”. When I was a brat growing up in Texas, I learned about Goliad in a mandatory Texas history class. During the revolution that eventually resulted in the independence of Texas from Mexico, a garrison of Texian insurgents was defeated and captured by the Mexican army, and under orders from Mexican commander Santa Anna, almost all were executed (342 men) in what became known as the Goliad Massacre. I don’t know what prompted Rabid Rabbit to build a song around that event, but so they have.

“Goliad” starts slowly, with methodically pounding drums, a funereal bass line, ringing guitar chords, and Andrea’s chanting clean vocals. Gradually, the music becomes more active, the bass groaning with a deep, sucking sludge noise and the lead guitar spinning out in an extended psychedelic solo before a refrain of the opening measures. Kind of a doomy shoe-gaze.

“Suicide” uses lyrics from an old “torch song” called “Gloomy Sunday”, which was composed by a Hungarian named Rezső Seress and was made famous through a 1941 recording by Billie Holiday, singing English lyrics written by Sam Lewis. The lyrics refer to suicide, and the composer eventually did kill himself (a lot more fascinating history about this song can be discovered here).

The pacing of “Suicide” is no faster than that of “Goliad”. It crawls like funeral doom, with plodding drum-and-cymbal crashes and thudding bass chords. Squealing, feedback-enhanced guitar notes, rambling sax riffs, and other strange electronic sounds overlay the trudging rhythms as the song lumbers ahead. I found my head starting to bob as the song crossed the mid-point and the heavy sludge factor increased, with Andrea’s vocals pairing up with a harsh male growl and the lead guitar and sax pairing up in a freaked-out outro.

This kind of crawling, pared-down, psychedelic, doom-sludge isn’t my usual drink of choice, but I did find myself drifting into a hypnotic haze and wondering what my blood would look like dripping from a shallow, self-inflicted wound. I came out of it before reaching for a knife. Later, I found myself humming the melody from “Suicide”.

Here are the two tracks now available on Bandcamp:

dropbunny

dropbunny is a seven-piece band from Melbourne, Australia. As in the case of Rabid Rabbit, they have a second album staged for release. It’s called IO, and it’s scheduled to become available on January 28, 2012, via iTunes, Bandcamp, and the dropbunny web site.

According to the press release I received, “dropbunny supplement their crushing guitars, mind-bending rhythms and roaring vocals with violins, sitars, xylophones and electronics, including ad-hoc instruments made from rat traps, fish tank motors, and a power saw.” So, you can see why I was attracted to this (in addition to the band’s name), right?

dropbunny have released a four-track preview of the album at http://www.dropbunny.com/IO.html. Four tracks sounds like a generous preview, doesn’t it? It may help to know that the album consists of 18 tracks. I decided to bend the MISCELLANY rules and listened to all four of the preview tracks: “Plummet”, “Irredeemably Fucked”, “Another Lost Kid”, and “Pentagonal Plywood Prison”.

“Plummet” features caustic harsh vocals, clattering percussion, demented guitar slashing, and a vicious bass line. Actually, everything about the song is demented. “Irredeemably Fucked” builds itself around a head-snapping lead riff, with clean vocals trading off with more of those crazed harsh ones. The music is somewhat less off-the-hook than “Plummet”, but still with the flavor of something unhinged and unpredictable (and the guitar riffs are quite cool).

The intro to “Another Lost Kid” is a start-stop affair that then settles into a bass-driven rhythm and another catchy series of furious guitar riffs, with another clean/harsh vocal mix. I like the bass grooves and the barreling drums in this song as it nears the end, and the guitar riffing is again groovy throughout. “Pentagonal Plywood Prison” is also bass-and-drum impressive, initially more melodic than the previous three tracks and with even greater vocal variety as female singing joins the schizophrenic male vox. The ringing guitar chords in the early part of the song made me long for the hard-charging riffage on the last two songs, but that eventually came as the song ramped up into a satisfyingly howling squall.

I’m favorably impressed with this music, though given my tastes I wouldn’t have missed the clean vocals if they’d been omitted altogether. Check out “Pentagonal Plywood Prison”:

P.S. You can download dropbunny’s debut album, Hypothesis, for free at their web site, here, along with those four preview tracks from IO.

I know regular readers must get tired of me explaining what this MISCELLANY game is about, but amazingly, the traffic on our site continues to increase, providing further proof that there are many confused people in the world. For the benefit of new readers, therefore, I continue to explain:

We keep an ever-growing list of bands whose music we’ve never heard. The names come from many sources, including the bands themselves. Every now and then, when time permits, I randomly grab some names off the list and listen to a song or two from each one. I then babble about what I heard in these MISCELLANY posts and play the songs for you, because no one could possibly be so confused that they would just take my word for something without listening for themselves.

For this post, the names I chose were The 11th Hour (The Netherlands), Sacrament Ov Impurity (U.S.-Washington), and Öxxö Xööx (France).  Here we go:

THE 11TH HOUR

I heard about this band via an e-mail from NCS curmudgeon reader Kevin. This wasn’t quite the stab in the dark that most of my MISCELLANY picks are, because every tip Kevin has given me so far has turned out to be a winner. Also, this band has an impressive pedigree. The main man is Ed Warby, whose name you may recognize from Hail of Bullets, Demiurge, Gorefest, and many other past projects. He handles all the instruments on the recorded songs, as well as clean vox. Harsh vocals were provided on the band’s sole album by Rogga Johansson (Demiurge, Bone Gnawer, Ribspreader, and many more). So, I figured the odds were good that I was going to warm up to this music.  (more after the jump . . .)

To date, The 11th Hour has recorded one album, Burden of Grief (2009), consisting of six long songs. I picked the first track, “One Last Smoke”, for test purposes. It’s a slow one, oozing with viscous sludge, driven by massive, distorted, slamming guitars and bass. About halfway through, a soaring synthesizer melody appears and is soon joined by a moaning guitar solo. The contrasting vocals are effective, though of course I’m partial to Rogga’s cavernous growls over Ed Warby’s high, clear, power-metal style cleans.

Yes, I liked “One Last Smoke” and no, I couldn’t stop with only one song, so I moved on to “In the Silent Grave”. A few bars of solitary piano at the beginning are soon smothered by more of that cataclysmic guitar tone and a winding, higher-register lead. The music remains bleak, dour, a rolling bank of heavy black cloud pierced by flashes of lightening.

So, yes, this is doom — really heavy, oppressive, yet melodic, doom. A steady diet of this could cause the top of your head to collapse into a sinkhole. Here’s “One Last Smoke”, which is aptly named.

The band has recorded a new album that’s scheduled for release in January by Napalm Records. Because of a prolonged illness that interfered with his ability to record vocals, Rogga will not be on the next album. Instead, the roaring will be provided by Pim Blankenstein (Officium Triste), who has been the band’s live vocalist since the outset. No songs from the album have yet surfaced (mixing still appears to be in progress), but you can bet we’ll feature the music at NCS when the time comes.

Here are band links for more info, and for stalking purposes:

http://www.myspace.com/11thhourdoom
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-11th-Hour/117564111594195

I found Burden of Grief at Amazon mp3.

SACRAMENT OV IMPURITY

I don’t pay nearly enough attention on this site to local bands in the Seattle area. We try to cover the world here at NCS, but still . . . So, today I decided to spend one of my MISCELLANY picks on a metal band from Mt. Vernon, Washington called Sacrament Ov Impurity. I’ve been thinking about them because I briefly met their guitarist, The Butcher (nice dude), outside Studio Seven recently and bought a copy of their 2010 debut CD, A World Beheld By Damnation.

Plus, I also discovered later that the band had written me about their music back in January. I thought a 10-month delay seemed like foot-dragging even for an inveterate drag-ass like me.

A World Beheld By Damnation is an ambitious undertaking for a self-released debut — 12 songs totaling almost 70 minutes, including a number of longer-than-average tracks. I decided to dive into the middle of the album and hear a song called “Frozen In the Eternal Godless Winter”, because that’s basically what I’m beginning to dread as we get close to November in Seattle.

This may be a Pacific Northwest black-metal band, but put out of your head any thoughts of Agalloch or Wolves in the Throne Room. You’d be closer to the mark if you thought about those Columbian transplants to the PNW, Inquisition. After a prelude that conjures thoughts of winter winds, the song begins to scythe its way through your senses with hammering blast-beats, intense waves of tremolo guitar, and a mix of shrieked and growled vocals. A brutally pounding instrumental breakdown comes near the end before the final burst of vehemence that concludes the track.

Well, that song was so good that of course I let the CD continue playing, onward into track 7, “Eye Ov the Storm”. This turned out to be an instrumental interlude: The sounds of rain; solitary guitar notes; a simple, contemplative synthesizer melody; a piano picks up the melody; massive drums begin to pound; synthesized strings swell, accompanying the piano. A beautiful song, but I wanted more of the scything, so I hung in there for track 8: “Blackened Skies Under A Dying Sun”.

I got my wish. This track moves from crunching death-metal style pounding to acidic black-metal blasting and back again. There’s another old-style breakdown in this song that compels neck-snapping with its stomping rhythms. Good stuff.

Sacrament Ov Impurity harness martial rhythms, atonal acidity, and memorable traces of melody, and drive them racing through your head. Damned impressive. Fans of bands like Immortal and Satyricon will find satisfaction in this music. This is an album I’ll be coming back to once this post is finished. Here’s “Frozen In the Eternal Godless Winter”:

To check our more news about Sacrament Ov Impurity, here are links; you can stream the band’s entire album and download the songs at both the ReverbNation and Facebook band pages:

http://www.facebook.com/SacramentOvImpurity
http://www.reverbnation.com/sacramentovimpurityband

ÖXXÖ XÖÖX

Don’t ask, because I have no idea how to pronounce this band’s name. They are from Vincennes, France, though their name is not French. Earlier this month they released their debut album on Apathia Records called Rëvëürt (which, according to the band, means “revolt of the heart”). With song titles such as “Ägörth”, “Ctënöphörä”, and “Sülï”, it’s apparent that the band have an affection for umlauts.

In fact, they’ve created their own language, in addition to sculpture, face-painting, costumes, graphics, animation, and more, in an effort to express concepts related to breaking free from the suffering and constraints of life on this world. The band’s name is a binary representation of the number 69 (in binary code, 0110=6 and 1001=9). As for why 69 was chosen, you can guess one reason, and the other relates to flipping life on its head, to turn bleakness into light.

In other words, this band is avant-garde, with a capital A and a capital G. I found out about them through an e-mail from Apathia and decided to give this a shot, in part because the band has some involvement by Gautier Serre from the two-man band Whourkr, and that is one cool band. But Öxxö Xööx is really a near-one-man project of Laurent Lunoir, with some assistance from Serre and Laure Le prunenec.

For purposes of this post, I started at the beginning, with “Ägörth”. It’s almost 11 minutes long, and succinctly capturing the music isn’t easy. At the most simplistic level, the intricate music is heavily symphonic, featuring the sounds of pipe organ, harpsichord, and massed strings. Distorted, grinding guitars and blasting drums do contribute to the mix. It moves from soft and thoughtful to bombastic, back and forth, and there’s a gothic darkness to the atmosphere. Thankfully, it’s also virtually cheese-free.

The vocals are almost entirely clean, but they’re quite varied. Laurent Lunoir has great range and emotional power in his clean singing, sometimes performing in harmony with female vocals. About as close as he comes to harsh vocals are high-end, vein-bursting proclamations of passion (and the lyrics in this song are constructed in that made-up language I mentioned earlier, so don’t bother trying to understand them).

I’m not well-versed in symphonic metal, because it’s really not my thing, but I would guess that fans of Nightwish, Rhapsody of Fire, and Therion might find Rëvëürt worth exploring. Check out “Ägörth”:

The band’s debut can be streamed and downloaded for a price, or ordered in physical form, from Bandcamp (here). The following are links to their various web sites, where streaming music and more info are available:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Öxxö-Xööx/184893678219275
http://www.reverbnation.com/Öxxöxööx

I mentioned earlier that this band is a multi-media project. If you get the digital album from Bandcamp, you’ll find that the file includes 26 images, some of them art and some of them photos. Here are just a few:

NCS reader SurgicalBrute has turned me on to many excellent bands, and I’ve come to trust his tips. Recently he sent me a new batch of recommendations, and so I decided to just pick three of them for this edition of MISCELLANY. I may do the other three another time.

The way MISCELLANY usually works: We keep a growing list of bands whose music we haven’t heard but who look interesting. The list includes all the bands who contact NCS asking for a review (as it happens, one of SurgicalBrute’s recommendations is also a band who contacted us). Unfortunately, I’ll never be able to get through that list, but when I can, I grab a few names off of it at random, listen to a song or two, write up my impressions, and then stream the same music for you.

This time, of course, I’m using SB’s list instead of the NCS list, and the bands I picked are: Bones (US-Chicago), Embers (US-Oakland), and Undead Creep (Italy). To begin:

BONES

Here’s what SurgicalBrute had to say about this first band: “Crusty death metal, and one of my favorite releases this year. They get a lot of comparison to Chicago’s Usurper.” The Usurper comparisons are inevitable: The band is composed of three ex-Usurper members. They released their self-titled debut (on Planet Metal) in July, recording the album live in the studio with production help from Sanford Parker (Nachtmystium). SurgicalBrute sent me a YouTube link to a track called “Bloodlust”, and that’s the song I listened to first. 

But I didn’t stop there. I cheated a bit on the MISCELLANY rules (what else is new?) because after hearing “Bloodlust”, I got the whole album and then listened to “Bitch”, the next song after “Bloodlust”.

What I got out of that experience (in addition to sore-neck syndrome) was a bloody meat-packing plant full of malevolent riffs, staggering rhythms, and carnivorous roars. A flood of Dismember memories washed over me as Bone proceeded to take a blood-crusted meat cleaver to all my fleshy parts.

This band has got the sound down with authenticity — slavering death metal with punchy beats and diseased melodies, both raw and tight. I liked this a whole fuckin lot. Check out the two songs I heard before forcing myself to move on to the next pick for this post:

Along with the last band featured today, Bones have insinuated themselves onto my list of the year’s best old-school death metal releases. The Bones Facebook page is here. The album is available as a download on Amazon mp3 (which is where I snagged it), among other places.

EMBERS

The next band I picked is an Oakland, California collective called Embers. They contacted us in June, and I added them to our list of bands to check out, though I hadn’t gotten around to doing it until I heard from SB. Coincidentally, another one of our faithful readers, ElvisShotJFK, e-mailed me the same day, also recommending Embers.

SB had this to say about the band: “Crusty blackened doom. They don’t really sound like anyone else so comparisons are hard, but it’s good stuff.  Also, I’ve totally got dibs on singer/bass player Kelly Nelson.”

Embers released their third album, Shadows, in March 2011. SB recommended I listen to a song called “Eucharist”, and so I did. It’s a long one, topping 10 minutes in duration.

The first segment is mid-paced and stately, with a trem-picked guitar lead establishing the dark, appealing melody and keyboards shrouding the music like night mist. The vocals are a tandem of deep, bearlike roars and the piercing cries of a blackened raptor. Almost halfway through, the doom deepens as the pace falls and the guitars ring out a mournful, echoing lament, with the vocal tandem crying out in unison. It’s a bittersweet confection, and one I liked a lot.

So, of course, I didn’t stop there. I got the album and listened to two more tracks, “Forsaken” and “Shadows”, and now I’m totally sold on Shadows and on this band. The music is composed with skill and delivered with aplomb. The melancholy melodies are sweeping, delivered by guitars that shimmer and strike and keyboards that are thankfully subtle rather than bombastic. Thanks to the aggressive riffing and the scarifying vocals, the music, while emotionally powerful, is saved from prettiness, edged when it needs to be with razors. Here are two tracks, “Eucharist” and “Shadows”:

The band’s Facebook page is here, their MySpace is here, and you can download Shadows, along with Embers’ first two albums, from Bandcamp at this location. It’s offered there with a “name your price” option.

P.S. I shared “Eucharist” with Phro, and he provided this off-the-cuff description: “It’s like falling into a pit of black with obsidian walls of a shadowy dark hue of darkened darkness with a side of blue black 124.” I wish I’d written that.

UNDEAD CREEP

Finally, we come to Undead Creep from Palermo, Sicily. SurgicalBrute’s pithy intro to this band reads as follows: “Really good early Entombed worship from Italy.” So, you can understand why I went for this one, can’t you?

Undead Creep released their debut album called The Ever-Burning Torch via Dark Descent Records (also home to killer bands such as Mitochondrion and Entrails) this past summer. The album also includes, as a bonus, the band’s 5-song 2009 demo.

SB sent me a link to a song called “Surrounded By Tombs”. Shades of Entombed, Dismember, Grave, and Carcass! Undead Creep sound like they jumped into a time machine and emerged in Stockholm’s Sunlight Studios with all guns blazing. Naturally, I cheated again and listened to half the songs on this album.

While Undead Creep are plainly paying homage to the Swedish forefathers of gore-drenched death and Asphyx-style doom, the music is more than mere cloning. The riffs are deliciously precise and dynamic, the guitar solos jump out of the sound like a viral surge of infection, the songs are distinctive, and the raging vocals are just awfully damned cool — they sound like a maddened beast roaring from within an echo chamber. I also found the completely unexpected, near-baroque acoustic interlude in track 6 (“On Blackened Mountains”) to be an inspired touch.

For those wondering whether it’s possible for old-school Swedish death metal to still strike a fresh chord, I give you Undead Creep:

For more info about Undead Creep, you can find them on Facebook here or on MySpace via this link. The album is available for purchase as a CD here, and it’s scheduled to become available at Amazon mp 3 on October 24.

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Needless to say, this MISCELLANY session was chock full of win. Many thanks to Surgical Brute and ElvisShotJFK for these tips. I’m sold on Embers, and as I noted earlier, Bones and Undead Creep have dragged their undead corpses onto my list of the year’s best old-school death metal releases that I’ve heard so far — a list that includes Disma, Puteraeon, Entrails, Funerus, Mordbrand, Acephalix, Decaying, Demonical, Destroying Divinity, Brutally Deceased, and Carcinogen.

For new readers and older readers who have memory deficits: We maintain a running list of bands whose music we’ve never heard. Most of the bands on the list have written us with requests that we check out their music. We add other bands to the list based on reader recommendations or things we’ve read. Most of the bands on this list have no label affiliation. When time permits, I pick two or three names off the list, listen to one or two songs from each band, and then write about the experience in these MISCELLANY posts. I also include the music I heard, so you can make up your own minds about whether the bands are worth exploring further.

Sometimes I cheat on the rules of this game and listen to more than one or two songs. I then punish myself for cheating by, for example, listening to indie rock or rap. Or something by Kamelot.

Today’s picks, as usual, turned out to be a varied lot: gritty black metal from Bringers of Disease (US-Ohio), groove-heavy thrash from Rezistor (Romania), and prog-minded death metal from Eldergaad (U.S.-Minnesota). You’ll have to set aside a solid chunk of time for this post, because it’s not a short one, but all the music is worth some serious attention. Here we go — after the jump:

BRINGERS OF DISEASE

I read about this band’s four-song debut EP, Gospel of Pestilence, back in June of this year. It got a lot of hype — a full stream on Noisecreep, a review in DECIBEL, fawning praise in a variety of metal blogs, but although I added it to the MISCELLANY list, I didn’t immediately listen to the music. Undoubtedly I was distracted by something important, like a passing car. But as I scanned over the list yesterday, the name jumped out at me again.

The music did, too — jumping like a panther on some helpless marsupial. Gospel of Pestilence is intense music, with all the claws and teeth bared, predatory nature in full bloom, but without pretense or complication. It’s gritty, street-level black-metal brawling, the kind that floods the senses with tremolo-ed waves of minor-key melody but viciously snaps your neck with booming rock-rhythm chords, judiciously placed bass tones that almost take over the melodic lead in the songs, and unexpected breaks in rhythm and decibel levels.

Yessir, I violated the MISCELLANY rules and listened to one song after another, and I’m here to tell you that all four songs are distinctive, all four worth your time — from the hornet-swarm of opener “Dooms To Flame” to the narcotic dream that begins the closer, “A Plague To end All Plagues” — before the vertebrae-popping hammer blasts begins.

This is one of the coolest, most neck-snapping outbreaks of black metal I’ve heard this year. The following song happens to be my favorite among four strong contenders; it incorporates all the stylistic variety the EP has to offer. It’s the kind of song I’m easily going to stick on personal playlists, because I want more of it. Fucken cool song title, too.

For those who want more data, I’ll mention that this group includes members of Mouth Of The Architect and Acheron. If I’d known that last June, I wouldn’t have fucked around before diving into this music. For still more info and news, visit Bringers of Disease on their Facebook. The EP is available on Amazon mp3 and iTunes, and you can order the CD from Translation Loss Records here. We do get a flood of promos here, but I paid for this motherfucker and I’d pay for it again.

REZISTOR

I found out about Rezistor, a band based in Constanta, Romania, through an e-mail from the band. They self-released their debut album, Beware the Silent, earlier this year in a limited release, but recently decided to spread the music far and wide by putting it up on Mediafire for free download — and bravo to that, by the way.

I decided to sample Beware the Silent by launching the first song, “Go Away”. What I got was a blast of biker thrash, loaded up with catchy-as-fuck riffage and throat-clearing vocals gargling up evilicious lyrics (which for some reason reminded me of Wayne Static of Static-X — and yeah, I still have good memories of Wisconsin Death Trip). I’m not the biggest fan of new-era thrash, but this shit got my head slamming and made me want to bellow along with vocalist Eugen Ranga.

Well, the song was really just too damned infectious to stop there, so I moved right into “Enough”. At this point I did start yelling along with the one-word chorus, which scared the pee out of my cat. I think I pulled a ligament in my neck, too. By the time the third song (“Unbound”) was in full swing, I’d damaged some of the furniture and my cat had climbed most of the way up the wall by his claws.

These dudes have got a way with gut-level, groove-heavy, riff-strewn mayhem, and I’m going to move on to the rest of the album after I finish this post and sedate my cat. Check out “Go Away”, and I’m throwing in the fourth track, too (yeah, I didn’t stop at 3), because it’s such a filthy piece of blackened stomp.

You can download individual songs from Beware the Silent or the whole album from this page, and you can learn more about Rezistor (and show them some like), by following this link to their Facebook page.

ELDERGAAD

We found out about Eldergaad via an e-mail from the band, and learned that they have recently released their debut album, Children of Gaad, for distribution through the Bandcamp platform. The album cover is a nice one — colorful and suitably creepy — and that helped tempt me into picking this band for today’s MISCELLANY experiment.

I decided in advance to pick two songs from the album. The first was the opening cut, “Cult of the Void”. It’s almost six minutes long. Early on, a swirling lead guitar establishes a down-tempo, Eastern-sounding melody over a pounding rhythm, with rancid vocals shrieking the lyrics. But at about 3:30, the song changes gears and morphs into a speedier, thrash attack — but one that includes a segment of pulsating interplay between the lead guitar and the bass, before the song returns to a reprise of the down-tempo beginning.

For the second song, I jumped forward to the sixth track, “Nocturnity”, just because I liked the song name. It’s a polyrhythmic jolt, quite different from the opening track. Lots of tempo changes, inventive drum progressions, winding minor-key guitar melodies, and a slow collapse about two-thirds through into a repetitive chug-heavy rhythm before a surging finish with a flashing guitar solo. There are aspects of jazz-metal in this song, quite different from what I was guessing would come, based on “Cult of the Void”.

Given the stylistic divergence between the first two songs, I decided to just hang in there and see what happened with “Eternity At A Glance”, the even longer song (8:46) that followed “Nocturnity”. Fuck, the caterwauling dual-guitar intro alone would have been enough to sell me on this baby, but lots more sweetness followed it — passages that reminded me of Devin Townsend’s harder-edged recent output (and vocalist Raa sounds more than a bit like DT in harsh-vocal mode), extended prog-metal instrumental segments, Meshuggah-inspired rhythms, and a periodic repetition of that oh-so-cool intro. One hell of a song — and it’s the one I want you to hear:

If you’re looking for inventive, prog-minded death metal that’s both technically sophisticated and crushing, Eldergaad is well worth your time. To stream more songs from Eldergaad and buy the album if it suits you, their Bandcamp page is the place to go. Their Facebook page is at this location.

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I’m afraid I have a Kamelot stomach-pump ahead of me, followed by a Shins suppository, for repeatedly violating the MISCELLANY rules, but it will be worth it. This was some good listening. Let me know what you think of today’s line-up.

Here we go again — another episode of MISCELLANY, in which I expose myself (figuratively speaking) to music from bands I’ve never heard before and dutifully report the results to you, along with the songs themselves. The rules of the game that I’ve set for myself are to listen to only one or two songs from each selected band and let that be the basis for some judgments about the music.

Recently, I’ve been violating the rules with increasing frequency because I’ve had good luck with the MISCELLANY picks and gotten caught up in the music. For this listening session, I decided I’d really try to stick more closely to the rules because I’m so far behind on other NCS projects. (Here’s a hint: It didn’t work.)

The bands I picked from our MISCELLANY list for this session are Manegarm (Sweden), Exorbitance (US), and Strom (Germany).

MANEGARM

In the last few MISCELLANY sessions, I’ve been intentionally including one pagan/folk metal band on the listening list. It’s a genre about which I’m not terribly well-versed, and I’ve had fun subjecting my eardrums to something different from their usual diet. As usual around here, the comments we’ve gotten on these posts have pointed me to some interesting looking outfits. So, I decided to continue the recent run of pagan/folk music by picking a band called Månegarm, who were recommended by multiple commenters. (more after the jump . . .)

Though Manegarm were unknown to me, they have six full-length albums in their discography, plus assorted other demo’s, splits, and an EP. The most recent release is a 2009 album on Regain Records called Nattväsen. Left to my own devices, I probably would have picked one of the songs off that album for today’s experiment, but I had a strong recommendation from SurgicalBrute for the title song to the band’s 2007 album Vargstenen (“wolf stone”), so that’s the one I heard.

And man, did that song surprise the hell out of me! It’s a roaring fire of black metal fury that periodically makes way for an infectious folk melody. Even the clean vocals are intense and passionate. Fuck, the whole song is intense and passionate — and it’s dark, despite its galloping pace.

Based on that experience, I decided to allow myself one more song from Månegarm and this time I picked one from their most recent album, “Vetrarmegin”, because it’s the subject of an official music video. This song is thoroughly paganized, once again constructed on a foundation of pronounced black metal elements, but it again includes passages of clean singing and some fast-moving romps led by an electrified violin. Though I liked the first song more, both of them easily convinced me to spend more time with this band’s music.

Here’s “Vargstenen”, followed by that video for “Vetrarmegin” from the more recent album. Check out Manegarm on Facebook here.

And  for my next stop on this MISCELLANY tour, I came back to the US for . . .

EXORBITANCE

Exorbitance is a five-piece unsigned band whose members are from New Jersey and New York. They were recommended by comments I got in an earlier MISCELLANY post about a NY band called Satevis, and so I decided to see what they were all about. They released their nine-track debut album, In This Nightmare, in May. I decided to just start where the band chose to start, with the first song on the album, “Demoness”.

Sure enough, the people who left those recommendations knew what they were talking about. “Demoness” is fast-paced melodic death metal with a hard, sharp cutting edge and a guitar soloist who knows his business. It’s a well-constructed song that’s expertly played, and I liked it so much I went right back and listened to it two more times. And then I listened to the next song on the album, “Powerless”. Like its predecessor, it’s wolfishly aggressive with rapid riffing, driving rhythms, and some beastly drumming.

Well, fuck, I got hooked and listened to the next song, “Covetous”. It continues the propulsive power displayed in the first two songs, and gave me a further chance to admire the high-octane guitar work and the nasty, carnivorous vocals, reminiscent of Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates).

Once again, I’m sold on the music and ready to finish this album as soon as I finish this write-up. Here are the first two songs I heard:

You can stream the rest of the songs on In This Nightmare and download the album for a price at the Exorbitance Bandcamp page. Their Facebook page is at this location.

STROM

Strom is a German band who just released their debut EP, Herz In Fetzen (Heart Shred To Pieces), on a U.S. label called Radikal Rock. We got an e-mail from Radikal urging us to check out the music, and I pretty randomly picked them off our MISCELLANY list and started with the first track, “Hallo (Wir Sind Strom)”.

It reminded me of the age-old truth that if you build a song around a simple, body-moving, ingeniously infectious riff, it’s really hard to fuck up. I don’t mean to suggest that the demon riff at the heart of this song is the only thing about it that’s appealing, but that’s sure as hell a strong selling point. Coupled with that is an industrial-style rhythm undergirded by a thumping bass-drum line and distorted, caustic vocals. And did I mention the quieter instrumental passages accompanied by whistling plus a short snatch of wordless female vocals? Nice touches there.

There’s a Rammsteinesque quality to the music (yes, I stole that word from a Trollfiend piece we posted earlier this week), and although Rammstein is a band that I’ve never fallen in love with, I have fallen in love with this song. So yeah, I didn’t stop there. I moved right on to the second track, “Herz in Fetzen”. It’s even more industrialized, with more electronic effects, wearing some Nine Inch Nails influence on its sleeve. It’s also got a sweeping melody and a hooky chorus.

Well fuck, only two more songs left, right? So I went for it. “Was Du Fuhlst” took me on a big left turn — less metal and more industrialized hard rock, with the clean singing predominating. But shit, still catchy as ebola. And then came the EP closer with the confusingly similar (to a non-German speaker) title of “Wen Du Fallst”. I fell for this one, too, although it’s even less metal and more nü-metal. The harsh vocals completely disappear, and a piano makes an appealing appearance, but Strom’s talent for a hooky melody comes through again.

I suppose, to an American, there’s something about a band singing in German that automatically makes them sound nastier than perhaps they really are. If Linkin Park were singing these last couple of songs, I’d probably have stopped them before they finished.  But they weren’t and I didn’t, and I liked what I heard.

Here’s the first song I heard,and the last:

Strom’s EP can be downloaded for $2.99 from the Radikal Records site at this location, or you can download individual songs for a dollar a piece.

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As usual for these MISCELLANY posts, today’s music was quite stylistically divergent, and I’m curious whether I’m the only person who liked all three of the offerings. So, what do you think? Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Thumbs sideways?

This exercise is different from our reviews, which we almost always limit to music we want to recommend. For this exercise, like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, we don’t know what we’re going to get. It may or may not taste delicious. But the surprise factor is part of the fun (at least for me). For today’s post, the bands I picked were Eyeconoclast (Italy), Under Eden (US), and Heidevolk (The Netherlands). I actually picked a fourth band, too, but I’m discussing them separately, to keep this thing from growing even longer than it already is.

I’ll go ahead and confess right up front: I cheated on the MISCELLANY rules for all three bands, because their music turned out to be too interesting to assess with just one song. Yes, I even cheated on the last one, too, though it’s not the kind of music I typically embrace. All that cheating means there’s a lot of music coming your way after the jump, but none of you has a real life, do you? Of course not, so you have plenty of time to listen.

EYECONOCLAST

I learned about this Italian band via an e-mail from its bass player Paolo “Urizen” Ballarotto, who asked us to check out their new EP, Sharpening Our Blades On the Mainstream.

The band had its inception in 2003, and over its history has shared connections with two other Roman behemoths who are among our favorite current metal bands — Fleshgod Apocalpse and Hour of Penance. Cristiano Trionfera of FA was at one time a guitarist for the band, and HoP guitarist Giulio Moschini played bass on Eyeconoclast’s debut album, Unassigned Death Chapter (2008). In addition, former HoP percussionist, the inhumanly good Mauro Mercurio, has been Eyeconoclast’s drummer since 2005.

As a result of further line-up changes following the band’s release of their debut album, the line-up who recorded the EP consists of bassist Ballarotto (formerly with the excellent Italian black metal band Malfeitor), session vocalist Carlos “Snyder” Mastantuono, guitarists Alessio Cosenza and Stefano Morabito (who is also a very talented record producer with his 16th Cellar Studios), and Mercurio on drums. One more change has followed since the EP was recorded, with the band being joined by Filippo Palma as its permanent vocalist.

Whew. That’s a lot of history, but I thought it was worth relating, because all those august pedigrees sure got my attention. But enough of that — onward to the music. As I said before, I cheated and listened to all three songs on the EP, and I’ll give you fair warning: You’d better duck and cover, because this is a roaring fire of blazing death-thrash.

My mind may be playing tricks on me, since I had FA and HoP in my head as I started listening, but I found similarities, particularly in the high-octane speed, the technical riffing, and the convulsive, slamming rhythms. This is more thrash-heavy in its instrumental styling than the music of those other bands, and the higher-ranging vocals are also closer to modern thrash than to death metal. Stylistic nuances aside, listening to Sharpening our Blades On the Mainstream is one hell of an adrenaline-charged rush.

There’s not much reason to miss out on the experience, because you can download the new EP for free (with the band’s permission) via a link you’ll find at this location, and the band’s merch page can be found here, where CDs of the album and EP are on offer. And now here’s a player you can use to stream all 3 songs from the new EP, plus songs from the 2008 album. You can follow Eyeconoclast on facebook here

UNDER EDEN

Well, I figured that whatever came after Eyeconoclast would be a let-down. What came next was a download of a new album (The Science of Self-Defeat) provided me by a band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, called Under Eden. Oh my fuck, not two rule-breakers in a row! But yes, I cheated massively on the MISCELLANY rules for this test, and you can guess why: Because this album blew me away.

In a post not long ago about Byzantine, NCS writer TheMadIsraeli asserted that the future of metal belongs to bands who successfully engage in a fusion of styles, and he gave Revocation and Fleshgod Apocalypse as current examples. I could add Under Eden as another example. They join together the weight and power of near-brutal death metal, the blistering fury of full-throttle thrash, the dark eviscerating buzz of black metal guitar, bursts of almost prog-metal soloing, and catchy melodies.

I suppose you could try to sum it up as an intersection of melodic death metal and black thrash, but I’m still not sure that quite captures what Under Eden are doing. From song to song, some elements are more dominant than others, which means that each song has an individual character, and moving through the album is like a road trip through a changing landscape.

The Science of Self-Defeat is the band’s second album, and the feeling of a dynamic musical journey isn’t accidental. This is a concept album that tells the tale of an alternate human history. The band recommends that the album be heard from start to finish, and even though I intended only to sample a few songs for this MISCELLANY post, I couldn’t stop myself from doing just that.

At times, the band is in full-on attack mode, like a school of feeding piranha, all flashing teeth and boiling water and blood, lots of blood. At other times, soaring melodies lift the songs above the low-end pummeling and the gravel-throated growling, or head-spinning guitar solos flash across the music or weave through it, switching the mood from buoyant to melancholy. At still other times, the darkness and heft of the music increase, the growly vocals drop into an even deeper abyss, and you get something like a more melodic version of Behemoth.

The band have been around since 2000, and the experience shows in the playing. There’s impressive talent at every station, but the two brothers who handle the guitars (Ryan and Christian McAtee) are particularly notable — dextrous, inventive, multi-faceted, and capable of flying.

I’ve picked two songs to share with you. I could have randomly picked any two and been happy with the choice, but I picked these to show some of the differences in stylistic emphasis from one song to the next. These are called “The Technocrat” and “Shadows Across Glass”.

You can buy a download of the album at this location, you can check out the band’s official web page via this link (which includes a page with free song downloads), and you can start following Under Eden on facebook here. They must be new to FB with less than 100 likes — so help them boost that total, and then spread the word and keep your eyes on these dudes.

HEIDEVOLK

I added this Dutch band to the MISCELLANY list through a recommendation from NCS reader Trollfiend. Trollfiend has multi-faceted tastes, but they include a weakness for folk metal (the last of his recommendations we featured was Russian pagan/folk band Arkona). One look at Heidevolk told me that their music was likely to fall within the same genre. You know, with all the animal skins, I figured it wasn’t going to be deathcore.

Heidevolk turns out to be a well-established band, signed to Napalm Records with three albums to their credit and one more scheduled for completion in 2012. The most recent album is 2010′s Uit Oude Grond (“From Old Ground”). The album cover offered another clue to the musical style:

Following up on Trollfiend’s request, I found an official music video for the first track on the most recent album, which is called “Nehalennia”. Initially, I had a bit of trouble getting past the clean singing from the band’s two vocalists, though at least they’re both baritones and they look like they could handle a battle-ax in a dust-up if need be. But I admit that it didn’t take long before I wanted to yell out “VOORWAARTS!” (forward!) right along with them in the supremely catchy chorus. The song also includes an irresistible headbanger’s riff and an electric violin solo that I liked. Check it out:

Yes, I cheated on this one, too, and listened to the second track on the album, “Ostara”. This one doesn’t have the swing of “Nehalennia”. It’s more of a stomping march with a black/pagan air, courtesy of a vibrant tremolo guitar buzz and blast-beat drumming. Once again, I got hooked by the main riffs in the song, and once again I wished for some harsh vocals. And once again, I’ll let you make up your own minds:

Heidevolk has an official site you can access via this link, and it includes free song downloads behind the “Media” tab. You can also get more info at their facebook page.

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That’s it for this edition of MISCELLANY. Let me know what you thought of today’s music in the Comments, and please do enjoy the rest of your fucking day.

Here we are with another edition of MISCELLANY, in which I listen to bands I’ve never heard before and report the results, whether they be good, bad, or indifferent. The ground rules:  We keep a running list of bands who contact us, or who are recommended to us, or who seem interesting based on things we read. When time permits, I grab a handful of names off the list, I listen to at least one song per band, and I write about my reactions. Then, I let you listen to what I heard so you can make up your own minds.

Them’s the rules, and I usually (though not always) stick to them. For today’s post, I picked two bands who were recommended and one who contacted us: Illuminatus (UK), Arkona (Russia), and Satevis (US).

These bands turned out to be significantly different from each other, and the musical variety was a good reminder of the diversity that metal has to offer. The music also turned out to be quite good, though given my own tastes, I did have a favorite. So, with that preamble, follow along after the jump and please do let us know what you thought of this music after you’ve heard it.

ILLUMINATUS

Much earlier this year, I discovered this band through NCS writer Andy Synn, whose from the same town (Nottingham, England), though three of the four members of Illuminatus are originally from Spain, Germany, and Italy. I’ve had them on our MISCELLANY list ever since. Why I haven’t checked them out until now is one of life’s mysteries; perhaps not as mysterious as “where did we all those crop circles come from?”, but still inexplicable.

The band’s second album, Glasnost, was released in February 2011 on Headroom Records, and it has garnered a multitude of enthusiastic reviews. In searching for a song to hear for this post, I turned to an official video for a song from Glasnost called “Murdocracy”.

My first thought after pressing “play” was that these are very well-dressed metalheads. But that thought lasted about a nanosecond before the music knocked me flat. “Murdocracy” has an aura of crushing intensity, with a pulverizing bass line and hammering percussion, waves of ringing guitars, and righteously venomous vocals. But the damned thing is also virulently infectious because of the melodies that surf along atop the rolling tide.

As you know, my tastes run to the more extreme variants of metal, and “Murdocracy” isn’t typical of what I usually put on my personal play lists. For one thing, the near-clean vocal style is more what you’d find in a hard-rock band. But I do like a well-written song that succeeds in getting the adrenaline pumping and also includes a powerful hook or two that stays with you. Doing that isn’t easy; if it were, everyone would be doing it. Illuminatus does it.

By the way, I cheated and listened to a few more tracks from the album before moving along to the next band. Those song-writing chops I was telling you about? Yessir, this band has them in spades. For more info about Illumnatus, here are the links to their facebook page and their official site. Glasnost is available on iTunes and at Amazon.

ARKONA

NCS reader/commenter/band-name-creator Trollfiend has been urging me to check out this Russian, female-fronted, pagan/folk-metal band, and so I finally relented, deciding to make Arkona my second stop on today’s MISCELLANY tour. It’s not that I didn’t trust Trollfiend, but to be brutally honest, the words “female-fronted pagan/folk metal” don’t exactly trigger a Pavlovian slobber response in me.

Before listening, I poked around to see what I could find out about Arkona. For one thing, I found that they have 35,890 “likes” on their facebook page. Clearly, there’s a large pack of devoted dogs out there for whom this band does induce salivation. For another thing, I discovered that Arkona have produced six albums, the most recent of which — Slovo — will be released on August 26 by Napalm Records. For a third thing, I saw and liked the album art for Slovo (look rightward and you’ll see the art by Kris Verwimp). For a fourth thing, I found a song from the new album to hear, in addition to the video for an older song that Trollfiend sent me.

The new song is called “Incantation” (or at least that’s the English translation — Arkona’s song titles and lyrics are in Russian). If you’re expecting soft cheese and a sweet soprano, think again. The vocalist (with the fetching name of Masha Scream) has got an intense voice even when she’s singing cleanly, and she’s a good growler, too. Though the song includes a number of traditional folk instruments and melodies, it’s also a motherfuckin’ headbanger. The slashing  tremolo guitar was also an unexpected and welcome addition to the mix.

The video I watched was for the title track to the band’s 2009 album, Goi, Rode, Goi!, which means ”Hail, Rod, Hail!” — Rod being the Slavic Great God, Father of the Universe. There are some cool visuals in this, and we get to see what Masha looks like in skins and battle paint. We also get a much heavier helping of her growly vocals, which are damned good.

Check out “Incantation”, and then below that is the official video for “Goi, Rode, Goi!”:

SATEVIS

Satevis is an unsigned, New York-based metal band who wrote us in July, asking that we check out their December 2010 EP, Centralia. Satevis is a new name for the band, replacing their previous moniker, Antares (and before that, the band called themselves Corsis). The latest name change apparently commemorated an alteration in the band’s sound, which I gather was previously more in the atmospheric-doom vein of metal.

Venturing forth for this MISCELLANY exploration, I decided to start at the beginning and listen to Centralia‘s first track, “Endless Perdition”. What a wonderfully varied song it turned out to be.

The dulcet sounds of a harpsichord in the intro transition to a thundering charge of heavy riffage and magnificently rancid vocals, which in turn transition to a piano-and-bass duet, which then eventually leads to an acceleration of the tempo and a variety of multi-toned guitar leads and solos, with changing keyboard accents — before the song changes again, a brief string instrumental serving as the prologue to an all-out rush to the end, led by pummeling double-bass and jets of heated guitar. The melodic chorus has a pagan-metal vibe, and the overall feel of the song strongly brought to mind Moonsorrow. Check it out:

Having heard that song, I then perpetrated a massive cheat on my rules and listened to the rest of the EP. All my first impressions from “Endless Perdition” were confirmed — Centralia is brimming with intricately layered music, both savage and sublime, that’s both ambitious in its design and expertly executed. It has an epic, symphonic air and a sharp, blackened edge, and I still think it would be quite at home in company with the music of Moonsorrow. I highly recommend it. (The album cover is damn cool, too.)

Fuck it, I might as well play one more song. This one’s the title track, and features melodies that are carried as much by the bass and acoustic guitar as by the electric guitar and keys. It’s an often mournful but emotionally powerful journey:

Centralia is available for download at Bandcamp (here) for the entirely fair price of $5. Yes, there are “only” six songs on the EP, but they add up to more than 30 minutes of music, and it’s 30 minutes of time that’s very well-spent.

You can visit Satevis at facebook via this link, and their official site is at this place.

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To sum up, I really enjoyed the hell out of this MISCELLANY expedition — three bands with very different styles of music but all good. I hope you find them to your liking, too.

As always, enjoy the rest of your fucking day.

At the risk of boring our longer-term readers, here’s a reminder about how this MISCELLANY game works:

We keep a constantly evolving list of new bands whose music we’ve not yet heard, based on various sources, including band e-mails we get, reader recommendations, press releases, and stickers left on urinals at metal clubs we frequent. Whenever I can manage, I pick a few names off the list, I listen to at least one of their songs, I write about what I heard, and then I stream the same track(s) so you can make up your own mind about whether to explore the bands further.

It’s a good way to discover new music, and I wish I could do it more often. But it’s a bit risky for readers, because even if I hear something I wouldn’t normally recommend to you, it still goes in these MISCELLANY posts. For today’s edition of this dice-roll, I listened to Deus Otiosus (Denmark), Shangren (Australia, I think), and Forever Revenge (China). Here we go . . .

DEUS OTIOSUS

This Danish band e-mailed us late last month and gave us the chance to check out their 2010 debut studio album, Murderer (the band also released a live album in 2010, preceded by a split and a demo). According to The Font of All Human Knowledge, the band’s name is Latin for “idle god” and refers to a “theological concept used to describe the belief in a creator god who largely retires from the world and is no longer involved in its daily operation.”

I’ve always thought this was an interesting concept, and it does provide an answer (if you’re a Deist at least) as to why the human world has been such a brutally fucked up place for thousands of years: The creator had some kind of inexplicable fun creating the earth, and then checked out.  (more after the jump . . .)

And when the creator has checked out, at least you can fall back on death metal for your salvation. The great thing about playing a game where you make the rules is that when you cheat, you have no one to fear for retribution except yourself. And so it was that I listened to the first song on Murderer, and then the second, and then the third, because I got into what I was hearing and wanted to hear more.

There’s an old-school flavor to Deus Otiosus, a flavor of down-tuned grinding with the aroma of decaying corpses in your nostrils, but there’s also a rhythmic affinity for thrash and an approach to song construction that embraces the reptile brain-stem’s attraction to a big hammering groove. These Danes have a foot on the boat and a foot on the dock, the old-school and the new, and a vicious desire to split you in two. Let’s dive into “Wall of Violence” — the third song on the album. Prepare to be carved like a succulent roast.

Murderer can be ordered in CD form directly from the band at this location. Digitally, the album is available on iTunes and at the band’s ReverbNation store. Hell, I had no idea ReverbNation had an mp3 store for bands. You learn something new every day.  You can snoop Deus Otiosus on facebook here.

SHANGREN

As best I can tell, Shangren is now a one-man project consisting of one Leonard Ong, who, as best I can tell, lives in Australia and is working on an album to be called Rise of the Dynasty. Until that arrives, we have a six-track debut release that appeared in early 2011 called Warriors of Devastation, on which Ong was joined by two other musicians, Andy Suppradit on rhythm guitar and Eve Nathan providing the keyboards.

I discovered Shangren through a MySpace message from the band a while back that billed their music as “Chinese folk/war metal”. As I look back, I wonder, with a description like that, how I could have waited this long to listen.

Folk metal and black metal draw on ethnic traditions from around the world more frequently than any other kind of metal, and Shangren is one of the rare albums I’ve heard that incorporates traditional Asian musical instruments into the heated, rolling fury of blackened metal.

Yes, I cheated again, because I was so enthralled by music that genuinely sounded different.  I was caught up, like a hawk on a column of rising, heated air, by the fusion of memorable melody, liquid, black-metal riffing, and the unusual sounds of unorthodox instruments delivering sounds I’ve never heard before in metal. This music is brilliant in conception and in execution. It will make you want to pound your head into the floor and then bolt upright in surprise. I can’t resist serving up two of the songs I heard, but seriously, every fucking song on this album is awesome:

You can legally download all the tracks on Warriors of Devastation at the band’s Soundclick page. For more info, Shangren’s facebook page is here.

FOREVER REVENGE

Shangren’s music may be Chinese-themed, but Forever Revenge is actually from China — Hong Kong to be precise. By population, China is the largest country on earth, with more than 1.3 billion people, but as far as I can remember, Forever Revenge is the first Chinese metal band whose music I’ve heard.

The band is the creation of a 16-year old dude named Eliel Chen, who is originally from Finland but now lives in Hong Kong. The Finnish pedigree, of course, is a positive sign.

Eliel e-mailed me a link to the band’s debut album Break Through the Dead End, which is on the verge of an official release. From the e-mail, it appears that Eliel wrote the music and also handled the production, in addition to providing the vocals.

I cheated on my own rules for this album, too, but for a different reason. Instead of getting hooked from the start and wanting to hear more, I continued listening after the first track, hoping to hear something in which I would find a spark of the unusual. Everyone here at NCS knows that our philosophy is not to write about music unless we can recommend it. If we don’t have something nice to say, we just pass on by.  But this series is the one exception to that philosophy, because the point of the game is to faithfully report the results of an experiment.

Break Through the Dead End is a classic example of a young band who haven’t yet found their own sound. For the first five tracks, what I heard was imitation, and not particularly memorable imitation either. Falling somewhere between the stylings of metalcore and deathcore (but without big, booming breakdowns), the songs just didn’t sound free or natural. They sounded simple and stiff, as if following a formula without true conviction. There’s some skill in the playing, but the music doesn’t sound like it emanates from the heart.

Eliel’s vocals are a prime example of what I’m trying to explain: There are a multitude of vocal styles on the first five songs, from high-end screeches to bass-register growls to pig squeals, but they sounded stilted, somewhat forced, and lacking in passion.

Imitation is not an inherently bad thing — everyone must start somewhere, and everyone begins by emulating what they know and like until they develop the confidence to make their own decisions. But for the first five songs on this album, I just didn’t hear anything interesting. And then came the sixth song, “Bleeding in the Darkness”, and that’s where I heard a crackling spark of potential.

On this song, Eliel’s vocals change again, to a frigid black-metal style scraping, but they sound more effortless and natural than any of the other vocals I heard before this song. The drumming takes off, achieving a speed and fluidity I hadn’t heard before. And the song itself includes interesting changes of pace, with a balance of loud and soft, the quieter passages carried by solitary guitar arpeggios and the rushing faster segments fueled by a stream of tremolo notes rather than the relatively simplistic chugging of the earlier tracks. I do like this song. It’s memorable. It shows potential.

I know absolutely nothing about the metal scene in Hong Kong, or in the country as a whole. Maybe the more prosaic songs will find an audience there despite their lack of flair and originality. But in my country or in Europe, I think they would attract little interest. My constructive criticism, coming from a listener who couldn’t play a note if his life depended on it, is to take chances, to push further in the direction of “Bleeding in the Darkness”:

The Forever Revenge facebook page can be accessed through this link.

More than six weeks have passed since my last MISCELLANY post, and I’ve been kicking myself black-and-blue for not writing them more regularly. In case you’ve forgotten, I use this MISCELLANY series as a vehicle for checking out bands whose music I’ve not heard before. We keep a list of MISCELLANY candidates, based on messages we get from bands or things we’ve read, and then when I’ve got the time, I pick a few bands from the list, listen to one or two songs, not knowing whether I’ll like the music or not, and then write about what I’ve heard. I also stream for you the same tracks so you can decide for yourselves whether it’s your kind of thing.

This installment of MISCELLANY diverges from the usual form in a couple of respects.  First, the selection process wasn’t quite as random as usual — this time, I decided to pick bands who I knew were all within the genre of black metal. Second, I already knew and liked the previous releases from one of the bands I picked — Aosoth — though I hadn’t yet heard anything from their newest release, so that’s a bit of a cheat on the usual rules.

So, with that preamble, here we go. The music I sampled for this post came my way from Progenie Terrestre Pura (Italy), Aosoth (France), Falloch (Scotland), and Towering Filth (U.S.). It’s all black metal, but the styles of music turn out to be quite different. Black may be the absence of light, but these bands prove (and prove well) that there are shades of black after all.

PROGENIE TERRESTRE PURA

Modern technology is a wonderful thing. It has made possible the creation of music that otherwise would never have existed. This band is a case in point. PTP consists of two men who use the names Eon[0] and Nex[1].  They’re both from Italy, but they live in cities quite distant from each other and they’ve never met. They create sound files in their respective home studios and then exchange them. So far, they’ve created two long, self-released songs in a 2011 demo for public consumption. The mixing and mastering was done through a service called WLFMastering.

With all this DIY going on, some of you may be lowering your expectations. Well, don’t. The two-song demo by this band is tremendously good. The sound quality is exceptional, and the song-writing and performance are top-notch. In a nutshell, this is one of the most interesting black-metal releases I’ve heard all year. Even better, the band have made the two tracks available with a “name your price” option at their Bandcamp page (here).

Progenie Terrestre Pura join together strains of electronica, ambient atmospherics, a mix of harsh and clean vocals, and the traditional vibrato guitars and blast-force drumming of black metal to create sweeping music that’s easy to lose yourself in. It’s the stomping frost-giants of a mythic arctic north hurled forward into the digital age.

Here are both of the two tracks on the PRP demo. If you’ve only got time for one, I recommend the second (though both are awfully fucking good):

To follow what Progenie Terrestre Pura gets up to next, like their Facebook page here.

And now for our next band. Because all of the album covers today are well above average, I’m going to change my usual habit and go big with them, instead of putting smaller images on the right, next to my pathetic verbiage.

AOSOTH

I first discovered this French band in the spring of 2010 and wrote a review of their December 2009 release, Ashes of Angels (here). They released their third album, III, in May 2010 on the Agonia Records label. I’ve had the album in my clutches for a couple of months, but just haven’t made the time to hear it. Fearing that I might never get around to it, I decided I would at least sample one song for this BM-themed MISCELLANY post.

The new album is like a one-act play, with the songs as scenes in the performance — six of them in all. I listened to the fifth song as part of this MISCELLANY experiment. The song’s introduction announces itself in no uncertain terms, slow hammer blows electrified by a piercing lead guitar, which continues to arc through the early part of the music as it swells in volume and ferocity. The mid-section is bleak and morbidly paced, a fitting accompaniment for the ghouls as they come out to gasp their ghastly longing. The piercing lead guitar returns as the song burns with mounting intensity, a bonfire of souls. The ebbing and surging of the music continues until it’s drowned out by a shrieking cataclysm of electronic noise at the end.

Aosoth has created a titanic sound, thunderous and skin-flaying and drenched in the foul sweetness of decay. Here is “Scene V” from Aosoth’s III:

You can find out more about Aosoth by visiting their Facebook page here.

FALLOCH

Falloch is yet another two-man band, this one based on Glasgow, Scotland, consisting of Andy Marshall and Scott McLean. Earlier this year they signed to Candlelight Records, which will be releasing the duo’s debut album, Where Distant Spirits Remain.

Recording of this debut started in 2010 and was completed when Ronan Chris Murphy (Ulver, King Crimson) signed on handle the finishing touches of the album. There are seven tracks on this album. I listened to the first track as part of this MISCELLANY expedition. It’s called “We Are Gathering Dust”.

Isolated guitar notes ring out in the midst of a sonic haze. The guitar chords and drum strikes build in volume and then fall away, to make way for clean vocals. Of course, I didn’t know that was coming. And then the vocals themselves drop away, to make way for solitary acoustic guitar notes backed by the sound of water on the shore and eventually the notes of a flute. The dreamlike, melancholy mood of the song continues through changing instrumental additions until a wave of tremolo chords and double-bass crash over them like a tidal surge. Reverberating tremolo chords ring changes on the central melody, and then pass away.

Falloch unify folk metal, post-rock ambience, and the dark shroud of black-metal attitude in a beautifully affecting way. Check out “We Are Gathering Dust” and the track that follows it, “Beyond Embers and the Earth”. This music definitely qualifies as an exception to our rule.

Andy and Scott have ambitions to convert Falloch into a full band so they might bring their creations to the stage. If you live in the vicinity of Glasgow (or even if you don’t), and you’d like to throw your hat in the ring, hit them up. Their Facebook page is here and their MySpace is here.

TOWERING FILTH

Towering Filth is a name that’s intrinsically appealing. Okay, perhaps it wouldn’t appeal to everyone. The Daughters of the American Revolution probably wouldn’t want to cook this shit from the PA system at their next national convention. However, I find it appealing — immensely so.

I vaguely recall months ago seeing a quick squib at Heavy Blog Is Heavy about the 3-song EP (Encircled By Wolves) released by this “band” — a band of one consisting of Matt Koch (from St. Louis, Missouri) — but it must have been one of those days where I couldn’t stop and just listen. More recently, I got an e-mail from Mr. Koch, with a link for a download of the music.

For this MISCELLANY post, I listened to the first track on the EP, “The Chorus of Dragging Chains”. An off-kilter rhythm, crashing guitar chords, cracked-ice vocals, unexpected pauses marked by the drone of guitar noise, a grim deceleration of the pace as the song drags its heavy chains to the end — it’s ferocious and primal, part-sludge, part-punk, part immersion in a bubbling acid bath. Here’s the song I heard:

You can hear the rest of the songs on The Towering Filth EP by visiting the band’s Bandcamp page here. And if you’d like to download it for your own music collection, there’s a Mediafire link here.

Matt reports that “there’s grandiose new stuff happening soon.” We’re all about grandiosity here at NCS, especially if it’s towering, and filthy. We will be all ears for the new grandiosity when it emerges to tower over us.