NEWNESS: DYING FETUS, BLACKLODGE, AND PANOPTICON

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
May 232012
 

Come on now, you didn’t really think I was going to let a new Dying Fetus song pass by, did you? I’ve been a little slow on the draw lately, but I can still clear the holster. And yes, there’s a new Dying Fetus song that’s been released for public streaming. It’s called “From Womb To Waste”, and of course it appears on the Reign Supreme album that will be released on June 19. It’s really good.

In fact, I’ll just go ahead and be a douchebag and say that the whole damned album is really fuckin’ good. In fact, it’s definitely in the running for the best death metal album of the year. Speaking of which, because I have such a hard time comparing albums and ranking them, I’ve decided that I’m going to use a loris race to rank the best death metal albums of 2012. I’ll round up a bunch of them from the NCS loris compound, tie band names around their necks, and let them race for the finish line.

Of course, they’re really fuckin’ slow, so I’ll have to start the race in, like, August.  That will be hard on the bands who release albums in the last four months of the year, but I don’t feel too bad about that because it’s not like bands are waiting around holding their breaths to see if they make the NCS year-end list, especially since we’ve never had an NCS year-end list.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the new Dying Fetus song. It debuted at AltPress. I borrowed their little player to stream the song after the jump. There’s more new music after the jump, too — from Blacklodge and Panopticon. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP (Part 3): NILE, MUTILATION RITES, PSYCHOPATHIC TERROR, KATAKLYSM, MEANS END, AND BLACKLODGE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Apr 272012
 

As explained previously, I’ve been catching up on what I missed in the metal world over the last couple of weeks while being otherwise occupied. So much happens every day that I can’t include everything I’ve discovered, but I’ve been trying to feature a mix of news and stylistically divergent new music that might have escaped your attention as well as my own. This is the final installment.

Some of what’s in here is VERY recent. And yes, this is long . . . but just treat it like six posts in one. Just pretend that it dribbled out all day long, like posts on some other metal sites that don’t want to tax their readers’ attention spans. Or you could set your alarm to go off once an hour and come read another piece of this as if it had just appeared. Or I could just shut up and get on with it.

NILE

Actually, I suspect this didn’t escape many people’s attention, because it’s Nile, after all. Thanks to Metal Sucks and TheMadIsraeli, I found out yesterday that Nile has now released the cover art for their next album (above), At the Gate of Sethu, which Nuclear Blast plans to release in Europe on June 29 and in the U.S. on July 3. The artwork is by Seth Siro Anton of Septic Flesh.

The central figure looked familiar, and after a bit of  research at The Font of All Human Knowledge, I confirmed that it’s the Egyptian god Thoth, which The Font describes as a god who, in the later history of ancient Egypt, “became heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes,the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead.” Continue reading »

2012 METAL IN THE FORGE (PART 3)

 Forthcoming Albums  10 Responses »
Mar 022012
 

For a change, I actually remembered on the second day of the new month that that the preceding month had ended; usually takes longer than that. My creditors would be happy, except I think their bills need to age a while longer. But yes, February is history — and that means its time to post our usual monthly round-up of news about forthcoming albums. Today’s list is a little more comprehensive than the half-assed job I did at the end of January, which means it’s about three-quarters assed. One of these days it will be fully assed.

Here’s how this round-up usually works: In these METAL IN THE FORGE posts, I collect news blurbs and press releases I’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like at NCS (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, I cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — THIS ISN’T A CUMULATIVE LIST. If I found out about a new forthcoming album earlier than the last 30 days, I probably wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier.

Having said all that, please feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us (me and your fellow readers) what I missed when I put this list together, because I’m abso-fucking-lutely certain that I missed all sorts of shit. So let us know about albums on the way that  you’re stoked about, even if you don’t see them here! Continue reading »