SEEN AND HEARD (BY DGR): DYSCARNATE, BROKEN HOPE, HIDEOUS DIVINITY, ARCHSPIRE, VOLTURYON, FLESHKILLER, THE RITUAL AURA, SEPTICFLESH, THE HAUNTED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 052017
 


Dyscarnate

 

(DGR has again stepped forward for round-up duty and has pulled together 9 new songs and videos that caught his eye between last week and yesterday.)

Last week saw a tremendous on-rush of heavy metal news, and of course, since many people knew that we here in the States (or at least many of us) would get a long three-day weekend, a lot of it hit in the back half of the week. As the site’s resident hoover vacuum, I’ve compiled an itemized list of nine… items… that caught my interest over the course of the week that we didn’t get a chance to cover that I will now lovingly shove right into your faces.

If you’re a big fan of death metal and its chugging ilk, this roundup is mostly for you, as it seemed like a large chunk of what I found came from that sphere of influence. There’s definitely the requisite world-traveling element as well, as we go from England to Canada to Italy to the States to Greece to Sweden (twice), and you can see where this is going from here. So let’s quit goofing off and get to the fun stuff. Continue reading »

A DGR SEEN AND HEARD: ABHORRENT DECIMATION, DECAPITATED, OCCVLT HAND, BROKEN HOPE, DECREPIT BIRTH, SCHAMMASCH, QUASARBORN, LEPROUS, THE ZENITH PASSAGE

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Jun 212017
 

 

(DGR once again takes over round-up duty, compiling a selection of nine items for your listening and viewing pleasure, culled from the last week.)

 

Clearly nobody got the email that we sent out announcing that we would be incredibly busy late last week Northwest Terror Festing, and therefore decided that it would be a good time to flood the heavy metal world with news. You wouldn’t know that by visiting NCS, because we slowed to a crawl, with writers Gorger and Andy Synn coming through as the heroes keeping the fortress guarded whilst the rest of us rotated between drunk and exhausted.

Now, though, DGR has come to collect his dues, so I have compiled a round-up with every single thing that I kept notes on from Thursday of last week ’til now, and I guarantee you that I’ve still missed a handful of things. Still, though, this collection of music videos, lyric videos, and live performance(s) is gigantic in its own right and it is certified NCS “Fresh”, which means it should only mildly smell like rotting beef carcasses.

Abhorrent Decimation – Conspire

When I first saw the artwork by Karmazid for the upcoming Abhorrent Decimation album The Pardoner, I declared that if the music on that disc could be half as cool as the artwork it bore or the concept behind it, then I would be a happy camper. Well, with “Conspire“, Abhorrent Decimation have shown that they are in good standing on that front — releasing a monstrous six-minute brutalizer. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ORIGIN, THE LURKING FEAR, SUFFOCATION, PATHOLOGY, BROKEN HOPE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
May 152017
 


Origin

 

(DGR steps in for round-up duty with a collection of deathly advance tracks from forthcoming albums that detonated late last week.)

2017 has been a year that has moved in fits and starts, with huge batches of releases and then a period of calm, then another huge batch and so on. It’s a different feeling from last year’s torrential flood, but it also means that promotional stuff moves in fits and starts as well — which is how we wound up with the back half of last week bringing one big release after another from some fairly recognizable names for those who love their death metal and high speed.

It was a pretty intense flood of death metal washing over the metal community, much of it coming from some fairly big names — a hefty collection of mainstays, old guard, and standard-bearers. We tried to collect some of them into our usual three-to-four part series of bands, but eventually it seemed like everyone wanted to get in on the game, and that’s why you have a SEEN AND HEARD headline with five recognizable names within it, all deploying material virtually at once. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BROKEN HOPE, GLORIOR BELLI, AND BOMBUS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Aug 162013
 

Well, I made it back home from Idaho last night. Thanks to the wind gods, the smoke that had shrouded the valley where I was working cleared long enough for the plane to take off. I took a few pics from outside the airport to show what was going on back in the direction I’d just come from. I’ll put those at the end of this post. But first things first: here are three kickass new songs (one of which comes with an eye-popping video) that I came across late last night after I got home.

BROKEN HOPE

You want an old-school band who make death metal sound fresh? I give you Broken Hope. I’m getting more and more pumped up about their new album Omen of Disease (their first in 14 years). One week ago we streamed the first advance track from the album (“The Flesh Mechanic”). And then yesterday the band’s label started giving away a second track (you’ve got to surrender your e-mail address to get it). This one is called “Ghastly”, and it’s just as striking as “The Flesh Mechanic”. Much of the song is simply . . . ghastly: the horrific guttural growls, the jagged riffs, the weaponlike drumming, the overarching atmosphere of menace.

But that is definitely not all this song delivers. The pulsating, harmonized guitar lead will grab your attention almost immediately. The choir will surprise you later. Or it would have if I hadn’t mentioned it (sue me). Hell of a song. Go HERE to download it.

And how about the band’s new promo photos by Stephen Jensen? Handsome motherfuckers, aren’t they? There are two more after the jump, plus a YouTube upload of the song. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BROKEN HOPE, EVOCATION, NEW DOMINION

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Aug 082013
 

You may have noticed that new music round-ups have been scarce this week. We’ve been going overboard on the reviews instead. However, I have been maintaining a constant vigil and collecting worthwhile new things as I’ve seen them. Only problem is that the list has grown so damned long, even after just a few days of watching and not writing, that the list has become unwieldy. So I’ve done some fairly random paring down and split this catch-up round-up into two parts, this being the first.

BROKEN HOPE

Do you sometimes wish that revered old bands who have fallen apart would just stay down, so you can be left with your fond memories instead of having them tarnished with a mediocre comeback? Unfortunately, it seems that comebacks tend to be mediocre a lot more often than awesome. But judging from the first new song in this round-up, that probably won’t be the case with Chicago’s Broken Hope.

They recorded five albums between 1991 and 1999 and then split up, but they’re coming back with a new album named Omen of Disease that’s due on October 20. The song that premiered yesterday is “Flesh Mechanic”. It’s a grisly riff monster, fresh guts dripping from its teeth, and trench-level roars bellowing from its throat. The solo in the song is white hot, and the whole thing is brimming with feral energy. If only all comebacks sounded this putrid. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BROKEN HOPE, INQUISITION, HANK3

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 312013
 

Here’s some recent album-release news that got me excited.

BROKEN HOPE

Early yesterday we reported about a U.S. tour scheduled for October that will be headlined by Deicide. One of the supporting bands is Chicago’s Broken Hope. I mentioned in that post that Broken Hope had recorded their first new album in 14 years and that it would be released by Century Media in October under the name Omen of Disease. And then later the same day we got an official announcement of the release dates: October 1 in NorthAm and September 30 in Europe.

We also got an unveiling of the album art, featured above. That’s one imaginatively nightmarish creature, isn’t it? I think I saw one of those fuckers in the corner of my bathroom one night. Right before I blacked  out. That was a bad night.

The cover was painted by the illustrious Wes Benscoter, who has created artwork for the likes of Slayer, Hypocrisy, Autopsy, Kreator, and many more. In a coming-full-circle kind of episode, he also did the covers for two of Broken Hope’s own albums, though that happened in 1995 (Repulsive Conception) and 1997 (Loathing). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NEW DEICIDE TOUR, NEW SOCIOPATHIC MIXTAPE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jul 302013
 

Here are a couple of items that caught my eye last night.

NEW DEICIDE TOUR

Word has escaped that Deicide will be headlining a U.S. tour this October, though to be honest, the supporting bands are the ones that have really peaked my interest: Disgorge, Necronomicon, and Broken Hope.

I’ve been a fan of Montreal’s Necronomicon for years, and their 2013 album Rise of the Elder Ones is quite good. San Diego’s Disgorge has occupied a storied place in the annals of brutal death metal, and they’re now at work on their first album in eight years, with a revised line-up (Angel Ochoa behind the mic and Diego Soria on bass). And speaking of revivals, Chicago’s Broken Hope will be delivering their first album in 14 years when Century Media releases Omen of Disease in the same month that this tour occurs.

In other words, there’s going to be a full slate of new metal from a group of veteran death metal carnivores, wholly without regard to whether Deicide manages to bring it hard at the top of the bill. Continue reading »

A WHOLE FUCKLOAD OF ALBUM RELEASE AND TOUR NEWS (AND A NEW GRAVE TRACK)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 112012
 

If you made your way through today’s earlier post about the first direct observation of Dark Matter, then you know we now have an official definition of “fuckload”: It’s a number that’s equal to the number of miles in 18 megaparsecs, which is (yes, I finally did the math) 1,126,656,000,000,000,000,000. Conveniently, that’s about 1.1 sextillion of whatever you’re counting, which is why it makes so much sense to just call it a fuckload.

And today there was a fuckload of news about forthcoming albums, with album art and release dates and such, plus a press release about a hellacious new tour. I don’t have time to write about the entire fuckload of news items, so I’m just going to pick the four that got the most “fuck yeah’s!” in a random survey I did of myself.

The bands in question are: Hooded Menace, Eyeconoclast, Cryptopsy, and Obituary.  And then at the end, I’ve got a new song from Grave’s next album, because we always have to have the musics.

HOODED MENACE

We’ll start this fucker off with Finland’s Hooded Menace. Today it was announced that their first album for Relapse Records, Effigies of Evil, will be released on September 11 (it can be pre-ordered in a variety of formats and bundles here). David D’Andrea did the album cover, which is cool. Relapse describes the album as “combining the grooving riffs of Black Sabbath and early Cathedral with the fire of classic Autopsy and Asphyx”. Fuck yeah. Continue reading »