Time for another installment of this Twitter-ish log in which I presume you’re interested in how I spent my morning, skipping over such vital details as what I ate for breakfast, what I’m wearing, and where my cat is licking himself right now.

Have no fear, this is just a log of the metal I listened to and watched in my latest internet browsing session — following up on press releases, MySpace add requests, and e-mail recommendations, and just some general fucking around. In all cases (with one exception), I had no previous exposure to the bands, and so no real clue whether what I found would be good, bad, or indifferent.

So, here’s what I did, in order of doing it, with no filtering and no guarantees that any of this will be worth your time — though I’m guessing most of what I found will be as new to you as it was to me. The bands I checked out are: Hellish Outcast (Norway); Citi (California); Episode 13 (Turkey); Darkness Dynamite (France); The Forrest Gump Mile High Marathon (Mars); and the one exception mentioned above, Bloodbath (Sweden).

HELLISH OUTCAST

I started off by exploring the music of Hellish Outcast, which is from that historical hot-bed of black metal, Bergen, Norway. We’d received a press release announcing the news that Thebon, frontman for the awesome Keep of Kalessin, would be joining Hellish Outcast as its new vocalist. (Have no fear KOK fans, Thebon hasn’t left that band, he’s just pulling double-duty). And then I found out that one of Hellish Outcast’s founders and its current drummer is Mads Lillevedt, who’s a member of the also-awesome Bergen band Byfrost. (We reviewed the latest albums by KOK and Byfrost here and here.)

That was more than enough incentive to visit the band’s MySpace page (here) and listen to some tunes from their 2008 EP, with the inviting title, Raping – Killing – Murder. And I’ll tell you what I thought — after the jump.

Still here? Well, I thought this was some killer music. I listened to two songs, “Possessed” and “Rapid Eye Movement”. “Possessed” is a slab of death-thrash with a mighty catchy thundering riff that will wake you the fuck up, and some heavy industrial-strength chugging. And then halfway through, everything slows down with dreamy, clanging arpeggios — until those hammering riffs reassert their dominance. Then, before the song is finished,  you’re inundated with a swirling, wah-wah pedaled solo that will cross your eyes.

Speaking of eyes, “Rapid Eye Movement” is even more thrash-influenced — with a blazing, darting, saw-like lead, physically compulsive drumming, and another one of those wah-wah screaming solos. But even with the thrash-metal pacing, this is still death metal — the grinding weight of it is tangible.

The production quality on these songs is first-rate — you can hear every instrument, including the bass, and all these dudes can really play. I had trouble tearing myself away from this music in order to continue my browsing, but I’m definitely going back to the EP to finish getting my brain scrambled.

According to the press release I read, Thebon is already rehearsing with Hellish Outcast and laying down the vocals for the band’s upcoming album, to be called Your God Will Bleed.  His first live appearance with the band will be at this year’s Hole in the Sky Festival in Bergen on August 28. I liked the vocals on the EP, but with Thebon on board, I’m now especially interested in the forthcoming album.

If you’d like to check out the tracks on Raping – Killing – Murder, here’s the band’s ReverbNation widget, which includes all of the EP’s songs — and each of them is available for free download through the widget.

CITI

My next stop was a band called Citi. I checked them out at random because we got a MySpace “add” request from the band — and I was immediately hooked. After I finished this browsing session, I went back and listened to the band’s entire debut album and decided to write a post about Citi (already up at this location), and so I won’t write more about them here.

EPISODE 13

At this point, I was feeling pretty lucky since both Hellish Outcast and Citi checked out so well. From Citi, I decided to move on to a black-metal band from Turkey called Episode 13. I’d received a press release announcing that Episode 13 had debuted two tracks from their forthcoming third album, Death Reclaims the Earth. Didn’t know anything about them except for the fact they were from Turkey — but of course that peaked my interest, since here at NCS we’ve got such a soft spot for metal bands from places that aren’t exactly known for their extreme metal scene.

And come to think of it, I’ve never heard any metal from Turkey. So, I thought, time to take the plunge and get wet!

Episode 13′s last release is an album called Pitch Black. The player on their MySpace page (here) features those two new songs, “Physical Comatose & Mental Overdose” and “Ars Moriendi”, plus two from Pitch Black. I listened to the two new ones plus the title track from the last album.

“Pitch Black” is a real headbanging motherfucker. For most of this up-tempo song, an absolutely killer death-metal riff occupies the verse while the chorus is a traditional black-metal passage of fused blast-beats and tremolo-picking that’s equally infectious — and in the middle there’s a throat-ripping guitar solo. Some vicious wolf-like vocals, too, though that vocalist will be replaced on the new album by the return of founding member Ozan Akyol. I thought the song was excellent.

“Ars Moriendi” is a much slower, atmospheric piece that features Akyol’s evil vocals and a memorable, dark melody. Another cool song.

The other new song, “Physical Comatose”, has a more dynamic tempo, shifting between slow melodies with densely layered tremolo chords and more up-tempo hammering, and a very cool finish. And did I mention that Akyol’s vocals are really, really evil?

According to the press release I got about Episode 13, they played Norway’s Inferno Festival and the UK’s Infernal Damnation Festival after releasing Pitch Black, and have toured in Russia, Finland, and Denmark, so they’re getting some exposure outside Turkey. They’re currently looking for a label outside Turkey to release Death Reclaims The Earth.

Here’s the band’s ReverbNation widget, which includes one of the two new tracks plus that ass-kicker, “Pitch Black”, and some other songs from either Pitch Black or the band’s first album, Tabula Rasa, that I haven’t heard yet.

DARKNESS DYNAMITE

After checking out Episode 13, I decided to catch up on the latest news over at Blabbermouth and ran across a new video from a French metal band called Darkness Dynamite for the song, “Supernatural”. The song comes off the band’s debut album, The Astonishing Fury Of Mankind, which was released in June 2009 via Metal Blade Records .

I’d never heard of these guys, but I’ve had pretty good luck with metal bands from France, so I figured, what the fuck. So I watched and listened.

I thought the song was decent, though not enough by itself to send me scampering after the rest of the album. It’s metalcore, with a to-be-expected combination of punishment and melody. At least on this track, the singer stops short of an outright burst of clean singing, though he comes close. I liked the instrumental work, particularly the guitars, and the melody is catchy.

As for the video, the photography is high-end quality, but it’s yet another one of those inexplicable metal videos that mixes performance shots with something else that seems utterly random. The something else seems to be an attempt to tell a story, though what the story is and what it has to do with the song (if anything) is a mystery. See for yourself. And if the music happens to hit your sweet spot, the band’s MySpace page is here.

THE FORREST GUMP MILE HIGH MARATHON

This band is from Long Island, though I believe they spend part of their time on Mars.

I got a message from the band asking us to check ‘em out, and really, with a name like this, how could I resist?  But it’s not just the name of the band. They’re the first band I’ve come across that actually builds their songs — all of them, as far as I can tell — around samples from the movie Forrest Gump. I think it’s a safe bet they’ve got a lock on the gumpcore sub-genre.

I listened to two songs on the band’s MySpace, “Lt. Dan, Ice Cream” and “Smart Man”. The music is slam metal — a genre I’m only starting to get into, though’s it’s growing on me (like a particularly nasty subdermal fungus). The first song is a grinding, mid-tempo bruiser with a head-snapping slam breakdown (after you get past the sample of Tom Hanks explaining the one good thing about getting shot in the buttocks).

The second song also proceeds at a lumbering pace with hammer-to-the-head riffs and guitar squeals and short bursts of speed sprinkled here and there. The vocals on both songs are of the guttural-mixed-with-pig-squeal variety.

The music has got some decent grooves mixed with all the brootality, but I don’t know about the Forrest Gump samples. See for yourself. The album is available on iTunes.

Forrest Gump Mile High Marathon: Lt. Dan, Ice Cream

BLOODBATH

After leaving the land of Forrest Gump, I went back to Blabbermouth and found a video of Bloodbath playing at Hellfest 2010 (June 18-20 in Clisson, France). I love Bloodbath. I love the fact that the exceptionally talented Mikael Åkerfeldt can be the creative force behind a band like Opeth and at the same time front a band like Bloodbath.

After an amusing introduction by Åkerfeldt, in which he notes (among other things) that Hellfest was only Bloodbath’s fifth live performance ever, the band launches into a song called ”Process of Disillumination” off the last album, The Fathomless Mastery (2008).   Really good video quality, only average sound quality. But fuck, it’s still Bloodbath.

Well, that was the end of my metal browsing session, and it’s the end of this post. Until we meet again . . . keep bangin yo head.

I first came across the band Citi via a MySpace “add” request we received from them — and from the first listen they spun my head around so hard, I felt like that possessed, bile-spewing chick in The Exorcist.

Initially, I was going to mention them briefly in the next episode of our “Miscellany” series, but I got so intrigued by the first few songs on their MySpace page that I downloaded and listened to their entire debut album (self-released last December), which they make available for free via a link on MySpace.

By devoting that much time, I took them out of the “Miscellany” category — and by getting completely skull-fucked by the music, I became convinced that I owed them a post.

From Bakersfield and Gonzales, California, Citi describe themselves (maybe with tongue in cheek) as “a melodic thrash death black progressive metal band.” There are a few genre labels that didn’t make it into that description, but not many.

But hey, I’m not going to argue with how Citi describes their music. It’s actually pretty accurate. Besides, since the inside of my cranium now feels like it’s been carpet-bombed by this music, I’m not prepared to argue about much of anything at the moment. I’m simply floored by this album. (more after the jump, including some tracks to stream . . .)

All nine songs on the Citi debut erupt with the force and pacing of some kind of high-caliber, über-fast minigun (the kind of munitions that fire 2,000 – 6,000 rounds per minute). The guitars, the bass, and the drums are all driven at lightening speed, but with head-spinning intricacy.

The riffing is particularly obliterating. It’s fast as rising daylight, but it also blazes to the beat of a hellish metronome that sets up a murderous groove.

As adrenaline-charged as the lead riffing is, the sound just fucking erupts when the single and dual-track guitar solos kick in. The shredding out-and-out burns like an acetylene torch with the gas opened all the way up, but it’s also emotionally gripping and at times sweepingly atmospheric.

Given this style of instrumentation, what would you expect from the vocals?

Take a wild guess.

If you guessed that the vocalist would sound like he’s shrieking as if his life depended on it, you would be right. He sounds as if his throat is turning inside out, like there is literally no tomorrow, like all must be left on the playing field.

Truly, all these dudes play and sing with complete abandon and utter devotion to the performance. If they can pull off anything like this in a live show, I would expect blood on the floor. And on the walls.  And on the ceiling. Yet at the same time, the integration of the instruments is as tight as a vacuum seal.

Now as you’re trying to imagine all this, let’s add one more piece of mind-fuckery to the equation. Imagine this kind of blast-furnace music mixed and processed in a way that distorts and fuzzes-out every sound and causes the whole raucous assault to oscillate at about 200 beats per minute.

Seriously, the sound oscillates — it pulses — like a surging alternating current that’s about to blow the transformer to kingdom come.

Given the speed, the brutality, and the innervating power of the music, combined with the pulsating groove and the occasionally epic bursts of melody, I was reminded of bands like Decapitated, Fleshgod Apocalypse, The Faceless, Gorod, and Ulcerate.

Of course, Citi is unsigned, and you probably haven’t heard of them. They’re probably clawing like fiends to continue creating and playing. But they deserve more attention.

Listening to Citi is like being strapped into a whipping centrifuge, inside a blast furnace, while having complex algorithms downloaded into your brain.

I guess it’s obvious that I liked their album.

A lot.

You do need to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate this. Y’know, the frame of mind that just wants to get blitzed.

Now it’s time to give you a taste of Citi’s attack. Here are links to not one, but two of our favorite tracks from their self-titled debut:

Citi: Revive

Citi: Feeding the Insane

If you like what you hear, go get the rest of the band’s self-titled debut album via the download link on Citi’s MySpace page, which is here. According to their MySpace blog, they’re currently hard at work writing new material for a second album:  “It will be a mixture of Swedish death metal mixed with black metal topped off with thrash with a hint of grind and groove, that will provide you with a complete dose of extreme metal for your listening pleasure.” Hell, that sounds good to me. Bring it on!

UPDATE: We’re still listening to this album and decided we needed to put up just one more song from it for visitors to check out. It’s another shudderingly catchy bit of mayhem, but it’s also got a cool melodic guitar interlude at about the 2:30 mark. Just too much fun not to include here.

Citi: Future Into Nothingness

FURTHER UPDATE: At the band’s invitation (see the Comments section below), we’re putting up the whole album for download on this site. We’re using the high-speed download service we pay for  and that we’ve used in the past to download albums we like, with the permission of the bands. If you click on one of the links below, the download will start immediately and in no time you will have all the songs without wading through the front page of a download service like Rapidshare.

We’ve made the file available in two formats — .zip and .rar — in case you happen to have one type of compressed file extractor on your computer but not the other. The songs are the same in both files. Go for it.

DOWNLOAD CITI ALBUM (.zip)

DOWNLOAD CITI ALBUM (.rar)