As expected, I haven’t had the time lately to do anything in-depth for NCS (and thanks again to all our guest post-ers for bailing me out) but I still do have time to put together quick items every now and then, just to keep the new metal flowing along its molten path from our ears to yours.

My original title for this post was “A Trio For Thursday”, because I’d heard new songs from three bands over the last 24 hours that got me excited. But then, as I was finishing this up, I came across a brand new fourth one that I just had to include. Not wanting to abandon my affinity for alliteration, I tried to think of a word beginning with “T” that means four of something.Voilà! In geometry, a tetrahedron is a shape composed of four triangular faces, three of which meet at each vertex — like a pyramid.

So, here we go — four songs, and I can guarantee you’ll like at least one of them, or your money back. The first is yet another new track from the UK’s Xerath from their forthcoming album II. The second is another track from Malfeitor, a Swedish death metal band whose new music we’ve already featured more than once recently. The third is a song by a group of Norwegian death-thrashers called Exeloume. And last, but not least, we’ve got a new song from a UK band called Detrimentum who we’ve been pumped about for a while.

Feast your ears on the tunes after the jump. Or, more accurately, allow the music to feast on your ears.

Look what we just found! It’s a brand new video for a brand new song from a forthcoming brand new album! It’s all just brand new, just like 2011! And it’s from Finland’s Omnium Gatherum. They’re not brand new, but they are fucking good.

And this song? It’s the best new song we’ve heard in the New Year. Granted, the New Year isn’t even 3 days old yet, but we’ve got a feeling that 362 days from now, this song will still be one of our 2011 favorites — it’s that strong.

This is melodic death metal done right. It hits hard, it makes you wanna headbang, but it’s catchy, and it has a surprising — and surprisingly dreamy — interlude in the middle with clean singing, of all things.

The album will be called New World Shadows, and as we explained when we featured Omnium Gatherum in our Finland Tribute Week series (here), it was produced by Dan Swanö and it includes guest vocals from Mr. Swanö. In fact, that’s probably his voice during the middle interlude of this song. What a fucking coincidence, seeing as how we wrote about Mr. Swanö just yesterday (here).

Enough of our blather. Watch the video. You won’t regret doing it. Fucking awesome song.

Dan Swanö is one of those names I associate with excellence in metal. He fronted the influential Swedish band Edge of Sanity (as well as others, including Nightingale), he’s been a member of other excellent metal bands, including Katatonia, Ribspreader, and Bloodbath, and he’s appeared as a guest vocalist or instrumentalist on albums by many others.

In addition to his creative work as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, he has for many years run a recording studio in his hometown of Örebro called Unisound, and has been responsible for recording (and/or mixing/mastering) an eye-popping number of albums by the likes of Opeth, Dissection, Marduk, Dark Funeral, Katatonia, and The Project Hate MCMXCIX. Search Blabbermouth using his name for recent news, and you’ll see that he’s scheduled to work on the production of new albums from Asphyx, Coldworker, and November’s Doom, among many others.

Swanö ran Unisound for most of the 1990s, then closed it for several years, and reopened it again in 2005. In 1994, he started a guestbook, where bands with whom he worked would add remarks and Polaroid photos of themselves in the studio. As one guestbook would become filled, he would start another.

Earlier this afternoon we learned that Swanö has arranged for the digitizing of the guestbook for 1996-1997, and he’s made it available on-line, along with his own “liner notes”. It’s fascinating, and after the jump we’ll tell you more about it and give you a link where you can see it for yourselves.

Because of our trip to Portland last weekend to take in the awesomeness of the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour (for the second time), I didn’t have time for my usual weekly foray into the interwebs looking for new metal.  I’ve been catching up since then and I’ve made enough headway to warrant another installment of this MISCELLANY series.

For new readers, here’s how this thing works: I randomly follow up on e-mails we get here at NCS, or MySpace “friend” requests, or demos that come in the mail, or tips we get from readers, or blurbs that catch my eye on metal sites like Blabbermouth — and I listen to the music or watch a video. Most of the time, I don’t know in advance what the music will be like, or whether it will be good, bad, or just meh.

And then, in this post, I dutifully write up what I found, without filtering out anything. I’m usually pretty lucky in finding new music that’s worthwhile, but there are no guarantees, for me or for you if you choose to read along.

Today’s grab-bag of listening and watching included offerings from Enos (UK), Nightfall (Greece), Anachronaeon (Sweden), Against the Plagues (multinational), and Shades of Dusk (Canada). It’s kind of a long post, but here’s a top-level hint — the music is divergent in style, but everything I heard was very sweet. No filler, all killer. So stay with me.  (explanations, music to hear, and videos to watch, after the jump . . .)