RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: A NEW FEAR YAWNS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 122014
 

(In this jumbo post Austin Weber puts the spotlight on recommended recent music from nine (9!) bands plus some tour news about a tenth.)

By now you know the drill, I’m going to throw a bunch of music your way and see if any of it sticks. While 2014 has seemed sort of slow, release-wise, so far, I managed to find a number of under-the-radar goodies and I’ve also included two established-band updates. As usual, you are free to loathe or love all or none of it. While I usually only listen to ambient grindcore, I’ve been branching out lately. So, lots of different kinds of music besides ambi-grind are included below. With deathqueef making up more of the music mentioned this time, but also delving into colostomy-bag-fueled post-electronic, instrumental scat, and nu-grunge.

EMBRYONIC DEVOURMENT

With their latest release Reptilian Agenda, Embryonic Devourment have even further embraced old school death metal tendencies into the fold of their technical brutal carnage that warns of the true reptilian nature of reality. This is a big step up for them, and fans of old school death metal should certainly give this a listen. In spite of its swarming Origin-meets-Malignancy veneer, a lot of the riffs are superbly evil, meaty, and groovy in an old school way.  Continue reading »

EMBRYONIC DEVOURMENT

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Sep 132010
 

It’s difficult to know whether to take this seriously:  Northern California’s Embryonic Devourment dedicates their new album, Vivid Interpretations of the Void, “to the people helping to expose the reptilian agenda,” specifically including David Ickes, Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa, conspiracy theorists Phil Schneider and Alex Jones, and “The Sumerians”.

If you don’t know, David Ickes is a British writer, speaker, and former media personality whose writings argue that shape-shifting alien reptoids have been controlling the course of human events for thousands of years and have inserted their own genetically compatible humanoid slaves into positions of power.

Embryonic Devourment’s fixation with the reptilian threat goes well beyond the album dedication. Lyrically, the songs are all about that, too — that and nothing else: Shape shifters “killing people fast”, the controlling dominance of “eternal ancient gargoyles,” the “messages lying beneath older worldly tablets,” the intertwining “of repto ancestry through history,” “lizard eyes pierc[ing] your mind hypnotized,” and more.  The album as a whole stands as a warning to the merely human: “Beware thy master god of disaster.”

Stranger things than this have inspired musicians, though this is certainly strange enough. But hey, we’re keeping open minds about the reptilian agenda. We run across people almost every day who act like reptoids. Who knows? Maybe they really are.

Plus, we’re keeping open minds as a show of respect for the music — which is an inventive and strangely pleasing amalgamation of cathartically extreme styles. (more after the jump, including an ear-grabbing song . . .) Continue reading »

VISUAL STIMULATION

 Metal News  11 Responses »
Jun 182010
 

I’ve got a fucking day job that sometimes requires me to work very early, and sometimes very late, and sometimes both together. The last few days I’ve been caught in one of those late-and-early vortexes, and it’s fucked up my plans for finishing some album reviews.

But instead of letting this site turn into a big void today, I’ve got a few random pieces of eye candy to throw your way in place of what I’d originally planned. Given what the rest of this day and night looks like, there will probably be some other kind of random shit up here tomorrow, too. After that I’ll get caught up and get back to the task of introducing you to some new music.

The first piece of visual stimulation is that album cover up above. The name of the artist is Remy Cuveillier, and he created that piece of visual mindfuckery for the second album by a California band with the family-friendly name of Embryonic Devourment. The album title is Vivid Interpretations of the Void, and it will be released July 27 on Deepsend Records. Compared to the music, the album cover is actually pretty tame.

(we’ll explain what that means after the jump, plus we’ll show you a cool video for our second piece of stimulation . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2010 SICKNESS (Part 2)

 Forthcoming Albums, Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Feb 232010
 

We’re now almost two months into 2010, and it’s already time for our second update to the list of forthcoming new albums we posted on January 1.  (See the original list here and the first update here.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases that we didn’t know about on January 1 or at the time of our last update about a month ago — and there’s a lot of them.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs from various sources over the last month about forthcoming new releases:

1349: “Prosthetic Records will release the brand new album from Norwegian black metal legends 1349 in North America via an agreement with Indie Recordings. The new CD, which promises ‘a return to the band’s more traditional, raw-yet-technical black metal sound,’ is due on April 13. In support of the yet-to-be-titled record, 1349 will embark on a North American tour in April and May as the support act for CANNIBAL CORPSE (alongside SKELETONWITCH and LECHEROUS NOCTURNE).”

ABACABB: “ABACABB are currently out on the road headlining the Hot Dice On Black Ice Tour featuring Upon A Burning Body!. The tour just hit Texas and will be in California this weekend. Following the tour ABACABB will enter the studio with producer Will Putney at Machine Shop in New Jersey and will have a new album to be released sometime this summer.”

AEON: “Swedish death metallers AEON have set Path Of Fire as the title of their third album, due later in the year via Metal Blade Records. The CD was recorded in September 2009 at Empire Studio in Östersund, Sweden and was mixed the following month at Mana Recording Studios in St, Petersburg, Florida by Erik Rutan (HATE ETERNAL, MORBID ANGEL, CANNIBAL CORPSE). The mastering was handled by Alan Douches at West West Side Music (CONVERGE, HATEBREED, THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN) in New Windsor, New York.”

AMORPHIS: “AMORPHIS will release its first-ever live DVD, Forging The Land Of Thousand Lakes, in early June via Nuclear Blast, in time for the band’s 20th anniversary. The filming took place on November 20, 2009 at Club Teatria in Oulu, Finland, where AMORPHIS was supported by STRATOVARIUS and BEFORE THE DAWN. In addition to the full-length live show, the anniversary DVD will include plenty of bonus material documenting the band’s impressive career.”   (much more after the jump . . . ) Continue reading »