EPISODE 13: “ULTIMATE STERILIZATION”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 252011
 

Episode 13 is a Turkish metal band who we’ve featured once before at NCS — though it was in July 2010 when we did that (here). Since then, the band have released their third album called Death Reclaims the Earth. That album was finished at the time of our earlier feature, but hadn’t yet been released because the band was looking for a label outside Turkey to increase exposure to their music. The one they found is a personal favorite of mine — Misantrof AntiRecords, the non-commercial Norwegian label founded and run by Daniel Vrangsinn (Carpathian Forest, Vrangsinn).

Vrangsinn’s philosophy is to let bands retain full creative control and ownership of their work. He provides a platform for distributing the music — free of charge for downloads. I’ve found lots of great shit through Misantrof, and so seeing the partnership between them and Episode 13 was a nice discovery. Death Reclaims the Earth is available for download at Misantrof (here), either as high-quality FLAC files or as mp3’s.

Misantrof released this album last October, but I was diverted with other shit at the time and just overlooked the news. What reminded me of the album was a recent Episode 13 post on FB that featured one of the tracks from the album called “Ultimate Sterilization”. So, I stopped and listened to the song, and I’m really glad I did. I think you’ll be glad you did, too. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MISCELLANY (NO. 3)

 MISCELLANY  16 Responses »
Jul 252010
 

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. Continue reading »