January ended four days ago, so it’s past time for our usual monthly round-up of news about forthcoming albums. I have to confess that this list is even more spotty and sporadically assembled than usual — which is saying something. Various distractions prevented me from keeping a sharp eye out for news about new releases, so I have no doubt this list is incomplete.

Here’s how this round-up usually works: In these METAL IN THE FORGE posts, I collect news blurbs and press releases I’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like at NCS (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, I cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — THIS ISN’T A CUMULATIVE LIST. If we found out about a new forthcoming album earlier than the last 30 days, we probably wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier. For example, on this list you won’t see such notable releases as the forthcoming albums from Meshuggah, Enthroned, Unleashed, Psycroptic, Goatwhore, Asphyx, Naglfar, or Autopsy, because we’ve mentioned them elsewhere. Or at least I think we did.

Having said all that, please feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us what I missed when I put this list together. Let us know about albums on the way that  you’re stoked about, even if you don’t see them here!

In our last post, DemiGodRaven caught us up on news items from the last few days that I missed, but this item, to which DGR also alerted me, deserves its own special mention.

In the realm of Italian death metal, 2011 was the year of Fleshgod Apocalypse, the year when that band made a huge breakthrough and established themselves as a true force on the international scene. I have a feeling that 2012 will be the year of their fellow Romans in Hour of Penance. Yesterday, HoP announced details about their fifth album.

It will be called Sedition and will be released on March 27 in North America, April 2 in the U.K., and April 6 in mainland Europe via Prosthetic Records. As Fleshgod Apocalypse did with Agony, Hour of Penance will be following the release of Sedition with a North American tour — their first. They will be in fine company on that tour: The Black Dahlia Murder, Nile, and Skeletonwitch.

The cover art also made its first appearance. As you can see, it kills. The artist is Gyula Havancsak, a new name to me but one I suspect we’ll be seeing more of in the future.

This last HoP album, Paradogma, was one of my favorites of 2010. Based on what Hour of Penance showed on that album, Sedition should qualify as one of this year’s must-listen releases for death metal fans.

What? You haven’t heard Paradogma? For shame! Here’s a track, which made our list of 2010′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs:

October is over, except for Halloween, which continues to go on and on here at the metallic island that NCS calls home. Your humble editor spent the end of the month and the beginning of this new one grinding away at his fucking day job, which explains why this installment of METAL IN THE FORGE is late. It also explains why it’s more than typically incomplete, but more on that later.

Here’s the deal:  In these posts, we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — THIS ISN’T A CUMULATIVE LIST. If we found out about a new forthcoming album before September, we wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier.

This month’s list begins right after the jump. I fell down on the job of monitoring the interhole and press releases to catch news about new albums that looked potentially cool to me, so I know I missed announcements of new releases that should be included here. So, feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us what I missed. Let us know about albums on the way that  you’re stoked about!

I doubt I’ll be able to continue doing this on a regular basis, but for the third day in a row, here’s a round-up of news I saw and music I heard today that I thought were worth sharing.

KRISIUN

It’s been three years since Krisiun released Southern Storm, and that’s far too long to wait for another slab of death metal bestiality from these Brazilian kings of the genre. Today’s wonderful news is that Krisiun will be releasing their eighth studio album, The Great Execution, on October 31 in Europe and November 1 in North America via Century Media Records.

A press release explains that the album “musically expands Krisiun’s trademark high-speed death metal violence with a heavily increased amount of diversity ranging from extreme tempo variations over distinct rhythm patterns to clean guitars and even Flamenco parts!” In addition, “Krisiun only used analog gear and instruments this time to avoid the compressed sound that so many musicians produce today. This wise decision resulted in a more organic sound, with the songs on The Great Execution possessing both warmth and rawness, which are so often lost through digital production. The low end is deeper, with drums that pound instead of bounce and guitar tones that sear rather than hiss.”

That just sounds fuckin’ peachy, don’t it? And what about that album art up above, by by Japanese artist Toshihiro Egawa (Suicide Silence, Heaven Shall Burn, Devourment, Dying Fetus)? Metal As Fuck.  (more after the jump . . .)

Today we reach the end of the line — the last two songs on our MOST INFECTIOUS list. Our list this year was three times as long as our 2009 list, but even so there were lots of other worthy candidates we omitted — including many recommendations we got from lots of you. Truth be told, 2010 was filled with great metal releases. Picking the catchiest songs wasn’t easy, and undoubtedly we fucked it up by leaving off some winners. But hey — we fuck up a lot.

No fucking up today, though. Our last two songs are from two blazingly hot bands who produced smoking hot cauldrons of metal in 2010. We saved them for the finale on purpose because they’re two particular favorites of ours. Both bands are from Italy and when their 2010 releases were recorded, they shared a common member (though no longer). Let’s get to it.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

We hope our list included at least a few surprises for you, but this isn’t likely to be one of them. Out of all the bands we could have fantasized about paying to be at our beck and call once we get the jillions of dollars that African philanthropists have promised us, this is the one we picked. (more after the jump, including the songs . . .)

On July 5, we tried a little experiment. Indulging in the same kind of presumptuousness that motivates people to tweet about their latest meal or the last time they washed their underwear, we just described the music we’d randomly checked out that morning — whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. None of the bands was known to us, and we didn’t actually like everything we found, but we wrote about all of it anyway — just because that’s what we heard.

A few readers actually seemed to like the idea, and we’re desperate for approval, so we’ll do it again. But not today. Today, we’re doing something that’s a little more focused and we’re exercising a bit more judgment. But in a way, this post started just as impulsively as the one on July 5.

We were over at Steff Metal‘s blog and got into a sick mixtape she had created (here), the subject of which was music with an ancient Egyptian theme (though not played by bands from Egypt). That got us to thinking (always a dangerous pastime) and we realized that we knew very damned little about Egyptian metal bands.

So, we started exploring, and the path we wandered hooked us up not only with some really good Egyptian metal, but also with metal from some other North African countries — Tunisia and Morocco, to be precise. We found enough interesting shit that we’re dividing this post into three parts: One band today (Scarab) and the next three over the two following days.

To be clear, we’re not pretending this is some kind of authoritative survey. We didn’t do in-depth research, and we didn’t listen to dozens of bands and then selectively whittle down the group. We’re way too half-assed for that. We just jumped into the fast-moving current of the internet and waited to see where we’d be washed up on shore.

And by sheer chance, we wound up with a little bit of everything — some death metal, some oriental black metal, and some progressive/folk metal — but what we found was awesome. So open your minds and your ears and we’ll show you what we found.  (beginning after the jump, of course . . .)

We do our best to keep up with news in the world of extreme metal. We read a few web sites every day that collect news items, we get press releases via e-mail, and we get alerts about MySpace and Facebook posts by bands we’re following. Put it all together, and it’s a daily flood of words — almost all of which are just completely forgettable, or worse. Usually, we find items that are either intentionally or (more often) unintentionally funny. Rarely, we find something we think is worth writing about on this site.

We’re kinda behind on putting together reviews of new music we’ve been cranking, and that may have lowered our newsworthiness threshold today, but whatever. Today, we’re just gonna dump a bunch of news on you that we read over the weekend, including one of those funny items and one new video that put us in a party mood. Not a lot of rhyme or reason to our choices, but there’s not much rhyme or reason to anything we do, so what the fuck?

Our topics? They involve Heaven Shall Burn, Hour of Penance, French Bat-Shit Grindcore, All Shall Perish, and The Ghost Inside.

HEAVEN SHALL BURN

Last Friday, German death metal and hardcore fusionists Heaven Shall Burn announced that their new album Invictus, which has already been released in Europe and will be released in North America tomorrow, landed on the official chart in Germany at position No. 9. According to the announcement, this marks Heaven Shall Burn’s and Century Media Records‘ first-ever Top 10 release in Germany.

The press release included this comment from guitarist Maik Weichert: ”Top Ten! This is insane! It is a dream come true and we thank everybody who had something to do with it! Everything will be awesome! However, when the police stopped my car yesterday they were still quite unpleasant to deal with, so I am assuming they hadn’t heard the news yet . . .”  (lots more after the jump — stay with us . . .)

A few short weeks ago, we mourned the apparent demise of Hour of Penance, a fantastic band from Rome that a well-known metal blogger characterized in an e-mail to us as “the Italian Behemoth.” (The most recent NCS post about HOP can be found here.) Our one consolation was the knowledge that the other band featuring the multi-talented HOP vocalist Francesco Paoli — Fleshgod Apocalypse — was still alive and well, and had a new album on the way.

Our advance copy of that album (which is really an EP) arrived a few days ago, and we tore into it like a pack of ravenous wolves. It’s called MAFIA, and that is indeed what it’s about. This statement from the band appears in the CD insert:

MAFIA is dedicated to all those who shed their own blood to fight the neverending curse of racketeering. We do support the war against those animals.

La Cosa Nostra is certainly not the typical subject matter of extreme metal songs, and we have more to say about the concept behind this album and the small and large ways in which that concept works its way through the music.

But to cut to the chase about the music, MAFIA will explode your head. If you liked this band’s debut album, Oracles, you will be mighty pleased by the new one. And if you haven’t yet checked out Fleshgod Apocalypse, don’t put it off any longer.  They’re putting out music that’s not quite like anything else you’ve heard. (more after the jump, including our favorite track from MAFIA . . .)

We knew Rome’s Hour of Penance had legions of devoted fans around the world (including us), but we found out the hard way just how devoted they are.

Last week, we reported the bad news about what happened at their show in Alicante, Spain not long ago. In a nutshell, the band’s drummer Mauro Mercurio was unable to play on stage (apparently due to being too fucked up) and had destroyed or damaged property at the venue, resulting in detention by Spanish police. That led Hour of Penance to cancel the remaining dates on their European tour. And then the next day we reported the even more depressing news that vocalist Francesco Paoli had decided to leave the band as a result of the Alicante incident, and we posted his explanation.

Those two posts received an absolute flood of hits from across the interwebz — and it’s still happening a week later. We’re clearly not alone in being depressed over the disintegration of this amazingly good modern death-metal band, whose 2010 album Paradogma has been one of our favorite releases of the year to date. So, at the risk of appearing morbidly fixated on these depressing developments, we’re serving up some additional details today — including the possibility that reports of the band’s death may be premature.

The further details come from another blog entry by Francesco Paoli (whose other band, Fleshgod Apocalypse, has a new album (Mafia) due for release in the U.S. on June 8). In his latest message, Francesco tries to set the record straight with some clarifications. It turns out that he had made the decision to leave Hour of Penance before the incident in Alicante, in part because Mercurio’s college career was interfering with HOP’s ability to schedule live performances and in part because Francesco was finding it increasingly difficult to juggle his roles in two increasingly active bands at the same time.

Of course, Francesco had not planned to leave HOP as abruptly as he did — that was the result of what happened in Spain — but he says his friendship with HOP’s guitarist Giulio Moschini and bassist Silvano Leone remains strong (apparently not so strong with Mercurio), and that he will be “happy to cooperate” with them in the future if they decide to go forward with Hour of Penance.  We’re not sure exactly what that means, but it sounds like a willingness to be part of a re-formed HOP if Moschini and Leone replace Mercurio. He definitely won’t be easy to replace — the dude is an amazing drummer — but HOP may not be dead after all.

After the jump, we’ll show you Francesco’s latest post in its entirety.

Yesterday, we reported the bad news about what happened to one of our favorite death-metal bands, Hour of Penance, at their show in Alicante, Spain not long ago. In a nutshell, the band’s drummer Mauro Mercurio was unable to play on stage (apparently due to being too fucked up) and had destroyed or damaged property at the venue, resulting in detention by Spanish police. And all of that led Hour of Penance to cancel the remaining dates on their European tour.

Well, the news just gets worse and worse. Today we saw a blog post by Francesco Paoli, the frontman for Hour of Penance. Correction — ex-frontman. And that’s the worse news: Francesco has announced that he has left Hour of Penance as a result of the incident in Alicante. We’re re-printing his blog post with the full explanation after the jump.

This is a truly fucked-up development. Earlier this year, Hour of Penance released their best album yet — Paradogma — one of our favorites of the year so far.  They looked like they were really hitting their stride and bound for even greater things. And now, virtually overnight, the band is disintegrating.

We’re not blaming Francesco for his decision. Read his blog post, and you’ll understand it. It’s just sad news for fans of Hour of Penance. The saving grace is that Francesco remains active in his other band, the ungodly good Fleshgod Apocalypse — and that band has completed a new album (Mafia) that will be released in the U.S. on June 8.

Now, continue on after the jump to see Francesco’s depressing blog post.

UPDATE: We’ve added a more recent post with additional details from Francesco that emerged after the statement you’ll see following the jump. Those further details suggest that Hour of Penance may not be dead after all and that Francesco was planning to leave the band even before the incident in Alicante. You can read all about it by following this link.