Earlier this month, we reported plans by German tech-metallers Obscura to self-release a collection of previously undistributed demo tracks and new cover songs. It will be called Illegimitation and will include four songs from the band’s 2003 demo, three pre-production versions of songs recorded in 2006 following a tour with Suffocation (including an early version of “Incarnated”, which ultimately appeared on Cosmogenesis (2009)), and covers of songs by Death, Atheist, and Cynic that the band recorded earlier this year.

The band is raising money for the production of the album in both CD and LP formats as well as associated merch through Kickstarter; pledges starting at $5 will get you a range of stuff from a digital download of the album on up. You can get there via this link.

Today, the band put up two of the 2003 demo tracks on their Facebook bandpage for streaming: “…And All Will Come To An End” and “Crucified”. More about those songs, plus a chance to stream one of them here, after the jump.

Also after the jump: One of our favorite metal bands, Living Sacrifice, will be releasing a DVD during the week of December 9 called In Finite Live. It’s a professionally shot and edited, multi-camera performance by the band in Pomona, California, plus six more songs performed in the band’s hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. The DVD also includes bonus goodies, and it’s available for pre-order for ten bucks here. After the jump, we’ve got two song-clips from the DVD. Stay with us . . .

Yesterday I saw three music videos from three bands I like, and I thought they’d make a good combined piece of entertainment for this Sunday. The music all qualifies as extreme, and no, there’s no clean singing in any of them, but there’s still a good variety of styles represented. We’ll start with a recently revealed video of Living Sacrifice performing at the Cornerstone 2008 festival. Then we’ll move to the first official video of a Finnish band called Retaliatory Measures whose most recent EP we reviewed just last week. Last but not least, we’ve got another brand new video, this one from a band we discovered in one of our MISCELLANY expeditions, Doomsday Prophecy.

LIVING SACRIFICE

I became a big fan of this band after seeing them on the 2008 tour that that marked their revival after an extended hiatus. It was one of those sets that gets burned into your memory — a performance by musicians whose maturity showed in the skill and self-assurance of their playing but whose energy level would leave lots of much younger bands in the dust. Yesterday I saw a post on their Facebook page about a video they’d never seen before of a show they did that same year — 2008 — at a festival in Illinois.

The visual quality of the footage is rough — which suits this song — but the sound quality is pretty strong. The whole package shows just how fucking heavy this band is and how much power they generate on stage. It’s a blowtorch performance of  a blowtorch song — coming up right after the jump.

I had way too much fun last night. This morning, I feel like I’m being punished in a circle of Hell far worse than anything Dante imagined in The Inferno. But despite a hangover of galactic proportions, I’ve got something for you. Two somethings, actually. They served as a reminder that no matter how much I want to kill myself today, there are reasons to Keep . . . Living.

When we rolled out our list of 2010′s most infectious extreme metal songs, Part 2 of the series paired up songs from two of our favorite bands, Keep of Kalessin and Living Sacrifice. By coincidence, yesterday I saw two brand new performance videos that feature both bands, and they’re both good.

KEEP OF KALESSIN

Last year, Keep of Kalessin made their debut in the Eurovision contest, riding the song “Dragontower” to a third-place finish in the Norwegian finals.  Even though “Dragontower” was the most accessible song on Reptilian, KoK’s third-place finish in the national contest was further proof that Norway and the U.S. are so different that they might not really be co-existing in the same universe.

But yesterday, there was more proof. KoK made a guest appearance on the nationally televised semifinal round of the 2011 Norwegian Eurovision song contest, performing another song from Reptilian — in a duet with Alexander Rybak. I tried to think of a U.S. parallel, and the first thing that popped into my head was Immolation showing up on American Idol to perform with Justin Bieber.  (more after the jump . . .)

Today we have the next two entries on our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs.  For a full explanation of what we mean by “most infectious”, read this.

In a nutshell, we compiled a list, in no particular order, of the catchiest songs from a wide range of extreme metal sub-genres — not necessarily the best metal of the year (though lots of these songs would qualify for that kind of list), but the ones that most effectively got our heads and other parts of our bodies moving, and then continued to ring in our tiny brains even after they ended.

Yesterday we began the rollout with some old-school death and black/death metal. Today we have two diverse entries that in quite different ways show once again how aggressive metal can light up your life like genital electrodes — except in a good way.

KEEP OF KALESSIN

Norway’s Keep of Kalessin made a big mark on 2010 with the release of Reptilian. When we reviewed it in June (here), we noted its stylistic diversity and praised it as an album full of gems, organized in homage to the terrible majesty of the dragon.  (more after the jump . . .)

November is now in our rear-view mirror. December lies ahead of us: A perfectly good stretch of road marred by the speed bumps of the cataclysm that is Christmas. And on the other side of those speed bumps is the end of the year – the roadkill that is New Year’s Eve. And you know what the run-up to year-end brings — year-end lists. It’s already started, but the coming weeks will bring us a slew of Best of 2010 album lists. We’ll probably do our own Best of 2010 list — not the best albums of the year, but, as we did last year, the most infectious extreme metal songs of the year.

But we’re not quite ready to launch that list. Instead, we’re looking off into the future, not backward at the music that’s rattled our skulls over the past year. Yes, it’s time for another monthly installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, in which we cobble together a list of forthcoming new albums, cribbing like rag-gatherers and lint-pickers from PR releases and metal news sites like Blabbermouth in order to construct a line-up of new music that we’re interested in hearing.

All of our previous monthly updates can be found via the “Forthcoming Albums” category link on the right side of our pages, and because we’re not keeping a cumulative list, you might want to check the last couple months of these posts if you want to get a full picture of what’s coming. The list that follows, in alphabetical order, are albums we didn’t know about at the time of our last installment, or updated info about albums we’d previously heard were on the way. After the jump, of course . . .

Yesterday, in the first of a two-part feature, we posted our review of the new album by Living Sacrifice. Today, we’re posting (for want of a better word) a meditation on these questions: When there’s no clean singing in extreme metal, do the lyrics really matter? And if they do, how do they matter?

THE MEDITATION: Think about songs in which you can hear the words. Sometimes the lyrics can be important. Beautifully crafted lyrics can tell a story that sticks with you, or they can express ideas or emotions in a way that resonates like poetry.

That kind of lyricism can combine with the music in a way that produces something more powerful than the sum of the parts — the words enhance the music and vice-versa, and each makes the other more memorable.

Of course, those things are possible only if you can hear the words. In extreme metal songs with no clean singing, you can’t hear all the words or sometimes any of them.  It’s rarely the content of the lyrics that contributes to the emotional appeal of those songs. Instead, what matters is the sound of the singer’s voice, which functions mainly as another instrument.

As a consequence, the songwriter’s ability to create memorable lyrics is often pretty unimportant in this subgenre. On those rare occasions when I look up the lyrics to a metal song I like, I’m not surprised to find that usually the lyrics suck – and I don’t really care that they suck because they don’t matter much to what I hear or how I feel about the music.

I suspect that lyrics rarely play an important part in the creation of extreme music either. Most bands seem to work out the riffs, the rhythms, and the melodies first (if melody happens to be a part of the band’s sound), and the lyrics are added later.  By definition, the words aren’t inspiring the sound; if anything, the reverse is true. Sometimes, the words seem to have nothing at all to do with the feeling that the music conveys. (more after the jump . . .)

We’ve been fucking around with cruise ship jokes the last few days, but it’s time to get back to what this site is really about – the music we live by. And we’re getting back to it in a serious way.

This is an album review, but it will be followed by a meditation on the lyrical content (or lack thereof) of extreme metal and the connection (or lack thereof) between the lyrical content and the music. And what prompted that meditation is the album we’re reviewing — the new full-length release from Living Sacrifice. So, today, the album, and tomorrow, the meditation.

THE ALBUM: Last week we traveled to distant lands and wrote about some ear-catching performers from Greece (Gux Drax), Costa Rica (Sight of Emptiness), Italy (Vomit the Soul), France (Eryn Non Dae, DOPPLeR, Zubrowska), and Sweden (Valkyrja). But today we’re back in America — really back — discussing the best release yet by a powerfully influential band from Arkansas.

Living Sacrifice originally came into being in 1988, broke up in 2002, and reunited in 2008 with a six-week US tour (“Stronger Than Hell”) headlined by Seattle metalcore band Demon Hunter. That’s when I became a Living Sacrifice convert. I caught the “Stronger Than Hell” tour when it passed through Seattle, and in my opinion, LS stole the show. Not even a close call.

Of course, I had to go get oriented with their whole catalogue, and that only made me a more devoted fan. So I’ve been waiting impatiently for The Infinite Order. And it’s finally here — the band’s seventh release, and the first full-length of all-new music since 2002′s Conceived in Fire.

Years of working can produce staleness or lazy repetition of comfortable formulas. But this album is powerful and vibrantly alive. In the case of Living Sacrifice, the fire within has not gone out and the years of experience reveal themselves in superior song-writing and impeccable musicianship.  (more after the jump, including a track to stream  . . .)

It’s Sunday. A perfect day to jack your headphones or earbuds into a computer somewhere and let the music stream into your synapses. Why would you want to do that instead of listen on your personal music player so you can move around and take care of other shit at the same time? Because we’ve got some recommendations that, for the moment, you can only stream.

LIVING SACRIFICE

Living Sacrifice has slowly been releasing new songs from its forthcoming album The Infinite Order for streaming on its MySpace page.  The band has now made the entire album available for streaming here. The album will be available for purchase on January 26. We’ll provide our review of the album in the near future, but for now we’ll just say that this mutha is a headbanging jewel. Here’s the track listing:

01. Overkill Exposure
02. Rules Of Engagement
03. Nietzche’s Madman
04. Unfit To Live
05. The Training
06. Organized Lie
07. The Reckoning
08. Love Forgives
09. They Were One
10. God Is My Home
11. Apostasy

We’ve got two more recommendations after the jump, so don’t stop here!

Yesterday Living Sacrifice made available for streaming the fourth song from their forthcoming new album The Infinite Order. The song is called “They Were One.” It’s packed with groove-oriented riffs, and the band’s thrash influences are really in evidence. This is one hellaciously infectious tune and (if possible) makes us even more stoked for the full album when it drops on January 26.

The band begins a 19-state tour on January 15, co-headlining with War of Ages. You can listen to “They Were One” and find dates and places for the tour by going here.

In December, the resurgent death/thrash brawlers from Living Sacrifice uploaded two new songs from their forthcoming album The Infinite Order, plus a video of one of those songs.  Yesterday, they graced us with a third  new one, called “Organized Lie.”  It’s another galloping beast of angry, groove-oriented metal that confirms the new album will be worth the long wait since the band’s last full-length of all-new songs more than seven years ago.  You can check it out here.

And there’s more headbangery ahead: the band promises yet another new song next Monday.

The Infinite Order will hit the streets on January 26, and LS will hit the road on January 15 with War of Ages, Shai Hulud, Lionheart, and The Great Commission.