Thanks to Heavy Blog Is Heavy, I just found out that Mastodon has released a video that includes the entirety of Hunter, their new album scheduled for release next Tuesday. You can view it after the jump.

I decided not to delay this post by listening to and watching the stream. Please feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think. My fucking day job is probably going to stop me from immersing myself in this until tonight. So, let me know: Should I do that or should I watch the premiere of X Factor instead?

As a public service, I thought I’d let you know about two North American tours I just noticed yesterday, plus two others announced earlier but not previously mentioned at NCS. The first of the newer ones is advertised by the poster above. What caught my eye, in addition to the name Korpiklaani, was the fact that Russia’s Arkona is on this tour. Arkona is a recent discovery for us here at NCS, thanks to our friend Trollfiend, who provided a guest review of the band’s new album Slovo. Also included on the tour are Polkadot Cadaver and Forged in Flame. I don’t yet know anything about those two bands, but I’m very tempted to see this show simply because of Arkona (though I like Korpiklaani, too), especially because the Seattle stop will be at a relatively small club.

The second tour is the 2011 edition of Thrash and Burn. This has been a summer tour since its inception, but it was a no-show in the summer just past and now appears to have emerged as a re-branding of Winds of Plague’s fall headlining tour. Following in the footsteps of Summer Slaughter, Winds of Plague and the promoters of this tour nominated a group of bands to fill the last tour slot and let fans vote for a winner. A couple days ago, the winner was announced, and it’s Volumes. Interestingly, Volumes was also one of the nominated bands on the Summer Slaughter ballot, but didn’t make the cut that time and instead were included on the Slaughter Survivors Tour. Volumes has a new album called Via that’s getting some buzz, though I haven’t heard it yet.

The rest of the bands on this version of Thrash and Burn are Chelsea Grin, As Blood Runs Black, For the Fallen Dreams, Upon A Burning Body, In the Midst of Lions, and Like Moths to Flames. In other words, the tour should be renamed Deathcore and Burn. No tour schedule has yet been announced.

I must admit that among the fall tours we haven’t yet mentioned at this site, I’m personally more interested in the Mastodon/Dillinger Escape Plan/Red Fang tour and the Mayhem/Keep Of Kalessin/Hate/Abigail Williams tour (which will be joined by Woe on 13 dates not yet specified). The schedules for the Korpiklaani tour and those others I just mentioned are after the jump.

Here are four things that got my attention earlier today. I’m betting that everyone who reads this will be interested in at least one of these items. And, just in case that’s a bad guess, we have porn after the jump.

ITEM ONE

I don’t think I have to do anything but excerpt these quotes from the Metal Blade press release. It was enough for me.

Cannibal Corpse has begun recording their twelfth studio album at Sonic Ranch studios in Texas with producer Erik Rutan. The band has spent months writing the album and has recorded at Sonic Ranch in the past, but never with Rutan at the helm. More details on the album, including art, songs, title and more will be revealed in the months to follow. For now, the band is hard at work forging their next death metal offering.

Erik Rutan worked with Cannibal Corpse for both Kill (2006) and Evisceration Plague (2009) and is returning for a third time. Rutan explains further: “I am super excited to work with Cannibal Corpse for our 3rd album together. We are determined to make the best album we possibly can. Everyone is very focused and the new material is awesome. There is a great blend of classic, old school CC with a newer, more heavy, dynamic and aggressive approach. I look forward to the challenge of making one heavy as hell record!”

(more after the jump, including porn . . .)

I BURNED OUT MY EYES / I CUT OFF MY TONGUE
I SEALED THEM WITH ALL OF THE SILVER
AND NOW I HAVE NONE /YOU KILLED THE LIFE
YOU TOOK THE DIAMOND / YOU KILLED THE VINE
DEATH OF THE…
YOU OWN THE DARKNESS / AND TAKEN MY SIGHT
YOU BURIED THE STARS UNDERGROUND
YOU’VE STOLEN THE NIGHT
YOU CAN RUN TO THE SEA / YOU CAN RUN TO THE FOREST
YOU CAN HIDE / BUT YOU’LL NEVER ESCAPE

Up above? Those are the lyrics to “Black Tongue”, a song from Mastodon‘s new album, The Hunter. And just below is the song itself, which was copied earlier today from a radio stream and spread like wildfire around the web. According to Mastodon’s Facebook page, more about the album (including more music?) was to be revealed at www.mastodonrocks.com at about 9:00 PST tonight. And sho’ nuff — now we have an actual official Mastodon video for “Black Tongue”:

Can you guess what the update is? Go ahead, make a guess! I’ll even give you a hint. It involves three mouths, four sets of ears, scales, and horns.

Yes! It’s the just-revealed cover art for Mastodon’s next album, The Hunter. It’s not your typical metal-album style of artwork, and it’s not the work of Paul Romano, who was the artist behind all of Mastodon’s previous cover art. Instead, it was created by AJ Fosik, a wood carver who’s also responsible for the backdrop the band uses in their live shows. 

I think it’s damned cool, not only in the composition, but also in the use of vivid colors. You can see some of AJ Fosik’s other work at this location. It’s damned cool, too.

Mastodon is currently in Europe for a summer-long tour that includes all the dates on this year’s Sonisphere festival as well as the Rock Im Park, Rock Am Ring, and Roskilde festivals, among others. The band is also scheduled to play a one-off show at The Gorge near Seattle on July 30, with Soundgarden, Queens of the Stone Age, and the venerable Meat Puppets.

Speaking of the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, after the jump we’ve got some quality fan-filmed video of Mastodon’s July 1, 2011 performance there.

While we’re waiting for Mastodon’s next album, The Hunter, we can continue listening to Crack the Skye. I’m not talking about the songs that were originally released on that album. I’m talking about a song that was recorded at the same time but for whatever reason wasn’t included. It’s called “Deathbound”, and it’s being released today for free download by Adult Swim as part of a 10-week free singles program (this being the third week).

In addition to making the song available for free download, Adult Swim commissioned Authority Films to create a music video. Of course, they did the perfectly logical thing: They made a video featuring muppets. Isn’t that what everyone thinks of when they think of Mastodon? Of course it is! But not just any muppets — brutal muppets, engaging in non-stop, carnivorous, explosive, muppet-like mayhem.

This video is so much fun. Seriously, I laughed so hard I thought I was going to pee myself. Hang on a second. Damn, I did pee myself, just a little. I hate when that happens. I was planning on at least three more days before changing these underoos. Well, fuck, I can get two more days out of ‘em anyway.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Mastodon muppet mayhem. Watch it after the jump. The new song sounds righteous, too — it’s a high-energy thrasher. And it turns out that it won’t be the only remnant of the Crack the Skye creative process that we’ll get to hear.  More on that after the jump, plus a link for the “Deathbound” song download.

Are you in the mood for a diversion from whatever else you’re doing or were about to do? Good!  Because we thought we’d share some new music that we heard in the last 24 hours from Pestilence and Outcast, plus a new video clip of Mastodon playing “Crack the Skye”, which will appear on their forthcoming DVD. It’s all ridiculously good. Why else would we want to share? Get ready to be . . . diverted.

PESTILENCE

Dutch death metal band Pestilence has been cranking out skull-crushers since 1986 — not counting that extended hiatus between 1994 and 2008.  The band count among their alumni the likes of Tony Choy (Atheist, Cynic) and Martin Van Drunen (Hail of Bullets, Asphyx). Their current line-up is also loaded with talent, including fretless bassist Jeroen Paul Thesseling (Obscura) and original or near-original members Patrick Mameli (vox/guitar) and Patrick Uterwijk (guitar).

They’ve got a new album due in late April on Mascot Records called Doctrine, and it’s been on our “highly anticipated” list. Two days ago, Pestilence made the seventh track from the album available for streaming, and we’ve got it here. It’s called, appropriately enough, “Sinister”.

It combines enormous pile-driving riffs with near-experimental, prog-sounding guitar leads/solos, and pummeling double-bass. It’s a head-smasher of a song, but it also engages the non-reptile part of the brain (ie, the part you sometimes think with). For some of you, the throaty vocals may take some getting used to, but trust me, this is a cool song. It’s coming your way right after the jump . . .

We’re jumping the gun on this post, since the month doesn’t end until tomorrow. Why? Uh, because this post is ready to go and we don’t have anything else finished for today yet. Work and other shit interfered with our grand plans for a Sunday post.  We might still get another one up later today, but for now, feast your eyes on the barrage of metal headed our direction.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days (or in this case, the last 27 days) about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming New Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. There’s some awesome shit on the way.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Our temporarily Australian correspondent The Artist Formerly Known As Dan has another list for you today. He left out a few activities. We sure hope the comments fill in the holes . . .]

If you are like me (read: a nerd) then you tend to categorize everything, especially music.  Whenever I hear something new, I’m very quick to make a judgement about the overall sound and what type of music it is. Only, I’m not filtering it into one of those sub-genres that are constantly argued about on the internet. I’m thinking about if I like the music enough to listen to it again. If the answer is yes, then I think about when I would listen to the music again, and what the associated activity might be (don’t ask me how or why I do this – I probably have a problem).

Anyway, the point is, I think about music as something to augment my life and its associated activities, like some kind of bizarre “soundtrack to life.” For example, I really really enjoy gaming to Dagoba. I’m not positive how it started, but I think I was playing Guild Wars and I played the entirety of Face the Colossus and it was just fucking awesome.

This post is mostly meant to stimulate discussion, so what is your favorite music to xxxxx to?  I’ll list some examples below of some activities and what I like to hear while doing them.  (after the jump . . . including music to hear)

Last week we received the following e-mail:

Hey, No-Cleaners.
We definitely have a whole lot of no clean singing on Flaming Tusk’s new album Old, Blackened Century. For that and many other reasons I think you’re going to love it. The album is available as a pay-what-you-will download (yes, even $0) at http://music.flamingtusk.com.
Enjoy. In a horrifying kind of enjoyment.

Keith [aka Zosimus]
Flaming Tusk

Well, we thought that was one of the most intriguing e-mails from a band we’d received in a while. So, we hopped right over to the linked page, downloaded Old, Blackened Century, made a monetary contribution, and started listening. And then listened again. And again. And it turns out that Flaming Tusk’s stylistic flair doesn’t stop at e-mail messaging and cool album titles.

The music is indeed immensely enjoyable, in a horrifying kind of unclassifiable metal enjoyment. If you like blackened post-hardcore proggy doom sludge noise metal, well you’ve come to the right place. (read on after the jump, and we’ll give you a track to stream, too, plus some musings about band names that Flaming Tusk may have narrowly averted . . .)