A HELLISH OUTCAST FORGES AHEAD WITH HELLISH OUTCAST

 Metal News  1 Response »
Apr 032013
 

While the band drama surrounding Norway’s Keep of Kalessin continues to unfold, Sunday brought cheerier news from the camp of another NCS favorite, Hellish Outcast.

The background: As our wandering metalhead Andy Synn reported from Oslo just as the news was breaking, and discussed at greater length in his own subsequent post about Opening Day at the Inferno Festival, Keep of Kalessin have disclosed that their talented frontman Thebon is out, and their founder, songwriter, and guitarist Obsidian Claw has taken his place behind the mic.

At first KoK reported, with tongue in cheek, that Thebon had disappeared into the wilds of South Africa with his girlfriend, leaving the band no choice but to record their next album without him.

Thebon then surfaced with a somewhat peeved rejoinder. As these things go, KoK then responded with a lengthy, less tongue-in-cheek explanation for Thebon’s ouster. The recriminations will probably continue, because that’s the way band drama works.

But I don’t really enjoy reading about band drama. I much prefer reading about the other news that’s the subject of this post. While Thebon’s days with KoK may be over, he’s still a fixture in Hellish Outcast, and Hellish Outcast will soon be entering the studio to record a new album, tentatively entitled Stay of Execution. 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 »