MISCELLANY NO. 22 (CYCLONE EMPIRE EDITION)

Just in case you didn’t get enough of a beat-down from that new Deicide track we debuted yesterday, this post ought to finish off the job of putting you in the hospital (or an asylum).

Early yesterday morning we received three e-mails in a row from a most excellent German label called Cyclone Empire. This label has got a kick-ass roster of artists and provides distribution for many more, and those three e-mails were about bands that have really peaked our interest.

This isn’t really a typical MISCELLANY post, because we knew something about the music of two of these bands before we started, but at least we hadn’t heard the precise songs we’re featuring here today. So, it’s kind of a hybrid MISCELLANY post.

Here’s what we’ve got: Another hell-on-wheels song off the debut album by Sweden’s Puteraeon, which was just released in Europe late last month; two new songs from Finland’s Before the Dawn that appear on Cyclone Empire’s European release of a special CD/DVD combo called Decade of Darkness; and a track from a brain-scrambling French band called Sideblast off their just-released second album, Cocoon.

Get a good daily fix of mayhem and melody to start your weekend off right . . . after the jump.  And tomorrow, we’ll have a proper MISCELLANY post with music from an international line-up of bands we really had never heard before.

PUTERAEON

Puteraeon’s debut album on Cyclone Empire is called The Esoteric Order. As I mentioned in one of yesterday’s posts, I first heard about this band via a comment from a friend of our site (Johan). So far, I’ve only heard two songs from the album, but both of them enlarge my canines and turn my sclera red.

NCS visitors seem to be digging the music as much as I am, so — until we get our hands on the full album — we’ve got another video to enrich your perspective on this band. It’s a track called “Into the Deep”, which appeared on a 2008 Puteraeon demo called The Requiem. The same song title appears on the track listing for The Esoteric Order, though we don’t yet know whether the song was re-recorded or re-mastered for the album debut. Not that it would need any of that — because the song slays, just as it is.

These dudes may be a relatively new band, but they have very old souls (or at least very old-school souls). Check this out.

BEFORE THE DAWN

This Finnish band recently signed with Nuclear Blast for the release of their new album, Deathstar Rising, which is scheduled for release on February 25. We’ve written about them before (here), as have two of our favorite metal blogs not named NO CLEAN SINGING — The Number of the Blog and Death Metal Baboon.

What we learned yesterday was that Cyclone Empire has just released something to tide us over until Deathstar Rising arrives. Specifically, they’re selling a combo EP-and-DVD called Decade of Darkness, which celebrates this fine band’s tenth year of making metal.

The EP (which is apparently called a Mini-CD, or MCD, in Europe) includes three new songs (“Decade of Darkness”, “End of Days”, and “Insomnia”), plus a bonus song (“Painless”) that was included only on the Japanese version of the band’s last album, Deadlight, plus two songs performed live (“Painless” and “Deadsong”), plus a symphonic version of “Deadsong”. The DVD is the band’s complete live set at the 2009 edition of the SUMMER BREEZE festival.

What we have for you today is one of those new tracks from the Decade of Darkness EP — the title track in fact — and then below that is a decent-quality video of the band’s first live performance of that track from the Japanese release, called “Painless”. Both these songs will appeal to fans of Amorphis, and they certainly whet our appetite for Deathstar Rising.

And, just in case you missed it, here’s the video for the first song released from Deathstar Rising, which appeared earlier this week:

SIDEBLAST

Sideblast is a band I’d not heard of until I saw the Cyclone Empire press e-mail yesterday about the release of their second album, Cocoon. But more than a few items in the release hooked my attention. One line described them as “French Black/Thrash/Death-Cyber-extremists”. Another line explained that the album was mixed and mastered at Hertz-Studios in Poland by the Wieslawski brothers, who are responsible for producing albums by the likes of Vader, Behemoth, and Decapitated.

Another line said that the band draw their influences from Behemoth, Strapping Young Lad, Immortal, and Emperor, but include sound bytes and “near-symphonic keyboard samples.” Last but not least, there were over-the-top complimentary quotes in the release from (among others) drum legend Gene Hoglan, Bart Hennephof (Textures), Robin Staps (The Ocean), and Mario Duplantier (Gojira).

I thought all that was more than enough reason to listen.  The title track from the new album is streaming on the Sideblast MySpace page, and it’s cool: A racing rampage of death metal with industrial-style, syncopated riffing, episodic placement of sci-fi-ish keyboards in the background, and a combo of DM growls and hardcore shrieking.

Only one slight problem, I couldn’t find any format for songs from Cocoon that I could share with you on this site. So, I jumped back to the band’s debut album, Flight of A Moth for this track, “Pattern of Life” — which kicks ass with gusto. Check it out:

Sideblast: Pattern of Life

Seriously, I don’t know why it took me so long to discover this band, but damn, better late than never.

I also found this clip of Sideblast’s cover of Sepultura‘s “Arise”, which appeared as a bonus track on the Flight of A Moth album. I thought it worked beautifully — a classic song rendered with deeper vocals and a generally heavier low end, but preserving everything else about the song which makes it such a distinctive piece of  thrash that has stood the test of time. Enjoy this, and see you tomorrow (if not sooner).