ACID WITCH

 Album Reviews  18 Responses »
Sep 052011
 

(Trollfiend is back with another guest contribution. Smokin’ a bowl before writing is clearly a winning literary formula.)

Let me preface this jibba-jabba by saying that I am not, normally, a fan of stoner or doom metal.  The reason behind this is simple: I have a tiny, walnut-sized bladder.  Now I know what you’re thinking: “did he really just fucking quote Mr. T?” Yes, yes I did, and I have only disdain for the ignoramus who doesn’t think Mr. T is awesome.

You might also be wondering what having a tiny, walnut-sized bladder has to do with stoner/doom metal.  The answer is simple biology: I don’t have the nephrotic fortitude to sit through an 11-minute long song.  I like my metal like I like my women: fast, punishing, and in a 16-year monogamous relationship (hi, honey!).  The thing is, if you’re playing with potheads in mind, you have to take into account the hallucinogenic time dilation that occurs with a good burn… even 90-second ‘core songs feel like they last hours (or maybe that’s just because I don’t like ‘core).  Conversely, you have the ‘elastic distortion effect’, or what is commonly known as ‘I smoked a bowl 15 minutes before work and suddenly I’m six hours late’ syndrome.  Most stoner and many doom bands take this latter approach, which is fine if you like grim, trudging, sludgy darkness but not so great if you have to whiz every five minutes.

One of the few bands that fits my rigorous “short enough to bridge pee breaks” rule is Detroit, Michigan’s Acid Witch. I can’t remember where I first stumbled across this band, probably thanks to the heavy marijuana use I enjoyed throughout my high school years, which has severely damaged my short term memory.  And my long term memory.  And is responsible for the extra forty pounds I’m now lugging around.  But anyway…back to the review. (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MELODEATH WEEK: DESTINITY

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 042011
 

(Here’s the last installment of TheMadIsraeli’s almost week-long series on modern melodic death metal. He’s going out with a bang, featuring a killer band from France called Destinity.)

We’re gonna cut this a day short and call it a wrap with this post, since I now officially have other content to review. So, let’s close this baby up, shall we?

Destinity is the product of bringing together EVERYTHING that has been introduced into the melodeath style up to this point and a band who have evolved with the style. You may be surprised when I tell you that these guys have 7 albums. Yes seven. And you’ve probably never heard of them.

Destinity is also proof that despite its rising prominence, the French metal scene is still unfairly overlooked, because this is some of the best melodeath I’ve ever heard. The band’s most recent album,  XI Reasons To See (2010), is a slab of furious, fast, thrashing and blasting melodeath with dark symphonic elements and even some small electronic moments, with harsh, old-school death metal vocals that call back to the greats like Martin Van Drunen of Hail Of Bullets or Patrick Mamelli of Pestilence. If you want your list of influences for reference, it’s quite obvious this band listened to lots of old Arch Enemy, At The Gates, and Hypocrisy. LOTS, OF HYPOCRISY.

This album is made by the sense of drama it channels within its brutal mission statement. Moments such as the opening instrumental “Just Before…” transitioning into “A Dead Silence” show definite veteran status on the compositional front. This album makes a grand, profound entrance most bands have trouble invoking.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 35: MANEGARM, EXORBITANCE, AND STROM

 MISCELLANY  10 Responses »
Sep 042011
 

Here we go again — another episode of MISCELLANY, in which I expose myself (figuratively speaking) to music from bands I’ve never heard before and dutifully report the results to you, along with the songs themselves. The rules of the game that I’ve set for myself are to listen to only one or two songs from each selected band and let that be the basis for some judgments about the music.

Recently, I’ve been violating the rules with increasing frequency because I’ve had good luck with the MISCELLANY picks and gotten caught up in the music. For this listening session, I decided I’d really try to stick more closely to the rules because I’m so far behind on other NCS projects. (Here’s a hint: It didn’t work.)

The bands I picked from our MISCELLANY list for this session are Manegarm (Sweden), Exorbitance (US), and Strom (Germany).

MANEGARM

In the last few MISCELLANY sessions, I’ve been intentionally including one pagan/folk metal band on the listening list. It’s a genre about which I’m not terribly well-versed, and I’ve had fun subjecting my eardrums to something different from their usual diet. As usual around here, the comments we’ve gotten on these posts have pointed me to some interesting looking outfits. So, I decided to continue the recent run of pagan/folk music by picking a band called Månegarm, who were recommended by multiple commenters. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 9)

 Forthcoming Albums  20 Responses »
Sep 032011
 


It’s Labor Day Weekend, August is a thing of the past, and as some people count it, summer is over. School is on the verge of resuming for people still attempting to educate themselves, and a ton of new metal tours are looming on the horizon for the fall. And of course, the fall will be filled with new album releases, too. Which brings us to the latest monthly edition of METAL IN THE FORGE.

You know the drill:  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 album before August, 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. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. And feel free to tell us about how we fucked up by omitting releases that you’re stoked about. Continue reading »

CSR COMP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 032011
 

Clean State Records is a label based in Australia that focuses on independent artists. To help promote new artists and their music and to help fund CSR’s own activities, the label periodically releases compilation albums, and the latest (G Force: Stick It To the Man) became available yesterday. What attracted me to this comp was the presence of a track from Reclusive Forest Council, which is one of the many music projects of Ray Heberer, a talented young musician from Taiwan who’s a friend of this site and who we’ve featured here before.

I suppose like most comps, this one is a mixed bag, at least for my tastes. It includes some melodic metalcore, some latter-day nu-metal, and some deathcore that didn’t do much for me, but the majority of the tracks were interesting and showed an impressive array of budding talent.

At the top of the list of songs worth having is the one from Reclusive Forest Council, “Romanticized Reality”. It’s an instrumental track that’s full-to-bursting with stylistic variety — pneumatic power chords, epic keyboard ambience, guitar solos that move from soulful to shred in the blink of an eye, a jazzy Mellotron-ish outro, and more. It’s almost like a medley of the different kinds of music that Ray has been exploring, and it showcases some of what he’s capable of doing. Good stuff that stands up to repeat listening.

Running down the list of other songs on the comp that I like, the next one is from another band we’ve featured here — Kakuna Vs Metapod. The song is “Slurry Dogs”, which happens to be the one we included in our original post about the band. To crib from what I wrote about it then: “It’s got mean-as-fuck drumming, automatic-weapon-style riffing, electronica, little bursts of catchy melody, about four different vocal styles, blasts of sonic mayhem — and bass drops.” There was a big novelty factor at work when I first heard it, but the song is still tons of fun to hear. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MELODEATH WEEK: THE ARCANE ORDER

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 032011
 

(TheMadIsraeli reaches new heights of fanboy-dom in this latest installment of his Melodeath Week series, shining the spotlight on Denmark’s The Arcane Order.)

Just listen to this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-6ZDxBkt0g

I think I could honestly end this article right here, but I’m a fan boy for this band, so I have to gush a bit. (gushing, and a lot more music, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

VALLENFYRE UPDATE

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Sep 022011
 

About five days ago we ran a post about a mysterious new UK death metal band called Vallenfyre who had recently signed to Century Media basically on the strength of a two-song 7″ single. Granted, after listening to excerpts of that single, it became immediately apparent why a venerable label like Century had signed this band, because the music is motherfuckin’ titanic.

In that earlier post (which generated quite a lot of interest as it turns out), I explained that despite hunting high and low over the trails of the interwebs, I had found very damn little information about the band. At the end of the post, I ventured a guess, based on the maturity of the music and appearance of the band members that they “have been metalling for a while, with other outfits.”

Well, holy fuck, was that a good guess. Today, Century Media released some additional details about Vallenfyre. For example, here’s who is in the band:

* Gregor Mackintosh (PARADISE LOST) – Vocals and Lead Guitar
* Hamish Glencross (MY DYING BRIDE) – Rhythm and Lead Guitars
* Mully – Rhythm Guitars
* Scoot (DOOM, EXTINCTION OF MANKIND) – Bass
* Adrian Erlandsson (AT THE GATES, PARADISE LOST) – Drums

Good lord, is that an impressive collection of talent or what. And coincidentally, it wasn’t so long ago that we posted a feature about Adrian Erlandsson and his brother Daniel (here). But wait, there’s more: Vallenfyre’s debut album, A Fragile King, will be released on October 31 in Europe and on November 1 in NorthAm. And there’s still more (after the jump). Continue reading »

ORPHANED LAND

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Sep 022011
 

(Today is a day for guest contributions, and this one is from ElvisShotJFK, who has been a friend of this site and an insightful commenter almost since the beginning of NCS. And there will be more to come from him next week . . .)

It’s no secret that I am quite fond of the stuff deemed Oriental metal or Middle-Eastern metal. There’s something about it, beyond the music itself, that I find myself drawn to for some reason. The band that is most directly responsible for this would be Orphaned Land.

Mabool is one of those albums that made me aware of music I hadn’t really heard before and gave me reason to explore the music of other bands from the region. And of course, I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR. I wasn’t fond of the title, but as Mabool had proved to me before, one shouldn’t judge an album by its title; ORwarriOR met my expectations and even exceeded some.

For a metal band to thrive in the Middle East is quite an accomplishment. Orphaned Land had disbanded after their second release, but they had a loyal fan following brought together by the internet, which helped convince singer Kobi Farhi to bring the band back together. With a new record deal, Mabool was the impressive result that they needed.

One of the things about Orphaned Land’s fans is that they have been able to put aside many of their differences – real and perceived – to come together under the banner of metal. Regardless of the generations-old hatred that is still passed on and on, Arabs and Jews have gathered together, singing in each other’s languages and getting along.  Much better than the shit we usually hear about on the news. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MELODEATH WEEK: THE ABSENCE

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Sep 022011
 

(TheMadIsraeli delivers the next installment of his Melodeath Week series.)

Now we get into the real meat and potatoes. This is the shit I LOVE out of this list. So without further ado…

The Absence is pretty easy to sum up. Mix At The Gates with early In Flames and you have this band in a nutshell. From Your Grave, for a debut, was vicious, sharp, and aiming for the throat. This band was obviously out for blood at the time, having the problem to overcome of being an American melodeath band.

From Your Grave is fast, technical, and memorable in all the right ways. Somehow The Absence found a way to take the brutality and dark riffing of At The Gates and counterbalance it with In Flames sense of guitar harmonies and emotive melodies. As the album’s intro plays, with that somber sole riff in the distance and the harmony coming into it, you’re being lured you into the assault of the official opener “A Breath Beneath”.

This album is full of riffs. Chock-fucking-full. You’ll remember every single one of them and want to hear them on repeat. Guitar duo Patrick Pintavalle and Peter Joseph perform with each other as if they’re one entity. It’s rare to hear two guitarists who write dual guitar parts THIS seamless. Picking the harmonies at the right time is a huge thing for me on this album.  In fact, everything occurs at the right place, at the right time.

Most of you will already know this band, but if you don’t, learning about them now might serve you well. These guys BLEED melodic death metal. Listen after the jump . . . Continue reading »

A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR YOUR LABOR DAY UN-LABOR

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Sep 022011
 

There’s something about the lure of free metal. I suppose, in a sense, all metal is free these days if you’re willing to torrent it, but I’m talking about metal that’s intended to be free. And the subject of this post is intentionally free metal from Victory Records — a Labor Day Sampler that includes tracks from 16 different bands.

What caught my eye about this offer is the second song on the sampler — since by coincidence it’s the Pathology track we featured in our last post yesterday — “Media Consumption” — from their as-yet-unreleased second album. The sampler also includes a demo track from God Forbid plus tunes from the likes of Jungle Rot, Ringworm, Within the Ruins, Carnifex, and Snapcase, just to mention the bands that interest me the most.

After the jump, we’ll show you the complete run-down of the sampler’s 16 tracks. To download it, visit the Victory Records facebook page here, where you’ll have to “like” them to access the download. Continue reading »

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