UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON: WHAT’S NEW FOR 2012

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 302012
 

 

(NCS guest contributor SurgicalBrute keeping it real with a collection of alerts about forthcoming releases from four underground bands — Maveth (Finland), Ketzer (Germany), Witchrist (NZ), and Anhedonist (Seattle) — plus examples of music from the featured bands.)

Another year is done, and everyone’s “best of” opinion has been given. So what’s a metalhead to do? Well, you forget about everything you got in 2011 and start looking forward to 2012.

A few big names are already being thrown around, some of whom are personal favorites (Desaster, Evoken, fucking Asphyx) and some of whom are enjoyed by the wider community (Meshuggah, Testament, Neurosis). So, with another potentially strong year ahead of us, here’s a few more bands to keep your eye on

MAVETH

Unholy blackened death, Maveth is composed of 3/5 of Finnish death metal band Cryptborn (one of my personal Best of 2011 picks). Mixing killer blast beats with some surprisingly melodic riffs, they never really let one style dominate, equally taking the best from both genres. Maveth’s first full length has yet to receive a release date.  (Maveth music right after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MONDVOLLAND: “PESTVOGEL”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jan 292012
 

For most of today, I’ve felt like killing myself. Not because I’m depressed — I’m one of the least depressed people I know — but because I partied beyond my limits last night and have been paying for it with a cataclysmic hangover. It’s one of those hangovers that’s so vicious, I suspect it will still be punishing me when I wake up tomorrow, too. Correction, not when, but if I wake up, because the fucker is so vile that death has seemed like an attractive alternative.

But things are looking up. I’ve had a crisis intervention, a reminder of why continuing to live is worthwhile: I listened to a brand new, free, three-song EP by a Dutch band called Mondvolland. The name of the EP is Pestvogel, which means “plague birds”, and which coincidentally is the avian species that I believe has been roosting in my head all day. Pestvogel is stupendously good; in fact, I can testify that it has life-saving properties.

Mondvolland was formed in 2005 by Martijn on guitars and vocals and Mickeal (Heidevolk session member) on bass and vocals. They released a debut album in 2010 called d’Olde Roop. I’ve not heard it, but I gather from reading about it that the music was in the vein of blackened folk metal. Pestvogel, then, represents a change in direction, a turn toward more thoroughly blackened music. The band also now features a second guitarist (Harold) and Kampfar’s drummer, Ask.

I fell for the title track, “Pestvogel”, in the first 20 seconds. The immediately infectious riff, the big, rumbling bass, the pounding drums — they hooked me from the get-go. The rest of the song was a big payoff, too. The music is hard-charging and dynamically varied. The vocals effectively combine traditional, raking, black-metal howls and folkish clean vocals; the guitar tones and styles range from hammering rhythm chords to whirring, tremolo melodies, to clean guitar leads; the drums move from solid, rock-style beats to a blur of blasting; and that rumbling bass is never far away. It’s just a dynamite song. Continue reading »

XII BOAR: “SPLIT TONGUE, CLOVEN HOOF”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Jan 292012
 

(groverXIII brings us this introduction to a band who, as you can see, has fine taste in cover art as well as fine taste in band names.)

When it comes to stoner metal, above all else, the riff is king. Bands like High On Fire, Weedeater, and Down know this well and adhere tightly to the discipline of the almighty riff, and relative newcomers XII Boar have taken this knowledge to heart.

You may remember XII Boar from a brief mention on my 2011 year-end list, specifically in the EP section, for their 2011 release XII. Well, they’ve already firmly established themselves a spot on my 2012 list with their new EP Split Tongue, Cloven Hoof, another fantastic four-track EP of kick-you-square-in-the-dick stoner metal.

In describing XII Boar’s music, I described them as “a mix of High On Fire and Motörhead”, and that label certainly applies. The EP starts off with the breakneck pace of ‘Smokin’ Bones’, a track that carries more of the Motörhead influence mixed with a bit of straight-ahead stoner rock and some bluesy guitar licks. They up the intensity even more with the blistering riffing of the aptly-named “Hellspeed Viper”, a track that plays to the High On Fire influence in their sound. Guitarist/vocalist Tommy Hardrocks does his best impression of Matt Pike’s whiskey-cigarettes-and-broken-glass vocals as the rhythm section of Bad-Dog Williams and Dave “Couldn’t Think Of A Cool Stage Name” Wilbraham propel the track along, then slow down to a crawl for an extremely doomy, sludgy section that is more akin to Sleep or Goatsnake. Continue reading »

RIVERS OF NIHIL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 292012
 

(NCS guest contributor The Baby Killer is back with us again, this time with an introduction to Rivers of Nihil.)

There’s a reason why people say if you want to find some of the best music, look to the underground. That’s where you’ll find bands who aren’t playing for a paycheck or releasing the same predictable, formulaic album over and over again, bands who are playing simply because they love what they do and want to be heard. To put it simply, underground bands just try harder, and once in a while a genuinely gifted act comes along that stands head and shoulders above the competition. Reading, Pennsylvania’s own Rivers of Nihil is one such band.

Now there are plenty of local unsigned acts who can write cool riffs and get your head bobbin’ and your feet tappin’, but it takes something really special to make you sit back and say, “Holy shit, that’s a bunch of locals playing that?” Rivers do just that with their personal brand of technical death metal, a unique blend of Aborted, The Red Chord, and a splash of Diminishing Between Worlds-era Decrepit Birth.

It’s certainly fast and heavy enough to keep the pits moving, but it also has just the right amount of atmosphere and melody to keep you interested the whole time. Blast beats and bass diddily-doo’s abound without being overbearing, and the guitars and harsh, almost-hardcore-but-not-quite vocals keep everything grounded. Continue reading »

BANDS YOU NEED TO HEAR: HACKTIVIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  87 Responses »
Jan 282012
 

(TheMadIsraeli returns with another quick heads-up about . . . something different from an English band called Hacktivist.)

I am either about to be extremely surprised or lose all metal credibility in front of all of you.

Rewind to the 90’s and early, early 2000’s.

I know, I know. You wonder to yourself why do I assail you with such trauma? Why have I caused your soul such ache? Why doth I penetrate thy conscience with such unfathomable knives of contempt!? Continue reading »

KEYBOARD WARRIORS: ERIK THOMAS

 Interviews  16 Responses »
Jan 282012
 

 

 (Rev. Will’s interview series focusing on metal bloggers and metal print journalists continues today with Erik Thomas, one of the founders of Teeth of the Divine.)

Finding a part-time metal writer with a day job that freakin’ deals with the law is like fantasizing about the existence of a zealous Christian pastor who has an obsession with researching about witchcraft—it is just a combination that comes off as extremely unlikely and weird to many. Well, such a weird occurance does exist.

A law enforcer by day, and a metal writer by night, Erik Thomas is not only one of the founders of Teeth Of The Divine (one of the Internet’s leading metal e-zines), but an ex-contributor to the now-defunct Metal Maniacs magazine and a current writer for Hails & Horns magazine as well. He has a family to boot! It’s just so cool when Papa writes about metal, isn’t it?

From his Missouri dwelling, the fervent devourer of traditional Swedish death metal sheds some light on the workings of Teeth Of The Divine and some of the social stigmas of metal—a topic banally discussed on various metal and non-metal news media during the days of yore.

Also, he is one of the last few surviving robots from the same batch as Islander, only with much more than a head missing than our benign NCS editor. Both of them may be old, but check out their cool arm tattoos! A legacy of and testament to their robotic past (perhaps they are cyborgs now), these unique markers were originally meant as identifiers, something very much akin to a barcode. Luckily for them though, they are fashionable statements now that just scream “Hot geezer alert!”. Continue reading »

GRIND TIME: A CARCASS BOOTLEG PLUS SLASH DEMENTIA

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jan 282012
 

The unifying thread of this post is a connection between the old and the new — as well as the sound of the “old” when it was brand new. The featured bands are Carcass (UK) and Slash Dementia (Finland).

CARCASS

The first Carcass music I heard was their 1993 album, Heartwork. Only later did I learn that what I thought was a melodic death metal band started life as a d-beat riding, gore-splattered, death-grind act who were in fact one of the pioneering bands in the evolution of that genre.

The band’s original name was Disattack. After the name change to Carcass, they released their debut album, Reek of Putrefaction, on Earache Records in 1988 after only four days in the recording studio. Although they weren’t happy with the outcome, that album “reached #6 on the UK Indie Chart, establishing Carcass as one of the pioneers of the grindcore genre” (per The Font of All Human Knowledge).

All of this is relevant background to what I stumbled across last night at CVLT NATION — a free download and album stream of a live performance by Carcass in the year of their album debut, 1988. Continue reading »

AUTOPSY UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

Yes, we approve this cover art for Autopsy’s next album of body parts. Mind you, no one sought our approval, but we grant it willingly, because this cover by Matt Cavotta includes all the food groups: bat wings, vulture heads, horns, tusks, a snake head, a sickle, a hatchet, a scorpion’s tail, a rib cage dripping with gore, and blood. But best of all, it includes the name AUTOPSY.

All Tomorrow’s Funerals is a collection of all of Autopsy’s past EPs in re-mastered form, plus four brand new songs — the first new Autopsy music since 2011’s wonderful album, The Macabre Eternal. Peaceville Records will be releasing it on February 28, which sounds like something of an oxymoron, because this album will certainly bring no one any peace.

One of the four new tracks, “Mauled To Death”, was included in unmastered form as a Decibel magazine Flexi disk not long ago, and it’s available for streaming on a SoundCloud player that we’ve embedded after the jump, just because even a news item like this one should not be allowed to appear at NCS without some kind of grisly music to accompany it. And believe me, this is grisly death metal straight from the crypt, crawling along at a lurching pace, surrounded by an air of lowering doom.

The track list for All Tomorrow’s Funerals is also after the jump. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM PELICAN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

The last release from Chicago’s Pelican came almost two years ago — What We All Come To Need. Word of new music has been circulating for a while, and today we can hear it.

Pelican’s new EP is called Ataraxia/Taraxis, and it will be released by Southern Lord on April 10. But Pelican has established a Bandcamp page that’s now streaming one of the EP’s four songs — “Lathe Biosas”.  On top of that, you can download that track for free by visiting Spin.com or via the Pelican Bandcamp site here.

The band characterizes the new EP as an “experiment” — the first release that they built “by recording in multiple studios (often not with one another) and compiling the results”. Most of the recording was done by the talented Sanford Parker, and he also handled the mixing.

After the jump, you can listen to the new song, “Lathe Biosas”. I’m writing about this and including the song stream for the usual and obvious reason — because I like it very much, and because I’ve become a fan of this band after seeing them live in Seattle for the first time last year. The song is a sweet jam of ringing, chiming, hammering, crushing music. Check it after the jump and let us know what you think. Continue reading »

BANDS YOU NEED TO HEAR: OBLIVION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

(TheMadIsraeli has a quick tip for you.)

Oblivion is a Bay Area band seemingly coming out of nowhere who are poised to take the death metal world by storm this year, playing a no-holds-barred, spine-crushing brand of insatiably bestial tech death that raises corpses from tombs, worms from rot, and blood from victims. After the jump are videos of portions of songs from their self-titled demo that I will be reviewing soon.

In the meantime, enjoy what you hear, and discuss. This demo is meant to serve as a teaser for their upcoming debut The Reclamation, due out later this Spring. Continue reading »

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