NECROWRETCH: “PUTREFACTIVE INFESTATION”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 082012
 

Can you name the band signed most recently by the venerable Century Media Records? Well, you’re looking at them. They’re from Valence, France, and they go by the name NecroWretch. And here’s where you say, “Necro who?”

In their careers as musicians, they’ve led something of a charmed life. Before being signed by one of the largest and most prestigious of metal labels, they had produced a grand total of two demos (in 2009 and 2010) and a four-song EP in 2011 — Putrefactive Infestation. The signing announcement came yesterday and it included this quote from Jens Prüter, head of A&R at Century Media Europe: “The Putrefactive Infestation 12″ dominated my turntable for some months and I’m sure the upcoming album will be as sick and heavy!”

Yes, of course, there will be a forthcoming album — though it hasn’t been written yet. The label that released the 2011 EP (Detest Records) first plans to release a 7″ NecroWretch EP titled Now You’re In Hell on March 10 at Asphyx’s album release party at the Turock club in Essen, Germany, where NecroWretch will also be performing. That new EP will include an original NecroWretch song and a Death cover.

Of course, I became curious about the Putrefactive Infestation EP — this four-song collection that landed an unheralded French death metal band on Century Media. I tracked it down and spent time listening to it yesterday, and it’s a very promising find — an authentic throw-back shrouded in cemetery stench and Sunlight Studio sonics, flavored with hair-raising blackened vocals and, of all things, hooky (but evil) melodies. Continue reading »

VIDEO VIOLENCE: BENIGHTED’S “LET THE BLOOD SPILL BETWEEN MY BROKEN TEETH”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

We didn’t review Asylum Cave, the 2011 Season of Mist album by France’s Benighted. Nevertheless, it was one of the most blistering death/grind albums of last year. Today, we got a reminder of that when the band released their official video for “Let the Blood Spill Between My Teeth” — which is such a vividly descriptive title not only for this particular song, but also for what happens to most people when they hear it.

It is for songs such as this that we keep close at hand the patented NCS rawhide chew, which allows us to listen comfortably without biting through our tongues.

Such a great song. It unexpectedly moves from fast to blazing, and then back to merely fast, like a speed-shifting, coked-to-the-eyes Formula One driver with a behemoth engine behind him and an open road in front . Within the great blur of this tightly controlled but utterly bestial song, the band even manage to spin out an unexpectedly melodic passage, and stomp their whirlwind delivery with gut-shaking grooves that make it stand out even more.

I confess that I’m not entirely sure what’s happening in the parts of the well-made video that don’t involve the band whipping up a whirlwind of sound, except it seems to involve blood and a death (but what else did you expect?). If you don’t have a good rawhide chew handy, proceed with caution, but do check out the video after the jump. Continue reading »

THEMADISRAELI’S TOP 20 ALBUMS OF ALL TIME: KILLSWITCH ENGAGE – “ALIVE OR JUST BREATHING”

 Album Reviews  15 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

(Yesterday, a new splash-page photo greeted visitors to the official web page of Killswitch Engage — part of which you will see after the jump in this post. It shows a new figure front-and-center in the line-up, Jesse Leach apparently back in the fold. So, it’s fitting that today we’re launching TheMadIsraeli’s series on his all-time favorite albums with this post on a record by Jesse Leach-fronted Killswitch Engage.)

This is the beginning. This will be my Top 20 albums of all time.  Yes, an all-time list — the bane of any music lover, including me, but I cannot deny the effect that certain albums have had on me.  Whether because of their musical merit or more personal connections, I’ve never been able to drop these 20. No other albums in recent memory, no matter how good, have come close to knocking these off their pedestals.

I originally chose from a pool of 50, and from among those I’ve had  a list of 20 planned out for a while, though a few of those have changed as I’ve thought more about it (although the majority have been forever constant).

It’s fitting that I should start the series with this album on this day, given the recent signs that KSE’s original vocalist Jesse Leach has returned to the band. For me and many others, that’s a sign of hope that Killswitch Engage will finally rise back up to metalcore prominence.  Maybe it won’t, maybe I’m just nostalgia-driven at the moment. We’ll see.

When Alive Or Just Breathing emerged in 2002, I had just made my official transition into metalhood.  I had abandoned my shameful nu metal past and adopted the ways of the brutal and the fast.  The first two metal albums I ever bought (at the same time no less) were Slayer’s Reign In Blood and In Flames’ Whoracle.  This was around 2001-2002, I can’t remember exactly.  What is important is that the metalcore movement was about to take its first steps into prominence. Continue reading »

CANNIBAL CORPSE: THE U.S. TORTURE TOUR

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

 

Cannibal Corpse will be headlining SUMMER SLAUGHTER this summer and they’re about to leave for a tour of Europe. But in between those events, they’ll be headlining a 23-city tour of the U.S. beginning in April.

Today, the band announced the U.S. Torture Tour 2012, sponsored by Metal Blade Records, Good Fight Entertainment, and dB Drum Shoes. It starts on April 5 in Jacksonville, Florida, and ends in Gainesville, Florida, on May 3.

Their support on this tour is first-class: Exhumed, Abysmal Dawn, and Arkaik. That will be a must-see show for death metalheads within spitting distance of any tour stop. Sadly, yours truly will be missing this tour, because the closest it will get to the Pacific Northwest is Colorado, and I can’t spit that far.

The full schedule is after the jump. Continue reading »

THE 11TH HOUR: “LACRIMA MORTIS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

(Today, NCS reader/commenter KevinP review Lacrima Mortis, the new album by The 11th Hour, which is being released today in the U.S. The album was written, performed, and produced by Ed Warby (Gorefest, Hail of Bullets), with harsh vocals provided by Pim Blankenstein of Officium Triste.)

I’ll admit to being a Warby Weenie.  I love Gorefest as well as Hail of Bullets, so I followed the production process of this album (via  Facebook) more than any other album before.  I was naturally excited for its release, but also a bit worried, as I had hyped it up in my mind.  Most albums never quite match my expectations and they seem like a letdown initially.  I’m happy to say this is one of those rare instances where the hype was exceeded.

What you get here is 52 minutes of doomy death metal across 7 tracks, filled with clean and harsh vocals, soulful piano melodies, along with some (dare I say) uplifting guitar riffs.  It does everything the first album did and improves upon it 10-fold.  This is the way you want a band to improve:  Stay true to their sound and keep polishing and refining.  Frankly, this album is so stunning, I have no idea where they go from here.  It will be a daunting task to follow up.

I can’t pinpoint any specific song over the others, as the entire album is so strong, everything about it just works and falls into place.  And if I sound overly “gaga” about this, I AM.  I don’t find many doomy death records you can just put on over and over again and enjoy this much. Continue reading »

WATCH STAM1NA’S NEW VIDEO; LOSE YOUR SHIT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

Timeline of my exposure to Stam1na:

Dec. 8, 2010: During our Finland Tribute Week series more than a year ago, Stam1na was recommended to us in a comment. Stupidly, I didn’t check them out.

July 14, 2011: Finnish NCS reader jeimssi leaves a comment pushing Stam1na, with links to sample songs. I have a vague recollection of listening to one of them and planning to write about them. Something must have distracted me, because I didn’t.

Dec. 14, 2011: During the NCS year-end Listmania, our Finnish guest fireangel names two Stam1na songs to her list of favorites from 2011. She wrote: “Stam1na have a huge following in Finland; they were founded in 1996 and  nowadays they are one of the biggest and best-selling metal acts. What I like about them is the mix of excellent musicianship, very obscure humour, and outspokenness regarding the protection of nature.”

Feb. 5, 2012: jeimssi takes a break from his compulsory military service to tell us in a comment that Stam1na are releasing a new album that he’s greatly anticipating. I follow up on that and discover that the new album, Nocebo, is being released in Finland tomorrow.

Feb. 6: Heavy Blog Is Heavy publishes a post about a new Stam1na video for the first single from the album, “Valtiaan uudet vaateet”, which is Finnish for “I’m about to get really fucked up”.

I watch the new video, and lose my shit. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: VISCERAL THRONE AND MARCO HASMAN

 Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

This is the second EYE-CATCHERS feature in as many days. In yesterday’s installment, we reported on new cover art for a forthcoming album from a band whose music we know — 16. In this post, we’re returning to the original intent of the EYE-CATCHERS series: using cool album art as a guide to finding music from bands we don’t know.

In this case, the album art was created by the talented Italian artist Marco Hasman. We’ve featured his artwork before at NCS, in posts about albums from Fleshgod Apocalypse, Beyond Creation, and Blasphemer. This time, his work will grace the cover of a debut record by a band from Evansville, Indiana, named Visceral Throne. The album is called Omnipotent Asperity and it will be released by Brutal Bands at some point later this year.

What Visceral Throne produced before that album was a two-song, 2010 demo. Both of those songs appear on the track list for the album; don’t know if they’ve been re-recorded for the album. The demo versions are still available for free download via Bandcamp (HERE), though that option will close once the album is released.

Let me attempt to describe the two songs without using the word brutal: barbarous, bloodthirsty, ferocious, heartless, inhuman, insensitive, merciless, pitiless, remorseless, rough, rude, ruthless, savage, severe, vicious, and impolite. Continue reading »

ANOTHER NEW CANNIBAL CORPSE SONG: “SCOURGE OF IRON”

 Metal News  13 Responses »
Feb 062012
 

I guess every carnivore knows by now that Torture, the next album by Cannibal Corpse, is slated for North American release through Metal Blade Records on March 13, 2012. One song has already premiered, and today Metal Blade gave the honor of releasing a second track to that bible of bile, that everyman’s guide to the filthy underbelly of the underground, that harbinger of hellish death metal . . . REVOLVER magazine.

Yeah, go figure.

Anyway, the new song is called “Scourge of Iron”. It’s an exclusive premiere, so I’m unable to embed it here — which means that to listen, you’ll have to hold your nose and go visit the Revolver site (HERE), where you will be greeted by two of “the hottest chicks in metal” flanking the Cannibal Corpse audio player, along with links to the latest news about Modern Day Escape, Shinedown, and Guns ‘N’ Roses. Sigh.

But in my humble opinion the nose-holding trip is worth it, cuz the song is a brain-stomper. It’s the flip-side of the first song (“Demented Aggression”) — slow, grisly, pounding, putrid, and featuring a truly diseased guitar solo. Truly diseased.

ALBUM NEWS FROM BEFORE THE DAWN AND MARDUK

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Feb 062012
 

If someone were to ask me, “Why is Finnish metal so awesome?”, I would answer, “Because it’s metal from Finland, you dork!” — and then I’d give the Nerd Laugh, the one that’s part snort and all-knowing. And if I were being asked by a big hairy dude with no nerd sense of humor, I’d follow that quickly with some examples, one of which would be Before the Dawn.

The band was started in 1999 by the prolific Tuomas Saukkonen (also a member of Black Sun Aeon, Dawn of Solace, and RoutaSielu), and their 2011 album (their sixth), Deathstar Rising, was one of our favorites (I also named a song from the album to our list of 2011’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs — here).  Their combination of hard-driving riffs and dark, beautiful, hook-filled melodies is a great example of the kind of gothic melodic death metal at which the Finns have excelled.

Part of the band’s appeal has been the one-two vocal punch delivered by Saukkonen (whose harsh delivery is killer) and bass player Lars Eikind. Elkind is gone, unfortunately, but of course that hasn’t stopped Saukkonen for a minute. Here’s a January 25 note posted by the band (which I only just saw, thanks to a tip from KevinP):

Finnish melancholic melodic death metal outfit BEFORE THE DAWN returns after living through a phase of changes and uncertainty – cleansed, renewed and stronger than ever! Leaving pieces of both the musical and personal past behind, mastermind Tuomas Saukkonen, lead guitarist Juho Räihä and their new companions get ready for conquering your ears with the finest blend of northern gloom and harsh melodic death metal.

Their seventh studio album and at the same time second release via Nuclear Blast Records is entitled “Rise Of The Phoenix” and will arise from the ashes on the 27th of April 2012!

Very welcome news indeed. After the jump, the track list . . . and news about the next Marduk album. Continue reading »

BLEEDING THROUGH: “THE GREAT FIRE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 062012
 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album from Orange County’s Bleeding Through, which is out now on Rise Records.)

Anyone who was around when the metalcore explosion was happening and followed its development should know who Bleeding Through are.  Their revolutionary (and unmatched to this day) combination of hardcore brawn, black metal venom, thrash metal fanaticism, and death metal brutality — all with symphonic overlays courtesy of the only female keyboardist in metal worth a living fuck — has yet to get old for me.

I remember when people were pronouncing Bleeding Through’s demise when founding guitarist Scott Danough left the band after The Truth and thought they would start sucking, but Bleeding Through has been proving everyone wrong ever since, writing their best material on their last two albums, Declaration (2008) and Bleeding Through (2010), which showed that Scott apparently didn’t have much to do with the song-writing process at all.  So what’s the verdict on this band’s new album The Great Fire?

This is their most brutal yet most experimental effort yet.

This is a much faster, much more visceral and frantic Bleeding Through than we’ve ever heard before.  At the same time, this is also the oddest Bleeding Through, mainly due to Marta Peterson’s new-found sense of adventurism in the keyboard and symphonic department.  Adding instruments and sounds that were begging to be incorporated into Bleeding Through’s music — organs, harpsichords, fucking electronic-as-all-get-out pad sounds that are lo-fi as shit — she has helped create a much more blackened atmosphere than has been heard before. Continue reading »

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