GOJIRA: “L’ENFANT SAUVAGE” (A Review By Islander)

 Album Reviews  23 Responses »
Jun 262012
 

How very difficult it is, in a metal landscape more saturated with music than ever before, to establish a distinctive sound — so distinctive that even brief excerpts from any randomly chosen song will shout the band’s name. How much more difficult it must be for a band who have accomplished that feat to move forward, to create something that’s genuinely new (and riveting) without sacrificing the character of the music that makes it so instantly recognizable. Yet that’s the trick that Gojira have pulled off on their new album L’Enfant Sauvage.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has closely followed Gojira’s meteoric trajectory. From one album to the next, the Duplantier brothers and their comrades Jean-Michel Labadie and Christian Andreu have displayed consistent intelligence, attention to detail, and consummate craftsmanship both in composing their works and in performing them. Refreshingly, they have persisted in following their own muse, without pandering to trends or commercial inducements. They’ve become popular without grasping for popularity, both challenging listeners and pleasing them, evolving along a path they’ve carved for themselves while pulling increasing numbers of slobbering fans along in the vortex of their slipstream.

The essential ingredients of Gojira’s sound are all present in the new songs: the stomping syncopated rhythms and odd time signatures; Mario Duplantier’s complex, off-kilter percussion; the squealing whine of a harmonic pickslide; the use of repeating, hypnotic, imminently headbangable riffs; the dominance of dissonance that still leaves room for head-grabbing melodies; the attention to mood-altering dynamics and a penchant for experimentation; and Joe Duplantier’s distinctive mid-range howl that’s somehow capable of carrying a melody as well as clawing flesh.

And of course, the music is still some of the heaviest matter in the universe: it crushes, while leaving that distinctive Gojira stamp on your mangled carcass.

Yet L’Enfant Sauvage holds surprises in store that make the album intriguing as well as pulverizing, like veins of gold that sparkle unexpectedly in a deep, well-mined strike. Continue reading »

DYING FETUS: “REIGN SUPREME”

 Album Reviews  24 Responses »
Jun 252012
 

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album from Dying Fetus.)

Let’s just face it: Dying Fetus are the shit.  I mean, this band has it all:  bestial vocals, explosively propulsive drum work, and utterly punishing grooves and riffs that drive listeners into every possible brain-suffocating convulsion imaginable.  Everything that good death metal should be has always been contained in the package that is Dying Fetus.

We all know this band has endured some membership changes, of course. John Gallagher has had a hard time maintaining a consistent lineup to assist in his brutality crusade.  The only member who’s been long-standing since the departure of the Destroy The Opposition lineup has been bassist, and now also high-end vocalist, Sean Beasley, who joined the band at Stop At Nothing and has soldiered on since.  Gallagher and Beasley have really become the focal point of Dying Fetus.  Trey Williams, drummer on Descend Into Depravity, is still here as well, the first drummer Gallagher has managed to keep for more than one album since Kevin Talley.

I admire Gallagher’s iron will to press on and persevere; the music he writes is still some of the most technically apt, precision-guided, hammer-to-the-skull death metal I’ve ever heard.  I don’t think there is a single Fetus album I would tell you is bad, mediocre, or even merely good.  They’re all excellent. But Reign Supreme is, in few words, a perfect album. Continue reading »

THE STRANDED: “SURVIVALISM BOULEVARD”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jun 252012
 

(In this post, DGR reviews the debut album by The Stranded, which is available on Coroner Records.)

The Stranded are an interesting proposition from a musical standpoint. They’re a new group, formed by the two men responsible for Disarmonia Mundi, an Italian melo-death/groove metal project alongside keyboardist Allesio NeroArgento and pro skateboarder Elliot Sloan. Elliot plays guitar and bass on this record, with the two DM gentlemen (Ettore Rigotti and Claudio Ravinale) taking responsibility for the vocals, drums and guitars. You can pretty much figure out why I jumped onto this group’s bandwagon early on, considering my deep and abiding love for DM’s Isolation Game release. It has also been close to three years since that disc hit.

The story behind how this band formed has to be interesting. I wonder who contacted whom when this band was just beginning, and how Elliot found himself involved with this specific group of guys. They are still a melodeath band, but the addition of a dedicated key player has brought them closer to what most people are familiar with after listening to groups such as Dark Tranquillity. They announced their formation late last year, and for a while it was a pretty slow drip feed of information. However, we now have a full release from The Stranded, and it is interesting, to say the least.

Survivalism Boulevard is an album that ping-pongs back and forth between various styles, while still staying somewhat familiar at its core. The presence of someone new in a full keyboard position does quite a bit to change things up. Many of the hooks on this album are delivered via the keyboard, a couple of them cheesier than all get out and others fitting in perfectly with the music. They produce the strange effect of making this project sound a little less ‘mature’ (probably a poor choice of words, maybe ‘refined’?) than what the guys in The Stranded are involved in usually. Continue reading »

MAGOA BRING THE GROOVE AND KVELERTAK BRING THE DRAGON

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 252012
 

To start this Monday off in style, we have two videos, one new and one that has become new again because it won a prize. And starting off a Monday in fine style is always a good goal, because I ain’t feelin’ too fuckin’ stylin’ on a Monday, and any kind of Monday style is a big goddamn plus, don’t you think?

MAGOA

This French band’s last song and video jumped me up like an electrode in the bunghole. Not that I would know what that feels like, mind you, but it seems like a fitting metaphor. Magoa’s “Animal” video is one of the best of the year, and if you haven’t seen it yet, by all means please go visit our earlier post about it. But as of yesterday, Magoa have a new song + video that is a bunghole insertion with extra voltage.

If there’s another modern band doing old-school groove metal with as much punch as Magoa, then I really want to hear about it. Their new song, “Enemy”, is like a brigade of machinists punching rivets through the steel girders of your thick skull. It really is the archetypal convulsive headbanger, a cleverly calculated formula for making people go into paroxysms of spastic neck-snapping.

And if that weren’t enough, it includes a hooky chorus and an old-school breakdown — by which I mean a breakdown that isn’t announced by a big fucking bass drop and one or two atonal chords. The production is just about perfect for this kind of metal — powerful, cathartic, and man, when the double bass comes alive, you’ll want to ram your head into the nearest wall. Even better, the song is a free download. Continue reading »

THIS SHIT WILL BLOW UP YOUR ASS

 That's Music -- But It's Not Metal  5 Responses »
Jun 242012
 

It appears we’ve driven the NCS funky train right off the rails today. I would offer apologies, but apologizing isn’t metal. The metal thing to say when you feel the impulse to apologize for something is “Fuck you, bitch”. So, fuck you, bitch.

Phro started this. To begin our day, he jumped the rails with that Head Asplody thing. Since the train is already barreling through the sticky underbrush of metalicized J-pop and red pandas, I feel entitled to bring you “Delorean” by FM Belfast before we get our engine back on the road to Hell.

Although the stainless-steel, gull-winged Delorean was actually manufactured in Belfast, FM Belfast are not from Belfast, nor even from Northern Ireland. They are from Iceland, which by itself may be enough to make this metal. There are other aspects of the band’s video for “Delorean” (which premiered on June 21 via IFC) that are kinda metal, such as the massively nerded-out collection of figures in the protagonist’s room (don’t blink or you’ll miss our on the Michelin man). I also couldn’t help but like the idea of this massive, bearded dude (portrayed by Njörður Njarðarson) collecting . . . well, you’ll see what he collects.

And then there’s the song itself. It’s synth-driven electro stuff that’s just fucked up enough to be intriguing, and man does it have a devilish hook embedded in it. Also, the first time I heard the chorus, I thought they were singing, “This shit will blow up your ass”. Continue reading »

HEAD ASPLODY

 Phro's Posts, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Jun 242012
 

“Metal Kitty” by bloodspit.

(This post was written by Phro. He brings us head asplody things.)

In the metal world, there seems to be a lot of anger, hate, filth, and skullfucking. I approve of this. In fact, I approve of this so hard that I sometimes get rage boners for no other reason than that I love how much negativity there is in the metal world. That said, a bit of humor goes a long way to making a good band a great band. And a shitty band an almost tolerable band.

But what we don’t have (for better or for worse) is much cuteness.

Now, that’s to be expected when you get a lot of misanthropes, bitter assholes, badasses, and posers all in the same general area. (I’ll let you decide for yourself which one of the four you are.) But, hey, it’s the weekend, so you have some free time to remove the corpse paint, take off the studded bracelets, hide in your room, and indulge in a little childish, high-pitched squealing and giggling.

BABY METAL

Baby Metal has released a new video. I love it. I’m not being ironic, sarcastic, or coy. It’s just fucking absolutely nothing more than shitty Jpop with a few rejected riffs and some random douchebag doing “death metal growls” in the background. But I still love it. (I may have brain damage.) Continue reading »

FESTIVAL-DEPRIVED METALHEADS REJOICE: GRASPOP IS STREAMING LIVE!

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jun 232012
 

More than once in NCS posts, I’ve bemoaned the fact that the good ole U.S. of A. is largely lacking in the kind of big, multi-day outdoor metal festivals that happen during the summer elsewhere in the world, and mainly in Europe. One of these days, I’m going to make the trek and take in the experience up close and personal. Until then, I’ll just bitch.

One of the biggest Euro festivals is going on right now in Dessel, Belgium: the Graspop Metal Meeting, 2012 edition. And earlier today I discovered the next best thing to being there: watching the festival on my computer in real time.

Yep, the Skynet.be web site is streaming most of the performances in high quality, as it happens, with multiple camera angles on the stage and in the audience. Just before pausing to write this post, I was watching All Shall Perish fuck shit up. Still to come tonight (based on the schedule I found at that site): Exodus, Comeback Kid, My Dying Bride, Fear Factory, and Pennywise. Dimmu Borgir is also on the schedule tonight, but it looks like that show won’t be streamed.

But check this out: At 7:50 pm (19:50) tomorrow night (June 24), Belgium time, Gojira will be performing! That’s 10:50 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.  Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET (AND FREE): VOID FORGER – “RUINED”

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jun 232012
 

Void Forger are a relatively new three-person band based in Bucharest, Romania, who contacted us recently with a request that we give their music a spin. They have a three-song demo called Ruined that’s available for streaming and free download at Bandcamp — and it’s a very pleasant surprise. The music has gravity, in two senses: (a) it’s heavier than a semi-truck loaded with concrete girders; and (b) both in its compositional elements and in its performance, it’s serious work that’s worthy of respect.

The music is also difficult to categorize. It’s a dark storm of doom and sludge punctuated with flashes of up-tempo grind, crust, and freaked-out noize, with the bleak atmospherics enhanced by cavernous, roaring vocals that barely sound human.

“Pointless Media” moves from doomy pound and crash to a rolling gait, interrupted by a flaming burst of grindcore-like mayhem before settling back into that black, grungy roll, the distorted guitars moaning  a diseased melody.

I’m a sucker for a heavy-assed bass solo, and we get one right near the beginning of “Relief” and then again later in the song. The music staggers and lurches and erupts in whirling frenzy, with a variety of guitar leads and solo’s enhancing the changes in momentum. It’s the most melodic of the three songs, and has become my favorite. Continue reading »

PRETTY PICTURES

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  9 Responses »
Jun 222012
 

Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I suppose people in our community have as varied a set of tastes in artwork as the rest of society at large, but when it comes to album art in particular, we’re off in a world unto ourselves. What we find “beautiful” in album art tends to fall on the ugly side of things. I think that’s because we look for album art that represents the dissonant, frequently voracious, often bleak sound of the music.

But even within the realm of extreme metal album art, there’s good and bad. Today I came across a collection of new artwork for forthcoming albums that I’d put on the good end of the scale . . . plus some works in progress by a well-known metal artist for album covers that are in the making.

The first example is the one you see above. It’s the just-disclosed artwork for the next album by long-running Swedish death metal band Grave, who happen to be one of my perennial favorites. The next album will be their 10th and is titled Endless Procession of Souls. It’s due for release in Europe on August 27 by Century Media. The artwork is by Costin Chioreanu, who also created the art for Grave’s last two albums. If you know anything about Grave’s music, you’ll appreciate how perfectly appropriate this creation is for their style of music. Beautiful. Continue reading »

VINTERSORG: “ORKAN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  11 Responses »
Jun 222012
 

(In the following review, Andy Synn assesses the new album by Sweden’s Vintersorg, which is set for North American release on July 10 by Napalm Records.)

A new Vintersorg album? Already? Well that’s always good news. And what’s even better is that Orkan continues the blackened folk vibe re-established first on Solens Rotter and then carried over to Jordpuls.

To be brutally honest with you, back when Vintersorg announced his participation in Borknagar (for 2001’s Empiricism) I was becoming concerned that the line between the two bands was starting to blur – the shinier, proggier stylings of Cosmic Genesis (still one of my all-time favourite albums) and its two successors weren’t all that far removed from the sounds of Empiricism and Epic. It didn’t help that Mr V’s vocals are amongst the most instantly recognisable in metal, often dominating proceedings and serving to tie the two groups a little too tightly to one another, giving neither the necessary room to breathe.

But all that changed with the release of Solens Rotter. A three-year break between albums saw the duo of Vintersorg and Marklund redefine their priorities to produce the first in what has turned out to be a return to the more rustic, folk-ish melodies and earthen black metal atmosphere of their earlier works,  musical miles away from the soaring, Pink Floydian blackened prog of Borknagar. Last year’s phenomenal Jordpuls continued the trend, actively improving on Solens Rotter in nearly every way, and now we are once more gifted with a new piece of blackened folk art in the form of Orkan. Continue reading »

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