SEEN AND HEARD: SEPULTURA, GYRE, UNKIND, SAKTMÓÐIGUR, DUNKELNACHT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jul 192013
 

The last few days brought many new discoveries that I thought were worth sharing. However, I haven’t had the chance until now because I’ve been dealing with the fallout caused by some asshole who smashed in a window on my car on a downtown Seattle street and stole a bag that contained my laptop and other valuables. Fuck that guy, and fuck me for being dumb enough to leave the bag in the car. Enough with the whining, onward with the metal . . .

SEPULTURA

This morning brought further news about the next album by Brazilian heavyweights Sepultura. Its title was inspired by Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 film Metropolis: The Mediator Between the Head and Hands Must Be the Heart. It was recorded by Ross Robinson, who also produced the band’s equally classic Roots album, and in an effort to cement the connection to past glories guitarist Andreas Kisser had this to say:

“The album is brutal, fast and straight to the point, I feel this is the best SEPULTURA ever, no bullshit. To work with Ross Robinson again was a privilege, one of the best producers out there. He has a strong connection with nature, the human heart, with life in general. We did an album that is alive, no fake studio tricks, we were jamming together in the room exploding in an energy so strong you could grab it.”

Of course, we wouldn’t expect him to say, “the new album is going to be a mediocre rehash and one of the lamest things ever to be released under the Sepultura name”, even if it were true. Yet the fact that he’s stuck his neck out there with this kind of a statement provides some reason to be hopeful. The album is due in October. Continue reading »

THE RESISTANCE: “SCARS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 192013
 

(DGR reviews the debut album by The Resistance, out now on Armoury Records.)

Everyone around these here parts knows I enjoy a bit of the melo-death scene, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that we were eventually going to come around to talking about The Resistance. It’s been a pretty good year for that scene, with a couple of groups firing on all cylinders for the first time in a long time and just dishing out absolutely amazing discs. When word got out that Jesper Stromblad of In Flames was involved in a group called The Resistance way back in late 2011/early 2012, I immediately perked up. I felt that he was responsible for a lot of the speed that In Flames had, and when he left, there was a big gap in that band’s sound. It seemed that he took the speed-playing with him to bands like Dimension Zero and now The Resistance.

The Resistance are something of a melo-death supergroup, composed of former (or once former and now current) members of groups such as The Haunted, In Flames, Carnal Forge, and many others. They’re a group formed of long-time veterans, so it’s not surprising how quickly the “supergroup” tag became affixed to them during the media blitz that lead up to this album’s release. Scars, which hit in late May, is a very solid slab of melo-death, but it also includes some other interesting ingredients as well.

Scars kicks off with “Clearing The Slate”, a pretty loud statement about what The Resistance are up to. It’s a quick, roughly two-minute flame-blast of pretty straightforward death. It sounds as if it were designed to rid the listener of prior expectations based on the previous band memberships of this group’s roster. However, things change the moment the vocals kick in, as The Haunted’s Marco Aro roars throughout the whole song, and by extension, the whole CD. Continue reading »

I TECH, THEREFORE I AM (PART 2): THE RISE OF ADULT-ORIENTED TECH METAL

 Mosh Pit  7 Responses »
Jul 192013
 

(Here’s Part 2 of Andy Synn’s two-part article, the first part of which you can read here.)

In part one of this short series of musings on the place of “technicality” in today’s metal world I made some short mentions about how the specificity and restrictive nature of the “Tech Death” moniker is often seen as a wholly negative epithet. However, you could equally say that it also grants those bands an instantly recognisable identity. You know it’s going to be “Tech” and it’s going to be “Death”, and the sheer brevity of the name gives you a clue that it’s going to be an all-out, no-frills assault on the senses. And sometimes that’s exactly what you’re looking for.

By contrast, however, there’s been a big thing for a while now of bands proclaiming themselves (or being proclaimed as) just “Tech Metal”. And I’m not entirely certain what to make of it. Certainly, the bands seem to be saying that they don’t fit within, and shouldn’t be associated with, any one particular sub-type of Metal (Thrash, Death, Black, etc) and they’re often right to make this distinction – after all, few things are more irritating than bands miscategorising themselves in an attempt to graft on some credibility. But this very lack of a specific identity seems to BE the identity for many of these bands. It’s as if the entire sub-genre is composed of left-overs.

Obviously, though, high-speed intensity is not the only way to display technicality in your music, and one thing indeed that defines much of the “Tech Metal” movement is a tendency for less extreme speeds (and less extremity overall), while retaining a similar level of complexity, particularly when it comes to shifting time-signatures and clever, often wonderfully complex, rhythmic transitions. Continue reading »

CONQUERING DYSTOPIA WANT YOUR MONEY (AND WHEN YOU SEE THE LINE-UP YOU WILL GIVE IT TO THEM)

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Jul 192013
 

Yes, my friends, yet another crowdfunding campaign has been launched by yet another band (Conquering Dystopia) who need help financing a recording. To be precise, they would like to raise $15,000, with most of the money going to professional audio mixing and mastering and the rest to be used for travel expenses and creating merch. And in less than a day they’ve already raised $12,301 as I write this.

When you see who’s in this band and the perks they’re offering for donations, you’ll understand why the money is already rolling in at such a fast pace. Here’s the line-up:

Jeff Loomis (guitars)
Keith Merrow (Demisery) (guitars)
Alex Webster (Cannibal Corpse) (bass)
Alex Rüdinger (The Faceless, Ordinance) (drums)

That’s an awful lot of metal goodness in one band. All the way back in January, Keith Merrow put up a Facebook status in which he said that he and Loomis had decided to collaborate on an album, but not many details have surfaced since then, until yesterday. Last month we featured a video jam by those two (plus Ola Englund), still not really knowing what was cooking. Now we know. Continue reading »

VARG VIKERNES FREED BY FRENCH POLICE AFTER FAILING TO FIND EVIDENCE OF A TERRORIST PLOT

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Jul 182013
 

Earlier this week we posted about the arrest of Burzum’s Varg Vikernes in France on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack. Based on reports at that time, the evidence justifying the arrest seemed thin. To close the loop on this story, French authorities have now released Varg after two days in custody.

According to news reports, the police failed to uncover evidence of any terrorist plot. However, it appears Varg will be charged with violating French law relating to incitement of racial hatred. If Varg’s writings violate French law, something about which I know nothing, it seems that such charges could have been brought long ago. This has the appearance of a face-saving maneuver, and though defending himself will no doubt be expensive, my guess is that Varg will relish the publicity, as well as the opportunity to write about his false arrest.

Here are excerpts of a July 18, BBC News report about Varg’s release:

“A Norwegian neo-Nazi musician has been released two days after he was arrested in central France on suspicion of “preparing a major terrorist act”.

Kristian Vikernes was arrested after his wife bought four rifles.

Officials say questioning of the suspect did not bring to light any evidence of a terrorist plot. Continue reading »

VULTURE INDUSTRIES: “THE TOWER”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 182013
 

Okay, it’s time to confuse people again (at this site we call things like this “Exceptions to the Rule”, but could just as easily classify them as “Seeds of Confusion”).

Vulture Industries are not strangers to these pages, though 18 months have passed since we last featured their music. They dwell in Bergen, Norway, population 270,000, and home to an astonishingly large number of talented metal bands given the city’s modest size. But it’s safe to say that Vulture Industries are unlike any other band from Bergen. In fact, I’m having some trouble thinking of anyone quite like them anywhere else in the world. Today they debuted (via the Pyro site on Norwegian national radio (NRK P3)) a lyric video for the title track to their forthcoming album The Tower, and it proves my point.

The music is a bombastic, theatrical, head-spinning thing. The excellent instrumental part of the music is sort of like a blend of melodic death metal, post-rock, and Broadway show-stopper, spun in an avant-garde centrifuge, and Bjørnar Erevik Nilsen’s mainly clean vocals will take you into the clouds. He sings, “It Soars!”, and his voice soars like you won’t believe. He also assumes a variety of other vocal personae in this allegorical song about the materialism of modern life in the Western world.

As eccentric and borderline-surreal as the song is, I found myself immediately riveted by it — and I do mean immediately, as in, from the first seconds. And the first thing I wanted to do after hearing it was hear it again. Continue reading »

REVOCATION: “REVOCATION”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 182013
 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new self-titled album by Boston’s Revocation. For another opinion, check out BadWolf’s review here.)

I’m pretty sure I should be in the ER right now for all the bones I just broke moshing and headbanging to this album, but duty calls.  Revocation’s S/T is pretty much the shit.  Maybe more than the shit.  Certainly their best album to date, most brutal, most technical, and just downright fucking nasty, grimy, and vicious in every way possible. Last year’s Teratogenesis EP in no way will have prepped you for this bad boy.  It takes no prisoners, it shows no mercy, I’m still trying to figure out how they managed to make an album this malicious and rabid.

Revocation, along with bands like Vektor and Sylosis, have really proved that one of the few ways (maybe the best way) for thrash metal to achieve legitimacy in the current world is to completely assimilate itself into death metal frameworks with jazz influences and black metal touches. In fact, this may be the new standard. I mean yeah, I heap praise upon bands like Evile and Havok, but I have no problem also saying that, as good as they are, they still pale in comparison to bands like Revocation — because bands like Revocation are paving the way for the future of metal as we will know it.

I know some observers already consider Revocation to be a “death metal” band per se, but I entirely disagree.  The band’s character is definitely more in line with thrash; the music is an organized anarchy, a barrage of Molotov cocktails and riot shields crashing into each other, the sound of civilizations collapsing beneath the frantic violence of life itself.  Nowhere is this more evident than on their new self-titled opus.  This record is chaotic as fuck and holds nothing but warriors’ pride in that fact. Continue reading »

REVOCATION: “REVOCATION”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jul 182013
 

(BadWolf reviews the new album by Revocation. For another opinion, check out TheMadIsraeli’s review here.)

You pick up a record, and find one phrase, even one word, on the cover—it sends a message. “This is a singular experience. This word is the definition of these sounds, and vice versa.” A self-titled album, then, should either be a band’s self-estimated masterpiece, or, at the very least, a record that best encompasses a band’s sound.

One should not self-title an album lightly—to do so is to make a major artistic statement frivolously. It’s like a superstition—a dicey proposition. I can think of four self-titled metal albums off the top of my head: Metallica’s 1991 blockbuster, Avenged Sevenfold’s best-forgotten stinker, and Killswitch Engage’s two(!) eponymous records. All four fail at defining those bands. Metallica will always first-and-foremost be the band that recorded Master of Puppets; Killswitch Engage will always be “That band with the black guy that did the heartbreak song.” (Sorry, Jesse Leach).

Enter Boston’s Revocation, releasing their self-titled record just in time for this year’s Summer Slaughter tour. While I don’t see Revocation reaching the mainstream-appeal of the aforementioned bands, it’s realistic at this point to see the band making records as a career for the foreseeable future. Unlike most other bands playing technical-melodic-death-thrash-insert-adjective metal, Revocation can craft a good tune, and have a certain general appeal as well.

That appeal is David Davidson, the band’s lead guitarist/vocalist/songwriter, whose distinctive harsh vocals and expressive guitar leads give Revocation something most modern metal bands absolutely lack—personality. Honestly, the band should just call the album “David Davidson” and be done with it. Continue reading »

JUCIFER: NEW VIDEO, NEW SONG, NEW ALBUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 172013
 

I’ve heard a lot of thoroughly pulverizing metal performed live, but I’ve yet to hear any band who are more gut-liquifying than Jucifer. In the one and only time I’ve managed to catch them live (despite the fact that they’ve been touring non-stop for almost two decades), my jaw hung open the entire set, even while mercilessly headbanging. I was too stunned to close it, not only because the decibels were threatening to un-do the structural integrity of my body but also because the husband-and-wife duo of Gazelle Amber Valentine and Edgar Livengood were so riveting to watch.

On July 17, Jucifer will be officially releasing their new album, with the Cyrillic title of за волгой для нас земли нет. It means “There is no land beyond the Volga”, though people are already just calling it “The Russian Album”. Inspired by the time Jucifer have spent in Russia as well as their longstanding interest in Russian history, it’s described as “a concept album dedicated to the people, events and geography of Volgograd – more famously known as Stalingrad”.

As noted, the new album will be released on July 17 in a limited edition 6-panel digipak, and digitally via Nomadic Fortress (Jucifer’s own imprint) and Mutants of the Monster – the label run by C.T. Farris of Rwake, and David Hall of Handshake Inc.  A vinyl version of the record, and North American retail CDs, will become available in October.

And now to the three main draws of this post. First, NPR has created a killing video of Jucifer laying waste to a D.C. venue in January with a medley consisting of “Throned In Blood” (from the album of the same name) bookended by two songs from the new album — “Pavlov’s House” and “Shame”. It’s really superb, and provides as good a sense as you’ll get of what it’s like to be confronted by Thee White Wall without experiencing it in the flesh. Continue reading »

WATAIN: “THE CHILD MUST DIE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jul 172013
 

Swedish black-metal horde Watain have a new album named The Wild Hunt coming on August 19 in Europe and August 20 in the US via Century Media Records. A two-track single (All That May Bleed) was released on June 21, and that was followed by the band’s official lyric video for the single’s title track (featured at NCS here). And now we’ve got another new song from the album, “The Child Must Die”.

The vocals are still soul-scraping, but much of the song may have more kinship to melodic death metal than the kind of scathing black metal you might be expecting. Yet although the song might be considered more “accessible” than Watain’s more typical output, it’s also multi-faceted, which should come as no surprise to fans of this band. It’s juiced with electricity and moments of thundering power, and it features a thrilling guitar solo. I’m quite liking it, though I’ll be curious to see what kind of reactions we’ll get in the comments.

Listen to the song next. You’ll find the lyrics below the video. Continue reading »

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