SHADES OF BLACK: SUM OF R, CHAOS MOON, GRUE, AND WITCHRIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 262013
 

I’ve heard a lot of new music in the last couple of days, mostly isolated songs and videos from fairly deep underground. From those I compiled this mix, which I thought deserved that “Shades of Black” preface that I’ve used before. Despite the fact that the first and last offerings aren’t black metal, they’re still black as a moonless night.

SUM OF R

Sum of R is a Swiss band that since 2012 has consisted of Reto Mäder (bass, drums, percussion, synthesizer, piano, effects) and Julia Wolf (guitar, effects). Their most recent work is an album entitled Ride Out the Waves, which was released in late 2012 by Storm As He Walks. It’s also now available on Bandcamp. The last song on the album is “Alarming”, and in 2012 it was released in advance of the album as a music video. The video is a montage of film clips edited and assembled by Francesca Marongiu, an Italian multi-instrumentalist and visual artist, in her alter ego as Agartthacave.

This was my first exposure to Sum of R (thanks to our supporter KevinP’s posting of a link to the video on FB today), and the combined audio and visual synthesis floored me. The music is a glacial floe of funereal doom and drone, shrouded in caustic distortion and punctuated by cataclysmic percussive downbeats and shrill electronic noises. Withering harsh shrieks and the sound of a siren ratchet the tension until everything falls apart beneath the final mallet blows. It’s completely crushing. Continue reading »

THE BEST OF OLD SCHOOL SWEDISH DEATH METAL PLAYED BY NEWER BANDS: THE LAST FIVE YEARS

 LISTMANIA 2013  41 Responses »
Oct 262013
 

Earlier this week I reviewed a great new album by Blood Mortized that’s in the vein of old school Swedish death metal, which happens to be one of my favorite metal sub-genres. One of our frequent commenters suggested that I consider compiling a list of my favorite “regurgitated” Swedish death metal albums since 2000 — and by “regurgitated” I took him to mean albums released by bands who weren’t actually in existence back when that old school was being constructed by the likes of Carnage, Nihilist, Dismember, Entombed, Unleashed, and Grave (to name only some of the ground-breakers).

I’m not very good at making lists. I have a hard time ranking bands and albums and I’m always afraid I’m going to forget something. Also, trying to make a list of albums that have come out over the last 13 years seemed like an especially daunting task for my feeble mind. But I did decide to create the list you’re about to see. Though it’s quite long, I’m still afraid I’ve forgotten something, or simply never heard an album that deserves to be mentioned. So I’m encouraging readers to add their own favorites in the Comments if I left any of them out. But first, I want to be clear about the criteria I used — and I want to provide some caveats, too.

1.  I limited the list to albums that were released from 2008-2013 (the last 5 years). Apart from the fact that this was easier, I think it’s also the period when we’ve seen the biggest resurgence in this style of metal among newly released albums and EPs.

2.  I excluded bands who existed back in the late 80’s and early 90’s when this style of music was being born, even if they’re still around (e.g., Grave) and even if they broke up and then later re-formed (e.g., Evocation, Interment). On the other hand, I didn’t exclude newer bands just because their line-ups might include people who were involved in other bands during that era.

3.  I tried to limit the list to bands whose sound is significantly influenced by that old school SWEDISH style, as exemplified by the bands mentioned above (though the listed bands are from all over the world).

Continue reading »

MAN MUST DIE: “PEACE WAS NEVER AN OPTION”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Oct 252013
 

(In mid-September we posted the first of two reviews of the new album by Scotland’s Man Must Die, and now we bring you the second one, by Andy Synn.  Some albums just just demand this kind of attention.)

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Hard times make the heart grow harder.

It’s been four years since these Scottish bruisers last brutalised our eardrums with their sickening sonic stew. Four long fucking years of pain and struggle and bloody-minded perseverance. So it’s no surprise that the fourth album by the Scottish juggernauts might just be their most abrasive, most lethally focussed, and most viscerally aggressive release yet.

To those unfamiliar with the band, their sound is a devastating mix of Cryptopsian chaos and Kataklysmic groove, delivered in a manner so utterly merciless, so utterly unforgiving, that its use in certain countries has been declared a war crime.

Fuelled by fire and frustration, each song is a demanding (at times exhausting) sequence of technical, pandemic death metal riffs, frenzied and punishing drums, and rabid, venomous vocals, all tied together by a subtle undercurrent of seditious melody and a grim atmosphere of malevolence and paranoia. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: GLORIOR BELLI, SEPULTURA, AND PROFANATICA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 252013
 

The subjects of this post are three full-album streams now available for listening.

The first is Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls by the French band Glorior Belli. It will be released on November 12 by Agonia Records. Our man BadWolf gave it a favorable review here. Three of your five regular NCS writers consider it one of the year’s best albums (and the other two haven’t weighed in). The full stream premiered yesterday at Stereogum, but you can also listen to it here, after the jump.

The second is a full stream of the new album by Sepultura, The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must be the Heart, which will be released in NorthAm by Nuclear Blast on October 29. In the US, the album is streaming exclusively at Metal Sucks, so you’ll need to go here to listen.

In light of certain accusations leveled at Nuclear Blast for not playing nice with web sites who don’t favorably review their releases, I thought it interesting that MS was selected for this stream, since their reviewer didn’t treat the album very well. We haven’t reviewed the album yet, and I haven’t heard it. But it’s Sepultura, and I thought that fact alone made the stream newsworthy. Here, by the way, is the album cover: Continue reading »

NEW TRIPTYKON ALBUM COMING IN 2014

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Oct 252013
 

This morning my comrade Andy Synn passed along a link to this press release from a few days ago. You can of course read it for yourselves, but here’s an executive summary, because we are your humble servants and you are our executives.

Triptykon, for those executives who have been living in caves since 2008, is the band formed by ex-Hellhammer/Celtic Frost singer, guitarist, and main songwriter Tom G Warrior, and its lineup also includes V Santura (Dark Fortress).  To date, they’ve released one album, 2010’s Eparistera Daimones. Today the band announced that a second album, entitled Melana Chasmata, will be released on April 14, 2014, in Europe and April 15 in North America, through a collaboration between the group’s own label, Prowling Death Records Ltd., and Century Media Records.

The album has been recorded “intermittently” since 2011, with engineering handled by V Santura. According to the press release, “The album’s title may be translated, approximately, as ‘black, deep depressions/valleys'”. And here’s a quote about the album from Tom G Warrior: Continue reading »

BRAIN STEW: TERATISM, NECROSIS, THEOLOGIAN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Oct 252013
 

I keep endless lists of music I mean to check out some day based on things I see or messages I receive. Unfortunately, time being in short supply, I never make it through everything. But last night I ticked off about a dozen items on the list and I picked these three with which to launch this Happy Friday. I picked them because in different ways they tend to mess with your brain, and collectively they create a nice stew bubbling inside the cranium.

TERATISM

This black metal band’s last release was an MLP entitled La Bas, which I reviewed here. All of those songs were recorded years ago though they were only officially released this past summer. But Teratism are working on their next album and they’ve recently made two demo tracks available on Bandcamp for a “pay what you want” price, under the title Prelude to the Second Death. While both songs contain eruptions of destructive blasting, they are for the most part slow and freighted with the weight of doom.

“Four Waters” is draped in sheets of radioactive guitar noise and harrowing feedback, which are pulled back in the song’s mid-section to reveal guitar notes that peal like funeral bells, the steady pulse of a bass, and the muffled thump of the drums. “Micturation Into the Tributary of Death” works with a similar funereal atmosphere, lacing it with eerie harmonic arpeggios that transform the music into a slow waltz of death. Both songs are deeply unsettling, and yet they are both almost beautiful in their utter bleakness. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PYLAR, SKYDANCER, IMPENDING DOOM, AND ANTERO SLEEPS

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

Here’s a round-up of music I discovered today in periodic forays through the interhole and a quick glimpse at the flooded NCS e-mail inbox. Stylistically, the music is all over the place, and it’s scattered geographically, too.

PYLAR

I came across this band via a short post at CVLT Nation, which gave no clue what the music is like (apart from calling it “pure magic”) or any information about the band, other than the fact that they’ve recorded an album entitled Rises In My Mighty that’s being released (on Nov 1) by Knockturne Records. (Actually, the album’s name is Poderoso se alza en my; I can’t vouch for the English rendition of the title.) Pylar have a Facebook page, but it’s not very informative either, providing neither the band’s location nor the identity of its members, though it’s apparent they’re from somewhere in Spain.

But I decided to listen to the song that CVLT Nation premiered because of that eye-catching album cover that you see above. According to the band’s FB page, it was created by “the expert in alchemical symbolism and sacred geometry, Gamaheo, member of the Numinoso Círculo Atlante.” Speaking of which, it’s also apparent that Pylar themselves devote their music (and possibly other activities) to certain ancient alchemical and occult arts, the meanings of which are completely obscure to whitebread me. But I do find that song fascinating. Continue reading »

IN SOLITUDE, IN THE CASTLE

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

Last week I had the chance to see Sweden’s In Solitude perform in Seattle as support on a tour headlined by Watain (who, by the way, were stunningly good). I was already a fan of the band’s 2013 album Sister, but came away even more impressed because of the high quality of their live show — an experience marred only slightly by the over-the-top “I’m a rock god” posing of the band’s bass player in the spotlight at the center of the stage while the true rock god, vocalist Pelle Åman, positioned himself off to the side, head down, hair covering his face, belting out wailing vocals that were damned near pitch-perfect.

This morning I watched a new video of the band in an unusual setting that captures their skill in the flesh, as well as the brilliance of their songwriting. A Swedish TV channel called PSL journeyed to the band’s hometown of Uppsala last spring to interview the band. While there, In Solitude took the crew to the band’s favorite hometown place, the castle ruin of the bloodthirsty King Erik XIV, who descended into madness before ultimately being deposed and most likely poisoned while in prison. As PSL writes at their online blog:

As the clock struck 12 – exactly 446 years after the king orchestrated a bloodbath in the very room where we stood – the band played us the song ”A Burried Sun” from their latest album ”Sister”.

And that’s what’s captured on the shadow-blanketed video — the potent mix of occult rock, doom, and psychedelia that makes up “A Buried Sun” and the spooky power of Pelle Åman’s voice. It’s very cool, and it’s available for viewing right after the jump (and yes, the music is an Exception to the Rule around here). Continue reading »

BLOOD MORTIZED: “THE DEMON, THE ANGEL, THE DISEASE”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

Sweden’s Blood Mortized are back with a new album, and as you might guess from that album cover, they’re not fucking around. However, as you might not guess from that cover art, there’s a lot more going on in The Demon, The Angel, The Disease than maniacal serial killers and a big unholy whiff of cemetery rot.

The resurgence of Swedish-style death metal in the blood line of Grave-Dismember-Entombed proves the adage that, in time, everything old is new again. But frequently the new releases in this vein just sound old, old and tired, even to people like me who are addicted to this style. It’s not enough to simply capture the tone and the atmosphere. Make no mistake, you do need that, but you need more to make a great album that will put smiles on the faces of the hellish faithful and cause them to slobber in ghoulish glee. I’ll tell you how Blood Mortized have pulled off that trick.

We begin with the essentials. The production job on the album (by Linus Nirbrant of Sweden’s This Ending) makes it sound absolutely massive, not too murky or raw but still corroded and corrosive. When heard at the proper volume (i.e., the level that will leave you with tinnitus for days), the music is overwhelmingly powerful. The drums (performed by Norway’s Brynjar Helgetum) go off like cannon volleys, like nearby thunder, like heavy caliber machine guns on full auto. And listening to the guitars and bass, tuned low and deep and shrouded in distortion, is like being trapped inside a giant chainsaw or a titanic tunnel boring machine. Like these things: Continue reading »

ULCERATE: “VERMIS”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Oct 242013
 

(In this post, NCS writer DGR reviews the latest album by New Zealand’s Ulcerate.)

Ulcerate were one of those bands who for a long time had a firm spot on my metal radar, but I never really got around to checking them out. The group got my attention around the time of their Willowtip release Everything Is Fire, mostly because I’ve always tried to keep up with that label after they gifted us with Arsis’ first couple of releases in the early aughts. However, where Ulcerate really made their impression was with Destroyers Of All, which it seemed like I listened to at first by gunpoint, with every metal listener I knew screaming from the mountaintops about it.

Destroyers Of All was a massive disc, a gargantuan, lumbering beast that you don’t really hear in death metal outside of the Polish scene or the more doom-oriented bands, yet Ulcerate had created an album that made me picture the band as one of the few who would be playing when the apocalypse happened. There was such a cavernous sound on display that it pretty much became an unspoken rule that anything the group did henceforth would be hotly anticipated. And so, as the group geared up to put out their 2013 release Vermis, I disconnected from most press outlets in a desire to go in somewhat unspoiled.

The album has been out in the world for a month at this point, and the reason that we’re only now getting around to a review is because Vermis is a dense, dense album. It feels like a brother to Destroyers Of All but with a bigger emphasis on the doom atmosphere. While the group had already been making long songs, Vermis extended them into the hopeless territory, with the listener being dragged almost unwillingly behind the band. It makes Vermis a difficult and challenging album to fight through, yet it is also one of the most intense experiences released this year. Continue reading »

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