SEEN AND HEARD: BLACK JESUS, DEATHEMBER, COGNITIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 142014
 

As we confront the brink of the weekend, what I have for you here are three new songs that are a hell of a lot of vicious fun for your earholes.

BLACK JESUS

Today CVLT Nation premiered five tracks from an album by a Melbourne, Australia band named Black Jesus. I’m not sure whether the album includes more tracks and I have no idea at the moment when or how the album will be released. But I started listening to it as soon as I saw this description: “The Black Jesus sound is a melting pot of 80’s Punk/ Hardcore & D-Beat pioneers Discharge, meets From Enslavement to Obliteration era Napalm Death and Entombed’s Left Hand Path. It is entirely unpretentious, completely exhilarating, and has a nasty ‘f* off’ attitude to match.”

I was in kind of a rush to get this round-up done, so I haven’t listened to all the tracks that are streaming, but I sure as fuck like what I’ve heard so far. Take the title track, for example. It puts a charge into the old brain stem right from the get-go with a mess of sawing riffs, scalding vocals, and delicious drum swarms. You definitely do get that Discharge / Entombed feel, but when the song passes the 2:00 mark it turns into a freight train chugfest that will give you some serious neck sprain. Damn, this is a blast. Continue reading »

THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT / TALANAS / BEYOND GRACE — UK TOUR REPORT

 Concert Reviews, Metal News  8 Responses »
Mar 142014
 

(Andy Synn provides this report on the recently completed UK tour by The Monolith Deathcult, Talanas, and Andy’s band Beyond Grace.)

So I’ve been harangued into putting together a short (relatively) report of the happenings and happenstances of our tour last month. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure where to start as I’m writing this now, other than to say that – despite the inevitable stresses that came about – I wish I was still on tour now. Playing a show every night, to new people, in a new place… well, that 30 mins onstage you get makes all the rest of it worthwhile.

DAY 01 – BRIGHTON, STICKY MIKE’S FROG BAR

My first piece of advice for any of you going on tour – try to get a good night’s sleep the night before you leave. Definitely don’t stay up late sending out digital promos and organising the launch of your new EP so that you only have time to get in 3 hours before having to go collect the van, drive it back to load your backline, then drive down to London (and then on to Brighton). Yeah, don’t do that. Continue reading »

A NEW ABORTION FROM ABORTED: LISTEN TO “NECROTIC MANIFESTO”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 142014
 

This week has brought a cornucopia of song premieres from albums we’re highly anticipating, including new goodies from Hour of Penance, Misery Index, Massacre, and Eyehategod — and this morning we got one more: DECIBEL magazine debuted the title track from Necrotic Manifesto, the forthcoming monstrosity from Belgium’s Aborted, and you can listen here as well.

Man, it is one decimating track, with this death/grind war machine firing on all cylinders: brutally militaristic snare attacks; flesh-raking riff assaults; Sven De Caluwe barking and screeching like a rabid mastiff; explosive bass drops; and an infernally inspired guitar solo that will pop out your eyes and make you drool. What a fine, fine introduction to this necrotic new album. Continue reading »

COLTSBLOOD: “INTO THE UNFATHOMABLE ABYSS”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Mar 142014
 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews the debut album by Liverpool’s Coltsblood.)

Pure soul-crushing, bowel-clenching, knee-shaking doom. That’s what we have here. Make no mistake, this is not designed to be a pleasant or an easy listen.

This whole album is a bleeding, gasping slog through a black morass of sludgy, slime-drenched chords and crumbling, fractured vocals, punctuated by sky-splitting explosions of crackling snare.

It’s dense. It’s claustrophobic. It’s brutish and unrepentantly severe.

And I love it. Continue reading »

APHONIC THRENODY / ENNUI: “IMMORTAL IN DEATH”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 142014
 

I’ve been trying to understand why I find the kind of music on the excellent new split by Aphonic Threnody and Ennui (entitled Immortal In Death) so appealing. I didn’t always. When I got into metal, the music that grabbed me raced like thoroughbreds with their bloodstreams flooded by adrenaline.  Immortal In Death moves like draught horses pulling a granite crypt, with no finish line in sight. Yet the music is immensely powerful and emotionally intense despite its glacial pacing and its black moods. It overwhelms the senses, maybe even more thoroughly than the kind of high-octane romps that were my first loves.

Each band contributes one very long song to the split, and although they are more alike than they are dissimilar, I’ll still take them one at a time.

APHONIC THRENODY

My own experience with this multinational funeral doom band (whose members come from other well-regarded underground groups) goes back to 2011, when I came across their debut album First Funeral (and wrote about some of the music here).  Though the band favored long songs on that release (all of them in the 9-10 minute range), “Ruins” dwarfs them. It’s a nearly 21-minute monolith — and it represents Aphonic Threnody’s crowning achievement so far. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM HOUR OF PENANCE: “RESURGENCE OF THE EMPIRE”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Mar 132014
 

Almost exactly two years have passed since Italy’s Hour of Penance delivered their last album, Sedition. Recently the band announced details about the release of their next album, the name of which is Regicide. It’s due for release by the Prosthetic label on May 13 in North America (May 12 in the UK and EU, May 16 in Germany). And today we got an official lyric video for the album’s first advance track — “Resurgence of the Empire”. You can watch and hear it after the jump.

The lyrical themes of the album revolve around tearing down the walls of ignorance and fear erected by religion and other “dysfunctional authorities” so that freedom might bloom. “Resurgence of Empire” by itself would serve quite well as a battering ram in that demolition project. It would work well on actual walls as well as metaphorical ones. You’ll find out why I say that momentarily. Continue reading »

ALBUM NEWS AND A TEASER OF MUSIC FROM VALLENFYRE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 132014
 

That album cover up there is one I want on a fuckin’ shirt ASAP. It was unveiled today by Century Media and it will adorn the second album by the mighty Vallenfyre, which is entitled Splinters. The artist is Brian D’Agosto. The album is now scheduled for release on May 12 in Europe and May 13 in North America.

I’m really, really eager for this album. We were early adopters of this band beginning when the first whispers of their existence surfaced back in 2010, and their debut album A Fragile King (2011) fully justified our early optimism. If you are somehow unaware of Vallenfyre, the band consists of Greg Mackintosh (Paradise Lost) on vocals and lead guitars, Hamish Glencross (My Dying Bride) on rhythm and lead guitars, Scoot (Doom, Extinction of Mankind) on bass, and drummer Adrian Erlandsson (At the Gates, Paradise Lost, The Haunted).

Today also brought the first taste of music from the new album. It comes in the form of a studio video that includes a minute and a half of the song “Scabs”. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 63: BARROWLANDS, LAUGHTER, KAIJU

 MISCELLANY  6 Responses »
Mar 132014
 

Every time I write one of these MISCELLANY posts I promise myself that I will do them more often. But, as ever, the promises you make to yourself are the ones most easily broken: My last installment in the series came more than three months ago! But hope springs eternal, so I’m promising myself I won’t wait that long to write the next one. Why I would trust a proven liar I don’t know.

Anyway, here’s how this game is played:  I randomly pick bands whose music I’ve never heard, I listen to one or two songs and write my impressions, and then I stream what I heard so you can form your own opinions. This time I decided to just pick the last three bands I heard about with recent Bandcamp releases. They’re all from the U.S.

BARROWLANDS

I learned of this Portland band’s new album via an e-mail alert from Bandcamp that I found yesterday. The name rang a faint bell, and through a search of our site I learned that our guest BreadGod had put their 2012 demo in the “Honorable Mention” category of his “Best of 2012” list for NCS. The new album, released March 11, is entitled Thane and I knew I had to listen simply because of the wonderful cover art by Sam Ford. Continue reading »

WINTER OF SIN: “VIOLENCE REIGNS SUPREME”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Mar 132014
 

(In this post Austin Weber reviews the forthcoming fourth album by a Dutch band with an eye-catching new line-up — Winter of Sin.)

Lately I’ve been craving a fist-pumping metal album, the kind that kicks your ass from the first minute and never relents (save for maybe one tiny little breather, the almost required instrumental break). Very recently I was allowed to hear such a glorious album, by a decade-and-a-half-old melodic black/death metal band from The Netherlands called Winter Of Sin, whose line-up now includes two former members of the sorely missed God Dethroned.

I freely admit to not having heard the band’s prior albums so I can’t say how this compares, but I can confidently say that on its own merits Violence Reigns Supreme is the sort of album whose high consistency and powerful energy make it hard not to replay frequently. Beyond the relentless nature of their music, they get an extra boost from the cancerous, throaty screams and stout mid-paced growls of God Dethroned mastermind Henri Sattler. His howled proclamations cover these unholy hymns with a pained damnation that adds materially to the experience.

Right from the start, opener “Astral Death Reign Algorithm” sets the tone and palette of the album: Wailing, sinewy black metal interlocks with melodic bursts and fiery buzzsaw death metal riffs — supplemented by thrash undertones, accented by sinister leads, and topped off with a coating of orchestral flourishes. All these ingredients are smashed together into a deadly union of speed and finesse, a sleekly crafted vehicle designed for the purpose of superior serrated destruction. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: A NEW FEAR YAWNS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 122014
 

(In this jumbo post Austin Weber puts the spotlight on recommended recent music from nine (9!) bands plus some tour news about a tenth.)

By now you know the drill, I’m going to throw a bunch of music your way and see if any of it sticks. While 2014 has seemed sort of slow, release-wise, so far, I managed to find a number of under-the-radar goodies and I’ve also included two established-band updates. As usual, you are free to loathe or love all or none of it. While I usually only listen to ambient grindcore, I’ve been branching out lately. So, lots of different kinds of music besides ambi-grind are included below. With deathqueef making up more of the music mentioned this time, but also delving into colostomy-bag-fueled post-electronic, instrumental scat, and nu-grunge.

EMBRYONIC DEVOURMENT

With their latest release Reptilian Agenda, Embryonic Devourment have even further embraced old school death metal tendencies into the fold of their technical brutal carnage that warns of the true reptilian nature of reality. This is a big step up for them, and fans of old school death metal should certainly give this a listen. In spite of its swarming Origin-meets-Malignancy veneer, a lot of the riffs are superbly evil, meaty, and groovy in an old school way.  Continue reading »

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