AN NCS INTERVIEW: ZAUM — “PILGRIMAGE OF DOOM ORACLES”

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jun 272014
 

(Our Russian contributor Comrade Aleks returns with another interview — and this time he talks with Kyle Alexander McDonald from the Canadian band Zaum, whose first album debuted earlier this month. We’ve got a stream of the album in here, too)

A caravan from distant Sweden comes into our city, as I Hate Records brings rich gifts, and among them I’ve found a rare one: Shining with colours of the sun, a disk with scriptures ancient, the 2014 debut CD of Zaum from Canada, with psychedelic heavy vibes. Enriched with the wisdom of Oracles, the melodies are spreading and full of Eastern mystic rituals that come and blind our feelings. Kyle, the master of the voice and heavy guitars, answers our questions and reveals secrets of the band and of long-gone tribes that make their stories come alive. So, welcome pilgrims of doom and praise the gods for rain.

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Salute Kyle! First of all let me ask a straightforward question: What does the band’s name mean? I know only an accordant word in the Russian language, but I wonder if you meant that when you give your band such a name.

For us, ZAUM defines the form of communication beyond that with which we are commonly familiar and have used as humans.  By harnessing ZAUM, one is able to communicate at a higher form without the boundaries of a modern spoken language.  ZAUM tells of a deeper meaning in the medium beyond the borders defined by the music, experienced as a deep mental elevation.  We indeed reference the invention of ZAUM by Russian Futurist poet Aleksei Kruchenykh – so I suppose in that regard we do have a Russian connection.  I’ve used the name as a label for my personal demos since 1993, and when the time came to name the band – it just made sense, as this is my first band in which I’m writing 100% of the music rather than in collaboration.  That said, Chris [Lewis] does have a hand in the song arrangements.  Hopefully we can play there soon.

 

You’ve been playing heavy tunes since the mid-90’s. What have been the most memorable periods in your artistic life?

Speaking for myself — I formed and played bass in a 3-pc stoner/noise band called COPSHADES and did a lot of touring with that band, which is now defunct, though it was very dear to me and my artistic journey.  Additionally, I fronted a 3-bassed psych/doom monstrosity called SHEVIL – a band which is currently on hiatus due to 2 of the 4 members relocating for jobs.  We recorded an EP and most recently a full-length which was just pressed to vinyl and is available to purchase from shevil.bandcamp.com — only 100 copies pressed so get one while you can! Continue reading »

YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! SCIENTISTS SAID IT COULDN’T BE DONE!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jun 272014
 

Okay, maybe you’ll believe that Darkest Hour and Abigail Williams are making new albums. And I don’t actually know of any scientists who said they couldn’t do it. I mean, it’s not as if these new albums are going to open wormholes that tunnel to distant galaxies — but it could happen! They could also include 5 weight loss tricks guaranteed to give you six-pack abs while you sleep!

I hate click bait with a fury hotter than the flames of hell, but I’m getting kind of bored with those “Seen and Heard” headlines. Anyway, here’s the news and snippets of music.

DARKEST HOUR

Yes, Darkest Hour have indeed finished recording a new album, just in time for them to hit the road on the Mayhem Festival tour, where they will be joining Cannibal Corpse, Wretched, Erimha, Body Count, and some other bands (and in what world do Emmure and Korn get higher billing than Darkest Hour and Wretched?).

Yesterday DH posted a snippet of music on a site called FuckWaitingAroundToDie. It’s all of 18 seconds long. It sounds scorching. Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN PRESENTS: REVIEWS IN HAIKUS:

 Reviews In Haikus  6 Responses »
Jun 272014
 

(Andy Synn delivers another installment of his irregular series of album reviews in haiku. Two more reviews come after the jump. With music, of course.)

So it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these columns, as my productivity on NCS has been particularly dire recently. While I’m working to correct that though, I thought I might as well use the format of this particular column to try and catch up on a few things we’ve missed out on.

As part of that I’ve decided to shake things up slightly, and give each of these albums a small introduction preceding each haiku. It’s a good time to bring it in, too, as each of these albums fits vaguely under the “Post/Atmospheric Black Metal” banner, so are all somewhat disparately united under a common theme, despite all hailing from different countries around the globe.

Anyway, enough of that blather, on to the poetry! (that sounded way more metal in my head)

ION – ION

A Post/Ambient Black Metal three-piece from San Francisco, Ion released their self-titled debut in April this year and I was immediately blown away. This is a brilliant, mesmerising album of blackened blast beats and gleaming celestial melody, based around a vibrant core of feverish riffs and soaring leads, that gets better and better with each listen. It completely renews my faith in this style of music every time I hear it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VEX — “TO ANACREON (STRANGLING THE MUSE)”

 Premieres  13 Responses »
Jun 262014
 

If you’ve been lucky enough to catch the Southeastern leg of Agalloch’s current tour, then you’ve already had the chance to witness the live performance of Vex from Austin, Texas, who’ve been along with Agalloch for that ride. For those who haven’t had that chance, we’ve got the next best thing — a premiere of a new Vex song that’s destined to appear on the band’s third album, Sky Exile.

This really well-written, mainly mid-paced song employs the kind of heavy, hammering riffs and flesh-raking vocals that will be familiar to fans of classic Scandinavian melodic death metal, but as the song unfolds it moves in increasingly interesting and unexpected directions, becoming a sophisticated, multi-textured work with the power to draw you back again and again. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DARK FORTRESS, NE OBLIVISCARIS, BASTARD FEAST, THOSE WHO BRING THE TORTURE, GORGASM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jun 262014
 

Yesterday was an eventful one in the realms of metal, with enticing new-album announcements and new songs. I’ve collected a few of the most interesting items here. I stayed up late at a metal show last night and am now rushing to get my ass out of the house and onward to my fucking day job, so I’m presenting the new songs without my usual commentary (which I may add later).

DARK FORTRESS

More than four years have passed since Germany’s Dark Fortress released the fantastic Ylem. Finally, after a few postponements, a new album is ready. Entitled Venereal Dawn, it’s scheduled for release by Century Media on September 2 in North America (and September 1 everywhere else) and yesterday its cover art was revealed. The cover is a painting by a Netherlands-based artist named Nespress Danielewski and it appears he has created other art for the album as well. I really, really like this cover and am interested to see what else he’s done for Venereal Dawn.

Of course, I’m really interested in the music, too. The press release says: “Expect epic song structures, mighty sonic cathedrals, virulent and sinister magic and lots of unexpected twists and turns as the bands drags you screaming and headbanging through the abysmal roller coaster of their universe once more.” Oh yes…

https://www.facebook.com/officialdarkfortress Continue reading »

INANIMATE EXISTENCE: “A NEVER-ENDING CYCLE OF ATONEMENT”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 262014
 

(Austin Weber reviews the new second album by Inanimate Existence.)

With their first record, 2012’s Liberation Through Hearing, Santa Cruz-based Inanimate Existence showed themselves to be much more than a technically competent brutal death metal act. A full half of the album was an experimental instrumental affair of great diversity. As a result, the evolution of their sound present on their sophomore follow-up, A Never-Ending Cycle Of Atonement, is not completely surprising. Yet it’s still stunning that they’ve managed to merge their progressive and experimental side with a series of ferociously cutthroat, frenetic death metal songs.

It’s an eloquent feat that works far better than it sounds on paper. Even more, the whole experience is bound to a philosophically rich lyrical focus of cyclical failure, potential redemption, and the eventual return to start the process again.

A Never-Ending Cycle Of Atonement is a worthy sequel to their first album, similar but bolder, more extravagant, and still intent on further branching out from the confines of mere brutal death metal. There is a larger melodic focus this time as well — verging on the sound of both Decrepit Birth and Necrophagist at times. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRIEG — “WORTHLESS NOTHING”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Jun 252014
 

On July 15, Unholy Anarchy Records will release a four-song split by Krieg and Ramlord, and today we’re delighted to premiere one of Krieg’s two tracks, “Worthless Nothing” — a cover of a song from the 1993 LP The Greatest Invention by the seminal UK crust band Doom.

As I wrote in my recent review of this excellent split, Krieg’s decision to cover this particular song makes perfect sense in the context of this release. It’s a natural pairing with both Krieg’s other song, an original composition named “Mocking Dead Empires”, and the blackened crust-punk assaults mounted by Ramlord. “Worthless Nothing” drives hard and fast, propelled by a combination of virally infectious jumping riffs and doused in acid by one of the best voices in US black metal.

Krieg long ago cemented its place as one of the cornerstone bands of black metal in the U.S. After two decades in the trenches, Krieg has nothing left to prove — but the creative fires are obviously still burning hot and bright. Listening to Krieg turn back the clock to the spawning grounds of crust while putting the band’s own vicious stamp on the sound is proof of that, and it’s also an enticing tease for the Krieg full-length (Transient) that’s expected later this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXXXEKUTIONER — “MANIAC ASYLUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 252014
 

I hadn’t even made it to the last song on my advance copy of Fear the Priest before I was blasting an e-mail to the publicist for Exxxekutioner, begging for the chance to premiere a track from this debut EP. I got my wish, and now you’ll get a taste of what got me so pumped up about this six-song main-line of pure mosh fuel.

This group of four twenty-somethings from the vicinity of Manchester in the UK have only been together since the spring of last year, but you’d never guess that from the music they make. They have mature skills and old souls — and by that I mean a direct channel to the early spirit of bands like Venom, Sodom, and Destruction, delivering a brash and authentic blast of thrash, black, and speed metal like they’ve been doing it for decades.

The hell-ripping songs on Fear the Priest fly like a horde of bat-winged demons, the kind of speed you’d reach if you were on fire and the nearest water source was three blocks away. The riffs are to die for — super-charged with adrenaline and loaded with irresistible hooks — and the tumbling, rumbling drumwork and booming bass will get their hooks in you, too. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MARK KLOEPPEL (MISERY INDEX)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Jun 252014
 

(In this post we present BadWolf’s interview of Mark Kloeppel, frontman for Baltimore’s Misery Index, conducted live at Maryland Deathfest — with photos taken there by the talented Alyssa Lorenzon.)

One of the highlights of my trip to Maryland Deathfest was the opportunity to see Baltimore’s own Misery Index live twice in a single weekend. The No Clean Singing crew has a soft spot for relentless mixes of grindcore and death metal, and Misery Index are among the best bands in that vein at the moment—not only is their rhythmic attack, weighed down by bassist Jason Netherton (formerly of Dying Fetus) and drummer Adam Jarvis (also of Pig Destroyer), fierce in a way many of their peers are not, but their approach is also intellectual. The band has a strongly anarchist-liberal lyrical bent, which only adds to the vitriol and complexity of their music. It’s the kind of death metal that makes me want to revisit it over and over.

Mark Kloeppel joined the band in 2005, and plays guitar, as well as screams, on their finest run of albums. His vocals and melodic guitar lines dominate the band’s 2014 album, The Killing Gods, which made up much of their MDF set lists. It’s the most melodic album in the band’s discography, but Kloeppel himself seems less than harmonious. He sat down with me behind a tent in the blazing Baltimore sun to talk about the new album, parenting, and how, economically speaking, we all lose.

********

It seems like there wasn’t a lot of activity on the Misery Index front for a couple years there. I remember Heirs to Thievery came out when? 2010? Four years ago?

Yeah. In 2010, the touring cycle started with us going out with Dying Fetus and then picking up our new lead guitar player. We did some other stuff… We toured with Grave. We did a whole bunch of stuff. It’s kind of hard to remember everywhere we went. I know we went to Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and a lot of places in South America like Brazil and Colombia. We did a tour with Cannibal Corpse in the States. That was the last thing I think we did in the States before this.

 

Why the recording gap? You guys were on a pretty steady two years per album clip for almost a decade.

Yeah, and that sucks! It’s like when you first start a band. When you first start a band, you spend a good five years crafting your very first songs. You go play shows, and it’s awesome because you’ve spent so much time crafting good songs and you grow and stuff like that. Being a seasoned musician and not being able to dedicate the proper amount of time to make a quality record, you feel like you’re being robbed. 

We stuck to the tight schedule that was imposed upon us by the label. It was kind of necessary to build the band for Discordia, Traitors, and Heirs to Thievery. After that, we were done with that schedule. We didn’t want Misery Index to do that anymore. We just spent the time you’re supposed to spend writing a record. 

 Continue reading »

LISTEN TO A NEW BELPHEGOR SONG: “GASMASK TERROR”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 252014
 

Belphegor’s new album Conjuring the Dead is set for release by Nuclear Blast on August 5 in North America (August 8 in the EU/Brazil, August 11 in the UK and France). It was recorded at Mana Studios in Florida with Eric Rutan. Within the last hour the band debuted a lyric video for the album’s first track, “Gasmask Terror”.

You can watch it right here… Continue reading »

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