OVERFLOWING STREAMS: DAWN, ELUVEITIE, EXTOL, GHOULGOTHA, LOUDBLAST, MAVETH-EMBRACE OF THORNS, NEOCAESAR, TYRANT OF DEATH

It was a rare Friday night for your humble editor, in that your humble editor didn’t get completely shit-faced. This means that I was able to listen to music on this Saturday morning without experiencing severe brain pain and heaving waves of nausea. I made my way through a long list of new songs and videos I had collected over the last few days, from which I’ve sifted a still pretty long list of things I commend to your ears and eyes, presented in alphabetical order with a minimum of words. But before getting to those, here’s a piece of somewhat older news I only discovered recently.

DAWN

Over the years since I began getting into metal I’ve done a lot of deep diving back into music that was released before I wised up, but I didn’t know about Dawn until just a few days ago. They were formed circa 1990 by guitarist Fredrik Söderberg (Cranium) and recorded a smattering of demos plus two albums (1994’s Nær Sólen Gar Niþer For Evogher and 1998’s Slaughtersun (Crown of the Triarchy)) before disbanding for nearly a decade. They’ve reactivated, and the line-up now includes, in addition to Söderberg, original vocalist Henke Forss (Retaliation) plus drummer Tomas Asklund (Gorgoroth, ex-Dissection, ex-Dark Funeral) and bass player Philip von Segebaden (ex-Afflicted, ex-Cranium). That’s a hell of a line-up.

Beginning in April, Century Media has reissued the band’s discography from the 1990s on vinyl, and Dawn have also been working on a new album. A “semi-official rehearsal track” has been up on YouTube for a while, though the song title apparently isn’t correct. Here it is, followed by a full stream of Slaughtersun:

https://www.facebook.com/DAWNOFFICIALBANDPAGE

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S32oFU_VJ-s&feature=youtu.be

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_q_F9ubwE

 

 

 

 

ELUVEITIE

Last Wednesday Eluveitie released a video for the second single off their new album Origins, which is coming in August from Nuclear Blast. This song is named “The Call of the Mountains” and it will be released digitally on July 25. The band recorded the song in all four of Switzerland’s national languages — Swiss German, French, Italian, and Romansh — as well as English. It appears the song will be released separately in all five languages. Below is the “multilingual” version.

https://www.facebook.com/eluveitie

 

 

 

 

 

EXTOL

Norway’s Extol played their first live show in more than 7 years at the Gullbrannafestivalen near Halmstad, Sweden, which was held on July 3-6 of this year. Video of the band performing “Open the Gates” from their 2013 comeback self-titled album (reviewed here) is now up on YouTube. A bit of history for a band we’re big fans of at NCS, and some damn nice music, too:

https://www.facebook.com/ExtolOfficial

 

 

 

 

 

 

GHOULGOTHA

Last month I praised a song by Italy’s Into Darkness, which was due to appear on a 7″ split release with San Diego’s Ghoulgotha. Yesterday Ghoulgotha’s song for the split — “Abnormal Paralysis” — became available for listening on YouTube. It’s lethal, so make sure you estate plan is in proper order. Here it is:

https://www.facebook.com/ghoulgotha666

 

 

 

 

 

LOUDBLAST

The long-running French band Loudblast released a lyric video on Thursday. The song is “I Reach the Sun” and it comes from their new Burial Ground album, which is out now on Listenable Records. Dark, dreary, and crushing.

https://www.facebook.com/Loudblast.official

 

 

 

 

 

MAVETH and EMBRACE OF THORNS

Sadly, for this next item I have no new music, merely the awesome cover art by Daniel Desecrator (Nekronikon) for what promises to be an awesome 8-song split release by Maveth (Finland) and Embrace of Thorns (Greece), the title of which is A Plague Through the Heavens. It will be released by Dark Descent on CD and LP (and the LP will include a poster-sized version of that artwork). Shipping is expected to begin on August 20. There’s also a Bandcamp page for the split, which means there will also be a digital download coming, as well as streams eventually. All the relevant links are below.

Since I don’t have any new music to include, I’m embedding Bandcamp streams of each band’s last album.

http://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-plague-through-the-heavens
http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/store/
https://www.facebook.com/Maveth666
https://www.facebook.com/EmbraceOfThorns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEOCAESAR

In August of 2013 we published a two-part interview that KevinP conducted with Mike van Mastrigt of Houwitser and a founding member of the ground-breaking Dutch death metal band Sinister. In that interview, Mike revealed that he was working in a new band named Neocaesar along with former Sinister guitarist Bart van Wallenberg, bassist Michel Alderliefsten, and drummer Eric de Windt. We didn’t have any Neocaesar music to share then, but now we do.

A few days ago the band uploaded an 8-track rehearsal-room recording of a song called “From Hell”. It may not be a finely honed studio recording, but it sounds killer — and it is reminiscent of old Sinister, which is nothing but good news.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Neocaesar/529920410407701

 

 

 

 

 

TYRANT OF DEATH

Less than a week ago, Toronto’s Tyrant of Death (aka Alex Rise) released a new single for free download on Soundcloud named “Awaken”. This comes hot on the heels of ToD’s last album Ascendency, which is itself only two weeks old (and which I have little doubt that DGR will be reviewing). Here’s “Awaken” — I’m really digging it:

https://www.facebook.com/TyrantOfDeathOfficial
http://tyrantofdeath1.bandcamp.com