Nov 112015
 

Abbath-ST cover

 

Greetings again from Anchorage, Alaska, where it’s colder than a well-digger’s ass in the Klondike and where I’ve come down with a raging cold myself. On the plus side, I’ve once again had a few hours to myself this morning before having to dive back into my day-job labors. On the minus side, it’s looking like I may not be able to get back home until Monday, which blows.

In my free time this morning I made a quick scan through the NCS e-mail. Despite the fact that it’s overflowing with stuff that I don’t have time to read, a few things did leap out at me, and I’ve collected those here — presented in alphabetical order by band name.

ABBATH

We’ve previously featured a trio of live videos by Abbath that the band released in the ramp-up to their self-titled debut album (coming from Season of Mist on January 22) and a 7″ single that’s due for release on December 11. Yesterday Abbath debuted the album’s cover art (above) and the first studio recording from the new album, a track called “Winter’s Bane”.

 

Abbath band photo

 

The new song rips. There’s a quasi-industrial groove in the music that will get heads moving, as well as an addictive, pulsing melody, some more fine drumwork by the band’s mysterious percussionist Creature, and a very cool dramatic finale heralded by an acoustic guitar interlude.

The new album and the 7″ single (Count the Dead) can be pre-ordered HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/abbathband/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fleshgod Apocalypse-King

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

Today brought the unveiling by Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse of the cover artwork for their next album, entitled King. It was created by one of our favorite metal artists, Berlin’s Eliran Kantor. The following statement by the band accompanied the artwork:

“This work of art is nothing more than the picture of an old world coming to an end. The author, Eliran Kantor, perfectly interpreted the concept behind the album. The King represents the last stand of integrity and justice in a court infested by traitors, villains, perverts, parasites and prostitutes. In an era that looks more like the Middle Ages than the 21st Century, we felt the necessity to express our indignation for the constant loss of values and our despise for mediocrity and commercial use of superstitions.

“The question is, are we sure everything that is ‘new’ is right? Are we sure we are not losing the perception of what is the real value of things? Perhaps the essence of that King lies inside everyone of us but it’s just dimmed by the mist of deceit and (ir)rational superfluity. Perhaps we should all hail the King we have inside.”

King is scheduled for release in early 2016 via Nuclear Blast Records. Needless to say, we’re very excited to hear what the band have cooked up.

https://www.facebook.com/fleshgodapocalypse

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obscura-Akroasis

OBSCURA

This next item also involves the disclosure of eye-catching album art, this time for the next full-length by Germany’s Obscura. The name of the album is Akróasis (apparently Greek for “hearing” or “listening”), and it’s scheduled for release by Relapse Records on February 5. It was produced by the band and V. Santura (Triptykon, Pestilence).

Five years have passed since Obscura’s release of Omnivium, and in that time there have been some noteworthy line-up changes, with the departure of Christian Muenzner and drummer Hannes Grossmann last year. Here’s the band’s current roster:

Steffen Kummerer – Vocals & Guitars
Rafael Trujillo – Guitars
Linus Klausenitzer – Bass
Sebastian Lanser – Drums

I’ve been curious how these changes would affect Obscura’s music, and now we have a teaser of an answer through the snippets of music from the album that you can hear below.

http://www.realmofobscura.com
https://www.facebook.com/RealmOfObscura

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vektor-Terminal Redux

VEKTOR

Yesterday, Philadelphia-based Vektor revealed artwork for the first advance track from their next full-length, Terminal Redux, which will be released by Earache Records on March 11, 2016. Although it’s not the actual album cover, it’s pretty damned cool.  In addition, of course, we got a stream of the new song — “Ultimate Artificer”.

It’s a head-twisting, hi-tech, speed-demon of a thrasher — which is what you expect from Vektor. So nice to have new Vektor.

https://www.facebook.com/VektorOfficial/

  13 Responses to “SEEN AND HEARD: ABBATH, FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, OBSCURA, VEKTOR”

  1. The artwork for “King” is perfect and I’m excited too, as well I enjoyed the new song by “Vektor” and the teaser by “Obscura” especially the riff in the first snippet sounds amazing like the drums.

  2. Hmm, not sure if I’m sold on what Abbath is doing here. Yet, at least. Definitely sounds different from Immortal, which is fine, but the industrial feel of it caught me by surprise.

  3. Winter’s Bane got my head moving, and my hands drum along on my breadbasket. I heard it yesterday, when I first received the Season of Mist Newsletter. I heard it again before listening to the other goodies here. Hell, I even scrolled up to take a new ride.

    I sure hope someone in, or connected to Fleshgod Apocalypse reads Angry Metal Guy, or that hindsight has thought them something. They make great music, but if they (or those further out in the production process) continues to compress the end result as much as on Labyrinth, than all compositional intellect in the world ain’t gonna save them from disaster. Such intense and crowded music needs room to bread.
    I’m keeping my fingers crossed real hard!

  4. Digging the new Abbath and was lucky to see them when they toured OZ.Cant wait To hear some new Fleshgod either,should be killer.

  5. Digging that Abbath track! According to metal-archives, the band’s “mysterious percussionist” Creature, is actually Kevin Foley from Benighted.

  6. The Vektor track is fantastic 🙂
    i’m really looking forward to the Abbath album, too!

  7. Really psyched on all of these releases. It seem 2016 will start off just as strong as 2015 has been.

  8. Oh boy, oh boy, all those big names all at once in a single post.

  9. Vektor track is insanely good. Can’t wait for the album. Abbath song sounds pretty cool. Interested to hear how Obscura rebound from all their line-up problems, fingers crossed they can deliver the goods again.

  10. I can’t believe it has been five years already since Obscura’s last release .. damn! And again, the songs seem to be frickin’ awesome, judging from the teaser. Nice to see them to keep the high quality after 3/4 of the band left!

    Artwork looks great, like always – and as expected, it follows a yellow color scheme. The band mentioned the different color schemes for the albums in some interviews*: Retribution (red), Cosmogenesis (blue), Omnivium (green), Akroasis (yellow). The color reflects the overall theme of the album. They said this color-key approach extends over 4 albums with Akroasis being the last one, so I wonder what comes next… 🙂

    * http://www.chroniclesofchaos.com/articles.aspx?id=1-1137

  11. Obscura sounds very promising! A bit like Gorod, my favorite technical death metal band.
    And Abbath is a sure winner for me.

  12. That’s a big time post, all bands that I like. The Abbath song is very interesting, I can picture him doing some leg kicks and crab walking to that. The Vektor song is great. That’s my local band, I’ve been waiting for this album for a long time.

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