SEEN AND HEARD: THE MELVINS, SANNHET, BEYOND MORTAL DREAMS, GIFT OF GODS, GOWL

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News  8 Responses »
Oct 152013
 

I’ll be straight with you: I have about 500 new albums I want to review, a few hundred more I’d like to hear, a couple of interviews I said I would do, and instead I’m sitting here surfing the interhole, looking for new things, with so many tabs now open on my computer that it’s too bogged down to stream the music I’m looking for.  Time passes, and I fall farther and farther behind. But I might as well put up a batch things I’ve seen and heard today so I can close some of those tabs. Here you go:

THE MELVINS

I saw an interview, published today, that Buzz Osborne of the Melvins gave to Noisey. He talked about the new Melvins album, Tres Cabrones (three dumbasses), which features the band’s original drummer Mike Dillard returning for the first time since 1983 and the band’s long-time drummer Dale Crover moving over to bass. The interview also included a bunch of other subjects, including these (which made me chuckle):

So you’ve been around for a while, what’s the biggest change in the music industry that’s impacted you as a band?
Nothing’s changed, really. Honestly, I don’t think there’s really any golden era of music. I like about as much new music now as I ever did, which isn’t much.

…

You were talking about new music earlier. At Noisey, we’re constantly dominated by news of Drake and Miley Cyrus. Curious if you had opinions on either.
Well, I don’t know who Drake is, first off. Continue reading »

YIN AND YANG: KUOLEMANLAAKSO AND HEAVY HOEMPA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 152013
 


Musta aurinko nousee — cover art by Markus Räisänen

Yesterday I discovered some new music, quite a lot of it actually. I picked two of those new discoveries as a pair for this post, but not because they are anything alike. In fact, they could hardly be more different — and that’s why I’ve paired them together.

KUOLEMANLAAKSO

This band’s Finnish name means “Death’s Valley” or “Valley of Death”. It began as a one-man project of guitarist Markus Laakso (Chaosweaver). After recording a handful of demo tracks, he recruited a group of talented comrades to flesh out the band:  vocalist Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun, Barren Earth), guitarist Savon Surma (“Kouta”) (Chaosweaver, ex-Verjnuarmu), bassist Tuomo Räisänen (“Usva”) (Elenium, The Nibiruan), and drummer Toni Ronkainen (“Tiera”) (Discard, Cult of Endtime).

Together they recorded an album at Woodshed Studio in Germany with V. Santura of Triptykon and Dark Fortress fame, who also mixed and mastered the music. The album is named Uljas uusi maailma (“Brave New World”) and it was released by Svart Records in November 2012. It was very good.

In August of this year the band recorded a second album with V. Santura, this time convening in a cabin in the Finnish woods near the shores of a lake. This morning I spent time I didn’t have reading Markus Laakso’s day-by-day studio diary, because it was both interesting and entertaining (and mouth-watering — this group ate well while together in the woods). If you have the time, and even if you don’t, I recommend it. Continue reading »

CIRCLES: “INFINITAS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  4 Responses »
Oct 142013
 

(Victimized by technological unreliability, TheMadIsraeli has been absent from our pages recently, but returns with this review of the new album by Australia’s Circles, which is out today via Basick Records.)

I’m finally back after experiencing another hard-drive crash and trying to get back on my feet with school and all.  Thankfully I have all this week off, so expect fuck tons of shit coming your way.

This band, and this album, represent what may very well be the epitome of the dirty word/guilty pleasure/shit you just shouldn’t like as a metalhead.  I have three dreaded genre names, and these guys are in all three.  Ready?

Djent, Nu metal, and Alt metal.

I know. But bear with me.

I’ve talked about Circles before, when I reviewed their debut EP here on NCS.  For me to appropriately address this album I think I need to go into a bit of surmising.  It’s safe to say that a lot of metal heads, whether they want to admit it or not, can appreciate a good pop metal record once in awhile (think Mercenary’s Darker Days Ahead, which appeared earlier this year), though more often than not we tend to be unwilling to admit this.  Sometimes you just want something that’s heavy enough, but has the hooks and melodies that will stay in your head for days. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ARTILLERY, THE OCEAN, “AUTUMN ANNIHILATION”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 082013
 

Here’s a collection of recent items that seemed worth sharing with our esteemed readers, as well as you.

ARTILLERY

I know we have thrash heads in the audience, and for you we present as a public service a new song from Denmark’s Artillery. For those of you born after 1982, Artillery have been recording music since before you were born. For those of you who don’t look both ways before crossing the street, they may still be recording music after you have left this veil of tears. Their seventh album, Legions, will be released by Metal Blade in the US on November 26, and on somewhat earlier dates elsewhere. It features a new vocalist, Michael Bastholm Dahl, and a new drummer, Josua Madsen, along with original guitarists Morten and Michael Stützer and longtime bassist Peter Thorslund.

Yesterday, an advance track was made available for streaming. The introduction to “Chill My Bones (Burn My Flesh)”, with its hand drums and exotic melody, is a surprise, and an immediate hook into the rest of the song. Thrash lives or dies by the power of the riff, and this song has got some good ones going on. I’m also told by a long-time fan of the band that the new vocalist is reminiscent of former vocalist Flemming Rönsdorf, last heard from on the band’s fourth album in 1999. Continue reading »

AEON DISCOVERIES: SATAN’S WRATH, THE ORDER OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE, HANNES GROSSMANN AND THE RADIAL COVENANT

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 072013
 

Here are a few new songs I came across in my adventures through the interhole today. I came across other songs, but trust me, you don’t want to hear them. These, you want to hear. Serendipitously, they all have something to do with the word “Aeon”.

SATAN’S WRATH

It was only last year that Metal Blade released Galloping Blasphemy, the debut album by Satan’s Wrath, a two-man Greek “Satanic blackened thrash” band. But lo and behold, the label is already planning to release a second full-length, Aeons of Satan’s Reign. What’s more, it began streaming a new song today by the name of “Die White Witch Die”.

Poor Jesus, once again made the source of refreshment for the goat lord, but I do like the colorful cover. I also do like “Die White Witch Die”, voiced as it is by one of the goat lord’s hellish minions and filled as it is with rockin’, thrashin’, bloody minded riffs, plus an infernally good slowdown. This isn’t old school, this is roughly three old schools packed into one. Sick guitar solo, too. Continue reading »

ANATHEMA, ALCEST, MAMIFFER: LIVE AT THE MACHINE SHOP, FLINT, MICHIGAN (Sept 19, 2013)

 Concert Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  2 Responses »
Oct 072013
 

(BadWolf reviews the live performances by Anathema, Alcest, and Mamiffer in Flint, Michigan, on September 19.  Photos from the show, which follow the review, were taken by Kyle Lee Tate.)

Metal is rarely beautiful music. Many people, myself included, come to it looking for something harder, ugly—a mirror to hold up to those feelings not accepted by the mainstream society day-to-day. But some bands do take metal and make something beautiful out of it. Gorgeousness is likewise shunned by the worker bees of the modern day (have you ever seen a modern apartment complex? Or a piece of IKEA furniture?).

Doom-turned-progressive pop heavyweights Anathema, who traffic in bittersweet lyrics and soaring melody, trekked through the United States for the first time in twenty years, with French shoegaze-meets-black-metal wunderkinds Alcest in tow. The tour also sported brief opening slots by Seattle-based avant-garde metal-as-soundscape artists Mammifer.

I rolled into Flint Michigan’s legendary metal venue The Machine Shop with photographer Kyle Lee Tate, to find Mamiffer already playing, bathed in stage-smoke and dim, red light. Mamiffer is a collaborate effort between Aaron Turner, the one-time creative force behind legendary post-metal act Isis, and wife Faith Coloccia. Together they make ambient metal with Turner on guitar-and-pedal-board, and Faith on vocals and keyboard. Their music is akin to the sound propagated by the Handmade Birds record label, and popularized by Horseback and Locrian (with whom Mamiffer have collaborated). Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM IHSAHN: “NaCL”

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 072013
 


Ihsahn’s fifth solo album, Das Seelenbrechen, will be released by Candlelight Records on October 22 in North America. It can be pre-ordered here. Last week a song from the album named “Hiber” was made available for listening on Soundcloud, and today we get the chance to hear another one. Entitled “NaCL”, it’s streaming as a lyric video and it’s available for purchase on iTunes (here, for US fans).

NaCL is the chemical notation for sodium chloride, otherwise known as salt. Whereas “Hiber” was heavy, dark, and occasionally dissonant, on “NaCL”, Ihsahn indulges the more purely progressive side of his solo explorations. It’s anchored by a punchy, complex, and ridiculously compulsive rhythm over which Ihsahn weaves a memorable melody. All clean vocals this time, but they sound great.

Listen next. Continue reading »

MOOD MUSIC

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 052013
 

Metal is mood music.  A few recent cases in point:

RAWHIDE

“City Kids” puts you in the mood to pound six shots of whisky in rapid succession, rip your shirt off, start busting up the furniture, run out into the street and expose yourself to passing cars, pick fights in the nearest bar, black out, and wake up wondering how all that vomit got on your pants and whether that’s your blood in your mouth or someone else’s. Death punk ‘n’ roll.

 

Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 60: OMNIHILITY, DEJADEATH, THE SLOW DEATH, ELISION OF ANIMUS

 Exceptions to the Rule, MISCELLANY  6 Responses »
Oct 042013
 

After almost four years of hit-or-miss experimentation, we’ve arrived at the glorious 60th edition of MISCELLANY. I wish I could tell you that I have something red-hot and extra-special lined up to celebrate the occasion, but that’s not the way MISCELLANY works. The way it works is that I randomly pick bands I’ve never heard, I listen to a song or two, I write my impressions, and I stream what I heard so you can make up your own minds.

All of which means that when I picked the following bands I didn’t know what they would sound like or whether they would be worth a damn: Omnihility (U.S.), Dejadeath (Spain), The Slow Death (Australia), and Elision of Animus (Portugal).

OMNIHILITY

I know I’ve heard this band’s name before, but I’m also pretty sure I never listened to their music until deciding to make them my first stop on this MISCELLANY tour after receiving a message from the band. They’re from Eugene, Oregon, which I confess warmed my heart, since I know they’re going to be enduring the same dank Pacific Northwest winter that I am, or something very close to it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (Pt 1): HAMFERÐ, INQUISITION, TOMBSTONED

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 022013
 

I ran roughshod through the interhole yesterday and this morning, and it seemed like around every corner was new music worth sharing. Even more good tunes were lurking in the NCS e-mail inbox. So, I’ve divided what I found into two posts, this one being the first.

HAMFERÐ

I first came across Hamferð in August 2012 because they were the first band from the Faroe Islands (population: 49,000) to enter the globe-spanning Wacken Metal Battle competition — and they won the whole thing, earning the right to play at the Wacken festival on August 6 of last year. That remarkable story is what snagged my interest, and listening to their 2010 EP Vilst er Síðsta Fet made me a fan (for more details about their story and a review of that EP, go here).

Hamferð have now finished their debut album Evst, and a couple of hours ago they announced that it will be released on October 11 in The Faroe Islands and November 15 in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (it will also be released digitally worldwide on the same day). It will be a concept album and appears to be a continuation of ideas developed on the EP. Once again, the lyrics will be in Faroese (the band’s name is a Faroese term for the apparitions of sailors appearing before their loved ones).

Interestingly, although winning Wacken Metal Battle gave Hamferð the option for a label contract with Nuclear Blast, they turned it down “to be able to continue their work without unwanted influences”. Continue reading »

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