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 »

READY TO HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN? WATCH THESE KIDS COVER TOOL’S “Forty Six & 2”

 Exceptions to the Rule  21 Responses »
Sep 282013
 

Holy fuckin’ shit on a stick!

I just came across a professionally filmed video of a bunch of teen-aged (and sub-teen) music students recording a cover of Tool’s song “Forty Six & 2” from their 1996 Ænima album. It’s ridiculously impressive. The vocalist and the drummer are especially amazing to watch and hear, but all of the kids really kick the hell out of this song.

Their instructor is a dude named Aaron O’Keefe who teaches at various music academies in Ohio. He’s obviously doing a fantastic job.

Yes, this is an Exception to the Rule round here, but one that’s completely justified in my humble opinion. If there’s ever a School of Rock sequel, Jack Black could save some time: Here’s your cast, dude.

Watch this next: Continue reading »

A SATURDAY SMORGASBORD: PHANTOM, FATES WARNING, DISPARAGED, CARPATHIAN FOREST, CARCASS, IMMOLATION

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 282013
 

Happy Saturday motherfuckers (and of course I mean that in the nicest possible way). You haven’t asked what I’ve been listening to this morning, but I’m going to share that with you anyway, because sometimes people want things that they don’t know they want, and I feel sure this is such a time.

PHANTOM

In listening to the kind of albums I, Voidhanger releases, I’m used to getting my brain pureed in a blender or torn apart by black hurricanes of harrowing noise. But this morning I listened to the first song on a forthcoming I, Voidhanger album that takes a different turn. The album is Incendiary Serum by a Danish band named Phantom, and it’s scheduled for release before the end of this year. The opening track is “Ghostly”, and it is ghostly (and ghastly).

The aura of the music is still very black and bleak, still filled by vocal vomit, but it’s slow, crushing, and melodic. Powerful degraded riffs stomp and moan, twisted tremolo trills flit through the murk, minor-key piano melodies sing the songs of dead, homeless souls. You can headbang, and you can sink into a state of melancholy bereavement. This is an excellent melding of doom, death, and black metal. I, Voidhanger does not disappoint. Here’s “Ghostly”: Continue reading »

MINDGRINDER, VAURA, YEAR OF NO LIGHT

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 272013
 

I know it seems like all we’ve done recently is collect new songs for you to hear, but there’s a good reason for this: All we’ve done recently is collect new songs for you to hear. In fact, we’re doing it again in this post, though we’ll be breaking the habit with a review or two later today. I’ve had more time than usual to go exploring, and I continue to find new music that get’s me pumped up. So, here we go again… and the bands, in alphabetical order, are MindGrinder (Norway), Vaura (U.S.), and Year of No Light (France).

MINDGRINDER

Until about two days ago I didn’t know MindGrinder existed, despite the fact that they produced two albums in 2004 and 2005. But in my defense, eight years is a long time between albums, and yes, they did release a new album on September 20 entitled Prop Agenda. I found out about it haphazardly, because the artist who created the cover (Eliran Kantor) is someone who I follow on Facebook and he happened to post the cover on his page.

That peaked my curiosity and I went in search of music and found two cuts from the album. The first one I heard is a cover of Emperor’s “I Am the Black Wizards”, on which the father of Emperor’s Samoth (who is a renowned blues artist in Norway) laid down the bass track. It blew my fuckin’ mind (you can tell I’m enthusiastic because I can’t help but use the F word when I get excited). Continue reading »

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