FROM EXILE: “MARTYR’S GAMBIT”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 022012
 

From Exile are an Atlanta progressive metal band we’ve written about frequently at NCS. You can see a collection of all our previous features via this link. The last time we checked in with them, they had released a new, freely downloadable song called “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement” and a music video to go along with it. The video was a live performance of the band filmed at the studios of Digital Arts Entertainment Lab on the Georgia State University campus in downtown Atlanta. It was filmed as part of a video series focusing largely on Atlanta-based bands called indieATL (check out their web site here).

At the time of that last post, From Exile had disclosed that they recorded a second song as part of the indieATL session and planned to release it (along with a video of the performance) at some future date — and last night they did that. The new track is called “Martyr’s Gambit”, and man, is it cool.

As in the case of “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement”, it’s not as extreme as most of the music we cover at NCS, and all the singing is clean. But the song is heavy, intricate, and superbly rendered, and it features a powerful, oh-so-memorable chorus. The dual vocal harmonies are beautiful, as is the interplay between the triad of guitarists, the nimble bass player, and the hard-hitting drummer. And as the icing on the cake, the instrumental jam in the song’s back half is a galvanizing flow of compulsive energy. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ATRIARCH, VOIVOD, SYBREED, AND CYTOTOXIN

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 012012
 

I’ve been missing in action more than usual over the last 4 days, having been kidnapped by work-related travel and activities that were fun, but  cut deeply into blog time. I’m now back home on this Sunday night and have been trying to find out what I missed in the world of metal. Of course, I missed a lot that interested me — too much to capture in a single post — so I’m going to pick out just a few of the items I thought were worth spreading around.

ATRIARCH

I first came across Portland’s Atriarch through their 20 Buck Spin split release with Oakland’s Alaric — and that whole split release is just chock full of win. If you haven’t heard it, check it out on Bandcamp here.

Atriarch is now on the Profound Lore label and their first PL release will be Ritual of Passing, scheduled to hit the streets on October 30. The cover art up there is by Stevie Floyd (Taurus). I saw that Pitchfork recently premiered the album’s third track “Altars”, and then I saw that PL had put the song up for streaming on SoundCloud as well. And I checked it out. Fuckin’ glad I did, too. Continue reading »

HAMFERÐ

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Aug 122012
 

The United States has always been run by a plutocracy whose power has rarely been challenged in any meaningful way, regardless of which political party happens to be in office. For complex reasons, class warfare has just never really been a serious factor in the civic and political life of the U.S. The big dogs gobble up an ever-increasing share of the pie, and most people don’t ever seem bothered enough by it to rise up politically and demand that their own interests be put first. But as a people, strangely enough, we do like to root for the underdog, and we tend to cheer when the underdog wins. I’m no exception . . . and hence, this story.

Wacken Metal Battle is a globe-spanning competition designed to showcase up-and-coming bands in the world of metal, and this year it celebrated its 10th anniversary. National competitions are now held in 33 countries, with the winner of each national competition journeying to Germany to perform on the first day of the Wacken Open Air festival, playing for all the marbles. And it’s a big bag of marbles, too. Apart from the thrill of getting to play at the world’s biggest metal fest, the winner this year was to receive a world-wide record deal with Nuclear Blast and a shitload of other prizes, such as a Marshall Full-Stack, Washburn guitars, and Paise Boomer cymbals (the whole list of prizes can be seen at this page).

For the first time in 2012, the Faroe Islands joined the Metal Battle competition. The Faroe Islands are a country consisting of 18 mountainous islands located in the North Atlantic between Iceland and the rest of Scandinavia. The total population is about 49,000, with nearly half the people living in the capital region of Tórshavn. They are the descendants of Vikings (and Irish), they have their own language, and they have metal (as those of you who know bands such as Týr, The Apocryphal Order, or SiC are well aware).

This year, eight bands competed in the Faroese national Metal Battle event, and the winner was a band named Hamferð. Hamferð made the trip to Germany and took the Wacken W.E.T. stage on August 6 to throw down against bands from throughout Europe, plus countries as far away as China, Japan, Russia, Mexico, and Brazil. And guess who won the whole thing, as their nation’s first-ever competitor in Wacken Metal Battle? That’s right — Hamferð did. Continue reading »

“THAT’S MUSIC!” – BUT IT AIN’T METAL: SOEN – “COGNITIVE”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, That's Music -- But It's Not Metal  7 Responses »
Aug 092012
 

(In this post, DGR reviews the 2012 album by Soen.)

Talk about a disc about which it has taken forever to compose my thoughts. It’s been floating around since mid-February as a Spinefarm release in Europe but only saw digital release here in the States much later. Soen are a conflicting-as-hell band to discuss because one of the first things everyone does is drop a comparison to Tool. Given that I am a Tool fan and very familiar with their work, I can confirm that the comparison is definitely warranted, but you know what? Soen deserve to stand as their own band.

Yes, they have some elements of the aforementioned band’s spacey prog-rock tone attached to them, but very few bands do it as well; even those who are influenced by it and try to mimic it to a T usually fail. Soen have somehow managed to get close enough to that band’s sound without becoming them or even adopting the Philosophy-101-styled thinking buried in new age mysticism that I’m perfectly okay with Soen.

Yes, getting David Bottrill involved (famed producer, worked with a ton of groups, including Tool) feels like an incredibly shrewd maneuver, and he does his damnedest to give them the exact same mix, but so what, it sounds great. They’re really not mimics. Believe me, Soen are something of an all-star group who manage to do enough things on their own that they feel like a new thing. Cognitive is a really good bit of prog-rock with quite a lot of individuality buried in between echo-heavy bass lines and singalong-worthy choruses, much of which, surprisingly enough, is provided by the drumming work of former Opeth drummer Martin Lopez.

I know it’s impossible to analyze this album in a vacuum, as if I had never heard some of what’s being done here before, but now that I have gotten that rant out of the way, let’s talk about Cognitive. Continue reading »

BARREN EARTH: “THE DEVIL’S RESOLVE”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Aug 032012
 

(DGR has been on a reviewing tear lately. In today’s installment, he breaks down the latest album by Barren Earth, which was released earlier this year on the Peaceville label)

My story with Barren Earth is pretty goddamn simple, but I feel that it needs to be told…if for no other reason than to explain why I suddenly seem so excited about a relatively ‘new’ band.

Barren Earth had been under way and gathering some steam, but it wasn’t until Scott (EvilLive, proprietor of Hookinmouth.net, currently writing for ThatDevilMusic) reviewed the group’s Curse Of The Red River release on TheNumberOfTheBlog and gave it the almost-never-used perfect score that I gave it a listen.

It impressed the hell out of me. I wasn’t aware they were a superstar side-project group of various doom and goth artists who had decided to do something a little closer to progressive death metal, with the occasional folk aspect and something a little bit retro-sounding, so the band came as a pleasant surprise. They are one of the few groups who can break out the 70’s-styled synths and keyboard sounds without sounding overtly cheesy. They also delved into some heavy, heavy stuff, too.

Less of a surprise when I heard the album and figured out that it was Mikko Kotamäki on the main vocals. The guy is almost instantly recognizable, and his participation in Barren Earth may have been part of why it took me so goddamn long to get around to this review. He is also the vocalist for Swallow The Sun, and their 2012 release (reviewed here), like this one, is incredibly long; it felt like I was overdosing a little. No fault of the album though. The tandem of new releases just affects the specific niche of people like myself who may have made the idiotic mistake of listening to both bands’ albums while attempting to stammer out some sort of review for both of them in close proximity. Some gentlemen from Amorphis and Moonsorrow have also been in Barren Earth for some time, handling backing vocals along with guitars and such.

Curse Of The Red River hit in 2010, so the release of The Devil’s Resolve just two years later, even with some production delays, and being of equal quality, has been fantastic. Also, just a heads up: This review is for the edition of The Devil’s Resolve that came with two extra songs. With some bands, you can usually skip out on the bonus tracks, and with some you shouldn’t. If you really like Barren Earth, you’re potentially giving up ten-plus minutes between these two songs. So if you have the regular edition, you should see if you can find those two on Itunes or elsewhere.  Continue reading »

SHIT SEEN AND HEARD: SONNE ADAM, ERUPTED, SILENT PATH, AND REIGN OF THE ARCHITECT

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 182012
 

Collected in here are items I randomly happened upon last night while browsing the internest and checking out links sent in by our ever-vigilant readers.

ITEM ONE

Sonne Adam are an Israeli death/doom band whose 2011 Century Media debut, Transformation, garnered a lot of critical praise. It was also one heavy motherfucker. Yesterday, I saw the news that the band’s first two-song EP, The Sun Is Dead, has been released by Van Records as a 7″ vinyl with that new cover art you see above.

Sonne Adam are also now working on a new EP to be entitled Doctrines of Dark Devotion, and yesterday they started streaming (for a limited time) a rough mix of a new track called “Bestow the Crown of Death”. Shit sounds heavier than oceans, darker than your worst nightmares. Guitars grinding on HM-2 overdrive; awesome reverberating vocals, deep as trenches and cracked like the windows in an abandoned warehouse; eerie guitar instrumentals swirling above the massive grinding noises underneath.

This is a very cool song and makes me tumescent for the new EP. Stream it right after the jump. Continue reading »

VAURA: “SELENELION”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  5 Responses »
Jul 062012
 

Here’s how this happened:

In a MISCELLANY post earlier this week I wrote about a NY band named Røsenkøpf (who, btw, I am still really digging). As I usually do, I messaged the band and their label (Wierd Records) about the post, y’know, in order to improve the chances that it would be read by at least two people. I got a nice note back from Pieter at Wierd Records. He suggested that I might also like another Wierd release by a band named Vaura, who he said included members of Dysrhythmia, Gorguts, Kayo Dot, Blacklist, and more, and he kindly shared a download link.

So, I’m a big fan of Dysrhythmia and Gorguts and have been intrigued by the few songs I’ve heard by Kayo Dot, so I downloaded Vaura’s February 2012 debut album, Selenelion, having no more idea about the music than the brief description Pieter provided — an “interesting collision of black metal and ultra dark post punk”.  (I later realized that Vaura had received quite a bit of attention when Selenelion was originally released, and I had overlooked it because . . . well, I’ll explain why later.)

Yesterday I went to the gym. For me, this is not a frequent or regular occurrence, but over the last six or nine months I seem to have acquired a jelly roll around my mid-section, like some alien spawn that burrowed into my navel while I was sleeping off last Thanksgiving’s feed and has been reproducing inside me ever since. Because that tire around my belly that makes me turn away from the mirror in disgust can’t really be me, can it? So I’ve resolved to try and beat that fucker into submission with some brutal iron-pumping.

I like to go to the gym at an hour when the only other gymnasts there are old people trying to loosen up their arthritic limbs in a futile effort to stave off the Grim Reaper, instead of hot chicks who would laugh at me, or worse still, ignore me. But, I still need music when I brutally pump iron, so I won’t hear myself gasping and whimpering like an abused dog. I decided to load up my iPod Shuffle with the Vaura, figuring that if the band included anyone connected with Dysrhythmia and Gorguts, it would give me a good injection of adrenaline, which I would need in order to achieve three repetitions instead of two on the bench press and bust out five sit-up’s instead of four.

Man, did I get a surprise. Continue reading »

ENOCHIAN THEORY: “LIFE…AND ALL IT ENTAILS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  6 Responses »
Jul 042012
 

(Andy Synn continues his unofficial UK Week of reviews here at NCS with a review of the new album by Enochian Theory.)

If you remember these guys from my previous review, then you’ll know that they are very much an Exception To The Rule here at NCS, but one that I think is worth making, such is the stellar quality of their material. It also helps that I know the audience here at NCS is largely made up of people who love MUSIC, with metal as their chosen speciality (occasionally to the exclusion of all else) and who often express an appreciation for other, tangential musical forms which share the best traits of metal – honesty, integrity, and complexity.

While this album is, on the whole, a prog-rock (rather than prog-metal) album, it shares a similar fearless spirit and an evolving creativity with many of the acts we all look up to today, a fearless ambition and a willingness to be open and vulnerable, perhaps even more impressive without the twin-shields of distortion and rage to hide behind.

The songs on this album are like some sort of rare and unique flower, hiding their complexities behind layers of overwhelming beauty and subtle notes of regret. Undeniably, even effortlessly, melodic and epic in feel, songs like opening duo “This Aching Isolation” and “Hz” take their time to fully unfold, and even longer to be appreciated for their sheer depth and clarity. Continue reading »

KATATONIA: “DEAD END KINGS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Jun 282012
 

(We welcome London-based guest contributor Alex Franquelli, who reviews the forthcoming album by Katatonia.)

Similar but different. The thin line separating criticism and appreciation when discussing the artistic value of the Swedish godfathers of “depressing metal” is such that the resulting balance between the two currents aptly describes the status of the band itself. Both camps are in fact not completely devoid of cynicism, and a subtle but relevant amount of expectation is shared by those who see Katatonia as either an epitaph or an epigraph at the beginning of a new chapter for heavy metal. 2012 marks the return of the band at whose helm Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström (vocals and guitar respectively) seem to sit pretty comfortably, sharing the role of producers with David Castillo at the mixing desk.

Is Dead End Kings the natural continuation of Night Is the New Day (2009)? The recent additions of Per Eriksson on guitars and Niklas Sandin on bass might be enough to make you draw your own conclusions, but what is revealed by listening to the new album is a thoroughly new concept of music which goes beyond an easily predictable evolution. Dead End Kings appears to be less direct; ambitions are set reasonably high, and the progressive hints, which punctuated the previous full-length album, now play an effective role in making the sound more dynamic and prone to dramatic changes of keys and atmosphere. Continue reading »

VINTERSORG: “ORKAN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  11 Responses »
Jun 222012
 

(In the following review, Andy Synn assesses the new album by Sweden’s Vintersorg, which is set for North American release on July 10 by Napalm Records.)

A new Vintersorg album? Already? Well that’s always good news. And what’s even better is that Orkan continues the blackened folk vibe re-established first on Solens Rotter and then carried over to Jordpuls.

To be brutally honest with you, back when Vintersorg announced his participation in Borknagar (for 2001’s Empiricism) I was becoming concerned that the line between the two bands was starting to blur – the shinier, proggier stylings of Cosmic Genesis (still one of my all-time favourite albums) and its two successors weren’t all that far removed from the sounds of Empiricism and Epic. It didn’t help that Mr V’s vocals are amongst the most instantly recognisable in metal, often dominating proceedings and serving to tie the two groups a little too tightly to one another, giving neither the necessary room to breathe.

But all that changed with the release of Solens Rotter. A three-year break between albums saw the duo of Vintersorg and Marklund redefine their priorities to produce the first in what has turned out to be a return to the more rustic, folk-ish melodies and earthen black metal atmosphere of their earlier works,  musical miles away from the soaring, Pink Floydian blackened prog of Borknagar. Last year’s phenomenal Jordpuls continued the trend, actively improving on Solens Rotter in nearly every way, and now we are once more gifted with a new piece of blackened folk art in the form of Orkan. Continue reading »

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