EYE-CATCHERS: VAULTING, RIGOR MORTIS, AND SWIMMING WITH SHARKS

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers  3 Responses »
Sep 252011
 

It’s been a while since we published an installment in this EYE-CATCHERS series. To remind you, the object of this series is to listen to new music based solely on the attractiveness of the album covers — testing the completely irrational hypothesis that cool album art correlates with cool music.

I was inspired to do another one of these posts by an e-mail exchange I had recently with NCS reader Treezplease. He sent me a handful of album-art images and a song to accompany each one, and I dived in. I’m going to include two of those test subjects in this post, and maybe more later. But at about the same time, I also got an e-mail from a German band called Vaulting. I visited their Bandcamp page to listen to something, and right away I saw the album cover up above. So I just had to lead off this post with it, because it truly is a fucking eye-catcher, isn’t it?

VAULTING

Vaulting was founded in 2006 in Wiesbaden, Germany, by two brothers, guitarist Matthias Gathof and drummer Sebastian Gathof. To date, the band have released a 5-song demo in 2007, an 8-song EP in 2008 called Epilog, and a five-track EP in 2009 called Modus Humanis, the cover of which you’re looking at right now. The band are also on the verge of releasing their first full-length album, Nucleus. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SEAS OF STONE

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers  3 Responses »
Sep 232011
 

(Here’s a brief review from NCS writer TheMadIsraeli . . .)

Just look at this fucking album cover:

It’s got bears fighting on it.  FUCKING BEARS. I suppose you can call this an edition of the NCS EYE CATCHERS series, since I totally downloaded this on merit of the album cover alone. But what exactly could such a mammoth album cover encompass?

Seas Of Stone (from Dresden, Germany) plays dense, humid, mist-engulfed doom/sludge metal that channels the atmosphere of hiking the northern woodlands, and hopefully NOT getting fucked a new one by fucking bears.  The production on this 3-song EP is pretty astounding, channeling the very mood and ambience of the album cover itself.  The instruments are all dense and behemoth in tone, playing sludge that induces a dreading sense of being mobbed.

By fucking bears. (a bit more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: ALL THINGS ROTTEN

 Eye-Catchers  10 Responses »
Sep 202011
 

NCS reader and multi-instrumental musician Ray Heberer gave me a great idea yesterday. He wrote me to sing the praises of a metal artist who goes by the name All Things Rotten, who will be creating the cover art for the album debut by one of Ray’s many projects, Dreams of Winter. I decided that in addition to putting together this feature about All Things Rotten, I’d make this the first installment in a continuing series on metal album art.

We’re certainly not the only metal blog that pays attention to album art, but it is something that matters to us. So it seemed only fitting that we devote some attention to artists even when it’s not in connection with a newly released platter of music. Like every other continuing feature on NCS, this one won’t appear on any kind of predictable schedule, because I’m just too disorganized and generally half-assed to manage regularity. But when the spirit moves me, I’ll do more of these. And like everything else I do here, I’m counting on the help of readers. So, if there’s an artist whose work you admire, leave a comment or e-mail me with your recommendations (islander@nocleansinging.com). And it will be even better of you send me names of people who aren’t already well-known in the world of metal artwork. If you can, include a link to someplace where examples of the art are posted for viewing.

Now, with that intro, let’s talk about All Things Rotten. He (and I think it’s a he, though I’m not positive) has done art for bands like Disgorge, Hacavitz, Snowy Shaw All Stars Band, Destroyer 666, Hirax, and many more. In addition to creating album art, he also does shirt designs and logos. He also periodically just gives away his artwork for use on album covers. For example, in browsing his Facebook page, I saw that he gave away the piece you’ll see right after the jump to the first person who replied and committed to use it on an album cover. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, GHOST BRIGADE, TRIALS, MINUSHUMAN, AND THE CLEANSING

 Eye-Catchers  10 Responses »
Jun 252011
 

In this EYE-CATCHERS series we usually pick music to sample from bands we’ve never heard before based solely on their album art. It’s an ongoing experiment, testing the illogical hypothesis that if the artwork is cool, the music will be, too. Today, we’re continuing that experiment with three bands — Trials (U.S.), Minushuman (France), and The Cleansing (Denmark) — all of whom have new albums on the way.

But we just couldn’t resist also featuring eye-catching artwork from forthcoming albums by two bands we already know and like very much — Fleshgod Apocalypse and Ghost Brigade. We don’t yet have any new music from those albums to toss your way, so we’ll play some older tunes from both bands as a reminder about why we care about what they’re up to. Yes, lots of bands to be covered in this post — so we’ll keep the verbiage short and focus on the art and the music.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

You knew we were going to feature the album art for FA’s next release, Agony, which is due on August 9 from Nuclear Blast. Along with Bury Your Dead (whose 2009 line-up change spurred the start of this site), they’ve sort of become the unofficial NCS “house band” (which means we wished they lived at our house so they could play for us all the time). The only reason we’re a couple days late in posting about it was so we could finish up the rest of this long EYE-CATCHERS installment. It’s a hell of an album cover, don’t you think? Credit goes to the very talented Marco Hassman. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: SLAGDUSTER

 Eye-Catchers  No Responses »
Jun 112011
 

We found out about Slagduster via an e-mail from Shane Sherman, the band’s vocalist and second guitarist. Even before getting to the music, I thought the band had two things going for it — the cover for their debut album, Nature.Humanity.Machine., and their name. One-word band names are cool, and just when I thought all the good ones had been taken, here we have Slagduster. I have no idea what it’s intended to mean or how it was conceived, but it’s got a nice, nasty ring to it.

Slagduster are from British Columbia in Canada, and the album design and art were handled by Zak Waterlow, who also recorded the album and produced it with the band at Waterlow Audio Studio. He also happens to be the band’s bass player. That’s what we call one-stop shopping.

I decided to listen to the album as part of our on-going EYE-CATCHERS experiment, in which we test the hypothesis that cool album art correlates with cool music. This particular test case completely supports the hypothesis, because this is one seriously cool album — a collection of inventive, head-spinning songs played by four extremely talented musicians. I suppose it’s a type of progressive metal, with intricate arrangements and often astonishing execution. But I really hesitate to use the term “progressive metal”.

Too often, I find prog metal to be over-produced and either too pretty (particularly the kind that includes clean singing) or so wanked-out as to lose all shape as songs. Also, too many bands who hold themselves out (or get classified without trying) as prog-metal bands forget that if you’re going to append the term “metal” to your music, it needs to be heavy, as well as creatively multi-faceted. Slagduster don’t forget that for one minute. If I had to compare them with another math-metal-leaning band, it would be CiLiCe from The Netherlands (which is high praise in my book). Continue reading »

EYE CATCHERS: BEYOND CREATION

 Eye-Catchers  4 Responses »
Jun 042011
 

It’s been almost two months since our last installment of EYE-CATCHERS, and it seemed like a good time to renew this series of posts, especially after publishing BadWolf’s artistic analysis of Travis Smith’s cover art for the new Opeth album earlier this week. While I’m on that subject, I have a new piece of information to add about the appearance of the Opeth band members’ heads in the tree on that cover — which seems to be a source of controversy about the artwork, even spawning rumors that the cover art released this week is just an elaborate prank and isn’t actually the true cover.

That piece of information came to us via NCS reader markus, who informed us of the artistic linkage between the Opeth tree and the jinmenju. Go here to see what markus was referring to. I still don’t think the cover is a prank.

To remind you, the object of these EYE-CATCHERS posts is to listen to new music based solely on the attractiveness of their album covers — testing the completely irrational hypothesis that cool album art correlates with cool music.

Our test subject for today is a Montreal band called Beyond Creation, who released their debut album The Aura in April. The cover art was created by Marco Hasmann, who has created equally eye-catching covers for the likes of NCS favorites Fleshgod Apocalypse and Blasphemer, as well as a host of brutal death metal bands. I think of all the bands we’ve featured in this series, Beyond Creation has been our most successful subject. We’re too lazy to keep Best of the Year lists, but if we did, I’m pretty sure The Aura would be in my personal Top 20, maybe my Top 10. If you appreciate the music of Obscura, The Faceless, or Augury, Beyond Creation will blow your fucken minds. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: BLOOD FREAK

 Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  42 Responses »
Apr 102011
 

I may not be able to write much during the next two weeks, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be completely invisible. Every now and then I’ll expose myself, figuratively speaking of course,  just so you don’t forget me. However, the exposures will mostly be fleeting, hit-and-run, guerilla-warfare incursions. In other words, my posts will be even more half-assed and unoriginal than usual. The only plus side for you is that they’ll be short.

This post will set the tone for more to come. First, it’s completely unoriginal — I stole the idea from The Living Doorway, which is a blog you should check out if you haven’t already. Second, it’s very short, because I haven’t even listened to the album in question, just the one song featured on The Living Doorway post. And third, because I wrote it, it will be half-assed by definition.

The band is Blood Freak, from Portland. The album is Mindscraper, now out on Willowtip Records. The song is “Pink on the Inside”. The style is “a splattery hodgepodge of bass-heavy goregrind, campy thrashiness, and grooving horror-fueled death metal.” I’m quoting The Living Doorway post because I can’t improve on that description. My own half-assed opinion? I love this song. You may listen to it after the jump. Continue reading »

ARCH ENEMY: KHAOS LEGIONS

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  9 Responses »
Mar 072011
 

Arch Enemy revealed the cover art for their next studio release, Khaos Legions. I thought it was so damned cool that I had to stick it up here for all to see.

The artist is Brent Elliott White, who has done covers for the likes of Megadeth and Death Angel, and many others.

The album is due in the late spring or early summer on Century Media and will mark the band’s return to new original songs after the re-recordings album, The Root of All Evil (2009) and the live DVD/CD they released in 2008, Tyrants of the Rising Sun.

Wonder if they’ll perform wearing those masks now? We’d still be able to recognize Angela, don’t you think?

EYE-CATCHERS (Part 5)

 Eye-Catchers  31 Responses »
Feb 232011
 

Fuck me, I just realized a couple days ago that it’s been almost eight months since the last time we did one of these EYE-CATCHERS posts. I guess it was always a variant on the MISCELLANY posts, and that series has continued while this one languished — until today.

In case you’ve forgotten, EYE-CATCHERS was both an experiment and a vehicle for discovering new music. The experiment was designed to test the completely illogical hypothesis that cool album art tends to correlate with cool music. There’s really no reason why the two should go together, but in my experience, they do, more often than not.

Of course, my experience has been completely anecdotal, with no statistical significance behind it at all. Undoubtedly the day will come when I’ll see a cool cover and then run for the vomitorium after I start listening to the tunes. But from the time when we started this experiment last April until it petered out in July, most of our test cases validated the hypothesis.

Today we’re reviving the experiment. It’s also yet another random way to make listening choices from the enormous pile of metal that’s constantly accumulating here. For those of us at NCS, randomness is appealing because we like surprises, and also because our lives are pretty much a collection of random experiences anyway.

So, today’s test cases for this renewed experiment are Illdisposed (a venerable band from Denmark who’ve got a new album coming); Blaspherian, from Texas (who also have a new album on the way); and a Finnish band called The Undivine. After the jump, we’ll reveal our test results and provide you the musical evidence, too. Continue reading »

TOO MANY HUMANS

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  8 Responses »
Jul 032010
 

We were big fans of the 2008 debut album from Montreal’s The Last Felony (called Aeon of Suffering). It was a brain-coring mash-up of technical death metal, deathcore, and hardcore styles, slightly blackened,  that we found ourselves coming back to whenever we wanted to just rock the fuck out.

We’re now greedily anticipating the August 17 release (in North America) of the band’s second effort, Too Many Humans, on Lifeforce Records. The album art up above would have warranted a test drive in our “Eye-Catchers” series, except we already knew about the band and its music, and the album title sits well with us, too. We pretty much have that thought on a daily basis, when we personally encounter or read about, uh, assholes. Just too damned many humans, and not enough emu’s.

Wholly apart from the strength of the band’s debut album, we’re psyched about the new one because of a few tastes of what’s to come. Three tastes, to be precise — and we’ll serve them up for you like delectable amuse-bouche while you wait for the main offering in August.

First, there’s a promo video for the album. We usually don’t even watch these things because so little effort goes into most of them — but this one is really well done.

Second, there’s a song from the new album (“Quandary”) that was included on the free compilation available for download from the Canadian label/distributor Sonic Unyon (the subject of a post you can find here).

And third, there’s another song from the new album that the band has recently put up for streaming, with the truly inspired title “We Are Future Housing Developements For Maggots”.

Figuratively wrap your mouth around all three tastes after the jump . . . Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries