WOUND UPON WOUND – S/T

 Album Reviews, Free Shit  6 Responses »
Jul 252012
 

(In February 2011, we reviewed the 2010 debut EP of Dublin’s Wound Upon Wound. Today, NCS writer Andy Synn provides his assessment of the band’s debut full-length album, which was released earlier this month and is available for free download.)

Brothers and sisters, I am here today to talk about… DOOM!!!!

Blackened doom at least. Or, Doomy black metal. Genre terms are confusing. Either way this album is a monolithic treatise on desperation and despair, soundtracked by venomous tremolo melodies and crushing slabs of doom-laden guitars.

An admission though, first. Doom isn’t one of the genres I am particularly au fait with. Though there’s a crossover with some of the more melodic, melancholic stuff I find pleasure in imbibing (a pint of Daylight Dies always goes down smooth) I’m definitely something of a neophyte when it comes to the slow struggle, at least on record (though I have experienced the breaking weight of several devastating doom bands in the flesh).

But Wound Upon Wound are far from a simple Doom band. The name itself should tell you that. No, what we have here is a black metal band who are not only unafraid to ease up on the speed once in a while, but who actually revel in reining in their breakneck speed suddenly, reducing their momentum to a crushing, cataclysmic crawl, all the chaos and calamity crashing together in a massive pile-up of sickening, juddering riffage. Continue reading »

INTERLUDE: FALLEN JOY, FROM ASHES RISE, AND THROWERS

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 242012
 

We started this day with doom (mixed with stoner) in a review of the debut EP by France’s Mudbath. We’ll be going back to doom in the next post (and I’m talkin’ about seriously catastrophic doom), but just to prevent things from getting too abysmal around here, this post includes two videos and a song that I saw and heard yesterday that get the blood pumping (instead of freezing it into a viscous sludge). And the bands are: Fallen Joy (France), From Ashes Rise (U.S. – Portland), and Throwers (Germany) — clicking on their names will take you to their Facebook pages for more info.

FALLEN JOY

Fallen Joy have a debut album coming soon called Inner Supremacy. The artwork for the cover and the CD booklet can be seen above, created by the very talented Strychneen Studio; in fact, I discovered this band through Strychneen’s posting of the album art on their Facebook page.

So far, the band have released one song from the new album for streaming on SoundCloud (here), and now they’ve released a music video for the same song: “Hymn To Silent Soldiers”. Whoever those silent soldiers may be, the song is also a hymn to bands such as At the Gates, but with some blackening in this canticle and an air of modernity in the riffing and soloing. The song is a blood-pumping, jolting gallop with riffs that blister and a nice blend of black- and death-metal vocals. Check out the video right after the jump. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET (AND FREE): MUDBATH – “RED DESERT ORGY”

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 242012
 

Go low, go slow, and crush all hope of life into the muck. That’s the plan of attack for Mudbath, a band from Avignon, France, who have just self-released their debut EP, Red Desert Orgy.  The spiritual offspring of bands such as Sleep, Electric Wizard, and Eyehategod, Mudbath deliver a heavyweight narcotic concoction of black doom and sludge-filled stoner metal that’s definitely worth spreading around.

“Loserwood” hooked me in the first 30 seconds with a disease-ridden lead guitar riff and a brutal bass line, both of which have the distortion dialed to the point that they’ll jar fillings loose in your teeth. A dual-tracked, downtuned guitar solo dumps a heaping bucket of filth all over the proceedings, and the song also includes a screaming psychedelic solo. To top it off, Mudbath’s vocalist sounds like Eyehategod’s Mike Williams, which is to say that the skrieks are enough to wake the dead.

Getting comfortable with the music isn’t an option, and I’m sure that’s not Mudbath’s goal either. But the fat, dissonant riffs in “Mudjahideen” are pretty infectious nonetheless. Yet the lumbering stomp of the music is still bereft of hope or light, and this time the burning-lung vocals are joined by a braying yell, though it sounds no more sane. The last third of the song briefly shifts into a higher gear as the guitars skitter about crazily, but that’s just a prelude to another warbling solo that’s awful damned sweet (and awful damned ill). Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 46: JANAZA, NETHER REGIONS, APOTHEOSIS, AND BLACKLISTERS

 Free Shit, MISCELLANY  22 Responses »
Jul 162012
 

Time for another edition of MISCELLANY, a game I made up for myself in the early days of this blog and still play on an irregular basis. The rules of the game: I randomly pick a few bands whose music I’ve never heard and whose names are new to me. I listen to one recent song by each band (I try to limit myself to just one song, but I sometimes I get carried away). I record my impressions here, and then I stream the song(s) I heard so you can make up your own minds about whether to explore the music further.

Usually, I pick bands to explore from e-mails I’ve received from the bands themselves or from NCS readers, and sometimes from links I see on Facebook. But two of today’s picks I came across in other ways. Today’s test subjects: Janaza (Iraq), Nether Regions (U.S.), Apotheosis (U.S.), and Blacklisters (UK).

JANAZA

Last week The Atlantic magazine published a piece by “Grim Kim” Kelly (one of my favorite metal writers) under the headline “When Black Metal’s Anti-Religious Message Gets Turned On Islam.” I received links to it from several NCS readers and writers and saw more links from bands in my Facebook news feed. To read Kim’s article, go here.

The focus of the article is an example of “art and dissent [intersecting] in a region where dissent can sometimes have deadly consequences,” and specifically on a handful of black metal bands in the Middle East who have re-directed “black metal’s historically anti-Christian ferocity to rail against Islam.” The lead example chosen by Kim was a one-woman Iraqi black-metal band known as Janaza. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: AUTOLATRY – “OF THE LAND”

 Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Jul 092012
 

(Note: this review will be today’s only NCS post, because of Blog Break.)

Autolatry is a black metal band from eastern Connecticut whose music is devoted to stories about the New England wilderness and New England history. In late 2010, they released a debut album entitled The Hill, which I haven’t heard. And then in February of this year they released the subject of this review, an EP called Of the Land. Both releases can be downloaded on Bandcamp (here) with a “name your price” option.

Given the lyrical themes of Autolatry’s music, the title of this most recent EP, the names of the four songs it includes, and even the cover art, you might assume that Autolatry is some kind of New England version of Agalloch — but for the most part you would be wrong. Though you might pick out a bit of Agalloch influence here and there, the four songs on Of the Land turn out to be a surprising mix of styles, with no two songs quite alike.

The opener, “Mountain”, leaps forward immediately with maniacal drumming and a rapidly moving blast-front of ripping guitar chords. Sulfurous vocals howl malignantly and a trilling lead guitar spins a melody through the maelstrom. There’s a hard-driving, instrumental-only scorcher of a finish to the song that will get your head nodding, too.

“Oak” sets the hook from the start, with dense, chiming guitars and a super-catchy bass line. In addition to a cascading tide of tremolo melody, the song includes a relatively subdued melodic interlude that features a duet of acoustic and electric guitar with a Spanish flair (or at least that’s what jumped to my mind). Overall, it’s a rolling, rocking track that’s infectious as hell. Continue reading »

SATURDAY SINGLES FROM MORBUS CHRON AND ERIMHA

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jul 072012
 

In this post are two new tracks I came across at different times this week that I thought were worth sharing, and now is as good a time as any.

MORBUS CHRON

I never got around to reviewing this Swedish band’s 2011 debut album, Sleepers In the Rift, but I sure as hell did enjoy it. It was a real throw-back, as in throwing all the way back to Autopsy’s first couple of albums. It had a genuine air of authenticity, and the songs were really varied and just a whole helluva lot of fun to hear.

In March of this year, Century Media announced they had signed Morbus Chron, with plans to release a second full-length in 2013. To tide fans over until then, Morbus Chron recorded a three-song EP — A Saunter Through the Shroud — that Century Media will be releasing in limited numbers on July 23 as a 10″ vinyl. The cover art is above. For now, it appears the EP can only be obtained by pre-order from the European site for CM Distro here.

Earlier this week, the German Rockhard magazine web site (here) premiered a song from the EP called “Channeling the Numinous”. It begins with an attention-grabbing drum roll and a blast of chainsaw grinding and then it falls off a cliff into a pit of slowly boiling gore, spiced with death-prog guitar leads, ghastly mid-range vocals, and a head-whipping solo. Awesome song. Give it a spin after the jump.

Continue reading »

SATURDAY MORNING IS FRIDAY NIGHT, EXCEPT WITH MORE VOMIT AND LIGHT

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jul 072012
 

I apologize to all of our faithful readers. I usually put our first-of-the-day posts to bed the night before, so that I can sleep like a disgusting sloth with mouth open and drool oozing like alien slime while people in some time zones even earlier than mine read what I wrote the night before.

BUT, tonight there’s a catch to those best-laid plans: I’m too fucked up to write much on this Friday night, but I still intend to sleep like someone in cryosleep a century from now on their way to Alpha Centauri.

Which means I just have a few quick pieces of metal, some news that involves free music, and very few other words. And with luck, my wife won’t wake up in the night and decide the time has finally come to string me up by my ankles and bathe in my gore, and I’ll be able to correspond with you again on the morrow. And if there are no more posts on Saturday besides this one, you’ll know my luck ran out.

AUROCH

Not long ago we featured the dark, eye-catching artwork for the new album by Vancouver’s Auroch. Today (or from the perspective of you as you read this, yesterday), they or their label chose to premier a track on Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, which as far as I can tell didn’t even give them their own unique post, instead including their track in a player that begins with Testament. Who am I to question such decisions? Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 44: FREE SHIT FROM FALSE LIGHT, RØSENKØPF, DEPRAVATION, AND HE WHOSE OX IS GORED

 Free Shit, MISCELLANY  No Responses »
Jul 032012
 

The last time I made one of these MISCELLANY excursions was in late April. It may be September before I do another one, or it might be tomorrow. As you know, planning isn’t one of my strong suits, nor is impulse control.

Because so much time has passed since the last one of these installments, here’s a refresher on the rules of MISCELLANY: I randomly pick a few bands (usually ones who are pretty deep underground) whose music I’ve never heard and whose names are new to me. I listen to one song (but sometimes more than one — see above re lack of impulse control), I record my impressions here, and then I stream the song(s) so you can make up your own minds about whether further exploration would be worthwhile.

For these excursions, I used to pick bands from a running list of names drawn from the e-mails we get every day from bands, press agents, and readers, or from things I see while browsing the interhole. The list got so long and I got so lame in writing these posts that I gave up on updating the list. Now I’ll just have to go with whatever I’ve seen recently, based on . . . impulse.

Today’s MISCELLANY candidates are False Light (U.S.-Charleston), Røsenkøpf (U.S.-NYC), Depravation (Germany), and He Whose Ox Is Gored (U.S.-Seattle). As it turns out, all of the songs I heard for this post are available for free download. Continue reading »

MAGOA BRING THE GROOVE AND KVELERTAK BRING THE DRAGON

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 252012
 

To start this Monday off in style, we have two videos, one new and one that has become new again because it won a prize. And starting off a Monday in fine style is always a good goal, because I ain’t feelin’ too fuckin’ stylin’ on a Monday, and any kind of Monday style is a big goddamn plus, don’t you think?

MAGOA

This French band’s last song and video jumped me up like an electrode in the bunghole. Not that I would know what that feels like, mind you, but it seems like a fitting metaphor. Magoa’s “Animal” video is one of the best of the year, and if you haven’t seen it yet, by all means please go visit our earlier post about it. But as of yesterday, Magoa have a new song + video that is a bunghole insertion with extra voltage.

If there’s another modern band doing old-school groove metal with as much punch as Magoa, then I really want to hear about it. Their new song, “Enemy”, is like a brigade of machinists punching rivets through the steel girders of your thick skull. It really is the archetypal convulsive headbanger, a cleverly calculated formula for making people go into paroxysms of spastic neck-snapping.

And if that weren’t enough, it includes a hooky chorus and an old-school breakdown — by which I mean a breakdown that isn’t announced by a big fucking bass drop and one or two atonal chords. The production is just about perfect for this kind of metal — powerful, cathartic, and man, when the double bass comes alive, you’ll want to ram your head into the nearest wall. Even better, the song is a free download. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET (AND FREE): VOID FORGER – “RUINED”

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jun 232012
 

Void Forger are a relatively new three-person band based in Bucharest, Romania, who contacted us recently with a request that we give their music a spin. They have a three-song demo called Ruined that’s available for streaming and free download at Bandcamp — and it’s a very pleasant surprise. The music has gravity, in two senses: (a) it’s heavier than a semi-truck loaded with concrete girders; and (b) both in its compositional elements and in its performance, it’s serious work that’s worthy of respect.

The music is also difficult to categorize. It’s a dark storm of doom and sludge punctuated with flashes of up-tempo grind, crust, and freaked-out noize, with the bleak atmospherics enhanced by cavernous, roaring vocals that barely sound human.

“Pointless Media” moves from doomy pound and crash to a rolling gait, interrupted by a flaming burst of grindcore-like mayhem before settling back into that black, grungy roll, the distorted guitars moaning  a diseased melody.

I’m a sucker for a heavy-assed bass solo, and we get one right near the beginning of “Relief” and then again later in the song. The music staggers and lurches and erupts in whirling frenzy, with a variety of guitar leads and solo’s enhancing the changes in momentum. It’s the most melodic of the three songs, and has become my favorite. Continue reading »

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