TOURISM: MAYHEM AND WATAIN WILL BE ASSAULTING NORTH AMERICA

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Oct 132014
 

 

Today Norway’s Mayhem and Sweden’s Watain announced that they will be mounting a co-headlining North American tour together this winter. Named Black Metal Warfare, the tour will also include support from the Canadian black/death band Revenge.

Mayhem are touring in support of their new album, Esoteric Warfare, while Watain are touring in support of their most recent full-length, The Wild Hunt. I really enjoyed the live performances of both bands the last time they separately ventured to our shores, and I have high hopes for this tour. I’m also very interested to see Revenge.

The full schedule appears right after the jump (it neglects the South and Southwest, among other regions): Continue reading »

VOMIT METAL: DEATH VOMIT (CHILE), WÖMIT ANGEL, DEATH VOMIT (INDONESIA), RADIOACTIVE VOMIT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Oct 132014
 

 

I’ve had vomit on my mind, and not for the usual reason after a weekend. This time it’s because I happened to notice that I had promos for three new albums by bands with the word “vomit” in their names, and at about the same time as I figured that out, I heard a new song from yet another vomit band on Facebook that I liked. It’s definitely not a distinct genre, this vomit metal. As you’ll see, vomit comes in all kinds of different chunks.

And although I’m joking around about vomit, some of the most fun I’ve had all year with my clothes on has come from listening to the music featured in this post. I do hope you’ll devote your time to it.

DEATH VOMIT (CHILE)

You may have noticed from the headline of this post that it includes two bands named Death Vomit. This first one is from Chile, and their debut album Gutted By Horrors was released this past July by Xtreem Music. I wrote about the first advance track from the album last June, but idiot that I am, I never listened to the whole album until Kunal Choksi reminded me of its existence via a recent e-mail.

I’m so glad I finally paid attention, because Gutted By Horrors punches a whole shitload of my buttons — it’s a supremely well-executed assault of ancient death metal lethality, like a strain of plague bacterium that has begun virulently festering after being unearthed from a crypt and exposed to air once again. Continue reading »

DECKARD CAIN’S MALADIES OF THE EAR!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 122014
 

(Our friend and fellow blogger deckard cain re-joins us with a fresh set of musical recommendations.)

Greetings!

While Diablo constantly devises plans, doomed to fail of course, to conquer the world and the rest of the world lets out a collective sigh, I sit here thinking. Thinking about penning down yet another scroll on the most infectious maladies of the ear, and lo, here we are!

“Stay awhile and listen.”

1.  DESERTED FEAR

OSDM with an extremely glossy finish, courtesy of Dan Swanö.

I’ve written about these guys from Germany before; in fact it was on my best of 2012 list here on NCS. What probably separates them from the old guard is their knack for using grooves that are more reminiscent of modern metal. One could say that they’ve got one foot each in the past and the present. This German trio’s got a new LP out titled Kingdom of Worms via FDA Rekotz. Stream their first single below. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLASPHERIAN, CLOUDKICKER, DISSVARTH, EASTFRISIAN TERROR, FEN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 122014
 

After a two-week hiatus from listening to new songs, watching new videos, and preparing these round-ups, I’m easing back into the gig. I didn’t finish as many reviews during the hiatus as I had hoped, and so I still won’t prepare these round-ups as frequently as before, until I make more headway on some reviews I desperately want to finish. With luck, Leperkahn will continue to pitch in as he did during my break. Speaking of which, how about a big round of applause for Leperkahn?

The good new metal continues to come in a flood: The following offerings are all new things I saw and heard just over the last 24 hours. The bands are presented in alphabetical order. The music is all over the map, both stylistically and geographically.

BLASPHERIAN

Iron Bonehead Productions has announced plans to release a new 7″ EP by Houston’s Blaspherian by the end of November. Its name is Upon the Throne… Of Eternal Blasphemous Death. The last time I wrote about Blaspherian (here) was more than three years ago, just before the release of their debut album. The fantastic cover art for the album had caught my eye, and the art for this new EP is certainly eye-catching, too. Continue reading »

STUFF LEPERKAHN DONE FOUND AND DONE LIKED, PART 5: SHORES OF NULL, OLD MAN GLOOM, INTER ARMA, WORMWOOD, WHORLS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 082014
 

 

(Leperkahn soldiers on with the round-ups while I’m AWOL from round-up duty. Here’s his latest collection of new things.)

Hello all. This version’s gonna be a bit short on the descriptions, since I have a boatload of Adam Smith to read, and a paper on the The Iliad that won’t write itself. That said, I figured I needed a break from that, and you all needed some wonderful metal in your lives.

SHORES OF NULL

I know I remember seeing some good press behind Shores Of Null’s recent Candlelight-released album Quiescence, and probably even watched one of the earlier music videos they made for one of the tracks. Yet, dunce that I am, I never actually checked out the album, and the just-released video for “Ruins Alive” is proving that was a mistake.

It mixes some doom-y/death-y instrumental work not unlike Insomnium, or something doomier than Insomnium, with Davide Straccione’s absolutely stunning vocals, both his cleans, used heavily and tonally in the vein of Enslaved’s Herbrand Larsen, Extol’s Ole Børud, and Black Crown Initiate’s Andy Thomas (therefore at once stunningly melodic and entrancingly proggy), and his cavernous, funeral doom-y growls. Listening to some of their other music videos, the quality put forth on “Ruins Alive” seems to carry throughout Quiescence. Add that to the long and growing list of albums I need to check out

https://www.facebook.com/shoresofnull Continue reading »

STUFF LEPERKAHN DONE FOUND AND DONE LIKED, PART 4 (I THINK)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 062014
 

 

(Leperkahn once again steps up to the plate during my round-up hiatus with a collection of noteworthy news and new music.)

MARDUK

You can pretty much assume that a new Marduk record will kick ass 100% of the time. Their most recent full-length, Serpent Sermon, is certainly a better testament to that than most of their releases. Luckily for us, January 2015 will give us yet another dose of their feral, maniacal black metal, entitled Front Schwein. I literally don’t know anything else about the record, other than my hypothesis that it’ll be one of the better records January offers. Get psyched.

[Editor’s intrusion: “schwein” is German for pig, and “frontschwein” seems to be an expression for the grunts at the front in wartime.]

https://www.facebook.com/Mardukofficial
http://marduk.nu/ Continue reading »

VOMIT ORCHESTRA AND T.O.M.B.

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 052014
 

 

On Friday I got a reminder that despite how much my tastes in metal have expanded over the years and how much more deeply into the underground I’ve gone exploring, there are still branches of the cave system I’ve still not discovered. As different as the music in this post is from the range of music I usually patronize, I do like what I’ve found — so I’m sharing it. Both discoveries were spawned by a song premiere we did late last week. Both are strange, though in very different ways.

VOMIT ORCHESTRA

Three days ago I had the pleasure of premiering (here) a long symphony of pain named “Scour (Parts I and II)” by the band Venowl from their forthcoming split with Cara Neir. Venowl’s music is itself on the periphery of the metal I know best, but at least in their case I was familiar with most of their previous releases. And then two days ago I was introduced for the first time to the music of the UK project Emit, and specifically to a 2012 demo entitled Spectre Music of An Antiquary that’s being reissued in remastered form by Crucial Blast Records. I wrote a mini-review of that album and premiered one of its tracks — “Beneath Carvings Linger” (here).

This in turn led to a conversation online with ][ of Venowl, who unlike me was quite familiar with Emit. He mentioned that the man behind Emit had guested on older material by a band named Vomit Orchestra — another name I had never heard. When I confessed my ignorance, ][ linked me to a new Vomit Orchestra song that really grabbed me, and that’s the first offering in this post. Continue reading »

BIG ASS ROUNDUP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(Leperkahn continues to pitch in during my round-up hiatus.  Between what I sent him and what he found himself (of which there was quite an overlap), this is a monstrously large collection of recent, recommended goodies.)

Hey all! So a bloody lot of things got put up between when I sent in my last roundup and now, so this is gonna be a long one, since I’m not in the mood to separate them out. Strap in for a wild ride across the metalsphere.

BLUT AUS NORD

A few hours ago a new song named “Clarissima Mundi Lumina” from the new Blut Aus Nord album Memoria Vetusta III — Saturnian Poetry was made available for listening. This follows our own premiere of “Paien” right here. Islander says his review of the album will be posted on Monday, but he says there’s no point in waiting — just go pre-order the album in a special digipack CD edition here or on vinyl here. You can listen to “Clarissima Mundi Lumina” while you’re doing that:

https://www.facebook.com/blutausnord.official
https://www.facebook.com/debemurmorti Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUND-UP: THE DEATH OF DEARTH, PART II — THE SEQUEL NO ONE ASKED FOR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 022014
 

 

(Austin Weber provides this first part of a multi-part round-up focusing on recommended new releases.)

It’s been a good while since I got down to it and churned out a round-up article here at NCS. For months now I’ve had a massive list of bands to put in an article, but have been too weighed down by life and loss to finish it. As I attempt to accurately assess the current state of my life, things have again taken a trip to implosion town, and so many of the things I held dear or grew accustomed to bit the dust yet again. Of course, this happens in all our lives, so I try to be realistic in deconstructing the ills inherent in all our realities.

I find some comfort in these times of rebuilding, though, with the hope that at least, in thinking deeply and reflectively, I may yet again find a different way forward that I had never imagined possible. Even in the darkest and dumbest places my mind goes to, music guides me and temporarily frees and harnesses this incorrigible mixture of hyperactivity and depression into a more passive and calm state.

Typically I would abstain from such personal and soul-baring words, yet inasmuch as I know myself, I am not ashamed of exploring and expounding upon what it is to be human, full of frailty and weakness — to realistically accept frailty yet not dwell too deeply in its realms.

Like past installments, the music that follows trends toward death metal, yet lest I box myself in, bands of other stripes are also included. As usual, many hours spent scouring the depths of Metal-Archives and other avenues has delivered in a big way for me. There’s a lot of killer music to explore, so this is going to be broken up into several installments. This is the first. Continue reading »

STUFF LEPERKAHN DONE FOUND AND DONE LIKED — PART 3?

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 022014
 

 

(Leperkahn continues to soldier on with roundup duties…)

Hello again! My stint emulating Islander continues. This time I put all of the songs and videos in alphabetical order, mostly because that happened on accident.

ABUSIVENESS

I’ve come to learn that the opinions of some MetalSucks scribes are either very good or very bad, so that it can be hard to tell whether something a given writer is recommending is worth my time. I tend to gamble on some of their posts in the hopes that a given band will fall into the former category, and I hit a bit of a jackpot in Poland’s Abusiveness. To put their sound succinctly, they sound somewhat like what newer Marduk would sound like if they subtly included some atmospheric keys and/or strings (or at least I think I hear keys and/or strings). On first gander, pitting those two together could be an odd match, but Abusiveness do it with aplomb on the song “Proces”, crafting an exhilarating six-ish minutes with blistering leads and an absolutely radiant solo maybe three or four minutes in. (There’s an ambient bit for the last minute or so that I don’t quite understand, but at that point you can just skip the end.)

“Proces” is from their new album Bramy Nawii, their new album on Arachnophobia. You can pick up Bramy Nawii with free shipping worldwide here if you dig the song featured below. Continue reading »

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