SEEN AND HEARD (Part 3): TRIPTYKON, WINTERFYLLETH, 1349, OBLITERATIONS

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Aug 072014
 

Jet-setter that I am, I’m on the road again this week in my old hometown of Austin, Texas. Until last night I haven’t had as much time as usual to check out new music or write about it. I missed a lot, and am trying to catch up before having to leave the world of metal for the rest of today.

I discovered so many things I want to bring to your attention that I’ve divided them into three parts, this being the third (Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here).

TRIPTYKON

Triptykon’s new album Melana Chasmata is proving to be one of the year’s favorites for me. The band have apparently made two music videos for the album, the first of which has now been premiered by Decibel magazine. It’s for the song called “Aurorae“, and it was directed by Philipp Hirsch (who previously did the video for Triptykon’s “Shatter”). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (Part 2): OBITUARY, ABYSMAL DAWN, PRIMORDIAL-PORTRAIT-BÖLZER, CRYPTICUS

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Aug 072014
 

Jet-setter that I am, I’m on the road again this week in my old hometown of Austin, Texas. Until last night I haven’t had as much time as usual to check out new music or write about it. I missed a lot, and am trying to catch up before having to leave the world of metal for the rest of today.

I discovered so many things I want to bring to your attention that I’ve divided them into three parts, this being the second (Part 1 is here). The first three items in this round-up are mainly visual.

OBITUARY

Those long-running Floridian death kings Obituary have a new album named Inked In Blood coming out on October 28 via Relapse Records, and yesterday the cover art was revealed. As you can see, it’s brutal. The art is by Andreas Marschall. I’m hoping for equally brutal music. Continue reading »

THE MYRKUR MYSTERY

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Aug 062014
 

MYRKUR

I wrote a feature about this supposedly one-woman Danish black metal band a month ago after discovering a song named “Nattens Barn” (“Night’s Child”) from the band’s forthcoming debut EP on Relapse Records. At the time, I knew very little about the woman in question, but yesterday, through the help of a few readers, I learned a lot of info — conflicting info — plus discovered another new Myrkur song — “Latvian Fegurð”.

The music speaks for itself — and I think it’s quite good; you’ll find the new song at the end of this post. As for the woman behind Myrkur, Relapse released a video in which she speaks (in Danish) of the motivations behind her music, her face mainly obscured behind a mop of pale hair while “Nattens Barn” plays in the background: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HORNED ALMIGHTY, VAIYA, MARE COGNITUM

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Aug 042014
 

I’ve spent the last three days having a fantastic time at the Denver Black Sky festival, about which I’ll have more to say and show in the coming days.  My traveling companions and I will be headed back to Seattle soon, and so I doubt I’ll be posting much on our site today, but I wanted to get you a few new things to hear before I once again enjoy the wonders of airport security in the 21st Century, even though I don’t have time to say much about the music itself.

HORNED ALMIGHTY

This Danish black metal band have recorded their fifth album, and the first since 2010′s Necro Spirituals. The new one is named World of Tombs, it features cover art by Mark B. Hansen, and it’s scheduled for release on September 1, 2014, by the band’s new label, Scarlet Records. In June I wrote about the first killer single from the album, “Diabolical Engines of Torment”, and today brought us a second one — “In Torture We Trust Pt. II”.

Through the use of my superior deductive skills, which have justly become famous throughout my own mind, the song title suggested to me that a song named “In Torture We Trust Pt. I” might exist somewhere. Undoubtedly its existence would be well known to fans more familiar with Horned Almighty’s full discography than I am. But this is why Satan created Metal-Archives. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ELEMENTAL NIGHTMARES I (WILDERNESSKING, OAK PANTHEON, KESS’KHTAK, LIBER NECRIS); DECAPITATED; WINTERSUN AND NUCLEAR BLAST

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Aug 022014
 

 

To pick up where my last post left off, the aircraft that I boarded yesterday in Seattle did in fact land in Denver, where I and my personal security detail spent the evening drinking beer, eating pizza, and air-guitaring at the Black Sky Brewery in preparation for the sonic holocaust that will begin today (otherwise know as the Denver Black Sky fest).

Because time is short (or more accurately, the time not spent drinking, eating, jawing, and sleeping), this little round-up will be less fulsome than I would like — but still worthwhile, I hope.

ELEMENTAL NIGHTMARES — I

We’ve been writing about the Elemental Nightmares project since early days, and it is now a reality. Today Elemental Nightmares released the first of seven 10″ vinyl splits for digital download; the physical copies will start shipping on August 7 or 8.

The first split includes songs by Wildernessking (South Africa), Oak Pantheon (Minnesota), Kess’khtak (Switzerland) Liber Necris (UK), and it features that stunning artwork you see at the top of this post (all of the individual pieces of art for the seven splits, when placed next to each other, will eventually flow together to form one large piece of art). The work was created by Düsseldorf artist Alexander Leybovich (whose web site is here). Continue reading »

KRIEG: “ORDER OF THE SOLITARY ROAD”

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Aug 012014
 

I’m about to get really high. I’m guessing 35,000 feet once the plane takes off and reaches cruising altitude. I’m hoping it will land in Denver instead of disappearing. There seems to be a lot of that these days. If it doesn’t land, I’ll miss Denver Black Sky and this post will be my epitaph.

I intended to include more than just one song in this post, but one is all I’ve got time for before I have to run the TSA gauntlet at Sea-Tac Airport. So I’m going with Krieg.

KRIEG

Krieg’s new album is named Transient. It’s coming out September 2 on Candlelight. I haven’t heard it yet, but some of the people at Decibel have, and they say it’s “killer”. They say it’s Krieg taking their music to its “next logical place” — “further down the rat hole of desperation, frustration, and monochromatic hate.”

They said that by way of introducing their premiere of the first song from the album, “Order of the Solitary Road”. I don’t know about the rest of the album yet, but yessir, this song is killer. Continue reading »

THEN AND NOW: NUM SKULL AND RIPPER

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Aug 012014
 

I’m indulging my rarely indulged taste for thrash in this post — rare, because usually thrash doesn’t taste very good to me, except when it’s as vicious as a starving wolverine. Often, death/thrash qualifies very well, and that’s what we have here. One of these bands (the second one) I’ve been sitting on a while without writing about them, and the other I discovered only yesterday. In my addled mind, they seem to make a natural pairing, even though the songs are separated by decades.

NUM SKULL

Thanks to a tip from NCS supporter Utmu, I learned yesterday that on September 16, 2014, Relapse Records plans to reissue on vinyl, CD, and digital the 1988 debut album of a band named Num Skull. The album’s name is Ritually Abused.

I had never heard of Num Skull. Metal-Archives says they were from Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, and that their last album was released in 1996. The first review of Ritually Abused that I read on MA began this way:

“This record is perfect and then some. A proper score would be 103.” And it continues as follows (written by someone who says he heard the band practicing in a two-car garage when he was 12 or 13 years old and had no idea what was going on): Continue reading »

TOURISM: VOICES FROM THE DARK 2014 — BELPHEGOR, ROTTING CHRIST, BEHEADED, SVART CROWN

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Jul 312014
 

 

Well, well, here’s some just-announced tour news that gave me a thrill: This fall Belphegor will be headlining the Voices From the Dark 2014 tour in North America and will be accompanied by Rotting Christ (Greece), Beheaded (Malta), and Svart Crown (France). That is one insanely solid line-up.

The schedule is after the jump… and that’s all I have to say about this. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (Part 2): SWALLOWED AND WOLFPACK 44 (and THE STONE)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Jul 312014
 

I’ve collected in this two-part post seven very good new songs from four bands that I heard for the first time yesterday. All the songs are from forthcoming albums, and as the title of the post suggests, most (but not all) of them incorporate elements of black metal into the music in varying degrees, and they are all shrouded in darkness. The cover art for each album is also really good. The bands are presented in alphabetical order (Part 1 can be found here) — except for a last-minute addition at the end.

SWALLOWED

I found out about this Finnish band more than two years ago when I listened to (and wrote about) their self-titled 2010 EP (still available here). It’s been a long wait for their debut album, but it finally seems to be on its way. The name is Lunarterial and it’s projected for release on October 14, 2014, through Dark Descent Records and Me Saco Un Ojo. The cover art is the work of Swiss artist Peter Birkhäuser. The new song I heard yesterday is a track from the album called “Arterial Mists of Doom”.

This disorienting song’s huge, slow, nearly atonal chords vibrate with grotesque levels of distortion — and then erupt when you least expect it into ghastly pyroclastic flows moving at blinding speed. The visceral drumbeats and cymbal ticks seem to have a mind of their own, and their unpredictability is also part of what makes the song so arresting. The vocals match up with the doomed, blasted, destructive aura of the music — they’re maniacal, agonizing, horrifying. It appears that Swallowed have made a soundtrack for your nightmares… Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (Part 1): MONDVOLLAND AND NACHTMYSTIUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Jul 312014
 

 

I’ve collected in this two-part post seven very good new songs from four bands that I heard for the first time yesterday. All the songs are from forthcoming albums, and as the title of the post suggests, most (but not all) of them incorporate elements of black metal into the music in varying degrees, and they are all shrouded in darkness. The cover art for each album is also really good. The bands are presented in alphabetical order (Part 2 will come next):

MONDVOLLAND

It was a sad day this past June when I learned that the Dutch band Mondvollond had decided to call it quits. Way back in January 2012 I lavished praise on Pestvogel, the band’s free, three-song EP that was my jumping on point. The title track in particular got its hooks in me, so much so that I included it in our list of 2012′s Most Infectiuous Extreme Metal Songs.

The knowledge that the band would be releasing a second album made the news of their dissolution somewhat easier to bear. The new album’s name is Kwade Vaart and it features wonderful cover art by Bob Mollema, who also created the great cover art for Pestvogel.

Two of the songs from the new album can be heard now, and they’re just as unusual and powerful as I would have expected. “Wanneer De Hemel Bloedt” begins slowly, with shimmering guitar notes, a booming bass, and clean vocals, and then rapidly escalates into a storm of tremolo-vibrating chords, thundering bass and drums, and caustic howls, with a piercing guitar melody. It’s an intense song, but no more so than the one that follows. Continue reading »

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