SEEN AND HEARD: VALDUR, BEAST AS GOD, EMBALMED

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Nov 152013
 

Here’s a random round-up of destructive new music I found today, including a review of a stunning new EP I stumbled upon quite by accident.

VALDUR

I first came across this three-man collective from Mammoth Lakes, California (and wrote about) them more than three years ago following release of their excellent second album, Raven God Amongst Us. In September 2012 I found out that Valdur had finished writing their new album and were set to begin recording it the following November, and I also found out about an excellent two-song EP entitled The Hammer Pit that they had previously self-released, consisting of “rough version” of two new songs. We featured those songs here and here, and both tracks are now streaming at Bandcamp. And then last December I saw that Valdur had released a stupendous new single entitled “Blast Beast”, which I wrote about here and which is also available (pay-what-you-want) on Bandcamp.

And now, finally, we have news about the band’s third album and a “rough version” of one of the new album tracks to hear. The album is entitled At War With, it includes 10 songs plus the killer album art you see above, and it will be released on December 17, 2013, by Bloody Mountain Records. The pre-mastered song that went up for streaming two days ago appears to be the title track — and it’s a blackened death metal masterstroke. Continue reading »

YOUR METAL INSPIRATION FOR THE DAY: DEATH METAL ANGOLA

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Nov 152013
 


Wilker Flores

A friend sent me a link to the story that I’m about to summarize. I thought it was inspirational. Maybe you will, too.

It’s about an orphanage in the war-ravaged town of Huambo in the Republic of Angola, a country in southern Africa. After a decimating 30-year civil war that ended in 2002, Angola was left with among the worst standards of living, life expectancy rates, and infant mortality rates in the world. The orphanage (named Okutiuka) is run in a bombed-out milk factory by a young woman, a native of Huambo, named Sonia Ferreira and her boyfriend Wilker Flores. According to the article I’m summarizing, “The Okutiuka orphanage isn’t funded by the government, and subsists on private donations and a mix of embassy-gifted funds.”

Apart from caring for more than 50 orphaned and abandoned children in Huambo, Ferreira and Flores are the ringleaders of an ongoing effort to encourage and promote heavy metal as a vehicle for young musicians throughout Angola to give voice to the pain and deprivation their country experienced over the last 3 decades. Against tremendous odds, they helped organize the first national rock and metal festival in 2011 and have continued it each year since. And their story is now the subject of a documentary film entitled Death Metal Angola, which has already garnered a lot of critical praise.

The story of how the film came to be made is itself a fascinating one. It was directed by a Detroit native named Jeremy Xido, and here’s the description of how the project began and came to fruition: Continue reading »

A BEHEMOTH UPDATE

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Nov 152013
 

We know that next year Poland’s Behemoth will be bringing us a new album named The Satanist. Now we know that on December 4 a Behemoth EP will be released. Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel will come in a limited 180-gram 12-inch vinyl edition, hand-numbered and signed by the band. The title track will be the first single from the album, and the EP will also include two non-album tracks — “If I Were Cain” and a cover of a song by a Polish post-punk/new-wave band named Siekiera. That should be interesting.

The 12″ EP can be pre-ordered now via Behemoth’s webstore as well as at www.indiemerch.com/metalbladerecords and www.nuclearblast.de. There will be no digital or CD version of the vinyl edition, but the single from the album will be released on iTunes.

We also now know that on December 4 the band will be releasing a music video for the “Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel” song. Two teasers for the video have been released so far, with the second one coming yesterday. You can see both after the jump.

And finally, the band have also announced that on December 4 they will be unveiling the album’s cover art, which is a painting by the Russian painter Dennis Forkas, whose work we have featured on other occasions at NCS. For this piece, Nergal’s own blood was mixed with the paint. Yum. Continue reading »

“GOVERNMENT PLATES”: NEW DEATH GRIPS ALBUM DROPS — WITH A FLOOD OF NEW VIDEOS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Nov 132013
 

Death Grips still takes the prize for not metal, but metal. And without warning they’ve just dropped a new album, for free download of course, entitled Government Plates.

But that’s not all. All at once they’ve also uploaded a flood of new videos, one for  each of the 11 new songs. That’s right — a new album and 11 new videos within the space of an hour. No fucking around.

It’s all so much, so fast, that I haven’t had time to process it yet. I’m just getting the word out there. A review may, or may not, come later.

After the jump you’ll find a full stream of the album and all the videos. Click THIS or THIS to download Government Plates (these are links provided by the band, though I can’t promise they will work at the moment). Continue reading »

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: OCELOT OMELET, ARTEMIS AND TARDIVE DYSKINESIA, BLACK TRIP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 132013
 

You really can’t accuse this site of being too narrow-minded, despite that thing about no clean singing, which we obviously don’t mean literally these days. We cast a wide net for our metal, catching all manner of shiny fish from a multitude of genres. But today I thought I’d feature new songs and videos I’ve come across in recent days that are outside even our expansive boundaries, or at least on the fringes. Before I mix my metaphors any further, let’s get to it:

OCELOT OMELET

Ocelot Omelet are a Seattle band whose music is difficult to describe. At one point they termed their sound “pseudo-retro tele-gothic psycho-hippie filth-punk”. Based on their first album, 2011’s Elliptical Optusion, that’s really not a bad description, as difficult as it may be to grapple with as an abstract concept. But based on their most recent recording, I think they’ll have to work the word “metal” into it some way.

Earlier this year, Ocelot Omelet recorded a new three-song EP by the name of Present In the Dark, with the legendary Jack Endino handling the engineering work. Two versions were mastered, one for vinyl and one for digital, and the band have now successfully completed a kickstarter campaign to finance pressing of the EP on 180 gram vinyl. I heard some of this new material performed live last summer, and I left with a severe case of headbanger’s neck. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: PAOLO GIRARDI (ARTIFICIAL BRAIN) AND KEN SARAFIN (THE KENNEDY VEIL)

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  9 Responses »
Nov 132013
 

Sales of music CDs in the US are in a state of “terminal decline”, and are projected to continue dropping by an average annual rate of 13% from now through 2017 and will probably never see “any kind of sales increase again”. Ironically, as some believe, they could be saved from complete extinction only by consumers who come to see them as a “nostalgia niche product”.

Maybe a day will come, far off in the future, when history will repeat itself and CDs will experience the resurgence that vinyl sales have been experiencing recently. But even with vinyl sales growing, the total physical market for music in the US is already dwarfed by digital sales, and the disparity is only going to get worse. The same trends are happening globally as well.

As physical sales of music have dropped, some observers have worried that album art would also become less and less significant, both as an art form and as a draw for consumers. I used to be one of those people. But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t base my optimism on any hard data, just my own observations, and so maybe I’m guilty of wishful thinking. But at least in the world of metal, it sure seems that fans still care about quality album art, and that striking album art draws fans into music they would otherwise never discover — even if they’re only buying digital downloads. Continue reading »

ENNUI AND DOOM METAL FRONT (“ASIA: TUNES OF THE RISING SUN(N)”)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 122013
 

Earlier today I included a feature in a “Seen and Heard” post about a new song by an Italian doom band named Necropoli. After posting that piece I learned that the tremendous vocals on the song were recorded by David Unsaved, one of the two collaborators in a band from Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, named Ennui. I decided to learn more about Ennui and discovered that they have completed work on a new album (their second), entitled The Last Way, which will be released by MFL Records on November 30, 2013.

Ennui’s Facebook page also pointed to a stream of one song from the new album on Bandcamp. That song turns out to be part of a 30-track compilation called Asia: Tunes of the Rising Sun(n) assembled by a German zine called Doom Metal Front. The comp comes as an automatic digital download with the purchase of Issue #11 (which you can buy either as a downloadable PDF or as a print copy that will be sent to you).

The comp includes music by 30 bands from India, Pakistan, Israel, Japan, China, Indonesia, Japan, Georgia, and elsewhere, and features names such as Church of Misery, Coffins, Bevar Sea, Eternal Elysium, and Birushanah. But at the moment, the only song I’m going to write about is that Ennui track that will also appear on their new album. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MITOCHONDRION, IMPUREZA, NECROPOLI (AND LUMBAR-NOOTHGRUSH-COFFINS UPDATES)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 122013
 


Here are a few things I saw and heard yesterday that I want to recommend to you.

MITOCHONDRION

Vancouver’s Mitochondrion are working on their third album. There’s a chance it may reverse the space-time continuum, or possibly open portals to a nearby dimension in which human beings are food stock for the nourishment of nightmares. Probably won’t happen, but with this band I never rule out such possibilities.

Yesterday they saw fit to release a demo version of one of the new album’s songs, “Writhen Unto Abraxas”. It’s a mauling frenzy of destructive riffing and horrific vocal effusions, caked with grime, splintered with jagged grooves, and writhing with maggot-ridden guitar leads. Galvanizing and merciless, doomed and infectious, the song is yet another triumph of blackened death metal malignance for this frightening collective. Listen next. Continue reading »

THE RETURN OF GOD DETHRONED?

 Metal News  13 Responses »
Nov 112013
 

Could it be that Dutch death metal heavyweights God Dethroned, in some form or fashion, may be returning after the announcement more than two years ago of of their permanent demise? Consider the following sequence of posts on the band’s Facebook page, all of them presumably authored by God Dethroned’s founder Henri Sattler:

In February 2011:

2011 is God Dethroned’s final year in existence.

We could have spent another year in a tourbus because the amount of offers was endless, but I just don’t feel like touring anymore.

People told me to take a break for a year or maybe two, but as I’m an “all, or nothing at all” type of person, I decided to call it quits.

Not immediately, but in December of this year we will definitely play our last show.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HEXIA, CYNIC, SUNN O))), ULVER, INGESTED, THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 112013
 

Hope you had a good weekend. And if you didn’t, hope you have a good week. And if you don’t, I apologize for the feebleness of my hopes. At least your life will be enriched by seeing and hearing these things I saw and heard over the weekend (and yes, I had a good weekend, thank you).

HEXIS

When last we wrote about this Danish band it was during 2012 in a review of their three-way split with As We Draw and Euglena. They’ve now recorded a new album entitled Abalam which is projected for release on January 11, 2014. Over the weekend I saw a music video released earlier this month for one of the new songs — “Tenebris” — which was made by London filmmaker Craig Murray. Murray’s video is an homage to a certain unforgettable scene in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, with a bit of a twist in its finale.

As for the music, it’s a storm of razors, thunder, and vocal lightning, a ravaging assault of fused black metal and hardcore. Continue reading »

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