STREAM WOLFHEART’S “WINTERBORN” NOW

 Metal News  11 Responses »
Oct 062013
 

I’ve already reviewed Winterborn, the debut album by Wolfheart, which is the new solo project of Finland’s Tuomas Saukkonen (ex-Before the Dawn, ex-Black Sun Aeon). In a nutshell, I think it’s one of the year’s best albums. In case you want to read the review, I’ll refer you here. But now you can hear the album for yourself.

Beginning today, the German Legacy magazine began streaming Winterborn in full. Go HERE (or here) to listen.

One more recent piece of Wolfheart news: The band has announced that the album will become available for digital download via iTunes, Amazon, and other online platforms on October 11. Physical copies can be pre-ordered here.

That’s it.  Go give this a spin.

 

TOURISM: CLERIC ARE COMING

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 042013
 

We don’t usually report news about tours unless they involve nationally or internationally known bands, because providing comprehensive daily news isn’t really part of our mission statement. But I’m making an exception in this post because the band is so damned interesting and because some friends in the Pacific Northwest provided the impetus for making this tour a cross-country reality.

The band’s name is Cleric and they’re from Philadelphia. I came across them in August through a recommendation by Ryan Schutte, guitarist for the awesome Seattle band Lb.! (pound) (who has since then helped Cleric arrange shows up in my part of the country). Back then, I listened to one long song from the band’s 2010 album Regressions that just completely blew my mind, and I wrote this:

This song is one of the most eye-popping, jaw-dropping, extravagant pieces of music I’ve heard all year. It’s almost 20 minutes long, and I was transfixed (and somewhat scared) the whole time. It’s an out-and-out barrage of freakazoidical, destructive, synapse-severing mayhem. It doesn’t follow a straight line, it doesn’t play nice, it doesn’t let up. A thoroughly brain-puréeing, remorselessly spine-crushing experience. Something like Portal, Blackjazz -vintage Shining, and Behold… the Arctopus communing in a hurricane. During an earthquake.

Four months after Regressions came out, they were robbed in Philadelphia “of nearly everything that helped to build and eventually portray their sound, and the closest they came to touring was driving to pawn shops looking for stolen gear.”  The story I received in a press release today continues: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SOLIUM FATALIS, SÓLSTAFIR, EYE OF SOLITUDE, DYING OF THE LIGHT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 042013
 

You want something new in your ears?  I mean, other than a stranger’s tongue or that bedbug that crawled in there while you were sleeping?  Well then, check out this selection of recommended new songs discovered over the last 24 hours.

SOLIUM FATALIS

I found out about this band (whose name means “Fated Throne”) thanks to a tip from my NCS comrade TheMadIsraeli. It’s the brainchild of New Hampshire guitarist Jim Gregory, but it also includes the superb Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork, Scarve, Bent Sea) on drums, Scarve bassist Loic Colin, and Excrecor guitarist/frontman Jeff DeMarco on vocals. Solium Fatalis released their self-titled debut album just days ago, and it features eye-catching cover art by Septic Flesh frontman/bassist Seth Siro Anton.

Two songs from the album are streaming on Bandcamp. I listened to them last night and they’re really good – a dynamic offering of blackened melodic death metal built upon excellent instrumental performances, a voracious vocal turn, and a well-crafted production that gives the music a sharp, heavy sound. Seductive Eastern melodies flow through the stately but savage “Molecular Devices” and the jolting fury of “The 7th Gate”. I don’t know why I haven’t heard more about this album, but I’m definitely going after it now (it’s available on iTunes and Amazon) Continue reading »

WATCH GOJIRA LIVE AT HELLFEST 2013

 Metal News  13 Responses »
Oct 032013
 

Beginning this Friday and for the following week, you will be able to stream Gojira’s 50-minute performance at Hellfest 2013, the French metal festival in Clisson, France. Gojira performed on June 23, and according to this site their setlist consisted of the following songs:

Explosia
Flying Whales
Backbone
The Heaviest Matter of the Universe
L’Enfant Sauvage
Connected
Remembrance
Wisdom Comes
Jam (Mario on guitar, Joe on drums)
Fire Is Everything
Oroborus
Where Dragons Dwell

As for where you can stream the film of the performance, well, you can do it right here because the player can be embedded and I’ve embedded it. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT: A RELAPSE FALL SAMPLER

 Free Shit, Metal News  12 Responses »
Oct 022013
 

Relapse Records has released a free fall 2013 sampler that includes 26 songs by 26 bands from the Relapse roster, including an exclusive new track by Toxic Holocaust. It’s an extremely diverse range of metal from an extremely solid line-up of groups. To download the sampler without charge, transport yourself over to Amazon via the link below — and to see which bands are on the sampler, keep reading.

RELAPSE SAMPLER

Red Fang
Toxic Holocaust
Windhand
Revocation
Exhumed
True Widow
Nothing
ASG
Ulcerate Continue reading »

BLATANT PLUG — TOUR EDITION

 Metal News  1 Response »
Oct 012013
 

(Here we have a message from Andy Synn . . .) 

That’s right NCS ne’er do wells and miscreants, it’s about time for me to abuse my lofty position here at the site in order to promote and advertise one of my bands again.

I know it’s corrupt, and entirely motivated by self-interest… but it’s also pretty cool, I promise.

So suck it up… bitch.

Come the end of November Bloodguard will be embarking on a week long tour of the UK’s finest small venues – some of which we’ve played before, some of which will be entirely new to us – as main support for Lithuanian melodic death metal types Awakening Sun. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ELIRAN KANTOR AND ICED EARTH, DEICIDE, VALKYRJA, HOWLING, AND BLOODSHOT DAWN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Sep 302013
 

I haven’t attempted to compile a round-up of noteworthy findings in several days, so I’ve had to ruthlessly cut what interested me or this post would have been longer than a reticulated python. Even truncated, it’s as long as a boa constrictor. And everything in here is awfully bloodthirsty, right up until the final item.

ELIRAN KANTOR AND ICED EARTH

Is that a fuckin’ brutal album cover up there or what? It’s the latest cover art by Eliran Kantor, who I watch like a hawk because he’s so damned good, and it graces the 11th album by Iced Earth, which is planned for release by Century Media in January 2014. With a grisly cover like that and song titles such as “Democide”, “Cthulhu”, and “Parasite”, in addition to the title track, this could be very interesting.

Speaking of brutal, how ’bout a new Deicide track? Continue reading »

ARTIFICIAL BRAIN SIGN WITH PROFOUND LORE; NEW ALBUM COMING; GLOBAL SANITY THREATENED

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Sep 292013
 

This is a piece of news that warms my cold black heart, a true Cinderella story, except there’s nothing pretty about New York’s Artificial Brain — a New York space-death-metal band that includes vocalist Will Smith (Buckshot Facelift, ex-Biolich), Revocation guitarist Dan Gargiulo, and some other mutants who apparently still wish to remain nameless.

I’ve been following this band for more than two years, writing about their first three-song EP, their first music video, and their latest two-song offering that appeared last spring — about which I frenetically penned these words:

“Imagine an alien stew consisting of cutting/blasting black metal, pummeling death metal, cosmic guitar digressions, rubbery bass-lines, roaring grisly bears, and shrieking ice giants. Also, gang vocals and a bit of Gorguts-like tech frenzy. And unstable tempos.”

Last spring I had heard that Artificial Brain was going to record a full-length album with Colin Marston that undoubtedly would include additional manifestations of sonic dementia. Today I learned not only that the album has in fact been recorded but also that it will be released by Profound Lore. Details follow in this message we received from the band: Continue reading »

PYRRHON SIGNS WITH RELAPSE

 Metal News  1 Response »
Sep 272013
 

It’s not every day that we pause to take note of a band signing with a label, but we’re doing it now for reasons that will become evident. The band is New York’s Pyrrhon (pronounced “peer-on”, as the press release says), and the label is Relapse.

The new multi-album deal follows release of the band’s debut EP (Fever Kingdoms) on The Path Less Traveled record label in 2010, and by the 2011 release of their first album An Excellent Servant But A Terrible Master by Selfmadegod Records. A new album has been completed — tracked and mixed by Ryan Jones (Today is the Day, Mutilation Rites) and mastered by Colin Marston (Gorguts, Dysrhythmia, Krallice) — and it obviously got Relapse’s attention. Its name is The Mother of Virtues, and we’ll all get to hear it sometime in 2014.

September has been a good month for Doug Moore. He’s the vocalist and lyricist for Pyrrhon, but this month he also took over the reins as Editor of Invisible Oranges following Fred Pessaro’s departure for a position at Noisey. This elevation follows several years of writing for IO and other music sites. There may have been another serious metal blogger whose band has signed with a label the magnitude of Relapse, but if there is, I’m not aware of it. That’s a pretty good September two-fer. Continue reading »

MORE SEEN AND HEARD: GHOST B.C., IMPENDING DOOM, MAGENTA HARVEST, AND VHOLDGHAST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 262013
 

I know that I’ve already posted one round-up today, but I found more things I wanted to share. So, here goes:

GHOST B.C.

I have an extremely powerful attraction to Ghost’s music, even though I listen to almost nothing else that comes within ICBM range of it. So, I was drawn like a fly to honey when I saw that a new Ghost video had premiered yesterday at Rolling Stone. It’s a professionally filmed clip of the band performing the infernal carnival of “Secular Haze” at a sold-out Webster Hall in New York. It reminds me of how damned much I’ve enjoyed the multiple live Ghost performances I’ve seen.

So, of course, I’m embedding the video here. Watch it next. Continue reading »

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