Mar 192013
 

(Here’s a news update from DGR.)

It sucks to come home from work and start your day off likes this, but sometimes that is the way the world works. Melo-death group Archons are calling it quits, as posted in this message here on their Facebook page. The opening section is in French so I grabbed the pertinent bit for you guys here

We have an important announcement to do today. We officially announce you that ARCHONS has decided to disband. The decision was taken in good will from everybody. We all want to pass on to something else. Sadly, this means the second album won’t be released. Even if most of the recording is done, there is still too much to do. We thank all of you for your incredible support for all these years. We will never forget what we lived with Archons. Thank you!

I really enjoyed these guys and their debut disc The Consequences Of Silence, and while I don’t think the group from Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, fully escaped sounding a bit like “Arch DarkTranquilArsis”, as one joking user put it, I still thought it was a damn good hybrid and Archons did do a lot with the genre – given its inherent scent of stagnation. They had excellent guitar work and were able to write some damn good music. Continue reading »

Mar 172013
 

Yeah, it’s fuckin’ St Patrick’s Day. I usually look forward to this day, partly because I have a soft spot in my heart for the Irish even though I have no Irish ancestry and partly because, hey, any excuse to get wasted. And is there more to St Patrick’s Day than getting shitfaced? Does anyone sit in quiet contemplation of the contributions of the Irish people to the development of civilization?

But I have to say I’m not excited about Saint Shitfaced Day this year because I’m on the home stretch of the fuckin’ work project that has kept me away from Seattle for 3 weeks and counting. It’s now like a race to the finish, with Tuesday slated for the project’s completion, and I have no freedom to party at all today.

In fact, this is the only post I’ll be able to manage today, having worked til midnight last night and having started again at 6 a.m. this morning. Consequently, his will be real quick and dirty.

GOATWHORE

I saw that photo up there of the almighty Goatwhore playing at the IndieMerchStore Riverboat Party at SXSW in Austin yesterday. Fuckin’ metal. Also kind of different to see Goatwhore playing in broad daylight. Amazingly, they didn’t burst into flames. Continue reading »

Mar 142013
 

I thought I’d let you know that despite my inability to contribute much to the site the last few days, I’m still alive. I’m beginning Day 18 away from Seattle, mired in a seemingly endless project for my fucking day job, and largely unable to listen to music, pay much attention to metal news, or write much. However, the end is in sight: it appears I’ll be able to go home next Tuesday or Wednesday.

While my blog life has been fucked up, other folks have been stepping up to fill the hole (if only they could fill the holes in my head), and one of them is DGR. In this post are some items he discovered recently, along with a few I came across this morning that we’d like to share with you — Islander

ARSIS (written by DGR)

The glorious Arsis info dump of 2013 happened yesterday, with the guys announcing pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted to know about their upcoming album Unwelcome, which will see release April 30th of this year. Continue reading »

Mar 092013
 

Within the shantytown of Blogville, we were relatively early supporters of Italy’s Eyeconoclast, reviewing their 2011 EP Sharpening Our Blades On the Mainstream here. Last July, Prosthetic Records announced that they had signed the band and that Eyeconoclast would be entering the studio to record their first album for Prosthetic. We wrote about that, too.

And now the album is finished. It has a name — Drones of the Awakening — and a cool album cover (by Fabio Listrani), and it’s scheduled for release in NorthAm on April 16. And yesterday Prosthetic released a teaser reel of excerpts from each track on the album. Before offering a few potentially incoherent thoughts about the teaser, I want to make sure you know who is in this band.

It includes former Hour of Penance drummer Mauro Mercurio, bassist Paolo “Urizen” Ballarotto (who used to play with Malfeitor), guitarist Stefano Morabito (who is also a very talented record producer at his 16th Cellar Studios — he recorded the new album), guitarist Alessio Cosenza, and vocalist Giuseppe Di Giorgio (Black Therapy). In other words, Eyeconoclast is loaded with talent. Continue reading »

Mar 082013
 

Hi. This is Day 12 of me being away from home and working like an indentured servant on my fucking day-and-night job. I know there’s been tremendous curiosity about what I am doing. I’m not at liberty to disclose where I am, but I thought I’d share a few details about the nature of the project.

As some of you have guessed, it does indeed involve super-science. My colleagues and I are testing methods for grafting additional penises onto parts of the male anatomy where penises are not usually found. There’s a gamers convention in town, so we’ve had no trouble finding willing test subjects.

We’ve had more trouble finding willing penis donors, so we’ve just been taking them without consent. Because there’s a gamers convention in town, we’ve had no trouble finding people who aren’t actually using their penises, so no harm done. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.

As you know, the demands of the project have almost entirely prevented me from listening to metal or writing about it for almost two weeks. However, the work schedule for today and tomorrow isn’t quite as awful as it has been, so I have a brief window of opportunity to come up for air and see what I’ve been missing. Here’s a small selection of items I found this morning. Continue reading »

Mar 072013
 

(DGR pitches in with this round-up of recent news and music while I’m still drowning in day-job bullshit.)

Since Islander has once again found himself incredibly busy I figured that I would do my best to get the word out there about a few things that caught my eye earlier on in the week. I had meant to get this up yesterday but unfortunately found myself dealing with jury duty summons – which isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things – so this one is going up today.

Enough excuses though; this week found a couple of death metal videos hitting the web and one electronics fused industrial death bit of music popping up as well. Since they’ve unfortunately flown under our radar, your lovely knight in shining armor gets to ride in upon his pale horse and capture what he can.

DEVOURMENT: “Parasitic Eruption” Video

We’ve been hotly anticipating stuff by Devourment for some time now and the group finally got to release their album Conceived In Sewage via Relapse earlier this year. Now the band have a music video for the song “Parasitic Eruption” which – music-wise – is an excellent example of exactly what this band is about. Continue reading »

Mar 062013
 

Starting Day 10 of my day-job death march. It’s looking like after today I’ll get a bit of a break — still can’t go back to Seattle, but I’ll have more time off that I can spend catching up on metal. But yesterday was another day-and-night clusterfuck and I had no time to pay attention to music. So this will be another very quick round-up of just a few things I saw that interested me early this morning.

FALLUJAH

This Bay Area band have a new EP on the way, called Nomadic. Yesterday TheMadIsraeli notified me that they premiered a new song from the EP named “The Dead Sea”. I listened to it.

Here’s the message I got from TheMadIsraeli: “I think the term for this is all consuming”. I can understand that reaction. The dramatic introductory music is a great build-up to an explosive start to the song proper. And as the song proceeds it proves to be a galvanizing experience, masterfully interweaving head-smashing death metal aggressiveness and head-swirling prog extravagance. Continue reading »

Mar 052013
 

About to begin Day 9 away from home. Still working day and night on that project for my fucking day (and night) job. Averaging four hours of sleep a night. Brain is fried. Unable to write complete sentences any more.

Wasn’t able to check my NCS email at all until late last night. Had no chance to surf the web for new music. Haven’t listened to metal in 24 hours. Starting to get the withdrawal shakes.

Did see these things when I checked my e-mail.

IMMOLATION

Fucking Immolation’s new album is named Kingdom of Conspiracy. Super-badass cover art was unveiled — created by the immortal Pär Olofsson. Super badass. Continue reading »

Mar 012013
 

Hey there dudes and dudettes. I’m just quickly checking in from the bottomless pit of my day-and-night job with a few goodies I discovered on a break early this morning.

PATHOGEN

Pathogen are based in the Philippines. Since forming in 2001 they’ve release an assortment of demos and splits and three full-length albums. The second one, Miscreants of Bloodlusting Aberrations, was self-released on tape in 2010 but was recently picked up for re-issue today (on CD and vinyl) by the German label Dunkelheit Produktionen. The release includes new cover art, which, as you can see, is fuckin’ aces.

This morning I came across a song from the album named “Atrocity Exhibit” that Dunkelheit put up on YouTube, and that led me into the rest of the album. Listening to Pathogen is like cracking open a subterranean vault and finding a tape created in the late 80s or early 90s in a rehearsal room. It has an authentic old-school sound reminiscent of Autopsy and Morbid Angel, with maybe a little Celtic Frost in the mix, too, and it’s catchy as hell. Continue reading »

Feb 282013
 

 

I’m still in day-job hell, or more accurately day-and-night-job hell. All personal plans for listening to albums and EPs and writing reviews are on hold. Actually, everything I do here is pretty much on hold except for quickly checking metal news and doing some fast web surfing in search of new songs — and I make time for that mainly to preserve some feeble semblance of balance in my existence.

In this post are new or new-ish things from four bands that I randomly happened upon. By the end of the post, you may conclude that my efforts at preserving balance have failed and I’ve fallen off the edge.

IMPERIUM DEKADENZ

I discovered this German band in the spring of 2010 and wrote a review of their then-current album Procella Vadens (which is superb), except I wrote it as if Suffocation’s Frank Mullen were writing the review. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Continue reading »