SHIT SEEN AND HEARD: SONNE ADAM, ERUPTED, SILENT PATH, AND REIGN OF THE ARCHITECT

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 182012
 

Collected in here are items I randomly happened upon last night while browsing the internest and checking out links sent in by our ever-vigilant readers.

ITEM ONE

Sonne Adam are an Israeli death/doom band whose 2011 Century Media debut, Transformation, garnered a lot of critical praise. It was also one heavy motherfucker. Yesterday, I saw the news that the band’s first two-song EP, The Sun Is Dead, has been released by Van Records as a 7″ vinyl with that new cover art you see above.

Sonne Adam are also now working on a new EP to be entitled Doctrines of Dark Devotion, and yesterday they started streaming (for a limited time) a rough mix of a new track called “Bestow the Crown of Death”. Shit sounds heavier than oceans, darker than your worst nightmares. Guitars grinding on HM-2 overdrive; awesome reverberating vocals, deep as trenches and cracked like the windows in an abandoned warehouse; eerie guitar instrumentals swirling above the massive grinding noises underneath.

This is a very cool song and makes me tumescent for the new EP. Stream it right after the jump. Continue reading »

THE FACELESS: “AUTOTHEISM” ON THE WAY (ALSO, KRALLICE RELEASE DETAILS AND ART)

 Metal News  9 Responses »
Jul 172012
 

This morning, Sumerian Records announced that they will release the new album by The Faceless — Autotheism — on August 14. Pre-orders are now being taken at this site.

Four years have passed since the band’s last release, and yet few details about the new album’s the progress have surfaced until recently. Now that there’s finally an official release date — with less than a month to go before the album drops — I presume we’ll get a quick roll-out of promotional teasers. That roll-out began this morning with the release of the album art and a brief video. There’s no music in the video until the closing seconds, but even that will probably be enough to get the die-hard fans all slobbery.

2012 has already seen many high-quality tech-death releases, with the albums by Gorod and Spawn of Possession leading the pack (in your humble editor’s humble opinion). With four years of time for The Faceless to plan this new release, expectations for Autotheism will be high. The bar has been raised. With this long running start, we’ll find out soon whether The Faceless can jump over it.

Catch the teaser video after the jump. Also after the jump (thanks to Utmu), we’ve got the album art and release date for that new Krallice album we blogged about just yesterday. Continue reading »

AFTERNOON ROUND-UP: JON LORD, KING OF ASGARD, BTBAM, SYBREED, WINDS OF GENOCIDE

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Jul 162012
 

Very sad news to start this round-up: Jon Lord passed away today at the age of 71. He suffered a fatal pulmonary embolism while hospitalized, following a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Though he had a long solo career and played with a variety of bands, he is best known as the keyboardist with Deep Purple and co-writer of many of that band’s most famous songs, including “Smoke On the Water”.

Deep Purple’s music meant a lot to me at a particular point in my life, and I’m sad to see that Jon Lord is no longer in the world. In his memory, here’s “Perfect Strangers”, a song that stands the test of time:

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/02-Perfect-Strangers.mp3|titles=Deep Purple – Perfect Strangers]

In happier news, King of Asgard released a music video for “The Nine Worlds Burn”, a song from their forthcoming album …To North, which is scheduled for release by Metal Blade on July 27 in Europe and July 30 in the U.S. The song should be familiar, since we devoted a post to it when it began streaming as the album’s first single in early June. The song still reminds me of Nalgfar and Immortal, with a dramatic feminine vocal in the interlude. Great song, and the video captures the fire of the song . . . with fire. Watch it next. Continue reading »

THE CONTORTIONIST: FULL ALBUM STREAM AND DEBUT VIDEO FOR “CAUSALITY”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 162012
 

Within certain circles, much eagerness seems to have been building for the new album from Indiana’s The Contortionist. Entitled Intrinsic, it will be released tomorrow via eOne/Good Fight Music.

To be brutally honest, I can’t say that I’ve been among the eager, because my own tastes tend to veer off in different directions. But I have at least been interested, and I suspect some of you are in the same camp. So, as a public service, I want to bring two pieces of information to your attention.

First, the entirety of Intrinsic is streaming at this location, at least for a little while.

Second, today Noisecreep exclusively premiered the band’s official video for “Causality”, the album’s third track. The song combines djent-style pneumatics, prog-style instrumentals, a dreamy/spacy keyboard layer, and a combo of hardcore roaring and ethereal crooning. It becomes . . . beautiful. The well-made video is pretty to watch, too . . . the dreams of a middle-aged man, both a kind of discovery and a kind of emotionally wrenching journey.  Nice shots of the band performing, too.

Anyway, to check that out, follow this link.

IN THE NEWS: DAMNATION FEST, A NAPALM SAMPLER, HIGH ON FIRE, AND KRALLICE

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jul 162012
 

Here are some things I saw while having my morning coffee. Wonder what the rest of the day will bring?

DAMNATION FESTIVAL 2012

This thing is scheduled to go off in Leeds (UK) on November 3.  Festival organizers had previously announced some of the bands, but a group of new eye-catching names were revealed today — and this list still isn’t finished. But as it now stands, this festival looks amazing, and talk about diversity!  Electric Wizard, My Dying Bride, Pig Destroyer (in their first UK show in 8 years), Primordial, Bossk, Belphegor, Extreme Noise Terror, Aura Noir, Textures, Devil Sold His Soul, Gama Bomb, 40 Watt Sun, and Wodensthrone.

For you lucky fuckers who are able to be in Leeds on November 3, go here for more info.

FREE NAPALM SAMPLER

Napalm Records has compiled a free sampler of music from their stable of artists. For my tastes, it’s a mixed bag, but it includes some winners as well as some bands whose music I’ve never heard, and therefore it offers some intrigue. Also, it’s free. To see the list and find out how to get the sampler, go past the jump. Continue reading »

HIT AND RUN: DARKTHRONE, OMNIUM GATHERUM, TESTAMENT, AND INDESINENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 142012
 

Yesterday I started putting up short posts during brief windows of time permitted by my fucking day job, just trying to spread the word, for your entertainment and edification, about new videos, new music, and news that I’d seen yesterday. I got two of those posts up on the site and ran out of time before I could finish the third one. So here it is, a day late but no dollars short.

DARKTHRONE

I saw on the Terrorizer web site that this Norwegian duo have finished recording their next album, the first one since 2010’s Circle the Wagons, and that it’s scheduled for release later this year. You can bet that it will make waves and draw lots of attention, because it’s Darkthrone. What I wouldn’t venture to predict is what it will sound like, except it won’t be black metal, because Fenriz has kind of a “been there, done that” attitude about the band’s musical roots. The Terrorizer report did quote guitarist/vocalist Nocturno Culto, as follows:

“The album will be called The Underground Resistance. I can’t speak for Fenriz, but I think he’s going for more epic lyrics. I can only speak for myself and this time around they are very personal lyrics. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried this and it’s difficult to do it nicely and put it into good words. There was a lot of hate and people trying to ruin your day and I had stuff to say for my sake.”

Of the album, he adds: “Our music now is basically just metal, it will be a step away from the last album as usual.” Yup.

While I’m on the subject of Darkthrone, I’ll mention that the Peaceville label has re-issued the band’s 2001 album Plaguewielder as a special 2-CD set, with the second CD consisting of lengthy track-by-track commentary from Fenriz. It also includes new cover artwork by the amazing Zbigniew M. Bielak, which is right after the jump, big as life. Continue reading »

HIT AND RUN: A NEW ABSU SINGLE AND NEWS ABOUT THE NEXT OAK PANTHEON ALBUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 132012
 

I’m still in kind of a work-related trash compactor, except it’s my mind and my time that are being compressed. I’ve had just enough time to glance around the interhole to realize that there’s a fuckload of happenings I’d love to share with our readers, but not enough time to package all of them together in a single post. But rather than just give up, I’m going to dash off a post here and then one or two more a bit later — quickly tossing out at least a few of the items that have caught my eye. This post has a black metal theme.

ABSU: “HALL OF THE MASTERS”

As they’ve done in the past, The Cartoon Network is again providing free new music as part of their “Adult Swim Singles Program”. Surprisingly, the single they released today is more extreme than what we would have expected. It’s a new single called “Hall of the Masters” from Texas-based Absu, a kvlt black metal band that’s well loved around NCS. It’s a hell-ripping thrasher of a song, and you can download it for free by visiting this page.

You can also give it a listen right after the jump. Continue reading »

THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF DANZIG III IS UPON US

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Jul 132012
 

Due to a recent day-job grind and a very late night spent in the company of Agalloch (a show that’s in my future as I type this and in your past as you read it, but which I have no doubt will be/was awesome), I am leeching off the work of other writers for today’s first two posts rather than creating the kind of brilliant original content for which NCS is known far and wide, by which I mean from Seattle all the way to Tacoma.

This first piece of leeching sucks the creative blood from Full Metal Attorney, whose blood we have figuratively sucked in previous posts as well. As you may recall from our previous leeching, FMA has been running posts celebrating the 20th anniversary of iconic metal albums. Today, he has posted one about the third album by Danzig, How the Gods Kill (its 20th anniversary is actually tomorrow, but FMA doesn’t post on Saturday’s).

FMA calls Danzig III “one of the most cocksure, diabolical metal albums of all time”, an album that saw Danzig “following a devil on the left down the path to rock and roll perfection”. Not only does he view Danzig III as the apex of the band’s musical career, he contends it’s a collection of music that, twenty years later, “hasn’t shown its age in the slightest.”

I don’t know whether these are controversial statements because, for me, Danzig wasn’t a pivotal band in my own road toward metal hell, and I’ve never listened to all of the albums. But I’ll say this: “Dirty Black Summer” is a hell of a song, and the H.R. Giger artwork for Danzig III is completely killer. Continue reading »

BLOOD MUSIC: WIN SOME EYE-CATCHING ABIGAIL WILLIAMS VINYL

 Metal News  10 Responses »
Jul 122012
 

On July 2, we reported the unfortunate news that USBM band Abigail Williams will be calling it quits after a farewell U.S. tour that starts later this month and runs into September. As a result of that post, we made contact with a relatively new non-profit organization based in Helsinki, Finland, named Blood Music.

Among other things, Blood Music raises money for its activities by releasing vinyl versions of previously released metal albums. For example, they have released vinyl versions of albums by Maudlin of the Well and in the near future they’ll be releasing a 7 LP box set of music by Strapping Young Lad. But the subject of this post is Blood Music’s release on vinyl of the first and the last works by Abigail Williams — the Legend EP and the band’s 2012 full-length, Becoming. There are five previously unreleased bonus tracks included on Legend (turning it into an album-length record) and three on Becoming (totaling more than 27 minutes) — and everything was remastered by the band’s frontman, Sorceron, from the original 24-bit mixes.

To help spread the word about Blood Music, they’re running a contest where the winner will receive a free copy of the sweet colored vinyl edition of Becoming pictured above. This is a double LP, with the pressing limited to 150 copies worldwide.

To enter the contest, you’ll need to like the Blood Music Facebook page (here) and share the photo on FB that you can find via this link.

Of course, Blood Music is also selling the colored pressings of both albums (though they’re nearly sold out of those) as well as the black vinyl pressings of both (also limited to 150 copies each). To check those out, HERE is the link to Blood Music’s store. And THIS is the link to Blood Music’s web site. After the jump is a pic of the colored vinyl version of Legend. Continue reading »

A WHOLE FUCKLOAD OF ALBUM RELEASE AND TOUR NEWS (AND A NEW GRAVE TRACK)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 112012
 

If you made your way through today’s earlier post about the first direct observation of Dark Matter, then you know we now have an official definition of “fuckload”: It’s a number that’s equal to the number of miles in 18 megaparsecs, which is (yes, I finally did the math) 1,126,656,000,000,000,000,000. Conveniently, that’s about 1.1 sextillion of whatever you’re counting, which is why it makes so much sense to just call it a fuckload.

And today there was a fuckload of news about forthcoming albums, with album art and release dates and such, plus a press release about a hellacious new tour. I don’t have time to write about the entire fuckload of news items, so I’m just going to pick the four that got the most “fuck yeah’s!” in a random survey I did of myself.

The bands in question are: Hooded Menace, Eyeconoclast, Cryptopsy, and Obituary.  And then at the end, I’ve got a new song from Grave’s next album, because we always have to have the musics.

HOODED MENACE

We’ll start this fucker off with Finland’s Hooded Menace. Today it was announced that their first album for Relapse Records, Effigies of Evil, will be released on September 11 (it can be pre-ordered in a variety of formats and bundles here). David D’Andrea did the album cover, which is cool. Relapse describes the album as “combining the grooving riffs of Black Sabbath and early Cathedral with the fire of classic Autopsy and Asphyx”. Fuck yeah. Continue reading »

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