SYMPHONIC EXTREMITY: NEW MUSIC FROM DIABOLICAL AND WELICORUSS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jul 262012
 

While browsing the interhole this morning in an effort to find something that would cheer me up in the wake of learning about the cancellation of the Gojira-LambOfGod-Dethklok tour, I happened upon two new videos that helped considerably. By coincidence, both involve bands whose new music carries an air of dark symphonic grandeur, while inflicting vicious body blows at the same time: Diabolical (Sweden) and Welicoruss (Russia).

DIABOLICAL

Diabolical are a Swedish death metal band with three studio albums and a live recording (2011’s Ars Vitae) to their credit. They’re now in the process of recording a new album entitled Neogenesis. Today, they released a video that includes pre-production excerpts from a few of the new songs, and the music is sounding really fucken good.

The music is a dark kind of melodic death metal, frequently with a black metal sheen. Whether galloping at a furious pace or stomping with imperial might, it’s infernally majestic. The vocals are deep and bestial and the riffing is titanic. But the band also spin sweeping melodies, and they leaven the blasting with soft spaces that include the mournful sound of violins. Through the guitars, subtle keyboard additions, and even choral clean voices, they also create a symphonic aura around this very ominous and apocalyptic metal.

The new video teaser also features a dude who looks like he took in a few too many roentgens somewhere. Continue reading »

WELL, FUCKITALL: GOJIRA’S TOUR WITH LAMB OF GOD AND DETHKLOK IS KAPUT

 Metal News  11 Responses »
Jul 262012
 

I guess this could be predicted, but I was hoping against hope that it wouldn’t happen: Gojira’s North American tour with Lamb of God and Dethklok that was scheduled to begin right here in the Emerald City on August 1 has been canceled. I just saw this morbid news on Heavy Blog Is Heavy, and “borrowed” their modification of the tour poster as well. HBIH also included the following statements by Lamb of God and Dethklok:

LAMB OF GOD:

“Due to the continued incarceration of LAMB OF GOD singer Randy Blythe in the Czech Republic, the band’s co-headline tour with Dethklok scheduled to begin August 1st in Seattle is being cancelled.  The band regrets the decision but the uncertainty of Randy’s release makes it impossible to carry on with the tour.  Upon Randy’s release, it is the band’s intention to rebook a tour in the fall and at this time the band fully intends to participate in the Mayhem Cruise in December.

LAMB OF GOD wishes to thank Dethklok, Adult Swim and Gojira for their support and patience as well as all of the promoters who had dates on the tour.  Last but certainly not least, the band thanks all of the fans who bought tickets for the tour and who have been supportive of Randy and the band over the last month that Randy has been held in Prague.  Without the fans, there is no LAMB OF GOD.”

DETHKLOK:

“In light of circumstances beyond our control, the upcoming Dethklok and Lamb of God with Gojira summer tour has been canceled. Refunds will be available to customers who already purchased tickets through their point of purchase. We thank Dethklok fans for their continued support and look forward to releasing information about the band’s upcoming third album and a planned fall tour in the coming weeks.”

Okay, fine, so maybe LoG will organize a new tour whenever Randy Blythe is allowed to leave the Czech Republic and maybe Dethklok will find another way to hit the road soon, but honestly, what I really want to know is what Gojira are going to do. Continue reading »

“HEART OF GOLD”: THE WOODS OF YPRES TRIBUTE ALBUM HITS OUR FRACTURED RADAR SCREEN

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 252012
 

On December 22, 2011, David Gold died in an automobile collision near Barrie, Ontario, at the age of 31. With his death, so died Woods of Ypres — the doom/black metal band that he co-founded and of which he was the sole consistent member over the course of five albums and assorted other releases. But of course the music of Woods lives on in the lives of the band’s passionate fanbase.

Given my own tastes in metal, I was never a die-hard follower of Woods, though I did appreciate the music, I was really high on certain songs, and I certainly understand why the band had such a powerful effect on many listeners. And I wasn’t surprised to learn earlier this year that a musical tribute to David Gold and to Woods was being planned under the title Heart of Gold. I’ve been casually (and irregularly) monitoring the project’s progress, and so, for example, I saw today that the project’s organizer, Steph LeDrew, had unveiled the very cool album cover that you can see above, created by artist Jason Hicks.

But what really put this album on my personal radar screen was the recent discovery that Sweden’s Canopy has contributed a cover of “Falling Apart”, which was one of two tracks that appeared on the Home 7″ single released in 2011. Long-time readers of NCS know that we’re huge fans of Canopy, and we’ve been starved for new music from the band since the release of Menhir (their third album) in 2010. Now we’ll have something to tide us over until the band finish work on their next album (which is in progress). Continue reading »

DAYLIGHT DIES: “A FRAIL BECOMING” IS ON THE WAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 252012
 

All of your friends here at NCS are immensely anxious for the release of the next album by North Carolina’s Daylight Dies. Three years have passed since the release of the band’s third album, Lost To the Living. But yesterday Candlelight Records announced a release date for the new album, entitled A Frail Becoming: October 9. In addition, the label put up a brief video teaser for the album, which is . . . way too fucking brief.

The new record was mixed by Jens Bogren (Opeth, Katatonia, Devin Townsend, and many more) at Fascination Street Studios in Sweden, and the album will feature photography from award-winning Jonathan Mehring.

I’m going to embed the teaser video after the jump, but I’m also including a more effective reminder of why this is one of our most anticipated releases for 2012 — the official video for “Lies That Bind”, a track from the band’s second album, Dismanting Devotion (2006). It vividly displays the band’s talent for moving from dark ethereal beauty to a crushingly heavy assault, without warning, and the video is cool to watch, too.

Speaking of videos, the press release we received states that the band are currently working on a video for the song “Dreaming of Breathing” from the new record. The clip is being filmed by Ramon Boutviseth, who also directed the video for “Lies That Bind”. For more updates, watch this space or visit Daylight Dies on Facebook. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: HOODED MENACE / HORSE LATITUDES SPLIT

 Album Reviews, Metal News, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jul 242012
 

Among the current practitioners of death-laden doom metal, you’ll be hard-pressed to find two more catastrophic practitioners of the art than Finland’s Hooded Menace and Horse Latitudes. In January 2012, Doomentia Records released a 12″ vinyl split by the two bands, with each one contributing a song. Since January, Doomentia has gone through two limited pressings of 500 copies, and both are sold out, though it appears that copies may still be available through the bands’ online shops — Hooded Menace here and Horse Latitudes here.

Fortunately, you don’t have to scrounge around for one of the remaining copies of the vinyl edition to hear the music, because Doomentia has recently made the split available for streaming and digital download on Bandcamp.

As we previously reported, Hooded Menace also have a new album on the way via Relapse Records by the name of Effigies of Evil. It will be released on September 11 and can be pre-ordered in a variety of formats and bundles here. Today, Noisecreep premiered that album’s title track, which I strongly recommend you check out at this location.

But the main purpose of this post is to review and recommend the Hooded Menace / Horse Latitudes split. Though it consists of only two songs, it’s almost 19 minutes of music, because both songs are long-format offerings. Both songs are also lessons in how to make slow, extended, completely gut-crunching music without sending listeners into a coma. Continue reading »

DIOCLETIAN / WEREGOAT: “DISCIPLES OF WAR”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 232012
 

At least some of you who are on Facebook and who have liked the NCS Facebook page saw this album art when I posted it late yesterday. Based on how many people saw that FB post, it seems like the artwork has generated a lot of interest. So I thought I ought to explain what it is in more detail.

It’s the cover of a forthcoming split by Diocletian from New Zealand and Weregoat from Portland, Oregon. The title of the split is Disciples of War. It will be released on 12″ vinyl by Parasitic Records and on CD by Dark Descent. I don’t have a release date yet and pre-orders haven’t started. Once I get more info, I’ll add an update.

The complex, hand-drawn album art is, as you can see, amazing, and amazingly vile. It was created by Daniel “Desecrator” Corcuera, a 27 year-old artist who lives in Chile. Based on a brief bio I found on a site that was describing an exhibition of his work in Portland (here), it appears he is entirely self-taught and spends his time as a tattoo artist, illustrator, and vocalist/bassist for a band called Slaughtbbath.

Desecrator has created album art and logos for bands such as Bestial Mockery, Sathanas, Vomitor, Suicidal Winds, Dead Congregation, Hooded Menace, Thornspawn, Satanic Warmaster, and more. A listing of many bands for whom he has created artwork can be found here. And via this link, you can find an interview with him and more of his artwork.

As for the music on the split, I expect it will be utterly savage. We’ve written about Diocletian multiple times, most recently here. Their most recent releases are a May 2012 7″ EP entitled European Annihilation, produced for their European tour earlier this year, and a June 2012 hour-long compilation of the songs from their first four recordings between 2005 and 2008 by the name of Annihilation Rituals. The word “annihilation” appears in these titles for a reason. Continue reading »

HELL DIVERS: HELL UNITED, SKELETAL SPECTRE, AND SOPHICIDE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 202012
 

Each of the three metal bands featured in this post have new albums on the way. Each of them have publicly released one song from their new albums. None of them sound quite like the others, but they do have these two points in common: First, all three of the new songs are very fucking good. Second, all three of them will make you feel like you’ve just taken a deep dive into the bowels of hell.

HELL UNITED

Hell United are a band of veteran Polish musicians (two of them playing in an earlier incarnation of this band as far back as 1997) who recently signed with Hellthrasher Productions for the September 11 release of their second album, Aura Damage. Just a few days ago, Hellthrasher started streaming the new album’s third track, “Deathlike Cold”.

The evil in this track starts flowing immediately in the tremolo-laced death-doom chords of the intro, and then it turns into a flood, with a dense wall of spitfire riffing, machine-gun percussion, and vocal outpourings of genuine bestiality. This horrific onslaught of hybridized black metal and brutal death-doom may qualify as war metal (a term we’ve had fun discussing around here off and on). Whatever you call it, it cored out my skull and left me hungry for more. Continue reading »

MDF XI: THE MARYLAND DEATHFEST ANNOUNCES THE FIRST 16 BANDS FOR 2013

 Metal News  32 Responses »
Jul 192012
 

It’s waaaaaaay past the end of our normal posting day, but I thought this news was significant enough to interrupt my regularly scheduled evening activities, which consist of lolling on a comfy sofa like a beached orca watching The Food Channel, taking frantic phone calls from world leaders, solving quadratic equations in my head for shits and giggles, and occasionally making lascivious remarks to my wife on the off chance that she might be in a frisky mood.

Yes, just hours ago, the best metal festival in these United State announced the first 16 bands to appear at MDF XI, which will be held in Baltimore on May 23-26, 2013 — and here they are:

VENOM (UK) – Exclusive US headlining show.
CARCASS (UK) – Exclusive US show.
MANILLA ROAD
RIGHTEOUS PIGS – Exclusive US reunion show.
PENTAGRAM
ANTAEUS (France) – Exclusive US show.
INTEGRITY
CONVULSE (Finland) – Exclusive US show.
AOSOTH (France) – Exclusive US show.
PELICAN
MIDNIGHT
!TOOH! (Czech Republic) – Exclusive US show.
MORGION
KOMMANDANT
AHUMADO GRANUJO (Czech Republic)
INGROWING (Czech Republic)

A few thoughts off the top of my head . . . after the jump. Continue reading »

TOUR NEWS (PRIMORDIAL, CORMORANT, AND YOB) PLUS NEW MUSIC FROM A MILLION DEAD BIRDS LAUGHING AND XAPHAN

 Metal News  16 Responses »
Jul 192012
 

Still plagued by the annoying intrusions of non-metal life (fuck non-metal life), your stupid friends at NCS have nevertheless found time to gather a few recent items of interest for your amusement and edification.

ITEM ONE

First item is above, presented to you as a public service, rather than because of my usual self-centered interests, since this tour isn’t coming remotely close to Seattle. But any U.S. tour involving both Primordial and Cormorant is by definition newsworthy. I don’t know While Heaven Wept, but they must at least be interesting or they wouldn’t be along for this ride.

Do pay close attention to the little asterisks, since not all bands will be at all dates.

ITEM TWO

The next item is also a tour announcement that also happens to be in September and also happens to include Cormorant (look closely at the dates for Sept 16-20 on the following poster) and also happens to be by-passing Seattle. On this tour, the headliners will be YOB and a band called Norska, which features YOB bass player Aaron Rieseberg and his brother Dustin and is described as a “progressive tech-sludge rock band.” Continue reading »

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 »

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