FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: THE FUCKING FESTIVALS ARE AWESOME TOO

 Metal News  24 Responses »
Dec 092010
 

Surely, when it comes to metal, the Finns make a mis-step every now and then. But it doesn’t seem to happen very often. Fuck, even the festivals are awesome.

Take the TUSKA open air festival, for example. The 2011 edition is scheduled to take place on July 22-24, 2011 in Helsinki. Yesterday, the festival organizers released an initial list of the bands that are confirmed so far. Take a peep at this:

AGNOSTIC FRONT
ARCH ENEMY
AT THE GATES
CHURCH OF MISERY
ENSLAVED
EXODUS
GRAVE
KILLING JOKE
KVELERTAK
MESHUGGAH
MISERY INDEX
MOONSORROW
MYGRAIN
SPIRITUAL BEGGARS
WITCHERY

Yeah, that’s exactly what I said when I saw it: Holy Shit.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

LEGEND UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 262010
 

Legend is a metalcore band from Michigan whose debut album, Valediction, we reviewed in June (here). At that time, the members of Legend included vocalist Chad Ruhlig (ex-For the Fallen Dreams), bass-player Joe Ellis (also ex-FTFD), and guitarist Aaron “Bubble” Patrick (ex-Bury Your Dead). In the space of the last five months, the line-up has undergone a thorough revision. Ruhlig is still on vocals (thankfully), but Ellis and Patrick are gone, and the new line-up consists of Devan Dickerson (guitar), Matty Harrah (bass and vocals), and Dylan Shippey (drums).

Today’s update was prompted by the revised Legend’s hot-off-the-presses release of a new song called “Proven”. It’s a hot song — heavy as fuck, obliterating as a jackhammer with a mind of its own, synaptically convulsing, and fueled by Chad Ruhlig’s wonderful hardcore howls and death-metal growls. The production has got just the right mix of muddiness and clarity for a brutally downtuned song like this. And to put some sweet icing on this dense cake, Legend’s label (Rise Records) is making the song available for free download at the band’s Pure Volume site (here). We don’t know how long the free download will last, so don’t delay — go get it.

Now, even though it only takes seconds to download this song, you may still want to hear it before allowing it to occupy the precious storage on your hard drive. We can handle that. We can let you hear the song first. And we can even do better than that. We can play you the song while at the same time allowing you to see a time-lapse video of Josh Schroeder, a.k.a. “Metal Josh,” creating new merch artwork for Legend. Josh also runs a professional recording studio (called Random Awesome), and he happens to be the dude who recorded this Legend single (in addition to recording albums for Dagon, For Today, Beneath the Sky, Hester Prynne and many others). Multi-talented people make us insecure.

So, while creating the artwork that you see above, Josh kept the camera rolling and then speeded it up so you can see the creation of the art from beginning to end while you listen to the song. Seriously, it’s so much fun to watch. So, continue past the jump and watch it! Continue reading »

CATCHING UP (Part 3)

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Nov 252010
 

I guess this still qualifies as catching up.  I just saw a notice on the Profound Lore web site that in tandem with the November 23 release of Marrow Of The Spirit, AGALLOCH have announced a West Coast tour with “Austrian industrial/neo-folk/martial ambient act Allerseelen.”  The tour begins on December 17 in Agalloch’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, which will also serve as their record release show.

The number of tour dates is limited, and if you don’t live on the West Coast of the U.S., this news probably won’t do you much good. For us here in Seattle, the chance to see Agalloch on the heels of this new album release is just a fucking bonanza. The dates and places for the Agalloch/Allerseelen mini-tour are as follows:

12/17 – Portland, OR @ Berbati’s Pan (w/Aerial Ruin)
12/18 – Seattle, WA @ Neumo’s (w/Waldteufel, Alda)
12/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Proud Bird (w/Winterthrall)
12/22 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall (w/Dispirit)

CATCHING UP (Part 1)

 Metal News  14 Responses »
Nov 232010
 

While I was away on vacation I didn’t completely neglect what was happening in the world of metal, but I confess I didn’t spend the kind of time I usually spend keeping up on current developments. So over the weekend I did my best to catch up. It was kind of like swimming against a flood tide. It’s amazing how much happens on a daily basis. Of course, I find that a lot of the bulletins, press releases, and blurbs that fill up the likes of Blabbermouth and band pages on Facebook and MySpace are pretty uninteresting.

But even ignoring the boring and utterly useless streams of bullshit that pass for metal news much of the time, I still found all sorts of happenings over the last 12 days that were quite interesting, and even exciting — the kind of occurrences we would have written about on this site if we’d been able to stay on top of our game. The downside of writing about them now is that for many of you, it will be old news. But what the fuck. We’re going to write about some of those items anyway, stale though they may be. Some things still taste pretty good even when they’re beyond their sell-by date. And besides, maybe some of you missed them, just like I did while I was off staring at clouds.

It may take a couple or three posts to catch up, but there’s no time like the present to get started. So today we’ve got a collection of items about Animals As Leaders, From Exile, After the Burial, and I Declare War. That’s what you’ll find after the jump, along with some music videos . . . Continue reading »

CELTIC FORCE!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Oct 302010
 

When we last checked in with our favorite bagpipe-driven metal band from South Africa, Haggis and Bong, about a month ago, they had just made four songs available for free download on their ReverbNation page. That ended a long dry wait for us. Finally, we had the ability to carry H&B songs around with us so we could get skirled to death by the music whenever the fuck we wanted!

A month ago, we also learned that Haggis and Bong had expanded their line-up to include, in addition to the Highland pipes and drums, a bass player and a trombonist. We wondered how the addition of a bass would affect the sound (we thought it would likely make it more metal), and of course, everyone knows that a metal band without a trombone is like a three-legged dog.

And now we know — because Haggis and Bong have added a new song to their ReverbNation player called “Celtic Force” — and it includes bass guitar and trombone!  That player also includes an upload of yet another song from the band’s 2008 debut, Fire in the Bowl.  That one’s called “The Plague”. And you can download both those new songs (in addition to the previous four) at a cost of nothing more than a mouse-click and a dirty thought.

And since we know our readers oh so well, we know all this will really cost you is the mouse-click. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

DEATHSPELL OMEGA (MISCELLANY NO. 15 1/2?)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Oct 142010
 

Thanks to an exuberant Facebook post by The Binary Code‘s Jesper Zuretti, we learned within the last hour that French black metal band Deathspell Omega has just made available a new song from their forthcoming album Paracletus (due for release in the U.S. on November 9). Deathspell Omega is one of those bands we’ve been hearing great things about for a long time, but whose music we somehow have never actually gotten around to hearing.

Amazing, really, since they’ve been playing music since about 1998 and since they have one of the coolest band names in extreme metal. Anyway, that’s all changed now, because the Season of Mist label has made that new song available for free download, and we’ve now heard them. Should have checked out these dudes long ago.

The new song is called “Devouring Famine”. It’s a dense and immense piece of guitar-driven, progressive black metal. To string together some additional adjectives: It’s powerful, caustic, cacophonous, creative, rhythmically diverse, technical, discordant, and compelling. Unless you just can’t stand black metal, this is absolutely worth hearing. So, here it is:

Deathspell Omega: Devouring Famine

By the way, the Season of Mist site has lots of other free downloads available from label artists, including that brand new song from Atheist, “Second To Sun”, that we featured in a post last week, and a song called “Tired Climb” by Kylesa from their forthcoming new album Spiral Shadow. This link will take you to the index of available downloads from Season of Mist.

And if you haven’t already seen Kylesa’s video for that “Tired Climb” song, it’s definitely worth seeing. So here — see it (after the jump). Continue reading »

WHAT’S IN A NAME (Part 2)?

 Metal News  58 Responses »
Oct 122010
 

About a month ago, we mused about how much a good band name has to do with a band’s success. We considered some ass-kicking bands with ass-kicking names, some ass-kicking bands that have succeeded despite piss-poor names, and some bands whose names are just perplexing — and that led to one of the most interesting comment sessions we’ve ever had at this site.  (The whole post is here.)

Yesterday, we saw the latest line-up of confirmed bands for the 2011 edition of the Maryland Deathfest, and that got us thinking about band names again. Actually, to be brutally honest, it got us laughing like hyenas circling a fresh carcass.

Not that we intend to make fun of the Maryland Deathfest — far from it. That festival is the closest thing in scope to the big European festivals that the U.S. has to offer, and if it weren’t so damned far away from Seattle, we’d be there next May in a heartbeat.

But the line-up of bands includes some names of bands we’ve never heard before that deliciously embody the general middle-finger-giving, batshit-craziness of metal that we love so much. And so, after the jump, we’ll review the current line-up with you, focusing on some of those fucktastic names, and we’ll include a song or two from the band whose name we like the best. Continue reading »

GOD DETHRONED: UNDER THE SIGN OF THE IRON CROSS

 Metal News  9 Responses »
Oct 112010
 

We’ve been fans of God Dethroned for a while, but were late-comers to the wonders of the band’s 2009 release, Passiondale. Late or not, we splashed our admiration for that unusual album all over these pages in January (here). But you can be damned sure we won’t be late again when God Dethroned releases its next album on November 23.

It will be called Under the Sign of the Iron Cross, and like Passiondale, it will be another concept album about World War I. Singer/guitarist Henri Sattler has explained that the fires of his continuing interest in that conflict were stoked by his reading of In Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel), Ernst Juenger‘s journal of his daily experiences in the trenches during the war.

Today, Metal Blade began streaming the first song from Under the Sign of the Iron Cross. The song is the title track, and holy hell, is it heavy as fuck. It’s fitting that we put it up here for your listening pleasure today, on the heels of our post about Autopsy, because it’s a bludgeoning piece of blackened death metal, as extreme as anything God Dethroned has done in many moons.

But . . . it’s also beautiful.  (more after the jump, including that song to stream . . .) Continue reading »

NEW ATHEIST MUSIC: SECOND TO SUN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 082010
 

Earlier today, Atheist put up the first song for streaming from their forthcoming album Jupiter. If our math is correct, Jupiter will be the first Atheist studio album in 17 years.

Some bands who’ve produced no new music in 17 years should just stay dead.  But this is Atheist, one of the true progenitors of tech-death and experimental metal. We relish the idea of a new album. We relish the thought even more after listening to the new song, “Second To Sun”. It’s a mighty fine piece of ear candy. Hear it for yourself:

THE BRUTAL TRUTH IS . . . INEXPLICABLE

 Metal News  15 Responses »
Oct 022010
 

I had a difficult experience last night. The evening started with tequila shots and continued with margaritas. The excuse to get soaked in the juice of the agave was an annual get-together of all the people I work with, which usually turns into a blow-out. Last night was no exception. The only difference is that this time, I didn’t require hospitalization by the end of the night. This morning is a different story. I’ll be calling 911 as soon as I get this post finished.

Before I reached the point of no return and was still able to carry on a conversation (otherwise known as “authentic frontier gibberish”), I started talking about music with someone I’ve known since the last geologic epoch. He’s never listened to extreme metal, and his mental image of metal appears to have stopped evolving somewhere around the high point of Def Leppard’s career.

I’m not sure he and I have ever talked about music, but in any case, he didn’t know about my addiction to the kind of music we cover on this site. He asked me to name a few bands, and I tried to come up with some of the most popular ones, hoping one would ring a bell (I mentioned Slayer, Lamb of God, and Mastodon), but the names meant nothing to him. He persisted — he was genuinely interested in trying to understand what the music sounds like and why I like it.

Now put yourselves in my shoes and imagine the challenge of trying to answer that question. I assume it’s akin to explaining “blue” to a person who’s been blind from birth, or maybe trying to explain Brutal Truth to a metalhead who doesn’t get the attraction of grind — and attempting to do those things while being about two and a half  sheets to the wind.   (more after the jump, including a new Brutal Truth video . . .) Continue reading »

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