SEEN AND HEARD: ENDLESSHADE, PROCESS BLACK, RELLIK, THEORIES OF THE APOCALYPSE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Feb 222015
 

 

Happy goddamn Sunday to one and all. I’m working on a THAT’S METAL! post this morning. It’s going to take me about an hour and a half to finish it. So I thought I’d leave a musical interlude for you before I resume toiling away on that other piece (which I may post tomorrow if not today). As the tag says, what follows truly is random fucking music — these are the last seven songs I listened to last night and this morning, presented in alphabetical order by band name. They’re all new, they’re all good.

ENDLESSHADE

KevinP tagged me (and about 100 other people) on a Facebook link to two songs by this Ukrainian doom/death band. Both songs are drawn from the band’s forthcoming debut album, Wolf Will Swallow the Sun, which will be released by Naturmacht Productions on February 22 (and can be ordered here). The first track is “Post Mortem” and the second is “Edge”.

These are long songs, in the eight-to-nine minute range. They create an atmosphere that’s both ethereal and crushing, both mystical and tangibly powerful, hypnotic and harrowing. The forlorn, keyboard-enhanced melodies are sweeping and memorable, while the riffs are titanic. The harsh vocals are gargantuan and vividly impassioned; the clean vocals are sombre and sorrowful — and both are impeccably performed by a woman (Natalia Androsova). Truly compelling music… Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ABYSS, COLD CELL, INFERNAL WAR, KURHAN, SABERTOOTH ZOMBIE, VELUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 202015
 

 

What’s that they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men? I had collected a great volume of new songs since Monday and began displaying the ones I wanted to recommend yesterday, in alphabetical order. I made it through “L” and had intended to finish the back half of the alphabet today. But in the meantime I came across still more worthy new song premieres by bands whose names didn’t conveniently fit in the “M” – “Z” category. So much for that idea.

Anyway, here are a few more things I discovered since yesterday and a few (but not all) of the tracks I originally intended to provide today. I guess that means I have more round-ups to prepare for the weekend…

ABYSS

20 Buck Spin is set to release the debut album by a Toronto band named Abyss — the album’s title is Heretical Anatomy — and yesterday DECIBEL premiered a track named “The Atonement”. It’s a searing blast of thrashing, lashing death metal that punctuates its fury with forceful hammer blows and a breakdown that will provoke sore-neck syndrome. Gruesome, morbid vocal vomit, too. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BINARY CREED, CRYPT SERMON, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, GOST, GRUESOME, HACAVITZ, HOLOTROPIC, INCULTER, LLOTH, LVXCAELIS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 192015
 

 

Greetings sistren and brethren. I have a bountiful collection of new songs and album streams to recommend. One of the reasons the collection is so bountiful is that I haven’t had time to pounce upon them with my usual catlike reflexes this week. I am instead moving at the speed of the loris horde in the NCS compound, which is to say, slower than the oozing of maple sap in a Vermont winter. In other words, there’s a backlog — and now the dam bursts.

Don’t be daunted by the volume of music in this collection. Just sip it slowly, a little bit at a time, as you would that jug of 100 proof rot-gut moonshine you keep under the sink next to the dry-aged head of the last person who pissed you off.

I’m presenting the music in alphabetical order by band name — and in this post I’ve only made it up to “L”. I actually have still more new music from bands whose names come later in the alphabet. I hope to package those up for tomorrow. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT FROM HYPNOTIC DIRGE RECORDS AND BLACK METAL ALLIANCE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 172015
 

 

I pride myself on having a breadth of knowledge that is very wide and very shallow. Sure, I could burrow deeply into particular subjects, and then be able to talk about 2 or 3 things in depth. You know people like that, don’t you? They bore the shit out of you, am I right? Broad and shallow, that’s the way to go (except when it comes to metal, about which I of course have near-encyclopedic knowledge).

For example, I know that statisticians have ways of reaching conclusions about large populations of items or people based on a small sampling of data. They have mathematical formulas for gauging the reliability of the conclusions based on their sample size. And that’s all I know about that. If I knew more, I’d probably bore the shit out of you.

I applied a sampling technique to the two compilations that are the subject of this post, because I didn’t have time to listen to all the songs. I’ve concluded that both comps are hot shit. I have no idea whether the conclusions I reached are valid. Fortunately, you can listen to all the songs before deciding whether to spend your hard-drive space on them — and that’s all you’ll have to spend, because they don’t cost money (unless you want to throw some cash at them out of the goodness of your coal-black hearts). Continue reading »

BANDS YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING TO: IN DREAD RESPONSE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 162015
 

(TheMadIsraeli revives a feature designed to put the spotlight on recommended groups, and today the focus is on New Zealand’s In Dread Response.)

In Dread Response have been mentioned a couple times here on the site, but I figured a full feature on them was relevant and due, considering the band’s next album Heavenshore is coming soon.  These “Bands you should be listening to” segments will be exactly as the title says, but I kind of aim to use them as indirect awareness and hype for a band’s upcoming output as well, especially when it’s a band I really believe in and love to death.  In Dread Response are definitely such a band, and this little feature is for those who may not even know who these guys are, as well as for those who do but maybe haven’t followed them lately.

In Dread Response play blazingly fast-as-fuck technical and emotive melodic death metal.  Make no mistake, this is a band who not only perfectly conform to what NCS is all about, they are also completely unrelenting, in a genuinely militant way that melodic death metal doesn’t often display.

A lot of the best melodic death metal nowadays really borrows from the Daylight Dies and In Mourning school of ambience, melancholy, and dragging tempos, but In Dread Response capture the ferocity the style was born with.  If you want band references or comparisons, think of a combination of Dark Tranquility and Darkest Hour.  In Dread Response have the savagery and melodic tendencies of early Dark Tranquility, and the speed and recklessness of Darkest Hour on Hidden Hands Of a Sadist Nation.  They lack the commercialized elements both bands later tried to incorporate, and have instead retained only the best and most intense aspects of those sorts of influences. Continue reading »

ESSENTIAL ENTRIES: JANUARY 2015

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Feb 152015
 

 

(In this post Dan Barkasi inaugurates a monthly series recommending music from the month just ended.)

Welcome, welcome, to the first edition of my monthly column, oh so cleverly titled Essential Entries. Classy and functional, right?

In a nutshell, the premise is to feature what particularly tickled my fancy every month. The plan is to get this out a little after each month is completed. Hopefully you’ll find something you’ll like, or simply have fantastic taste and know the stuff already! Either way, enjoy, and I encourage you to make a comment on what you particularly dug, or if there’s something you think yours truly missed.

Without further ado, here’s January, which was a pretty damn good way to kick off 2015.

A Swarm of the Sun – The Rifts

Coming in at the very end of the month, and thankfully, this was caught in time to be included. Atmospheric and complex post-metal meets some doom, and it’s daunting in the best way. The vocals are especially fitting, the piano sections are mesmerizing, and the whole vibe needs to be felt. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FALSE, ACHERONTAS, DØDHEIMSGARD, VOLAHN, MISÞYRMING, GHOST BATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Feb 152015
 

 

This is a round-up of news and new music that I discovered in a long bout of listening and reading yesterday. It happens that all the items in this collection concern black metal, but black metal is a broad spectrum, and it happens that the music you’re about to hear is quite diverse — and all of it very good.

FALSE

This first item is a piece of news, an official announcement of an album that’s been on my personal “most anticipated” list for 2015 since I heard it was being recorded last year. It’s the debut full-length by False from Minneapolis, and it will be released by Gilead Media in the May-June time frame, both as a double-LP and as a CD. The cover art (above) is killer — I’m eager to see what the LP gatefold looks like.

False have only released three songs in their meteoric career — two of them on an untitled EP in 2011 and one on a 2012 split with Barghest (reviewed here). But False are fond of long songs, and so those three add up to almost 45 minutes of music — 45 very intense minutes. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LEVIATHAN, LYCHGATE, IMPLODES, SVIN, KEEP OF KALESSIN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Feb 132015
 

Presented below, for your entertainment and edification, is a collection of songs and videos I discovered this morning. All but one are new. All are recommended. No two of them sound alike.

LEVIATHAN

Within the last couple of days Noisey published an interview of Leviathan’s Jef Whitehead by Drew Millard, preceded by Millard’s thoughts about the subject of the interview (“Whitehead’s a scary guy”). If you want to read that, the link is below. But the main point of attraction to me was an accompanying premiere of a new song from Leviathan’s forthcoming album, Scar Sighted (due for release by Profound Lore on March 3). Below, I’ve included the Soundcloud stream for that, too. Continue reading »

GET TO THE POINT: A.C. OF THROES

 Interviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 122015
 

 

(In this latest installment of his “Get To the Point” series, KevinP poses 5 questions to multi-instrumentalist “A.C.” of the UK band Throes, whose debut album Disassociation is coming out March 22nd… and we have a new song to stream as well.)

******

K:  Another day, another new band from you.  So what’s this all about?

A:  Throes comes from a turbulent time.  It was originally formed as a full band in 2011 but due to DG’s term of house-arrest we were forced to disband.  There’s not a great deal worth delving into with regards to the history of Throes. In fact, we’d rather leave most of it feigned in mystery.  This is for a variety of reasons but mainly because when you look at the current incarnation of Throes it bares no similarities to its predecessor (i.e., as opposed to being a full band), it is now a two-man outfit with all instrumental and writing duties handled by myself and vocals performed by DG.

 

K:  So musically what were you aiming for on this, as opposed to the plethora of other bands you are involved with?

A:  This has a whole load of electronic influences and definitely takes a much more experimental approach than any other record I have done.  Also, I wrote the material over a fairly short period of time in comparison to what I would normally spend on a record. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VOICE OF THE SOUL, IN DREAD RESPONSE, SOUTHERN FRONT, MUSCLE AND MARROW, FALL OF SUMMER 2015

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 112015
 

 

I would actually like to review an entire album. Or even an entire EP. And I harbor hopes of finishing the rollout of our Most Infectious Songs list for 2014. But on a daily basis I continue to find new songs that I feel compelled to say something about, and so here we have another round-up of such discoveries.

VOICE OF THE SOUL

I first came across Voice of the Soul four and a half years ago via a MISCELLANY excursion. The band’s vocalist/guitarist Kareem Chehayeb was then based in Kuwait, with other band members spread around other locations in the Middle East. When I reviewed their 2011 EP, Into Oblivion, I found that it represented a large leap forward, or more like a stretching of wings — by a rapidly maturing raptor with big claws that could do some damage, and an even more impressive ability to take flight on the wings of some very memorable melodies. Since then, Kareem Chehayeb and guitarist Monish Shringi relocated to Dubai in the UAE, and recorded the band’s debut album, Catacombs.

Guest writer Gorger reviewed the album for us last October and gave it high marks. But despite his praise and my own history with the band, I stupidly didn’t dive into it. Too many other distractions, I suppose. And then yesterday I watched and listened to the band’s new lyric video for a song from the album named “Defiled”, and holy shit. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries