SEEN AND HEARD: GRAFVITNIR, ELDVÅG, ARMAGEDDON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 222014
 

 

Happy Saturday to one and all. It’s not exactly a happy Saturday for me because I’m away from home for the old fucking day job and won’t get back to Seattle until December 6 or 7. While toiling away in distant environs I do hope to continue posting at least one new thing of my own each day, in addition to contributions from others.

This morning I had the chance to check out some new songs, from which I sifted the following three that I recommend to your earholes.

GRAFVITNIR

Grafvitnir are a three-man occult black metal band from Sweden who describe themselves as “the faceless emanations of primordial chaos”, and based on the new song I heard this morning, I can believe that. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ASCENSION, AT THE GATES, BLACK SHEEP WALL, CENTINEX, CRETIN, FAITH NO MORE, NAPALM DEATH, RAMMING SPEED, SATANIC WARMASTER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Nov 202014
 


Photo credit: Dustin Rabin

 

I need to whine for a couple of minutes. Yes, even I, with my usually sunny disposition, need to whine every now and then.

First, I’ve been getting so little sleep lately that my eyes are as red as a baboon’s ass. Second, I inflamed a muscle in my arm from curling massive amounts of weight at the gym, the kind of crushing weight that’s comparable to a grocery bag loaded with a single loaf of bread. Third, and most egregious of all, my fucking day job has been making me run the gauntlet the last two days, with no end in sight, leaving me no time for my usual self-appointed NCS duty of scouring the web for news and new music.

I do know about a bunch of song and album premieres that appeared over the last 24 hours, but only because of messages received from my co-writers and some sharp-eyed readers. I’ve collected streams or links to them in this post, but don’t have time to write about them or even provide album art or helpful links. Shit, I haven’t even listened to all of them. How embarrassing. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: INFESTUM, WITCHRIST, HELLFEST, JEFF LOOMIS AND ARCH ENEMY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Nov 172014
 

 

I’ve seen and heard a lot of metal things on this Monday. I thought I’d try to collect all of them for tomorrow’s first post, because that way I could do some other things with what’s left of my Monday, such as doing some work for my fucking day job, because there are some people who actually think I should do something I’m actually paid to do. But fuck that. I decided to make a start right now and finish everything up in tomorrow’s first post.

INFESTUM

Last week the European Space Agency landed a small spacecraft named Philae on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a 2.5-mile-wide ball of rock, ice, and dust that was moving faster than 40,000 miles an hour and was 317 million miles from Earth at the time of the landing. Not a bad piece of work. I have trouble landing my car in my driveway.

Unfortunately, the spacecraft shut down on Saturday after its batteries were drained. Apparently it landed against a cliff or crater wall where it couldn’t get enough sunlight to recharge those batteries. Before that happened, Philae did send back some photos. As you can see above, one of them looks suspiciously like the cover of Monuments of Exalted, the new album by Infestum from Belarus that was released by Lacerated Enemy Records just a couple of days earlier. If you’ve heard anything from the album, you may be less convinced this was a coincidence. Continue reading »

THERE WILL BE A DELAY (SO HERE’S A NEW BLOODBATH VIDEO — “CHURCH OF VASTITAS”)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Nov 142014
 

 

I’ve been on vacation for the last week, got home after a lot of traveling early last night, and then had to turn around a couple hours later to go back to the airport to pick up someone, and didn’t get to bed until very late — without having written any NCS thing for today. And all of my NCS writer comrades have been doing other things besides writing NCS things. So basically, I got nuthin’. And I need to go to work today, so I probably won’t have much for today, period. Whatever I do get ready will be late.

So anyway, I thought I might at least do a quick scan of the interhole for something new, because I hate to post anything on the site that doesn’t have some metal in it. And voila, I came across a link on FB to a just-released music video by Bloodbath for a song named “Church of Vastitas” off their new album Grand Morbid Funeral. I like the song — it’s a slow, brooding, grim, morbid piece of pestilential death/doom with good vocal vomit. The video is pretty simple, but doesn’t detract from the music. Here it is. I’ll be back… at some point… later today. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ZOM, SELVANS, XII BOAR, KVILE I KAOS, BITCH WITCH, PARASITIC EXTIRPATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Nov 122014
 

I’ve amassed a sufficiently large number of recommended new songs and videos over the last couple of days that I’m mainly going to just toss them your way in this post and hold my own commentary about the music to a minimum. I realize that this comes as a crushing blow to all of you, but somehow the music will just have to speak for itself today.

As you’ll discover, I’ve intentionally provided a broad array of musical styles to keep you off-balance.

ZOM

This makes the fourth time we’ve written about Dublin-based ZOM this year. Their debut album Flesh Assimilation is coming on November 24 via Dark Descent, with artwork by Zbyszek Bielak. Yesterday, DECIBEL premiered another advance track from the album, “Conquest”. It sure as fuck conquered me. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HIDEOUS DIVINITY, CANCER BATS, MORS PRINCIPIUM EST, JONATHAN ATHON, AND WAYNE STATIC

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 102014
 

A collection of things, good and bad, most of which I noticed over the last 24 hours:

HIDEOUS DIVINITY

We’ve written about every one of the advance tracks that have premiered from the new album Cobra Verde by Italy’s Hideous Divinity — in fact, we helped premiere one of those ourselves. The reasons we’ve devoted so much space to the music is that it so successfully combines explosive violence, trauma-inducing groove, and memorable strains of melody within well-structured songs.

It’s superbly performed, obliterating death metal that’s not only exhilarating to hear the first time through but also delivers the same level of adrenaline rush on subsequent listens. And there’s not a single soft spot in the whole album. Now the entire album is available for listening, so you don’t have to take anyone else’s word for its strengths. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: UR DRAUGR, REVEL IN FLESH, JUPITERIAN, ENDEMISE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Nov 062014
 

 

I’ve had a busy day today — but for better or worse I haven’t been busy blogging. Truth be told, I’m on vacation — and doing some day-job work by long distance, which I guess is some kind of karmic retribution for vacationing on the job before I ever left.

Anyway, the upshot is that I don’t have many posts to contribute to the site today. One can only hope that I’ve made up for the lack of quantity with some metal quality — including these four new songs I happily discovered while roaming the interhole and the NCS email today.

UR DRAUGR

We start this round-up with a band named Ur Draugr from Perth in Western Australia whose ranks include past or present members of Impiety, Wardaemonic, DeathFuckingCunt, and Morphica. They’ve recorded a debut album entitled Augur Unboden that’s projected for release in December, and today they began streaming one of the new songs — “Unseen Golgotha”.

I was drawn to the song by the superb painted cover art of Jeff Christensen that you see above, and by two additional Christensen pieces for the album that come next: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NAPALM DEATH AND VOIVOID ON TOUR, DECIBEL NAMES THE TOP 100 DOOM ALBUMS, AND NEW MUSIC FROM ARCHGOAT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 052014
 

In today’s posts we’ve thrown quite a lot of new music your way, but we’re still not quite done. There are a couple more songs I want to recommend that I discovered over the last 24 hours, plus some news items that perked my interest. We’ll start with those and then move to the songs.

THROUGH SPACE AND GRIND TOUR 2015

Through Space and Grind is the name of a 2015 North American tour whose roster is full of eye-catching names: Napalm Death, Voivod, Exhumed, Iron Reagan, and Black Crown Initiate. The tour begins on January 27 in Miami and runs through February 28 in Houston.

The following bands will also join the tour on selected dates:  Ringworm, Dayglo Abortions, Theories, and Phobia. Here’s the full schedule: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ISRATHOUM, CHALICE OF BLOOD, NEFANDUS, NIGHTBRINGER, VERBUM VERUS, WEDERGANGER

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 052014
 

 

In my daily searches for news and new music that I think would be worth your time, sometimes I come across so many exciting new discoveries that it feels like the flood gates have been opened, or that I’ve opened Pandora’s box thinking that it was my underwear drawer, or that a pack of wolves have materialized in my skull and started devouring its meager contents.

That happened over the last 24 hours. I found so many new things worth recommending that I’ve split this round-up into two posts. By chance, many of them all involve the same label — Daemon Worship Productions — so I’m collecting those in this first post.  More info about all the releases discussed below and related merch can be found here.

ISRATHOUM / CHALICE OF BLOOD

Our last mention of Israthoum on the site occurred almost two years ago when Andy Synn reviewed the band’s second album, Black Poison and Shared Wounds. That is now being followed by a new Israthoum split with the Swedish black metal band Chalice of Blood, which was originally announced at the beginning of this year. Like that preceding album, the split is adorned with spectacular artwork by Held (Ubertragic Art).  (Click the image to view a larger version.) Continue reading »

SEXCREMENT: “SALT PETER”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 032014
 

 

I discovered the Boston-based deviants in Sexcrement back in 2012, when they released their second album Sloppy Seconds. I sure as fuck did enjoy that album. I forgot how much I went on and on and on about it when I finally got around to writing a review until revisiting that tome earlier today. I’m not going to blather quite so incessantly about the subject of this post. I’m mainly going too let the music and the video speak for themselves.

And that’s what we have here — yet another music video directed and edited by underground filmmaker Victor Bonacore for a Sexcrement song. The last piece of perverted genius he created for Sexcrement was for the song “Trucker Bombed” off that Sloppy Seconds album. Now he’s made a new short film for a new Sexcrement song named “Salt Peter”, which appears on a brand new free Sexcrement EP entitled XXX Bargain Bin Vol. 2. I only found out that the EP had been released when I watched the video this morning, so I haven’t listened to it yet. You can be damned sure I will — but I didn’t want to delay in spreading around the video. Continue reading »

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