SEEN AND HEARD: ATRIARCH, CENTINEX, HEIRESS, GHOST BRIGADE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Sep 072014
 


 

I spent a chunk of yesterday catching up on new music premieres and teasers from last week. I’ve collected four of the best in this post, representing a range of metal styles.

ATRIARCH

Portland’s genre-bending Atriarch are preparing for the release of their third album, An Unending Pathway, via Relapse Records on October 27. It’s available for pre-order here. Last week one of the new album tracks had its premiere. The title is “Collapse”.

This new song is well-named — it sounds like both a physical and an emotional collapse, the kind from which there won’t be a rebuilding. The rumbling drums and sour guitar melody dominate the song, with the vocal mix of horrific growls and psychedelic wails giving it the air of a ritualistic chant. Before it ends, all hell breaks loose; the drums become spine-shattering, the vocals turn to ghastly shrieks, the bass and guitars become an explosive wall of sound. Doom on… Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MARTRÖÐ, “…AND JUSTICE FOR ART”, NUCLEAR PERVERSIONS, BEYOND GRACE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Sep 052014
 

 

Here are a few randomly chosen items discovered over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth your time.

MARTRÖÐ

This first item caught my attention because of the artwork up there. It was drawn by Misanthropic-Art for a forthcoming EP by a band named Martröð. But having seen the artwork, my eyes popped open even wider when I saw the line-up:

MkM – Vocals (Aosoth, Antaeus)
Esoterica – Guitars (Krieg, Chaos Moon)
H.V Lyngdal – Guitars (Wormlust)
Wrest – Additional Guitars, Ambiance (Leviathan)
Thorns – Drums (Acherontas, Blut Aus Nord) Continue reading »

HIDEOUS DIVINITY: “SINISTER AND DEMENTED”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 052014
 

The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us that the phrase “slash and burn” originated as the name for an ancient agricultural technique that involves cutting trees and other natural growth and then burning them to ash, once dried, in order to create fields for new growth. That phrase springs to mind immediately upon hearing “Sinister and Demented”, the new song by Italy’s Hideous Divinity that premiered not long ago. It appears on their forthcoming album Cobra Verde.

The song is an assault of high-speed sonic decimation. It threshes, it thrashes, and then it burns in a super-heated conflagration. But so complete is the devastation that it’s hard to imagine that anything will grow from the scorched ground it leaves behind.

Everything in the song is geared toward jolting the listener with galvanizing power — from the blazing fretwork to the jaw-dropping drumwork to the ravaging vocals (which sound more like a pack of wolves than a single human). Simply from the perspective of technical proficiency, this is technical death metal of a very high order. Continue reading »

AT THE GATES IS TEASING US (WITH A SNIPPET OF NEW MUSIC)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Sep 042014
 

 

I thought our man BadWolf got some interesting insights about the new At the Gates album in his recent interview with Tompa Lindberg, but just now we got a bit of aural insight into At War With Reality: Century Media has posted a teaser on YouTube that contains a (painfully brief) slice of the music.

Of course, it’s not enough of a slice on which to begin opining about the album as a whole — but as slices go, it sounds tasty to me. Listen next: Continue reading »

NE OBLIVISCARIS STREAM THEIR FIRST SONG FROM “CITADEL”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Sep 042014
 

We have been eagerly awaiting the first sounds from Citadel, the forthcoming album by Australia’s Ne Obliviscaris, and today we (and you) get the chance to hear them. Not long ago, Terrorizer premiered the album’s first advance track, with the lengthy title of “Painters of the Tempest part II, movement III: ‘Curator’ Elusive Reverence”.

Citadel will be released on Season of Mist on November 7 this year. You can pre-order the album here.

This is an exclusive stream, so you’ll need to visit this location to hear it (but do come back and let us know what you think of the music): Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GORMATHON, VHOLDGHAST, CULT OF FIRE, MIDNIGHT, DARKSPACE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 032014
 

 

This is a second round-up for the day, collecting some of the news and new music I discovered yesterday that I thought were worth sharing around. In no particular order:

GORMATHON

I first wrote about Sweden’s Gormathon this past July upon setting eyes on Eliran Kantor’s wonderful cover art for their new album, Following the Beast, which will be released by Napalm Records during September in Europe and on October 17 in North America. Back then I didn’t have any music to share, but thanks to a tip from TheMadIsraeli I discovered that a few days ago they released an official music video for one of the new album tracks — “Absence of Trust”.

The best comment on the YouTube clip was this one: “New video from Saruman and his band directly from Isengard!” Visual resemblances aside, there’s something about the music that inspires such thoughts as well. It’s catchy-as-hell melodic death metal that bears resemblances to Amon Amarth, but with flavors of folk and power metal in the mix. Here’s the video: Continue reading »

RESURRECTIONS: NEW MUSIC FROM ROB THE BARON (AMEBIX), FAITH NO MORE, KALL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Sep 032014
 

Amebix, once upon a time…

Yesterday was one of those days. One of those days, which seems to happen about every once every two days in the world of metal, where a big old dump truck of metal backed up to my door and caved it in with a big load of new metal things of varying shapes and sizes, all of which then began to gnaw on my fleshy parts. I won’t try to cover all of it in this one post, but I’ll make a start… with three items that have something in common.

AMEBIX? (NOT AMEBIX)

[The following is a revised version of what originally appeared here.)

A (black) rose by any other name…

No, there isn’t an Amebix any more, more’s the pity. Rob “The Baron” Miller announced the dissolution of Amebix in late 2012 following the release of the excellent Sonic Mass, and although he did say at the time that he and Roy Mayorga intended to work on new music “with a view to a new incarnation of the Amebix legacy, flying under a different banner”, it was clear that after the parting of ways by The Baron and his brother Stig, Amebix would not continue.

Although it appears that work between The Baron and Roy has not yet come to fruition, there is something else on the way that’s very exciting, albeit mysterious:  A few days ago the following clip appeared on YouTube and I saw it last night thanks to a friend (thank you KK).

And here it is: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ILENKUS, VEKTOR, A DARK DESCENT SAMPLER

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 022014
 

Here are a trio of randomly chosen new things I discovered over the weekend.

ILENKUS

Ilenkus are five men from Galway, Ireland, whose second album The Crossing will be released on vinyl on September 15. The album is available for pre-order on Bandcamp along with a stream of one song, which can be downloaded now if you make the pre-order. I wrote about that song — “Over the Fire, Under the Smoke” — back in July. It hits hard right from the beginning, with big Mastodonian riffs, attention-grabbing drum rhythms, and clawing vocals. The high-voltage music flashes with jolting, progressive-minded lead-guitar flurries — and then takes a sharp left turn into something dreamlike and drifting before building again, with a rising sense of urgency, into a high burn and then a cooling-off period. Impressive guitar work and an equally impressive rhythm section make this song stand out.

Late last week Ilenkus released a music video for the song, which has racked up over 22,000 views in short order. In a nutshell, it shows one of the band’s three rotating vocalists, Chris Brennan, walking along a Galway pedestrian thoroughfare on a busy day. The camera stays focused on him, and he stays focused on the camera as the crowd flows around him. He’s singing the song as he walks — and from the looks he gets, I’m pretty sure he was actually shrieking and growling the words at full volume rather than lip-syncing (though we’re hearing the studio track in the video). Continue reading »

METAL FROM ALL OVER: SULLEN, NOKTURNEL, CANOPY, GREY HEAVEN FALL, DHWESHA, WOLF BLOOD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 312014
 

 

Yes, I’m feeling much better today, thank you for asking. My day-long hangover yesterday was so catastrophic that I couldn’t bring myself to listen to any metal at all — so you know it was a really bad one.  Having finally recovered overnight, I decided to do some catching up on this Sunday morning. In thinking about what music to package in this post from what I heard, I decided to make it a globe-trotting musical tour of the underground. It’s all death metal until the final two songs.

SULLEN

Sullen are a fairly new band from beautiful Isla Margarita in Venezuela whom I discovered after the band’s guitarist e-mailed us yesterday. They’ve recorded a four-song EP released earlier this month named Parasite In Agony, which includes a creepy intro, two original songs, and a cover of Venom’s “Resurrection”.

It’s a strong offering of tyrannical death metal that’s both thoroughly malignant and quite memorable. The songs are loaded with big, sour, earth-moving riffs, fine (and surprisingly soulful) guitar solos, viciously pugilistic percussion, and pleasingly throaty, blood-gargling vocals. I thoroughly really enjoyed this stomping, jagged-edged, skull-fracturing EP. It’s well-written, well-performed, and well-produced. Listen below. Continue reading »

BANDCAMP FOR THE 1%: VORBKT AND WRITHE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  24 Responses »
Aug 302014
 

I got hammered last night. I mean, really hammered. I feel like dog vomit today. The day is half gone already, and only now am I able to touch the keyboard without causing shooting pains behind my eyes. And I won’t tell you how my stomach feels because it would be too disgusting, even for you.

Being unable to think straight, I had no good ideas for what to write today. And then Raven S. sent me a couple of links that gave me the idea for what you’re now reading. They’re links to what must be the most expensive digital albums on Bandcamp, and therefore probably the most expensive digital albums ever.

VORBKT

The first album is by a band whose name sounds like a noise I made a few minutes ago when my stomach turned a particularly nasty flip-flop. Vorbkt are from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Their latest Bandcamp release from April 2014 is entitled Tragedy, and it’s available on Bandcamp for free. But their first demo from January 2009 costs $1,000 for a digital download. The name of that one is La Mort d’echantillon. Its cover appears to be an altered version of a painting I recognized — The Suicide, by Edouard Manet. Which is fitting, because that’s what I’ve been contemplating all morning.

At slightly more than 25 minutes in length, La Mort d’echantillon costs about $40 per minute. That’s some pricey listening. Of course, you can listen for free because the album is available for streaming on Bandcamp, but if you want to carry it around with you wherever you go, that’s going to run you $1,000. Continue reading »

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