SEEN AND HEARD: LOUDBLAST, PACT, ARSAFES, SPECTRAL LORE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 022014
 

This is one of those days when the old fuckin’ day job is going to wipe out my blog time.  So this will likely be our last post of this Friday.  What I’ve done — hurriedly — is to feature a handful of things I heard last night that I think you should hear, too.

LOUDBLAST

Burial Ground — the new album by the long-running French band Loudblast — is one I’ve been anxiously awaiting. In late March I featured the album’s first advance track, “Ascending Straight In Circles”, and yesterday DECIBEL premiered an official video for the same song. As I’ve written before, the music is part thrash, part death, part doom — and as catchy as it is decimating (with thoroughly ravaging vocals).

It appears the album will now be released on June 10, by Listenable Records. It can be pre-ordered here. Check out the video next. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, CLOAK OF ALTERING, DEAD CONGREGATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
May 012014
 

Here are three select items I’d like too throw your way from my recent crawls through the interhole and the NCS in-box.

WOLVES IN THE THROWN ROOM

I was motivated to mention this first album by the stunning artwork you see above. The image is a collaboration between Rachel Carns and Nathan Weaver for Celestite, the forthcoming release by Wolves in the Throne Room. In addition to the unveiling of the artwork, the album’s release date was also announced yesterday: July 8, 2014 — which will make it a nice birthday present for yours truly.

I’ve mentioned this album before, but to recap, it has been described as “an instrumental, experimental companion” to the band’s 2011 album Celestial Lineage and as “a deeper excursion into the crystalline synthesizer-driven domains that have long intrigued them.” Here’s the track list: Continue reading »

MARTY FRIEDMAN + JØRGEN MUNKEBY = “MEAT HOOK” SWEETNESS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Apr 302014
 

Prosthetic Records will be releasing the new Marty Friedman album Inferno on May 27 in North America (May 26 in the UK/EU and May 23 in G/A/S). Within the last hour, a brand new song from the album named “Meat Hook” started streaming on YouTube. This song includes Jørgen Munkeby of Norway’s Shining playing saxophone and providing vocals. Friedman says this may be his favorite song on the album, and you can understand why — because this song is fucking fantastic.

It includes not only borderline unhinged skronkiness and eye-popping shred from this duo but also a beautiful melodic saxophone part. The sound captures elements of both Shining’s Blackjazz sound and Friedman’s, and it’s amazing how well the combination works. Mind=blown.

After the jump listen to “Meat Hook” and then check out what both Friedman and Munkeby have to say about it in separate video statements. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: INCANTATION, DEMONIC RESURRECTION, MOONSORROW, INSOMNIUM, FORGOTTEN TOMB

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 302014
 

Your humble editor has fallen down on the job. Due to a variety of personal and work-related interferences I haven’t been as diligent as I would like in spotting and writing about new developments in the wide world of metal over the last couple of days. With luck, I can do some catching up today, beginning with this collection of items that I thought were worth your attention.

INCANTATION

How many times have you seen Incantation’s name as a reference point for releases by new death metal bands? Dozens of times? Hundreds? I know I’ve used them many times myself in attempting to capture a certain kind of sound in writing about the music of more recent groups. And now we have new music from Incantation themselves.

But before getting to that, is that album artwork cool or what? It’s by the phenomenally talented Eliran Kantor, whose work we’ve praised frequently at this site. We’ve obtained a hi-res version of the cover, which you can see in all its glory by clicking on the image above.

The album’s name is Dirges of Elysium and it’s due for North American release by Listenable Records on June 24. The song that premiered yesterday is named “Carrion Prophecy”, and man, it’s a monster — monstrous pounding riffs that ooze radioactive sickness, monstrous abyssal growls, and an atmosphere of monstrous menace. When the song begins to gallop and race, heads will bang hard, and when it descends again into a pit of decay and depravity, you may feel tumors begin to thicken your organs. Continue reading »

NOT QUITE FREE SHIT BUT STILL A GOOD DEAL: A NEW CANDLELIGHT RECORDS SAMPLER (“LEGION III”)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Apr 302014
 

Periodically the London-based Candlelight Records releases a sampler of music from the label’s artists, and within the last day or two they did it again. This new compilation is named Legion III and it includes 27 tracks by a long list of bands with a wide variety of musical styles. I’m familiar with most (though not all) of the bands, and the ones I know of are very good.

I usually mention new comps on this site when they’re free — and of course when they include music by bands I like. In this case, the comp costs $4.99 (or £2.99), but I thought the array of music was so good that it was worth spreading the word anyway. Also, that’s a pretty cheap price for the quality of music included here. Speaking of which, this isn’t simply a repackaging of previously released tracks — it also includes live cuts and demos that until now haven’t been made available for purchase.

Rather than try to pick out a few names to highlight what’s to be found on the sampler, I’ll just post the entire list: Continue reading »

RAP DJENT IS BECOMING A THING — DEVASTATOR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  20 Responses »
Apr 292014
 

(TheMadIsraeli wrote this.)

Time to revisit this shit again at my own peril.

So, I, and we, have written multiple times about Hacktivist.  For those unfamiliar with them, Hacktivst play rap-djent.   They WERE the only band doing what they do, but now it looks like we may be seeing rap-djent become a solidified “thing”.

Australia’s Devastator are the second band I’ve heard doing this kind of shit, and while the temptation is to compare them to Hacktivist solely on the fact they’re playing djent with rapping as the main vocal drive, Devastator are quite a bit different.  Their music has a more driving edge to it, far more aggressive both musically and in the tone of the vocals of Matthew “AntiMatter” Youkhana. Continue reading »

THERE IS A NEW JUDAS PRIEST SONG (“REDEEMER OF SOULS”)

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 282014
 

When I picked “NO CLEAN SINGING” as the name for this site, it was a reaction to the pollution of good metal with crappy clean vocals — a reaction produced by some specific events at a specific period of time. But it wasn’t a reaction to the likes of Judas Priest. They’re an exception to our Rule (one of many). And Priest are back with a new album and a new song, and they’re both named “Redeemer of Souls”.

Now don’t get me wrong: I still have a low tolerance for clean singing in metal, and I’m not one of those people who worship at the altar of seminal heavy metal bands like Priest, nor do I care very much for the waves of power metal bands that Priest inspired (it’s my least favorite genre of metal). But there are certain Priest classics that still fire me up (possibly for nostalgic reasons as much as anything else), and I do like the title song of the new album, even though Halford doesn’t hit those astonishing high notes he used to reach. It maketh me to hold the invisible oranges.

Redeemer of Souls is due for release in the US on July 15 and in the UK on July 14. Other release dates can be found here. Here’s the title track: Continue reading »

GROSS, GUTTURAL, DISGUSTING, SLAMMING

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 272014
 

Hey there motherfuckers, happy Sunday. I’ll be traveling all day today, which means the odds of me posting anything more than this one thing are slim. There’s a theme to this “playlist”. Can you guess what it is?

All of the songs I’m including here came my way via a message from my NCS comrade DGR. And he announced them this way: “Gross, guttural, disgusting, slamming…. All of these are upcoming 2014 releases except for the last one, which is already out and more brutal death feeling.”

CEREBRAL EFFUSION

This is the first track off the upcoming Idolatry Of The Unethical album that will be out in Spring 2014 through New Standard Elite (delicious cover art by Marco Hasmann). The band are from The Basque Country that straddles France and Spain. They’ve been around a long time. They’re still here because apparently a few mountain ranges are still standing and a handful of cities haven’t yet been leveled into dust. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: POLE DANCING TO VALE OF PNATH, LANTLÔS, ARKAN

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Apr 262014
 

Here are a few things I spied over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth passing along. The last two items aren’t nearly as vicious as what normally tends to attract me, but they’re suiting my mood today.

ARORA LEIGH AND VALE OF PNATH

I’m guilty of inconsistent impulses about metal, in the same way as many other fans of underground music. On the one hand, I get cynical and even pissed off when I see metal being spread around in the mainstream, a feeling that it’s being polluted by rubbing shoulders with the uninitiated. On the other hand, I also get a little thrill when I see metal being used in a way that exposes the music to new listeners in new settings. I can’t explain it.

But anyway, I got that little thrill when I saw the following video this morning. It’s a performance by a woman named Arora Leigh at the 2014 Atlantic Pole Championship competition on April 12 in Washington, DC. As musical accompaniment for her routine, she chose an edited version of the song “Poisoned By Prosperity” by Denver’s Vale of Pnath — a band we’ve repeatedly featured and praised at this site. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SEPREVATION, WOODS OF YPRES, SUMMER SLAUGHTER 2014, HORSEBACK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Apr 252014
 

Happy goddamned Friday to one and all. I have a few randomly selected items to share with you, as a way of greasing the skids for your slide into the weekend. Because I wouldn’t want anyone to get ass burn before the fun starts.

SEPREVATION

Let’s begin with a jet-fueled death/thrash romp.

Late last month I included some release info about the debut album (Consumed) by the UK’s Seprevation in one of these round-ups, despite the fact that I had no music from the album to share with you at that point. I mainly just liked the album cover. But today the band released an official video for a song named “Slave To the Grave”, and guess what? The music is as good as that album cover. Continue reading »

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