APRIL FOOLS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Apr 022014
 

My close friends and family members will tell you that I’m one of the most gullible people you could ever encounter. I prefer to think of it as an innately trusting nature, but my history of being duped is so long and rich that I can’t really quarrel with their judgment. Even on April 1, when I try to be on guard, I still get suckered like a carnival rube.

There were lots of metal-oriented pranks yesterday that were funny even though they were obvious — such as the 50 reviews that suddenly materialized on Metal-Archives for the ingeniously named Penis Metal by Hades Archer. At least I think that was a prank. Sometimes gullibility can work in reverse.

One prank I fell for, hook, line, and sinker, appears at the top of this post. I have such a hard-on for Oak Pantheon and Amiensus, and their 2013 split Gathering, that I took one look at that flyer — and the appearance of a Seattle date — and started marking my calendar and exclaiming enthusiastically about it on Facebook. I didn’t dwell on the logistical difficulty of a tour that would start on the US East Coast, jump to a bunch of European capitols, and then pick up on the US West Coast, all within the space of a month. I also completely missed the two tiny words in the lower right-hand corner of the flyer. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PUTERAEON, VANHELGD, MISERY INDEX, DAWN OF DEMENTIA, FALL OF THE ALBATROSS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Apr 012014
 

Here we have another round-up of new music to recommend for your aural pleasure. I’m splitting this quintet with one of our other writers, Austin Weber. I’m introducing the first three items, and he’s got the other two after that. Here we go:

PUTERAEON

I’ve massively enjoyed this Swedish death metal band’s last two albums, The Esoteric Order (2011) (reviewed here) and Cult Cthulhu (2012) (which I miserably failed to review). They’ve now completed another Lovecraftian-inspired album entitled The Crawling Chaos, which will be released by Cyclone Empire on April 25 and features chilling cover art by Christoffer Fredriksson. The band recently released an official video for the album’s third track, “Path To Oblivion”, and I caught up with that today. You should catch up with it, too.

The music is like a hard-charging phalanx of ghouls and golems, a ghastly and galvanizing gallop of gore-strewn gruesomeness. The crypt door has been flung wide open, and all manner of unholy, undead things are coming for your teeth. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WRONG, WITCHTHROAT SERPENT, SOUL THROWER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 312014
 

Here are a handful of new songs and videos I found this morning that I thought were worth passing along.

WRONG

I got interested in this new two-man black metal band because the vocalist and drummer is Phlegeton from the excellent Spanish metal band Wormed. His partner, who plays guitar, bass, and piano, goes by the initials DP and is a member of The YTriple Corporation and Neverdie. Their second album, Pessimistic Outcomes, is coming out in April.

In January I featured a Wrong video for a song from their first album, and what I found today is a just-released video for the new album’s title track. The song is slow-moving and depressive, with squalling tremolo guitars and methodically pummeling percussion that moves between rock beats and rolling thunder. Incorporated within this bleak, atmospheric music are two contrast points — ugly, distorted, bile-spewing vocals and eerie, ethereal piano notes. Continue reading »

BOMBS OF HADES AND PSYCHOTIC GARDENING

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 302014
 

I’ve got some other goodies lined up for you on this day of rest, but while I finish messing with those I thought I’d bomb you to smithereens with some Bombs of Hades and then let Psychotic Gardening prune your vines.

BOMBS OF HADES

Bombs of Hades are one of the bands I included on a list of the best Swedish-style death metal being recorded by newer bands over the last five years, and if you haven’t heard them before you’re about to find out why they belong on that list. They have a new album on the way entitled Atomic Temples and yesterday they started streaming one of the new songs — “Omens” — and it’s great.

As many of you know, I have a long-standing love (some might call it a crippling weakness) for this kind of metal, despite the fact that it’s music that MUST fit a certain mold or it loses its identity. With other styles of metal, sub-genres can be spliced together, filigrees and embroidery can be added, experiments can be performed, growth and innovation can occur. But with this kind of old-school, d-beat-driven Swedish death metal, there’s simply a right way to do it or a wrong way. Bombs of Hades do it the right way. They keep the faith, they carry the torch, and it’s smokin’ hot. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE, BRETUS, DEATH I AM

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 292014
 

This is the second round-up of newly discovered music for this Saturday. One just wasn’t enough for what I found yesterday.

CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE

My comrade DGR rightly praised this Sacramento band’s self-titled 2013 album in a review last September. And how, we wondered, might the band follow up that monster of a disc? Well, now we have our answer: by covering a West Coast rap song from 1994 by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. I’m not lying.

Actually, “Natural Born Killaz” is a pretty natural choice for a metal cover if you think about it. To quote The Font of All Human Knowledge: “The song has satanic and occult undertones and covers such subjects as mass murder, Sarah Connor from the Terminator films, Al Cowlings’ tight bond with O. J. Simpson, schizophrenia, Charles Manson, the attack on Reginald Denny during the Rodney King riots, strychnine poisoning, flagellation in Singapore, Jeffrey Dahmer, Kurt Cobain’s suicide and psilocybin mushrooms.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VALLENFYRE, INFESTUS, ARCH ENEMY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 292014
 

Yesterday was a bonanza for me, like Santa got lost on Christmas Eve and wound up in a roadhouse in Amarillo and pulled out of his blackout drunk only yesterday, just long enough to drop these three presents down my non-existant chimney while he puked his guts out all over the reindeer. Or something like that.

VALLENFYRE

I get all tingly in my nether bits thinking about Vallenfyre’s new album, Splinters. A Fragile King (2011) was such an auspicious debut, and it’s such welcome news that this all-star band decided to follow it up with another album, which is now scheduled for release by Century Media on May 12 in Europe and May 13 in North America. Yesterday brought the premiere of the album’s opening track, “Scabs”.

The combination of screeching feedback, massive guitar and bass tone, and crisp, rapid-fire percussion grabs you within the first half-minute — and the song just gets even better from then on. The writhing guitar melody, the truly titanic chugging, the cavernous vocals, the obliterating drumwork — it all combines to exert a powerful, primal appeal, and an atmosphere drenched in bleakness. Fantastic song. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LORD MANTIS, INVINCIBLE FORCE, YOUNG AND IN THE WAY, TARTHARIA, ATHANATHEOS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 282014
 

I spent some time last night searching for new music worth recommending. Found quite a lot. Damaged my ear drums in the process, but oh so worth it. (They were so screwed up beforehand that it didn’t really matter. As for you, play this stuff loud enough to cause pain, so I don’t feel lonely in my deafness.)

There’s a lot of music in here — I could easily have spread it across five posts today — but there probably won’t be many other posts on this Friday because I’m on the road again. So, take your sweet time with it.

LORD MANTIS

We already reviewed Death Mask. We’ve heard it all, but most of you haven’t. Some of you will want to run away from it, some of you will eat it up like whatever it is you can’t stop eating even when you know you should. I’m in the latter category — it has made an indelible mark, as deep as all the black tattoos that beautify my limbs. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AUTOPSY, LOUDBLAST, BLACK ANVIL, AND ARCHSPIRE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 272014
 

I’ll spare you the why’s and wherefore’s, but your humble editor has fallen behind in monitoring developments in the world of metal.  As a result, the collection of new songs is even more random than usual. Nevertheless, I think all the music is very good, and it’s diverse enough that it should please a range of tastes.

AUTOPSY

Tourniquets, Hacksaws And Graves is the name of the seventh studio excrescence by the mighty Autopsy. Ever since the Wes Benscoter album art and April 21 release date were disclosed by the Peaceville label back in February, I’ve been waiting for a taste of the music, and we finally got it yesterday, with the premiere of “The Howling Dead” at Noisey.

I’m not surprised at how good this song is, but I’m surprised at how wretchedly good it is. That driving beat at the beginning, shrouded in dense distortion, is just killer. So is the thoroughly horrific doom slow-down that follows it. So is the lurching, rocking stomp that comes next. And so on… Chris Reifert’s vocals have never sounded more horrific, the riffs are as putrescent and grisly as they’ve ever been, and the closing guitar solo oozes decay. Fantastic! Continue reading »

OCULUS INFERNUS: IN WHICH THE PROFESSOR EXAMINES SOCKWEB, JUMALATION, DEMON EYE, ANGELSPIT, AND CULTFINDER

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 272014
 

(It is always such a treat for us to bring you the investigations of Professor D. Grover the XIIIth. They come in the night, when you least expect them, and they open your eyes, and your ears. Blessings be upon his wizard head.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. I return to bring to your undoubtedly overcrowded attention new releases from a quintet of artistic purveyors of the Devil’s Musick. You may be familiar with a few of these artists, and that in itself is laudable. If, by some odd confluence of fate, you are familiar with all of them, then I warmly shake your hand and wish to know more about you, as clearly we are of a similar mind when it comes to music. And now, let us commence.

SOCKWEB

If there is one of these musical groups I would expect most of you to know, it would be Sockweb. After all, they have been widely discussed in the annals of No Clean Singing before. Still, for those of you a bit slow on the uptake, Sockweb are a grind duo comprised of multi-instrumentalist Adam “Blackula” Young and his now seven-year-old daughter and vocalist Joanie “Bologna” Young, and it is that initially gimmicky quality that has gained Sockweb their notoriety. At any rate, the duo’s debut album Werewolf is finally available for purchase, and as many had hoped, it’s actually quite excellent. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: A STORM OF STREAMS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 262014
 

(Austin Weber brings us another round-up of music and metal news, featuring The Conjuration, D’Arkestra, Divine Realm, Winter of Sin, and Posthumous Blasphemer.)

THE CONJURATION

After a long wait, The Conjuration’s new album, Surreal, has finally emerged—and it’s a gloriously twisted avante-garde beast that lashes out in progressive and schizophrenic fits. This is death metal turned upside down. Corey Jason has proved once again that he doesn’t need a band, only himself. He composed all of it, played all the instruments, did the vocals, and handled the production himself, too.

On Surreal, Corey skillfully pushes the limits of what a one-man death metal act is capable of creating. Most acts of this nature that play death metal are lacking compositionally and all too often create music that is too samey in the songwriting, and too often lacking a vital creative spark. By contrast, Surreal really does sound like the work of multiple people whose different ideas and approaches led to a diverse group of songs. Continue reading »

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