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 »

CHRISTIAN MOLENAAR’S GUIDE TO GORENOISE

 Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  41 Responses »
Mar 262014
 

(Christian Molenaar plays guitar (and flute) in San Diego’s Those Darned Gnomes. He also performs, on those or other instruments, in Mortal Bicycle, Static Goat, City of Brass, Cëmetricity, and the Cooldad Memorial Volcanic Orchestra, among others. And as you’re about to see, he knows a thing or two about a host of subterranean sub-sub-sub-sub genres. And he can write. And he’s funny.)

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call… The Gorenoise Zone.

Halfway between the utter pretension of so many in the noise scene and the legitimately questionable tenets of goregrind (here’s looking at you, Cemetery Rapist) lies the paragon of human musical innovation, a hybrid creature so truly beautiful it can only be heard by those pure of heart. Welcome, friends, to the world of gorenoise.

After Islander wrote about Phyllomedusa’s most excellent Puddle Dependency I felt compelled to spread the gospel of gorenoise, its history and what may lie in its future. Take my hand, friend, and walk with me into a beautiful new world… Continue reading »

DEATH RITUALS: PHOBOCOSM, MIASMAL, KRIEGSMASCHINE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 252014
 

I haven’t had time to pull together a round-up of new discoveries in a couple of days, but I thought that before I get further behind I would at least call out four recent songs that are worth some attention Two of them are precursors to new albums due for release later this year and otwone come from an album that hit the streets in February.

PHOBOCOSM

Phobocosm are from Montreal and in recent days they were signed by the Dark Descent label for the release of their debut album, Deprived, which was mixed and mastered by Colin Marston (Gorguts, Dysrhythmia, Krallice). NCS scribe Austin Weber brought them to my attention, thinking their music would be up my alley, and man was he ever right.

Just a few days ago the band released the first song from Deprived for public consumption, and it’s a monster. The dreadful chiming chords that begin “Solipsist” are like the bells that herald the final doom, and the rest of the song provides a reasonable approximation of that event. Phobocosm marry crushing riffs and ever-changing drumbeats to bleak, needling tremolo melodies and a gargantuan voice that emanates from some deep pit in the earth. Continue reading »

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