MISCELLANY NO. 54: HEBOSAGIL, SUFFIX, BELGRADO

 MISCELLANY, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
May 022013
 

I am so far behind in so many ways, perhaps most far behind in completing album reviews. So what am I doing? Listening to music from bands I’ve never heard of. I suppose this could be a form of procrastination, but instead I think it’s just my hunger for new things, which appears to be insatiable and uncontrollable.

So much time has passed since my last MISCELLANY experiment, that I ought to provide a reminder about my self-imposed rules: I pick bands at random whose music I’ve never heard; I listen to one song (sometimes I cheat and listen to more); I write my impressions; and I stream what I heard so you can judge for yourselves. The bands selected for this test are Hebosagil (Finland), Suffix (Sweden), and Belgrado (Spain).

HEBOSAGIL

As noted, these dudes are from Finland, so I already knew there was a better than even chance they would be good. I found out about them via a press release announcing that they have a new album named Lähtö that’s due for release by Ektro Records on May 17. The seventh track on that album is “Valmis mihin vaan” (yes, Hebosagil’s songs are in Finnish), and it happens to be streaming on Soundcloud, so that’s what I picked for purposes of this experiment. Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE . . . UNFAIRLY MALIGNED ALBUMS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  27 Responses »
May 022013
 

(Here’s another in Andy Synn’s irregular series of things that come in five’s.)

That’s right, with this edition of the column I’m going to try and convince you that your opinions are wrong, and break the Pavlovian conditioning that has led you all to unfairly loathe some genuinely fine albums.

But… this is the internet… so none of that’s probably going to happen.

A little context first off though. A couple of days back I was listening to the new Cryptopsy album (still stunning btw) and suddenly thought to myself, “You know what, I haven’t listened to The Unspoken King in forever… surely it’s not as bad as I remember?”.

And you know what… it is. Ok, so it has a couple of solid songs, and a few that would be pretty good if they weren’t Cryptopsy songs, but overall… wow… it really is bad.

But it did get me thinking about albums towards which the general public consensus is largely negative (often influenced strongly by prevailing media portrayals, and sometimes out and out misrepresentations) but which I think deserve a renaissance, now that the initial furore has died down.

So here I present five of my picks for albums which have been castigated and criticised by the metal community at large, sometimes seemingly without even listening to the actual music, but which I think are actually pretty brilliant, once you get past all the politics and preconceptions. In fact, having spoken to several people about some of these albums, it seems a lot of folks “remember” the albums as being bad, but can’t tell you much about when, or even if, they’ve actually listened to them. So here I intend to rectify that. Continue reading »

A MORNING ROUND-UP: SYNAPSES, BÖLZER, MUMAKIL, AND DEAFHEAVEN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
May 022013
 

Here are some things I heard yesterday that grabbed me. I’m starting with two bands who were new to me and finishing with two of whom I was already a fan.

SYNAPSES

Yesterday we posted Andy Synn’s engaging and informative interview with Alan Cassidy, The Black Dahlia Murder’s talented new drummer and formerly the hitter for Abigail Williams. If you haven’t read that yet, you should. At the end of the interview, Andy asked him for musical recommendations, and Alan made a pitch for an Italian band named Synapses. The name was new to me so I investigated.

It turns out that Synapses are a relatively new band whose debut album Expiation was released by Deepsend Records in February 2012, and they’re currently at work on a follow-up. Some tracks from the album are on YouTube and I listened to one called “Assault of the Weak”.

I can understand why Alan Cassidy thinks these dudes are awesome. It’s because they are indeed awesome, and a big reason why is drummer Riccardo “Cannibale” Fanara. “Assault of the Weak” is a fairly brutal form of highly percussive, fleet-fingered death metal with rapid-fire guitar and bass riffing and roaring vox. But as balls-out blazing as the hi-tech music is, it incorporates some mighty grooves and some inventive (and acrobatic) drumming. I’m particularly digging the snare hits, which come in unexpected places and punctuate the blasting in creative ways. Continue reading »

YOUR HAIRLESS CAT PHOTOS FOR THE DAY

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 302013
 

Yeah, hairless cats. We don’t have enough hairless cats here at NCS. Actually, the only other time we had a hairless cat at NCS was in this post from three years ago, of which I’m still awfully damned proud. But today I saw some hairless cat photos that just seemed to cry out for a feature.  Voila!

POTERGEIST

The first photo is up above. It was taken by none other than Seth Siro Anton (Septic Flesh), and the subjects are Alex S. Wamp of Greek “swamp metal” band Potergeist and Sethi. That’s Sethi on top. I think it’s a badass pic.

Before seeing it I didn’t know anything about Potergeist, but now I know that they have a new album on the way named Swampire and that Mr.Anton will be doing the cover art for it. In hunting for Potergeist music, I found two things that I liked. The first is a cover they recently recorded of Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard”, which appears on a Greek tribute to Sabbath named Sabbath Cadabra that Metal Hammer Greece is giving away with issue #340 (it went on sale April 2). Some fuckin’ juicy riffs in this thing, not to mention a sweet blues harmonica, a nice guitar solo, and some squalling vocals.

Before I get to the second thing I found, here’s another photo of Alex and Sethi: Continue reading »

SHARPEN YOUR BLADES: A NEW WATAIN ALBUM IS COMING IN AUGUST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 302013
 

The Wild Hunt is coming.

We learned in January that Sweden’s Watain had begun recording a new album, the follow-up to 2010’s Lawless Darkness. Today the band announced that the album is finished and will be released on August 19 in Europe and August 20 in the US via Century Media Records. The title is The Wild Hunt. I don’t have anything else to say, except to note that I’m excited about the news. So, here’s the posting that appeared on Watain’s Facebook page about an hour ago:

After 120 nights of iron will and ardent magic, the fifth fullength album of Watain is now complete. With broken bones and burning hearts we have ploughed our way through deepest winter into a new wilderness, to which we will open the gates at summers end. THE WILD HUNT will be released on August 19th in Europe and August 20th in USA. Beware!

Might as well use this as an excuse to post some Watain music, so have at it following the jump . . . Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MECHINA AND GOTHMINSTER

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 302013
 

(This little round-up is provided to you courtesy of NCS writer DGR.)

MECHINA

Chicago’s Mechina are now close to five months in from their unleashing their excellent release Empyrean. However, they’re not a band to just sit on their laurels and instead have been hard at work on quite a bit of new music. They’ve already discussed a follow-on trilogy of musical releases — which in itself is ambitious as hell — but the group have also been putting out the occasional oddball single/cover and have recently made a couple of them available for free download.

It’s done through a website called WeTransfer, which I’ve never heard of before, but it seems legit and it checked out on the two webrep style programs I use, and neither song has given me any crazy-ass computer sickness as of the thirty minutes ago that I downloaded these things. Plus; if anything does happen we know the band are based in the Chicago area and, really, how hard is it to find four or five guys within a mass of millions, right? Now, let’s discuss the songs.

First up is “Anicetus” – which is an electronica-augmented song that the band proclaims is a “dubstep/whatthehellyoucallit” track made for the hell of it. As someone who has been exposed to an oddly heavy amount of the genre I can say that yes, there are definite elements of it throughout the whole song, so there’s no denying its presence. However, the amount of noise, guitars, electronics, and orchestral elements combine to make something that is oddly compelling. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DEATH ENGINE, REVELATION’S HAMMER, FREYA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 292013
 

Sometimes it happens like this. It’s a goddamn Monday morning and I wake up at an hour fit for nocturnal predators but not for human beings. I brew the coffee and start chugging it like a Bolt Thrower riff. I check the NCS e-mail to see what came in overnight and the first three things I see kick my ass so hard that the coffee becomes superfluous. And I start writing . . .

DEATH ENGINE

Death Engine are from Lorient, France. They’ve recorded a debut EP named Amen, which will be released in a limited run of CDs in May and on 10″ vinyl in mid-June by Throatruiner Records, North Cult Records, and Basement Apes Industries. More info about that can be found via the links below; perhaps one day it will become available digitally as well.

A song from the EP has begun streaming. Its name is “Gun”. It has made me re-think my support for gun control. It punches holes through concrete. It spews acid. It swarms. It rumbles. It rolls. It pulsates. It bends genres, harnessing elements of hardcore, black metal, crust, and noize. It includes a fucking killer drumbeat. I like it.

After the jump I’ve installed the EP’s cover (by Hugues Pzzl), some links, and “Gun”. Continue reading »

WATCH SÓLSTAFIR’S NEW VIDEO: “ÆRA”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Apr 282013
 

It’s nice to have an excuse to put Kim Holm’s artwork on our site again. Up above is the piece he created for the song “Æra”, which appeared on the magnificent 2011 album by Iceland’s Sólstafir, Svartir Sandar. “Æra” is on my mind because Sólstafir have just released an official video for that song. It’s a live performance at the 2012 Eistnaflug Festival in Iceland using footage shot by about a dozen camera wielders.

I’ve loved this song from the first time I heard it. The beat, the riffs, the vocals . . . all good. Always thought the hammering parts of the song would be a sure-fire mosh trigger, and it’s nice to see it happening in this video.

I really, really need to see this band on stage, someday, some way. The video is after the jump. Continue reading »

DEATH FUCKING METAL: JUST BEFORE DAWN AND CROCELL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 282013
 

You get one guess about the theme of this post. It involves new music from two bands with forthcoming albums — Sweden’s Just Before Dawn and Denmark’s Crocell. Neither band mess around — they bring full-strength, undiluted, high-potency death metal that will knock you on your ass, but they do it with flair. Based on the new tracks that have recently premiered from both bands, these albums look like “must get” releases for fans of the genre.

JUST BEFORE DAWN

This is a legitimate death-metal all-star project. The band was founded by multi-instrumentalist Anders Biazzi (Blood Mortized, ex-Amon Amarth) in the summer of 2012, and he was later joined by vocalist Rogga Johansson (Paganizer, Bone Gnawer, Putrevore, Humanity Delete, Demiurg, etc., etc.). Originally intended as a two-man project, it expanded to include participation from a host of others in the recording of the debut album, including six more vocalists:

Jonas Lindblood (Puteraeon)
Mr. Hitchcock (Zombiefication)
Gustav Myrin (Blood Mortized)
Dennis Johansson (Plästerd, Headstoned)
Ralf Hauber (Revel in Flesh)
Tony Freed (Godhate)

The album, entitled Precis Innan Gryningen, also includes guest guitar solos by Jonas Lindblood, Gustav Myrin, and Rick Rozz (Massacre, ex-Death), and it features cover art by one of my favorite metal artists, Daniel “Devilish” Johnson. The album is now scheduled for release by Chaos Records on May 20. Continue reading »

CLEAN AND UNCLEAN: THE GREAT OLD ONES, ANTTI RAILIO, AND SHADE EMPIRE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 272013
 

I had already put together one daily round-up of new metal for this Saturday (here), but since doing that I found more items I want to share, because sharing is caring (I spit up in my mouth as I wrote that, so it didn’t turn out as funny as I’d hoped). Part of what’s in here involves clean singing; and no, we aren’t entirely bigoted on the subject despite the site’s name. However, I’m sandwiching the clean in between slices of the unclean, just so no one gets the idea that the exceptions have become the rule around here.

THE GREAT OLD ONES

The Great Old Ones are a French black metal band who released their debut album Al Azif last year via Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions. To commemorate the one-year anniversary of that album, The Great Old Ones decided to record a cover of a Björk song. Probably wouldn’t have been my pick for a celebratory commemorative, but what the fuck, I decided to check it out — and it’s outstanding.

The band have preserved the song’s melancholy melody through a mix of vibrating tremolo chords and intensified its emotional power and dramatic punch with wrenching black metal vocals, heavy bass, and well-timed drum blasting. In retrospect, I can see how the song’s lyrics would lend themselves to a black metal cover: “I’m a fountain of blood . . . I’m a path of cinders burning under your feet . . . You’re the intruder hand / I’m the branch that you break.” Continue reading »

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