SEEN AND HEARD: WORMED, NEGATOR, AND MONOTHEIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 272013
 

We keep our eyes and ears open so you don’t have to. Except when you’re crossing the street. You should keep your eyes and ears open when you do that. Also when driving and performing open-heart surgery. There might be a few other exceptions that I’m not thinking of at the moment, but otherwise we can be your eyes and ears. And here are a few recommended things we’ve seen and heard this morning: new music from Wormed (Spain), Negator (Germany), and Monotheist (Florida).

WORMED

“Tautochrone” is a fuckin’ great song. It’s by Spanish death metal band Wormed and it appears on their excellent new album Exodromos. It’s a brutal, blazing song, but Wormed add both technical and near-ambient melodic elements that most purveyors of brutal death don’t even dream of doing, and Wormed do it superbly.

And I’m thinking of that song why? Because yesterday Wormed released an official video for it. I haven’t yet figured out whether it’s the video that’s strobing and shaking, or my eyeballs. Either way, it’s cool. Continue reading »

FOLLOWING UP: TARDIVE DYSKINESIA – “CRAWLING IN THE MUD”

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 272013
 

Yesterday, in a post devoted to recent metal art, I included the piece you see above (created by Manster Designs). It mysteriously appeared, without explanation, on the FB page of a Greek band I admire named Tardive Dyskinesia. If I’d only waited a day . . . because now the band have revealed what it’s all about.

The artwork was created for a “new” single named (of course) “Crawling In the Mud”. The song was originally recorded during the 2008 studio sessions that produced the band’s 2009 debut album, the terrific The Sea of See Through Skins, but it was not included on the official release of that album by Coroner Records. As of today, the band have made the song available for free download in a package that also includes two live tracks — “We, the Cancer” (from the band’s latest album Static Apathy In Fast Forward) and “Complicity” (from The Sea of See Through Skins) — plus a high-res version of the above artwork and a band photo and logo.

I’m just going to focus on that “ghost” song “Crawling In the Mud” because I hadn’t heard it before today. Continue reading »

THE CORE-LESS BREAKDOWN: A LIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  29 Responses »
Mar 272013
 

 (I wish I had thought of this cool idea for a post. But BadWolf beat me to it — and this is his piece.)

It’s not news to anyone reading this ( I hope) that heavy metal culture has an elitist streak. In fact, read enough comment threads on this blog and others, and you will notice a tiered system of elitism, false barricades that we, as fans, erect to keep ourselves distanced from a perceived wasteland that is ‘the mainstream.’ By virtue of reading a metal blog, I’d wager you’re already a step or two up on the elitism pyramid. By definition, as a metal blogger, I am MORE than a few steps up on the elitism pyramid. But I’m not far enough up to lose my sense of perspective.

There is an appropriate amount of ironic self-distancing when appreciating art. The top of the elitist pyramid? Probably black metal purists, and look how even the mainstream lambasts the true corpsepaint-set as clowns. Those folks would do well to remember that most of the Norwegian attack bands abandoned the strict black metal template quite rapidly. Ihsahn is in a prog band now. Mayhem put electronica all up in their second album.

But at the same time, from where I stand, the lowest rung of elitism is abjectly deserving of ridicule as well. And what constitutes that bottommost rung? Probably the bias against breakdown-centric bands. You can even see it on No Clean Singing—we’re covering a lot more black metal than deathcore these days. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: TARDIVE DYSKINESIA, PENTAGRAM (CHILE), ASG, AND ENTRAILS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 262013
 

Here’s another installment of things I saw and heard over the last 24 hours while merrily rambling along the by-ways of the interhole. The theme of this installment is METAL ART RULES!

TARDIVE DYSKINESIA

This Greek band’s debut release The Sea of See Through Skins was one of my favorite albums of 2009. One version of the album apparently included a bonus track named “Crawling Through the Mud”, though I don’t think it was on the copy of the CD I bought; at least I don’t see it on my iPod, which is where I transferred the music from the disc before eventually storing the CD away with a gazillion others that my spouse made me remove from our cluttered house.

And that’s all I can say about the wonderful artwork above that mysteriously appeared on Tardive Dyskinesia’s Facebook page yesterday. I don’t know who created it, and I don’t know what music it will eventually accompany. Maybe the band is about to release that bonus track as a single?

Anyway, the band’s 2012 album Static Apathy In Fast Forward ain’t too shabby either. Here’s TD’s cool official video, released earlier this month, for “Time Turns Planets” from that album. Prepare for a spine-jolting, head-scrambling experience. Continue reading »

TODAY IN THRASH: EVILE AND ESSENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 262013
 

While wandering the interhole last night and this morning I came across many items of interest — too many to pack into a single round-up post. So I’ll subdivide my findings and start here, with two discoveries that should interest thrash heads far and wide.

EVILE

You’re looking at the first item above. It’s the recently revealed cover art for Skull, the forthcoming fourth album by the UK’s Evile, which is due for release on May 27 by Earache Records and Century Media. The artist is none other than NCS favorite Eliran Kantor. Like all of his art, this piece snags the attention and pulls it into the details of the work — which are mysterious. Evile explain that the artwork embodies a concept that’s connected to the music . . . but what that is we’ll have to learn later as more details trickle out.

As for the music, Evile drummer Ben Carter is quoted as saying, “Our fans can expect this album to be a return to our thrashier roots, as well as exploring new ground in typical EVILE form.”

And now it’s time for some actual music instead of musical forecasts. Continue reading »

THE “YEAR ZERO” VIDEO: AN INSIDE LOOK AT GHOST B.C.’S PRE-PERFORMANCE RITUAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 252013
 

The Nameless Ghouls in Sweden’s Ghost B.C. have jealously guarded their true identities, which makes it so surprising that without much fanfare they’ve now revealed them for all the world to see.

Earlier this month the band released a track named “Year Zero” from their forthcoming second album Infestissumam (Latin for “hostile”), which is due for release on April 9. Today they premiered an official video for the same song. Apart from cryptic images of children, the main action consists of a group of women of different ages assembling for a visit by their lord and master and a light repast of raw steak, grapes, and goblets of wine.

All of this proves to be simply spiritual and material nourishment in preparation for donning the costumery of Ghost B.C. and finishing off the track in the garb to which we Ghost fans have become accustomed.

So there you have it. Secrets revealed. And that’s not all that’s revealed: we get to see the band members buck nekkid when they change clothes. Which means this video is NSFW. Continue reading »

UNEARTHED: SHEVILS, ÖGENIX, THE SOLEMN CURSE, AND TAKEN BY THE TIDE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 252013
 

Yesterday I devoted space to four under-the-radar bands with divergent styles of metal that I thought deserved more attention from fans of extreme music. Shining the spotlight on deserving but relatively unheralded bands has consistently been one of this site’s objectives, but my recent day-job death march put me way behind in doing it. So I’m doing it again today, with four more bands unearthed from the underground who have recently released new music. Once again, their musical styles are all over the map.

SHEVILS

Shevils are based in Oslo, Norway. They released their debut EP last year under the title Necropolis, and earlier this month they premiered a new song named “We Walk On Shattered Glass”, which will appear on an upcoming album that’s projected for release in the fall of 2013. I took a chance on the song, not knowing anything about the band, and it kicked my ass right up between my shoulder blades. This has made it difficult to sit down, but I’m not complaining.

The new song delivers hardcore vehemence with musical flair, combining skull-pounding grooves, vein-bursting vocals, and a catchy melody that will get stuck in your head. Continue reading »

TROLLFEST COVER BRITNEY SPEARS (and TOM WAITS) AND SUIDAKRA REVEAL NEW COVER ART

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 252013
 

This morning brought new goodies from two of our favorite folk metal bands, who enjoy capital letters so much that they refuse to stop at just one: Norway’s TrollfesT and Germany’s SuidAkrA.

SUIDAKRA

SuidAkrA will be releasing a new album via AFM Records on May 24. Its name is Eternal Defiance and it will include 10 tracks plus a bonus song (“Mrs McGrath”). This morning the band unveiled the album’s cover art by Kris Verwimp. It’s an eye-catcher, and one that makes me curious about the significance of the four faces superimposed on the red dragon. Time will tell . . . I’m hoping for good things from this album.

TROLLFEST

The world’s premier exponents of True Norwegian Balkan Metal also have something new on the way — a 12” picture vinyl entitled A Decade Of Drekkadence, which the band is releasing in celebration of their 10th Anniversary. The picture disc, created by Swedish cartoonist Jonas Darnell and designer Terje Johnsen, is also an eye-catcher, but in a different way — nutty instead of dramatic — but what did you expect from these guys? Here it is: Continue reading »

OBSCURITY: GEVURAH, SYN:DROM, THRAWSUNBLAT, AND ODRADEK ROOM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 242013
 

We’re sitting on a cornucopia of promos for forthcoming releases by relatively high-profile bands such as Amorphis, Arsis, Children of Bodom, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Finntroll, Heaven Shall Burn, and Hypocrisy. We will be reviewing some of those, and more that I haven’t named. But this morning I felt like exploring new music from more obscure bands whose music I’d never heard. As usual, there’s no rhyme or reason to what I picked.

GEVURAH

The obscurity of this two-man Montreal band is likely to be short-lived since they’ve now been signed by Profound Lore. PL plans to release Gevurah’s five-track debut EP Necheshirion (Hebrew for “snake-like”) on May 28. I haven’t yet seen much publicity about this news, but I did find a stream of one song from the EP, “Flesh Bounds Desecrated”.

That song is an unmitigated aural assault of blackened death metal (or deathened black metal). With almost overpowering force, the band deliver a fast-moving wave-front of blasting drums and harrowing guitar and bass licks, with raw mid-range vocals that scrape like sharpened nails on skin. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BELPHEGOR, BLOOD RED THRONE, AND BLACK FUCKING CANCER

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 232013
 

I’m making a slow start on the blog today. I was putting the finishing touches on a pocket-sized fusion reactor that runs on spit, produces beer as a by-product, and will supply the power (and beer) needs of an entire neighborhood for a century. I’ve been working on the idea for a few days and figured I’d just go ahead and get er done.

Also, I stayed up late last night partying with my co-workers after completing that month-long day-job project I’ve been whining about, and I got obliterated.

Anyways, here are a few things I saw and heard this morning after finishing the reactor and waiting for those skull trolls in my head to stop hammering on shit with lead mallets. I hate skull trolls.

BELPHEGOR

According to a press release I got, Austria’s Belphegor have finished tracking drums, bass, and guitar for their new album, working with producer Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal). That’s the good news. The bad news is that the release of the new album has been pushed back to early 2014. Frontman Helmuth Lehner,  who nearly died last year as a result of complications from a typhus infection he contracted on tour in Brazil, is scheduled to record vocals in June and July, with mixing and mastering to be done in September. Continue reading »

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