MORE GEMS: CREST OF DARKNESS AND OCTOPUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

It’s getting late in our usual posting day, but I thought I’d throw a couple more things your way that I discovered today.

CREST OF DARKNESS

Norway’s Crest of Darkness have a new album (their sixth studio release) scheduled to appear on February 25 via My Kingdom Music. Its name is In the Presence of Death, and the cover art is above. This band trace their origins back to the mid-90s, though I haven’t ever explored their albums with any care. After hearing the first song to be released from In the Presence of Death, that’s about to change.

The track is called “From the Dead”, and it grabbed my interest within the first 10 seconds. And by the time it really began to roll 30 seconds later, I was hooked. There’s no doubt that this is black metal with lots of bite, but not the kind that depends heavily on drum blasting and knife-edged whirlwinds of tremolo guitar. Depending on where you are in the song, it includes rock beats, industrial rhythms, progressive guitar parts, a head-spinning solo, and ominous, pounding riffs. I really like this and want more!

Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: NEW THINGS FROM BLUE STAHLI AND CARACH ANGREN

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

Here are a duo of new videos I spied yesterday and this morning that I thought were worth sharing. They stood out because the visuals enhanced the music and were actually very entertaining to watch, which I honestly can’t say about most metal videos.

BLUE STAHLI

I discovered Blue Stahli thanks to an interview with him that DGR did for us last year. I’ve been following his social media and music releases since then, and it’s obvious that he’s a clever, creative, slightly unhinged dude, and I like his style, even though the kind of music he makes isn’t my usual kind of thing.

This morning, Bloody Disgusting premiered a music video for the song “ULTRAnumb”, which comes from Blue Stahli’s 2011 self-titled album, which you can acquire here. The song is a catchy piece of work with an industrial beat and harsh vox that remind me of Devin Townsend’s, plus clean crooning that doesn’t make me run for the exits. And the video . . . the video is a complete head trip, most of it funny as hell, and ultimately full of gore, too. Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM DEBUT THEIR OFFICIAL VIDEO FOR “THE UNKNOWING” . . . AND IT’S ALL BEAUTIFUL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 062013
 

Sadistic bastards that we are, we published three different glowing reviews of Beyond, the forthcoming album by Finland’s Omnium Gatherum, months before the album’s scheduled release dates (Feb 25 in Europe and Mar 5 in the U.S.). We had no music we could share with you then, but Omnium Gatherum eventually started streaming one of the album’s numerous stand-out tracks, “New Dynamic” (which you can hear at this location). And as of this morning Metal Hammer premiered an official video for a second one — “The Unknowing”.

In addition, the same song is now available on iTunes.

The imagery in this new video was an inspired choice as accompaniment for the music. Along with close-up film of the band performing the song, it depicts the majesty, power, and sublime beauty of a sunlit coastal sea from dawn until dusk. And that pretty much captures the spirit of the song — majestic, powerful, beautiful. It’s one of many tracks from the album that I’ve already put on our list of candidates for our list of 2013’s most infectious extreme metal songs.

Check out the video after the jump, and give thanks to Olli-Pekka Lappalainen, who directed and edited the video, and to director of photography, Tapio Aulu. Continue reading »

MESHUGGAH: “PITCH BLACK” IS NOW OUT!

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Feb 042013
 

Last week when I caught wind that Scion AV would be releasing something new from Meshuggah tomorrow, I ventured a guess that it would be a new Meshuggah song, perhaps as part of a two-track EP, maybe with a live track included along with the new song. Well, it turns out I was right.

Yes, Pitch Black is a two-song release with a previously unreleased studio recording from 2003 — “Pitch Black” — and a live track. The second track is a previously unreleased, live version of “Dancers To A Discordant System” from obZen. Both songs are very much worth hearing and having.

What do these songs bring? Here’s a partial list: brute, bruising, chugs with that reliable Meshuggah tone; spacey cosmic ambience; near-spoken-word vocals, some of it positively robotic; a fidgety, squirming guitar solo in the title track; and funky bass lines as the foundation for what sure as fuck sound like sax solos (or a guitar tuned to sound identical to one) on both songs. Continue reading »

OAK PANTHEON: “TOGETHER WE RIDE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 042013
 

Holy hell, get a load of that badass artwork, would you? It’s by Wes Talbott and it accompanies a brand new free single from Minnesota-based Oak Pantheon that just premiered: “Together We Ride”.

Now, if you know the music of Oak Pantheon — and you damned well should — this track will throw you for a loop. It’s a medley of instrumental music that originally appeared in various installments of the Fire Emblem video game series and it was apparently also the series theme in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Not being a gamer, I had to look this up . . . and needless to say, I’d never heard the music before. I just took the Oak Pantheon version as it came.

As the name implies, it’s one hell of a galloping, trampling, epic romp. Yeah, all the cheese will immediately raise your cholesterol level, but I’m going back for seconds and thirds, mainly because I’m hooked on the guitar lead in this baby. And the galloping. I like the galloping, because music like this is as close as I’ll ever get to being on a charging horse with a pennant in one hand, a sword in the other, and the reins between my fuckin’ teeth. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC AND NEWS: CNOC AN TURSA, INTER ARMA, DEATHEMBER, AND HEAVEN SHALL BURN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Feb 032013
 

Yesterday I featured four new releases that appeared on Bandcamp on February 1. In this post I’ve collected more kickass new music that I discovered yesterday, plus a news item that excited me when I saw it.

CNOC AN TURSA

I wrote about this Scottish band last October after seeing the news that they’d been signed by Candlelight Records. In that earlier post I included all of the music from the band that I could then find, including a portion of a track called “The Lion of Scotland”. Sometime between then and now, that fragment disappeared from Soundcloud, but in the last couple of days it has reappeared in all its complete glory — and it is indeed a glorious song — along with the cover art for their Candlelight debut, The Giants of Auld.

I could hardly be more stoked for this debut, and “The Lion of Scotland” is an example of why I’m so eager to hear the album. It’s a genuinely soul-stirring song, with a skirling tremolo melody, an epic keyboard overlay, hard-charging rhythms, and passionate harsh vocals. If this doesn’t get your blood racing and your fist pumping, I’ll be surprised. Listen: Continue reading »

NEW BANDCAMP DEBUTS: THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR, SCORDATURA, FOUL BODY AUTOPSY, AND TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 022013
 

Work and work-related travel cut short my blog time the last couple of days, but I’m now back in the land of the grey and soggy, also known as home. So, last night and this morning I plunged through the sphincter of the interhole in search of metal things I missed, and here’s some of what I found. These are all new albums or songs that have appeared on Bandcamp over the last day or two — and they all fuckin’ blew me away.

THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR

Our blog brother MaxR (Metal Bandcamp) contributed a line-up of doom favorites in our 2011 Listmania series, and it included a song from an album (“Essence of Nine”) by a Colorado band named The Flight of Sleipnir. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’d heard of them, and I’m also pretty sure I failed to check out their music even after Max praised them in these words: “Perfectly executed black metal rasps, beautiful clean singing, folk harmonies and a doomy groove. So atmospheric and, yes, mellow.”

Fast forward to last night when NCS supporter Utmu sent me a message about a new album by this band — Saga — that’s due for release on February 15. The album art (above) is awful damned cool, and so is the song from Saga that began streaming on Bandcamp yesterday. Continue reading »

CHECK OUT SOILWORK’S NEW VIDEO FOR “RISE ABOVE THE SENTIMENT”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 012013
 

“Once upon a time, in a rural town in Sweden, in a cozy little home that still has wooden furniture, a bearded aging man finds something from another time that awakens the beast of his own youth within him: a VHS cassette tape featuring the recording studio antics of his fellow countrymen SOILWORK.

“And hey, with streamed digital files, holographic projections, and possible direct electronic transmissions into the occipital lobe of the human brain… who won’t be aching for the simpler times of old?

“Check out the video for the soul-soaring SOILWORK track, “Rise Above The Sentiment,” on YouTube.”

And that’s part of the text I received not long from Nuclear Blast. And after the jump you can watch “Rise Above the Sentiment”, which comes from the band’s ninth studio album (a double-disc), The Living Infinite , which will be released in Europe on March 1, and in North America on March 5. Continue reading »

SHARE THE WEALTH (OR, HOW I LEARNED THAT NU-METAL IS STILL A THRIVING GENRE)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Feb 012013
 

(I’ve always liked Andy Synn. And the following article he wrote reminds me of one of the reasons why. Read it, and then find out more about how to vote for his band in the Bloodstock contest HERE.)

Ok, so, blatant plug time… you know I’m trying to get my band more exposure by applying for both the Bloodstock and Damnation festivals this year, right? Well the former involves bands submitting a live video, and the latter requires a simple vote on a facebook poll (here). The best thing about the Bloodstock angle so far, though, has been looking through the competition and seeing exactly what’s out there, and also the lengths to which people will go in order to make themselves stand out – or appear to be something that they’re not.

So, one evening recently myself and a few buddies/bros/mates got together to have a few beers and trawl through the different entries to the Bloodstock/Hobgoblin competition and see what we could find.

Some of it wasn’t pretty. There’s an awful, awful lot of generic retro-thrash out there, with songs generally just about ‘being metal’… which would seem pretty obvious, considering the music, right? There’s also a heck of a lot of nu-metal still out there, positively brimming with angst (as well as some rather disjointed, occasionally hilarious, pseudo-intellectual imagery).

There’s also quite a lot of metalcore pretending not to be metalcore (6th generation Killswitch riffs and over-processed clean vocals, by any other name, don’t smell any sweeter, I can tell you that). There’s even quite a few bands claiming to be metalcore when their sound is a tad too… light… even for that now-over-saturated genre.

BUT – it’s not all bad. I’ve gone through and picked out a few real stand-outs for you, that (at the risk of damaging our own chances of getting any further exposure or support) I’ve winnowed down to the few after the jump.

Let’s begin… Continue reading »

FRACTAL GATES ARE ABOUT TO OPEN AGAIN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 312013
 

So, this morning I was poking around a nice new India-based metal blog established by our supporter “Deckard Cain” (Metalspree), and what should I spy but the news that Fractal Gates have a new album coming and a new video streaming. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

I discovered this Parisian band 2 1/2 years ago through an insistent recommendation from one of this site’s original co-founders and was blown away by their 2009 album, Altered State of Consciousness, which I reviewed here. I was taken by everything about it, not only the music but also the artwork for each song and the sci-fi oriented concept behind the album — which is a tale of an apocalyptic future in which human minds escape into the depths of space, eventually to discover that they are not alone . . . and never have been.

The music itself was a kind of dark, brooding melodic death metal that at times reminded me of Insomnium, and I spun that album to death.

Thanks to Metalspree, I now know that the band have finished a new album — Beyond the Self — which will be released by Great Dane Records in February. It was mixed and mastered by the godly Dan Swanö with guest appearances by  Swanö himself (vocals) and by Septic Flesh guitarist Soritis. And based on a few samples, it appears there will once again be separate artwork for each song: Continue reading »

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