SOILWORK DEBUT A BLISTERING NEW SONG: “SPECTRUM OF ETERNITY”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Dec 172012
 

Sweden’s Soilwork will be releasing their ninth studio album, a double CD entitled The Living Infinite, on February 27 in Asia (via license to Marquee Records), in Europe on March 1, and in North America on March 5 through Nuclear Blast Records. Tonight, the band debuted the first new song from the album, “Spectrum of Eternity”.

Every time I’ve reported news about The Living Infinite, I’ve tempered my interest with some kind of comment to the effect that although hope springs eternal, my expectations aren’t high. I do love this band, and I’ve loved at least one song on every album they’ve released, but the percentage of songs I’ve loved has declined over time.

But holy shit, “Spectrum of Eternity” has caused my expectations to soar. After a brief head-fake of an intro, it turns out to be absolutely blistering — a real high-energy powerhouse of a song. Speed Strid’s harsh vocals have never sounded more vicious and his clean vocals have never been more powerful; he hits some high notes I had no idea he was capable of reaching. Continue reading »

SUNDAY SEEN AND HEARD: GHOST, HOWLING, AND ARKONA

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 162012
 

From me to you, new things discovered today . . .

GHOST

I became an acolyte of Ghost after witnessing their live ritual twice in the last year. The music was already growing on me before those shows, but they sealed the deal.

Now we have a new Ghost song and a new live video performance of the song to go with it. Ghost began rolling out the song on-line, one recording track after another, and now the entire song is available for listening — and it’s also a free download.

“Secular Haze” has the rhythm of a waltz and fancifully begins and ends with the sound of a calliope. Like so many of the band’s songs, it’s poppy and catchy, and yet moments of ominous tension find their way into the melody. The song didn’t grab me as fast as some of the tracks on Opus Eponymous, but by the third listen I was hooked.

To hear the song and get it for free, go to this location and enter your e-mail address. You’ll then receive a download link by e-mail. To watch the new video, continue on past the jump. Continue reading »

WHAT LIES AHEAD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 162012
 

I thought I’d give you a preview of what’s coming at NCS in the weeks ahead.

LISTMANIA

This week we’re expecting two more year-end lists from what I’ve been calling “big platform” web sites — NPR and Pitchfork. And unless we see something else that’s unexpectedly interesting, those two will finish off our series on 2012 lists from other publications and web sites with big-scale audiences.

Beginning tomorrow, we’ll also start rolling out year-end lists from the NCS staff as well as guest writers. We’ve got 9 guest posts in hand and ready to go right now, and we’re expecting at least one or two more to come in. These lists reflect considerable diversity of tastes and should provide some new discoveries for everyone.

We also want to remind everyone about the Readers’ List resource. This is a post where we encouraged all of our readers to leave the names of their own favorite 2012 albums in the Comment section for others to see. There are a lot of great lists in the Comments to that post already, but we can use more. Go HERE to leave the names of your favorites and to see what other people are talking about. Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE . . . B-SIDES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Dec 142012
 

(In this post, NCS writer Andy Synn provides another installment in his “Five of My Favourite” series, with five killer b-side tracks from Himsa, Satyricon, Setherial, Skeletonwitch, and Marduk.) 

Ah, the humble b-side. The bonus track. The Japanese exclusive. How they toy with our emotions and loyalties. How many copies of an album are you willing to buy to get just the right track-list? How completest/obsessive are you? Is that itunes bonus track worth the extra dough? Have the band offered up these extra tracks for free download (some do, you just have to look for them)? Is there ANOTHER Roadrunner digipak re-release on the horizon, scraping the archives for all that they’re worth???

Anyway, recently I’ve started a slow but steady purge of my itunes library, removing the b-sides, bonus tracks and covers which I don’t consider worth the bit-space. This comes after several years of obsessive-compulsive trawling of the internet for downloadable versions of these extra special bonus tracks, or (even worse) buying up another, “better” copy of a cd I already own, just to have the completist’s wet-dream of an exhaustive track-list.

After several intense bouts of therapy I’ve made the first step in getting rid of these superfluous extra tracks that do nothing but clutter up my library and, at their worst, detract from or disrupt the intended track-listing of some of my favourite albums.

But it has also given me a chance to appreciate those b-sides which deserve their time in the spotlight – the very best of which I can’t help but wonder WHY they didn’t make the final cut, in many cases as they’re better than some of the actual album A-sides! So here we are, five of my favourite non-album b-sides. I’ve purposefully excluded covers and re-recordings, and just focussed on five original tracks that honestly deserved to be on an album! Continue reading »

SUFFOCATION: “AS GRACE DESCENDS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Dec 142012
 

As previously reported, the almighty Suffocation have a new album on the way in February via Nuclear Blast. It’s name is Pinnacle of Bedlam. Today, NB began streaming a track named “As Grace Descends”.

I am so damned happy to hear this track. It fulfills fervent hopes. It’s music that both strips flesh from bone and invigorates the mind with a flurry of technical wizardry, interesting drumwork, and a beautiful solo.

Also, Frank Mullen.  Listen:
 

ROUND-UP: TOURISM NEWS PLUS EVOKEN AND ENSHADOWED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 142012
 

Here are a few items I saw and heard over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth sharing.

TOURISM NEWS

Featured above are flyers for two North American tours. In Flames headlines the one on the left (the “Another Year Another Tour”), with support from Demon Hunter, All Shall Perish, and Battlecross. A partial schedule surfaced previously, but yesterday I saw what appears to be the complete calendar for the tour. It begins on February 2 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and ends on March 7 in Norfolk, Virginia.

The closest it comes to the Pacific Northwest is Vancouver, so I doubt I’ll catch this one. Otherwise, I would go. I’ve seen the top three bands multiple times before, but would enjoy seeing them again, and I’d like to see Battlecross for the first time.

The tour on the right hasn’t been officially announced. I caught wind of it when I was updating the NCS “NW Metal Calendar” page and saw that this line-up is scheduled to perform in Seattle on March 12. And then I poked around and saw that other sites have reported other leaked dates, including the one in Atlanta that’s featured in the flyer above.

This line-up is bizarre. The only thing the bands have in common is they all use guitars, bass, drums, and a human voice. The leaked dates for this one plus the In Flames tour schedule are after the jump. Continue reading »

DIVERSITY: BRAND NEW SONGS FROM PORTAL, STARKILL, AND BLOODY HAMMERS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Dec 132012
 

I’m feeling like a man of leisure today. Which is to say I got hammered last night at a 12-12-12 bash to celebrate my wife’s birthday and am taking the day off from work in order to have my blood processed through a machine that will remove all the toxins in the hope of being able to function at a level better than slime mold by tomorrow.

And, while waiting for my corpuscles to finish cycling through the tubes, I sifted through NCS e-mails and the tangled pathways of the interhole to find what new metal this day hath brought. And holy shit, it hath brought a bonanza. In this post I’m including three new songs that are stylistically quite different from each other, but I thought they were all really good. So here we go:

PORTAL

I’ve experienced mixed feelings of dread, horror, and glee at the thought of a new album from Australia’s Portal. As previously reported here, it’s called Vexovoid, and Profound Lore is threatening to release it on February 19. Today brought the first song premiere from the album. I wouldn’t have guessed that Pitchfork would be the vehicle for the unveiling. Yes, Pitchfork has a big audience, but if I were PL I’d be worried about the liability risk of so many non-metalheads experiencing irreversible psychic trauma.

The new song is named “Curtain”. It’s the third of the album’s seven tracks. It’s a sonic plague of threshing guitars, booming/blasting drums, bass-level hammer blows, and grotesquely distorted abyssal vox. It’s a moving stormfront of boiling black bestiality, heavy as hell and mercilessly destructive. I fuckin’ love it. Go HERE to listen, and then come back and let us know your reactions. Continue reading »

12-12-12 (WITH INFANT ANNIHILATOR, ULCER, AND ROTTEN SOUND)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 122012
 

Today is a milestone day. It’s really just an unusual alignment of numbers in the Western world’s completely arbitrary way of measuring the passage of time on a calendar, but it’s cool nonetheless: The last 100% repetitive date that most humans now alive will ever see. It’s a long wait until January 1, 2101.

So, how shall we commemorate this arbitrary milestone? In the same way we commemorate the advent of every blessed new day: with some fucken metal. Here are a few things that caught my eyes and ears since last night (and we’ll also have an eviscerating video premiere by Krisiun coming up soon).

INFANT ANNIHILATOR

We have flogged the name Infant Annihilator mercilessly since discovering their artistic, bunghole-plugging video for “Decapitation Fornication”. And now the day has arrived when the band’s debut album The Palpable Leprosy of Pollution has been vomited forth in a steady stream of incendiary munitions and vocal filth guaranteed to fracture spines and necrotize flesh.

After the jump, press play — and then duck and cover. You can buy the album on Bandcamp via this link. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DEAFHEAVEN, NECROCURSE, CREST OF DARKNESS, AND DEATH I AM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 112012
 

Here’s a round-up of things that caught my eyes and ears today. Eventually, they will let go and I will be able to see and hear again. The first thing is a news item about a band I like a lot. The other three items involve deviant musical filth of the supremely headbangable variety, which of course I also like a lot.

DEAFHEAVEN

I admit it: I’m intensely devoted to the music of San Francisco’s Deafheaven. The last time I wrote about them was in this review of their superb recent split with Bosse-de-Nage.  Today I received a press release stating that they have reserved studio time in January for the recording of their second full-length album, which will be entitled Sunbather and is projected for a Spring 2013 release by Deathwish Inc. They’re sticking with the same engineer (Jack Shirley) who worked with them on the debut album, Roads To Judah.

I was intrigued, though made nervous, by the included quote from Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke: “While the new material is more developed, we’ve strayed from what was previously a more melancholic approach. The black metal aspect to our music is prevalent in the new material, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the focus this time around.”  Lead guitarist Kerry McCoy continued, “There are a lot of harsh, dark vibes on Sunbather, but don’t be surprised at how lush and rock-driven, even pop-driven certain aspects will be.”

It’s pointless to begin forming impressions about music you haven’t heard, but I repeat: The term “pop-driven” makes me nervous. To calm my nerves, I decided to get filthy. Continue reading »

FIST BUMPS FOR RIVERS OF NIHIL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 102012
 

We were first introduced to Pennsylvania’s Rivers of Nihil by NCS guest writer The Baby Killer (who still needs to stick his head back in our lair). The focus of his post back in January was not only the band’s ripping recorded music but also their ability to play a fire-breathing brand of technical death metal with immaculate skill on stage, stirring the shit out of the pit while delivering spot-on execution of their complex music. More recently, we featured the band’s official music video for an ass-blasting song called “(sin)chronos”, which appeared on their 2011 EP, Temporality Unbound.

Today, we learned the happy news that Rivers of Nihil are now signed to Metal Blade Records and will be recording their full-length debut for the label with Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal) at Mana Recording Studios next March. And today we also got a demo version of a new song that will appear on the album — “Rain Eater”.

I had the volume on my computer turned up a tad too loud when I started streaming “Rain Eater”, and I think it blew some of my brains out my nose. I lost a little blood out of my eyes, too. It’s a roaring blaze of tech-savvy death metal with a flurry of progressive guitar and bass flourishes (and yes, I’m still a sucker for the prominence the bass enjoys in this band). Very nice.

Check out the new song after the jump, after you check your volume controls. Continue reading »

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