A SMALL ROUND-UP OF SMASHING NEW MUSIC FROM NADER SADEK, ROTTING CHRIST, AND KRYPTS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 302013
 

Here are a few new songs and videos I heard and saw yesterday and this morning that I thought were worth spreading around

NADER SADEK

Nader Sadek is an Egyptian set designer, visual effects director, and composer. His well-received 2011 debut album In the Flesh featured a host of name-brand guest musicians performing Sadek’s compositions. It made several of our “best of 2011” year-end lists, including one from guest contributor Tamás Kátai, the man behind the brilliant band Thy Catafalque, who wrote about it as follows: “This is exactly like Morbid Angel and Chimera-era Mayhem mixed together. Odd, exciting, dark death metal exploiting the contributing musicians’ ability, charisma, and character to the maximum.”

On February 27, Sadek plans to self-release a live CD/DVD called In the Flesh. It’s a video of the first performance of In the Flesh on November 20, 2011, and includes the album’s original line-up — drummer Flo Mournier (Cryptopsy), guitarist Rune Eriksen (Aura Noir, ex-Mayhem), bassist Novy Nowak (ex-Behemoth, ex-Vader), and vocalist Steve Tucker (ex-Morbid Angel) — plus guest guitarist Sean Frey and operatic backing vocalist Carmen Simoes (Ava Inferi).

Today, GunShyAssassin premiered a song from the live CD, “Petropilia”. It’s completely obliterating and remorseless, a cacophony of blackened death rising up from oil-soaked vaults deep beneath the earth and catching fire in a great conflagration. All the performances sound fantastic, but I have to give an extra round of applause to Flo Mournier’s off-the-charts drumming. And I can’t wait to see the video of this show. Continue reading »

MULLET CLOWN BASS GUN CONTROL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jan 282013
 

You know, it’s about fuckin’ time that someone captured in music the inner pain, sorrow, degradation, and wistfulness that clowns experience every goddamn day. God bless those Cephalic Carnage brethren Nick Schendzielos and Brian Hopp for doing that in this new video.

I mean, let’s be brutally honest: no one likes clowns except other clowns. Little kids may pretend to like them, but deep down inside they’re either scared shitless or experiencing an inarticulate sense that something is not right. And the rest of us KNOW that something is not right.

This widespread prejudice has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of clowns. It is the hidden shame of our great Nation. And the number would be orders of magnitude higher except for the fact that juggalos travel in packs. But (except in the case of juggalos), this mixture of fear and loathing that everyone feels about clowns is heartless and insensitive.

If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? If you poison them, do they not die? Beneath the face paint and the big red noses, are they not human, just as you and I? Actually, I don’t know, because I wouldn’t get close enough to touch one of them if my fuckin’ life depended on it. Continue reading »

MONDAY MURDER: NEW SONGS FROM GUTTURAL SECRETE, BLACK CRUCIFIXION, AND MALEVOLENCE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 282013
 

Monday’s are tough enough under the best of circumstances, but your humble editor had something of a lost weekend, with epic revels on Saturday night and a Sunday lost in painful fog, paying the price for all that fun. The brutal reality of normal life and work now intrudes, whether I want it to or not.

But now is not the time to mope and moan over that which can’t be changed. It’s time to get back on the fuckin’ horse and charge out of the gates. And to get the old game face on for what lies ahead this week, here’s some murderous new music that I discovered yesterday — from Guttural Secrete (U.S.), Black Crucifixion (Finland), and Malevolence (Portugal).

GUTTURAL SECRETE

Guttural Secrete are from Nevada. They play brutal death metal. Actually, let’s call it brutal tech-death. They have a new album entitled Nourishing the Spoil due for release next month on the Brutal Bands label (pre-order here). Last October I included a song from that album by the name of “Stainless Conception” in this post, and over the weekend the band debuted another one, “Deadened Prior To Coitus”. What a nice name for a song!

It begins with eerie, reverberating chords and then all hell breaks loose with grinding, pulverizing riffs and a merciless drum attack. There’s a load of fast fretwork and rapid tempo changes throughout, as well as a reappearance by that ghostly melody from the intro. The vocals, of course, are guttural secretions. Continue reading »

SATURDAY

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  12 Responses »
Jan 262013
 

I’m going to a massive bash tonight in celebration (a day late) of the 254th birthday of Robert Burns.  Whisky will be drunk, songs will be sung, whisky will be drunk, poems will be recited, whisky will be drunk, haggis will be eaten, whisky will be drunk. Also, whisky will be drunk, and we will all be drunk.

Therefore, I will be writing something for tomorrow today, because I have a feeling tomorrow will be lost to incapacitation. I will also be preparing myself today for some sort of performance tonight, and also updating my last will and testament, just in case. Between the writing for tomorrow and the preparation for tonight, I will be scarce around the site on this Saturday. But before disappearing, I thought I’d share a few recent discoveries and a few old favorites that are on my mind today, all of which are metal, even if they’re not all music.

PRAISE

Today the following comment appeared on a post about the band General Surgery that I wrote a year ago: “Thank you a lot for giving everyone an extraordinarily brilliant chance to read critical reviews from this site. It is often very kind and full of a lot of fun for me and my office friends to search your web site at the very least three times in 7 days to read the new guidance you have. And of course, I’m just usually satisfied concerning the stunning techniques you give. Selected two ideas in this article are indeed the most efficient I have had.” Continue reading »

NEW SONGS FROM HYPOCRISY, OCTOBER TIDE, AND VREID

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 252013
 

Thanks to tips from DGR, I learned about two attention-grabbing developments this morning — new details about the forthcoming albums by Sweden’s Hypocrisy and October Tide plus new songs from each of them. And then on my very own I found a new single from the next album by Norway’s Vreid. It is a good day to be alive.

HYPOCRISY

Here’s how I progressed toward the new Hypocrisy song: First, I saw the cover art for the new album, End of Disclosure, which was created by Wes Benscoter (Slayer, Kreator, Nile, Vader, and more). I found it pleasing. Kind of a Zen demon. Also, many skulls. Second, I read, and was intrigued by, this quote by Hyporcisy’s main man Peter Tägtgren in the Nuclear Blast write-up on the album:

“This time I wanted to go back to basic, felt like we lost it for the last couple of albums , it’s straight to the point, it’s more Hypocrisy than ever, the fast, the heavy, the epic.. Enjoy!”

And then I listened to an edited version of the album’s title track, “End of Disclosure” — which you are about to hear, too, and which is available for free download. Continue reading »

OBSERVATIONS: PAGANFEST 2013 DATES, DETAILS ABOUT THE NEW AMORPHIS ALBUM, AND A FRESH NEW BLOODSHEDD SONG

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jan 242013
 

I thought I’d provide a quick update of things I noticed while web-surfing and reading e-mails this afternoon. As always, I’m sharing mainly what interests me, while hoping it interests you as well.

PAGANFEST IV

We first reported about this tour on December 2 when its existence became public but before any schedule had been announced. Today, all the dates and places were finally announced. And as a reminder about why this matters, the tour features Finland’s Ensiferum as the headliner, as well as Tyr (Faroe Islands), Heidevolk (The Netherlands), Trollfest (Norway), and Helsott (Los Angeles). Plenty of ass should be kicked by these pagan brethren.

The schedule consists of 21 shows, launching in Denver on March 30 and concluding in New York City on April 21, and it includes Canadian dates, too. Here’s the complete schedule: Continue reading »

WITNESSED: FINNTROLL, NECROWRETCH, AND SEVEN SISTERS OF SLEEP

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 232013
 

Between last night and this morning, I finally found a little time to resume my usual spelunking through the interhole in search of metal nuggets of interest worth sharing. And here are a few of the items I found.

FINNTROLL

I found that Finland’s Finntroll have been rolling out versions of the cover art for their forthcoming, as-yet-untitled 2013 album. The artist is Samuli “Skrymer” Ponsimaa (whose FB page is here). They began with a pencil sketch of the cover and today they added the fully inked version that you see above. Presumably, we will eventually get the color version (the images are appearing on Finntroll’s FB page). Fuckin’ cool, no? To see a larger version of the art, click the image above.

NECROWRETCH

I first discovered (and wrote about) this French duo  a year ago when I saw they had been based solely on two demos (in 2009 and 2010) and a four-song EP in 2011 — Putrefactive Infestation, which I reviewed in that first post. Later, I also reviewed a two-song 7″ named Now You’re In Hell. I’ve been looking forward to their debut album, Putrid Death Sorcery, scheduled for release in North America on February 5 (order here). I previously featured the eye-catching album art by Montenegran artist Milovan Novakovic (which you can see again next). Continue reading »

GET YOUR SATANIC RITUALS RIGHT HERE: NEW OFFICIAL VIDEOS FROM WEAPON AND LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 222013
 

Today has brought us new official videos from two infernally good bands: Canada’s Weapon and L.A.’s Lightning Swords of Death.

Weapon’s video is for the title track to their excellent 2012 album Embers and Revelations, a seething but quite memorable fusion of black metal and death metal. The LSOD video is also for a title track, in this case the band’s third album Baphometic Chaosium, which was released today by Metal Blade. To learn more about that album, check out Andy Synn’s detailed review, which we posted earlier today at this location.

Given the subject matter and the genres in which the two bands toil, it’s not terribly surprising that both videos are built around Satanic rituals. Both also briefly include nudity, so be forewarned if you plan to watch these in a public setting. Also, goats, skulls, and the quaffing of unseemly fluids. Continue reading »

KVELERTAK: “BRUANE BRENN”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 222013
 

Norway’s Kvelertak have a new album (Meir) coming in 2013 via Sony Music. Last fall they performed one of the new songs, “Bruane Brenn”, for the first time at a live show in Oslo. This past weekend it appeared on Spotify and as of yesterday it’s also now available as a download via iTunes in Scandinavia, accompanied by Seldon Hunt artwork, though it won’t become available on other iTunes sites worldwide until January 28.

You may once again scratch your heads over the logic of record labels in making staggered releases of music in the modern digital age. Something appears in Country X, and in no time at all it appears on YouTube everywhere else. And then we often see the game of YouTube Whack-A-Mole in which the labels demand that YouTube take down the leaks, only to see them surface again.

And so, “Bruane Brenn” is now on YouTube, and after the jump we’ll have that song clip for however long the particular link we found may exist, along with video of that live performance in Oslo (which is pretty fuckin’ cool in its own right).

Oh my, is this a catchy motherfucker of a flailing, upbeat punk rock romp, with juicy guitar chords, a hook-y chorus, a blend of scarred and clean vox, and a sweet, slowed-down guitar solo. This is more a road-burning, sing-along rocker than anything infected by the black metal virus that seeped into songs from the band’s debut album. Very nice way to start this Tuesday. Continue reading »

CALL OF THE VOID AND A RELAPSE SAMPLER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 202013
 

I previously mentioned that because I’ve been squeezed in a work-related vice all week, I’ve fallen way behind in reading NCS e-mails. I’m still way behind, but I did stop to explore one from a few days ago because of the strikingly ghastly artwork you see above, which is by Anthony Lucero.

It’s the cover for Dragged Down A Dead End Path, the debut album from a Colorado band named Call of the Void that’s scheduled for release by Relapse Records on March 19 in North America and earlier in Europe. Having been struck by the artwork I wanted to hear music, and a song from the album happens to be included in a free Relapse sampler on Bandcamp.

The sampler seems to have been released in October, but I missed it. Maybe you did, too, so more about that after the jump. But first, here’s why I’m spending NCS space on Call of the Void.

The one song that’s streaming from the new album so far is “Failure”. As soon as it starts, the music feels as if the band have dropped a crushing weight right on top of your head — slow, massive, sludgy chords mix with the shriek of feedback and a battery of battering from the kit. That turns out to be just a prelude to a faster frontal assault. Continue reading »

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