BLOOD MOON MUSIC: OCCULTATION, GUTTURAL SECRETE, CHROME DIVISION, AND WINTERFYLLETH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 292012
 

Early this morning, October 29, 2012, the moon was full. In certain older civilizations in the Northern Hemisphere, this full moon in what we know as October was a celebrated event. In olde England, it marked the beginning of winter and was known in the Anglo-Saxon tongue as “winterfylleth” — winter full moon (and yes, now you know where that wonderful English black metal band got their name).

Native American tribes in what is now the northern and eastern United States called it the Full Hunter’s Moon. It was a time when the leaves were falling from the trees and the deer were fattened for the winter — a good, well-lit time to hunt and store up meat for the bleak months ahead.

It has also been known as the Blood Moon, which of course makes it metal. This year it may really be a blood moon in the eastern U.S. With the moon in its full phase, high tides on Earth will rise about 20 percent higher than normal, and NASA experts say this will significantly amplify the storm surge that Hurricane Sandy will bring to the eastern part of the country, exacerbating what are already expected to be life-threatening floods that this super-storm will inflict on our shores.

To our brothers and sisters in metal who live in the vast swath of territory likely to be impacted by Sandy, and who probably can’t read this because their power is already out, be careful and stay safe. Looks like today will be ugly.

So, not so much in celebration of the Blood Moon as in commemoration of it and in respect for the power of nature, I’ve rounded up new music and a video, from these bands: Occultation, Guttural Secrete, and Chrome Division. Of course, there’s some Winterfylleth at the end, too. Continue reading »

VASSAFOR, PAROXSIHZEM, KHORS, GEHENNA

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Oct 282012
 

Here’s a smattering of powerful music and eye-catching album art I heard and saw yesterday that helped make a wet, gray, cold Seattle day more tolerable — despite the fact that all of the music displays the results of blackening.  But I still want my summer back.

VASSAFOR AND PAROXSIHZEM

I was snooping around the Dark Descent web site looking for news about a release I’ve been expecting. While I was there I spied the two album covers you see at the top of the post. I knew little about the bands, but I thought the album covers were very cool. If you click on them, you’ll see larger versions.

The one on the left is for an album entitled Elegy of the Archeonaut, which collects selected tracks by an Auckland, NZ band named Vassafor. The album will be released at the end of this month and includes music from Vassafor’s early releases as well as unreleased versions of songs and covers. Coincidentally, one of those covers is Vassafor’s version of Beherit’s “Beast of Damnation”, which was also covered by Beyond Mortal Dreams in their excellent EP that I reviewed earlier this week. The killer album cover was created by Aaron Aziel, who’s also from Auckland.

I learned that Vassafor released an album earlier this year named Obsidian Codex, and I found two tracks from it on Soundcloud, both of which can be downloaded for free HERE. More about those after the jump.

The art on the right is for a forthcoming, self-titled debut album by a Toronto blackened death metal band named Paroxsihzem. It’s also scheduled for release by Dark Descent at the end of the month. I haven’t yet found who created the artwork. The artwork was created by the band’s vocalist, Krag. Intrigued by the artwork, I found a Paroxsihzem track called “Nausea” for streaming on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

RINGS OF SATURN UPLOAD “DINGIR” FOR STREAMING, THREE MONTHS BEFORE OFFICIAL RELEASE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Oct 272012
 

In June I included the stupendous cover art you’re looking at (sans the band and album names) in a post about new metal artwork.  Then, I didn’t know who the artist was, but now I do:  Mark Cooper (a/k/a Mindrape Art). He created this piece for the cover of a new album by Rings of Saturn named Dingir (din-jeer), and that leads us to a sordid tale of woe, the moral of which is a reminder that the community of metal still includes people with no morals.

In June, when the album art was released, the band’s label (Unique Leader) also provided a teaser clip of samples from the album and a tentative release date: November 20. The recording and production work on the album was apparently finished. What remained was the promotional run-up to the release.

And then Dingir ran into some potholes on the road to its release. First, as disclosed by the band last night, undisclosed “legal issues” arose which led to a delay in the album’s release from November 20 to February 5. I’ve seen no explanation of these issues. Undoubtedly, that extra two months of waiting for release was a source of frustration for the band.

But second, and more important, an unfinished, unmastered, pre-production version of Dingir leaked yesterday, apparently appearing across a variety of metal blog spots and torrent sites, as well as on YouTube. And that drove the band to take unplanned action to limit the damage. Continue reading »

BLOODSHOT DAWN: “THEOKTONY”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 262012
 

 

Two combined bits of coolness: Bloodshot Dawn have released a new single for download named “Theoktony”, and they’re contributing all sales proceeds to a worthwhile charity. Details to follow . . .

I’ve written a lot about this UK band and their self-titled 2012 album, which remains one of my favorite releases of the year. In addition to my January review, in April we featured an official video for a track from the album called “Visions”, and in August we featured another official video for “Godless”, which is still available for free download at the Bloodshot Dawn Bandcamp page, where you can acquire the whole album, too.

But what we have today is a new song that’s not on the album, and a new video to go along with it. Both the song and the video kick massive amounts of ass.

The music is signature Bloodshot Dawn — an explosion of blast-furnace death metal packed with thunderous grooves, spidery prog-style guitar soloing, and howling wolf-pack vocals. With a sharp-edged modern production, it sounds uber-powerful. The lyrics can be found here.

The video is split-screen footage of the band recording the song in the studio, and it’s loads of fun to watch. Here you go: Continue reading »

CLEAN SINGING (THAT RAWKS): NEW VIDEOS FROM MAMMOTH MAMMOTH, BEASTWARS, AND THE SORROW

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 262012
 

I’m drowning in new videos. Beginning late yesterday, this is the third in a row of posts I’ve written for the site that consist of nothing but videos. But as much as I’d like to finish other things I’m working on, I continue to be distracted by the moving pictures and the quality sounds.

This post is full of Exceptions to the Rule around here, because all three of the new vidz collected in this post include (to varying extents) clean vocals. But all three songs have grabbed me, and I hope they’ll grab you, too. The first two are from down-under bands we’ve previously covered at NCS — Mammoth Mammoth (Australia) and Beastwars (New Zealand) — and the third is from a band I don’t think we’ve ever mentioned before, The Sorrow (Austria).

MAMMOTH MAMMOTH

I first came across Mammoth Mammoth back in May when they released their last video, which was for the title track to their third album Hell’s Likely (featured here). Since then, Napalm Records have picked up the album and will be releasing it on November 23 worldwide (order here).

I’m enjoying the album cover. I’m also enjoying the new video for “GO”, which includes a nice tip of the hat at the video’s beginning to Gojira’s “Vacuity” video and also features the same delectable woman who graces the album cover in her birthday suit (though she’s somewhat more clothed in the video). Continue reading »

MORE NEW VIDEOS: PIG DESTROYER’S “THE DIPLOMAT” AND FEAR FACTORY’S “THE INDUSTRIALIST”, PLUS “MR. FROSTY MAN” AND “THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 262012
 

Yesterday we devoted our last post to videos, and now two more new ones have premiered, one from Pig Destroyer and one from Fear Factory. One is “The Diplomat”, one is “The Industrialist”. Plus we have a fantastic Evil-Dead-goes-claymation video (“Mr. Frosty Man”) and a brilliant animation from The Netherlands (“The Origin of Creatures”) that puts a post-apocalyptic spin on the Tower of Babel parable. The music for these two isn’t metal, but the videos sure as fuck are.

PIG DESTROYER

Book Burner, the latest album from the almighty Pig Destroyer, came out in North America via Relapse on Monday of this week. Today saw the premiere of a new music video for one of the longer songs from the album, “The Diplomat”.

When this song had its debut in September, lyricist/vocalist JR Hayes said (here) it was “about the origins of human conflict and how if you look back through history, we’ve never really gotten along.” He explained: “You’re always wrapped up in the time that you’re living in, and right now there’s war and suffering and despair and economies collapsing, but if you look back in history, that’s the way it’s always been.” Can’t really argue with that, can you?

As for the sound of the song, Scott Hull used an opening riff that he had originally written for his other band Agoraphobic Nosebleed five or six years ago, and as he has noted, “The pace of the riff informs the tone and the tempo of the whole song.”

As for the “squawkier” and “angular” riffs toward the end? He was listening to a lot of Gorguts.

The song itself is excellent — and so is the new video. It was directed by Phil Mucci from Doomsday Entertainment, who also directed High On Fire’s killer “Fertile Green” video, as well as many others. It’s an allegorical tale that puts a different spin on the opening of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a gray-suited, arms-dealing motherfucker in place of the monolith. The colors are amazing, by the way. Watch it right after the jump. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: ANTROPOMORPHIA, RED FANG, AND MONSTER ROLL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Oct 252012
 

Would you like some quality video entertainment? You would? Well, then, you’ve come to the right place, because I happen to have three clips right here that I think you’ll enjoy.

ANTROPOMORPHIA

Antropomorphia are a Dutch band whose new Metal Blade release, Evangelivm Nekromantia, really snuck up on me. The clues were there, as was a promo sitting in my in-box, and I just missed all of it until last night, when I watched the band’s recent official video for a track from the album named “Psuchagogia”.

The song burrowed under my skin immediately. It’s an occult-flavored form of death metal, reminiscent at times of Behemoth, with heavy use of tremolo guitar, demonic vocals, and a thundering beat. Halfway through, there’s a slow, very cool instrumental break with the bass taking the lead, and in the video, a ritual then reaches its defining moment in the drinking of blood from a skull, with relish.

Though “psuchagogia” doesn’t appear to be a word found in the dictionary, “psychogogia” is a Greek word meaning the leading of the soul and was used in its original context to describe a ritual of raising souls from the dead. Just so you know.

One word about the album art before we turn to the killer video itself: If those three skeletons in red and the shrouded figure in purple ring any bells, it’s because the band wanted to pay homage to the cover of Death’s Scream Bloody Gore. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HELLISH OUTCAST, BLASPHEMOPHAGHER, RWAKE, MOMENTUM

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 242012
 

Here’s another round-up of things I saw and heard over the last 24 hours that I didn’t have room to include in yesterday afternoon’s post (the one that included new offerings from Aeon, Tardive Dyskinesia, and Zubrowska): New videos from Hellish Outcast (Norway) and Rwake (U.S.), new Paolo Girardi artwork and bittersweet news about Blasphemophagher (Italy), and a new song from Momentum (Iceland).

HELLISH OUTCAST

Please tell me you already know about this band.  If you can’t tell me that, then please read Andy Synn’s review of their 2012 album, Your God Will Bleed. It included such gems as this:

“Not only do Hellish Outcast not do black metal, they also don’t do nice. Or comfortable. Or anything less aggressive than a rabid pit-bull that’s been force-fed a diet of sand and barbed wire. In fact, this album is so damned aggressive, so utterly hate-filled, that it should come with a warning label along the lines of:

Danger – the levels of testosterone and aggression on this album could cause permanent damage to your underlying genetic structure.”

Or maybe you read Andy’s review and skipped the music because you wished to preserve your current genetic structure. If so, then you’ll probably want to skip Hellish Outcast’s brand new official video for “Djinn”. Since I already have a mutated genetic structure, I dived right in.

Fuckin’ love this song, from the skin-flaying death/thrash start straight through to the infernal melodic slow-down at the end. Video accompaniment is live performance footage from the Inferno Fest, edited by the band’s vocalist Thebon (Keep of Kalessin).  Prepare to be mutated. Continue reading »

AEON, TARDIVE DYSKINESIA, AND ZUBROWSKA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Oct 232012
 

I found many new metallic abominations to like over the last 24 hours, too many to shoehorn into a single post. So I’ll make a start with this batch of sharp spiky European offerings from Aeon (Sweden), Tardive Dyskinesia (Greece), and Zubrowska (France). Don’t touch, now, or you may draw back a bleeding stump.

AEON

Still loving the fantastic album art up above, by  Kristian “Necrolord” Wåhlin. It’s for Aeons Black, the fourth album from Sweden’s Aeon, which Metal Blade will release on Nov 19 in Europe and Nov 20 everywhere else. As previously reported, the title track is available for free download here. You can also catch an official lyric video for the same song at the end of KevinP’s recent NCS interview of the band’s founding guitarist Zeb Nilsson at this location.

Today’s news is that another song from Aeons Black premiered today. It’s streaming at Metal Hammer’s web site. The song is the album’s first track, “Still They Pray”. It’s lacerating, the kind of death metal that leaves skin in tatters. Go here to listen, and then come back and thank us for pointing you in that direction. Continue reading »

CHECK OUT MESHUGGAH’S NEW VIDEO: “DEMIURGE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Oct 222012
 

Meshuggah has debuted a new live performance video for their track “Demiurge” from the stunning 2012 album Koloss.

The video was produced by Scion A/V Metal — Scion A/V has definitely been on an awesome metal roll lately. The video combines a host of cool camera angles — including footage from mini-cam’s mounted on the mic and the instruments – and it’s very well edited. The performance was filmed at Meshuggah’s show at Terminal 5 in New York City lasy May. The vid was shot and edited by Anthony Dubois and had its premiere this morning on DrumMagazine.com.

This is definitely worth seeing — and you can do that right after the jump. Continue reading »

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