HAPPENINGS BEQUEATHED UPON MY (SENSORY) SYSTEM BY THE (PHYSICAL) WORLD AND (THE PASSAGE OF) TIME, or BRAIN FUCKERINGS! I HAZ THEMS!!!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 102012
 

Lately I’ve been writing posts in which I collect new music, album art, and metal news items that I’ve seen recently which I think are worth sharing. I keep saying it’s not going to become a regular kind of series, but I might as well stop fooling myself. I still need to find a title for them. Today I’m trying out a couple of ideas I got from Kazz (with my addition of some Demilich-style parentheses) and Phro. I’ve got some more reader suggestions I might try out the next time I do this.

SCARAB

I saw that Egyptian death-metal band Scarab have revealed the artwork, tracklist, and title for their next album — Serpents of the Nile. The artwork (above) is by an Egyptian artist who calls himself Bombest, (Mohamed El Sherbieny). and I think he did an awesome job with this, don’t you? Actually, the album cover is only a part of a larger piece, which you can see after the jump.

I discovered Scarab back in July 2010 when I put together a series on metal from North Africa, and wrote this post about them, focusing on their superb last album, Blinding the Masses. It reminded me of bands like Behemoth, Immolation, and Italy’s Hour of Penance, but with a marked use of oriental melodies in the riffs.

Along with details about the new album, Scarab also premiered the title track two days ago. “Serpents of the Nile” still calls to mind those bands I mentioned above, and it’s an excellent song. It proves all over again that this is a band who deserve to become more widely known internationally. Continue reading »

PURIFIED IN BLOOD: “MOT GRAV”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 082012
 

Norway’s Purified In Blood have a new album via Indie Recordings called Flight Of A Dying Sun due for release on June 11 in Norway, June 15 in the rest of Europe, and some other day in North America. The album’s eye-catching cover art (above) was created by Jondix Mahashakti. Here are a few more intriguing details about the album:

It features guest appearances by Glenn Reaper (the band’s second singer who otherwise wasn’t involved in the recording of this album) on a power anthem called “Iron Hands” and Erlend Hjelvik (Kvelertak) on a song called “Mot Grav”. It also includes performances by a guest saxophonist, a guest organist, a guest on double bass, and a guest Siberian throat singer.

Today the band released an official video for that “Mot Grav” song, and Erlend Hjelvik is in it, along with worms, skulls, chains, falling water, and some sketchy looking activities. Along with all that, the video further includes chunky, viral riffs — the kind that will get your headbang on. There’s one thing missing from the video — clean singing. There’s just the kind of vocals that you could use in lieu of a sandblaster if you had a big paint-stripping job ahead of you.

Neck-snapping follows the jump, along with artwork for the “Mot Grav” single.
Continue reading »

EVOKEN: “AN EXTRINSIC DIVIDE”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 082012
 

On July 31, Profound Lore will issue the label’s 100th release, and it will be Atra Mors [“Black Death”], by Evoken. This is the band’s first album in five years, and only their fifth in a career that has spanned 20 years.

I gather from reading about the band that many regard them as forefathers of the funeral doom movement in the U.S. And you can correctly infer from that last sentence that I’m a newcomer to Evoken. As far as I can remember, the sum total of the music I’ve heard consists of a brand new song that Profound Lore began streaming yesterday: “An Extrinsic Divide”.

The song makes quite an impression, which is sort of like saying that World War II was a bit of a scrape. At more than 10 minutes in length, it exhales a suffocating fog of dank miasma, creating an all-encompassing atmosphere of catastrophe. The uber-distorted music is very heavy and generally ponderous — the sound of dinosaurs walking the earth and making the ground tremble with their might.

But that’s not the sum total of the song by a long shot. It also includes some beautiful, albeit haunting, melodies (ably assisted by reverberating guitars and keyboard overlays), as well as accelerated passages of gut-churning death metal. Continue reading »

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN ICELAND (AND A FREE DEATHWISH SAMPLER)

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 072012
 

To be clear, I’m not actually adventuring in the actual country of Iceland, though I wish I were, because it seems like a fascinating place, and even if the landscape turned out to be less dramatic than it looks in photos, I feel pretty sure I could get my head whomped pretty hard by some live metal.

No, the adventuring in this post is following up on some new music from a couple of bands we featured on our impromptu Iceland Metal Month series last month. One of the bands is Ophidian I, who we wrote about here. The other is Beneath, featured in this post. They’ve both started streaming additional tracks from their forthcoming albums, and the new songs are slaughtering me, in a good way — the kind of slaughtering where body parts come off and you eat them with the music ringing in your earholes and you realize that you don’t taste half bad despite what you might have thought.

Also, since I’m back on the subject of Iceland, I thought I might as well throw in some music from another band we haven’t covered yet. It’s not an Icelandic band. They’re actually from New York, but they recorded a new two-song 7″ at “Sundlaugin”, a studio in Mosfellsbær, Iceland, owned by the band Sigur Ros. (The session was engineered by Birgir Jón “Biggi” Birgisson.) The band is called Self Defense Family, and the music is a big, sweeping left turn away from our well-traveled path around here — but it has managed to sink its hooks in me. Maybe it will hook you, too. Continue reading »

MISERATION: “ON WINGS OF BRIMSTONE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 072012
 

We’ve already posted twice about the forthcoming album by Sweden’s Miseration, so this makes three. Late yesterday, the band released a second track from the album for YouTube streaming. This one’s called “On Wings of Brimstone”

The album is Tragedy Has Spoken and it will be released by Lifeforce Records on July 2 in Europe and a day later in North America. As previously noted, the artwork is by the ubiquitous and dependably awesome Pär Olofsson. I thoroughly enjoyed this band’s ass-blasting last album, The Mirroring Shadow (2009), and had high hopes for the new one. I’ve only found time for one spin through it so far, and it’s certainly not a clone of The Mirroring Shadow, but it’s quite cool.

Among other things, it incorporates the use of 8-string guitars and folk instruments such as the Indian Esraj harp, the Persian hammered dulcimer called a Santur, sawblade, organ, mandolin, and piano, as well as Mongolian throatsinging. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you much of that just from listening. Although I’m familiar with a vast array of instruments, most of them are the kind you buy online and have them shipped to a one-use only P.O. box, though possibly a Santur was included as a bonus in my last shipment. I know there was something in there that involved strings and a hammer.

Anyway, there’s a lot going on in “On Wings of Brimstone”. There is definitely some up-tempo ass-blasting brutality, a la The Mirroring Shadow, but the song also includes dark stomping chords with an old-school Swedeath tone, a white-hot guitar solo, and a dramatic melody. And Christian Älvestam provides an impressive array of vocals style, from flesh-flaying howls to abyss-deep growls to soaring cleans. There might be an Esraj in the mix, too, though since I’ve never heard an Esraj it’s difficult to be sure. Very nice song — listen after the jump. Continue reading »

I’M NOT GOING TO CALL THIS “THINGS I SAW AND HEARD YESTERDAY” BECAUSE I’VE OVERUSED THAT LINE SO I’LL COME UP WITH SOMETHING ELSE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Jun 072012
 

Really, I swear, this isn’t going to become a regular feature, despite the fact that this is the fourth time I’ve done one of these posts in the last week. And the proof is that I’m not using the same name for this post as I did for the last ones. I’m calling it something different. You can see that.

Anyway, here are some things I saw and heard yesterday and last night, and at the end of the post I’ll have an update on our experiment in paying to promote our Facebook posts. Here’s a disgusting hint: It works.

I saw an announcement by Century Media that Swedish death metal icons Grave (in their leather finery up above) will release their 10th studio album, Endless Procession Of Souls, on August 27th in Europe and on August 28th in North America.  I’m already beginning to get the stench of rotting corpsemeat up inside my nose. I’ll probably stop bathing soon, just to get myself fully attuned to the reek by August. We previously reported that Grave will be touring NorthAm with Dark Funeral (and some band named Morbid Angel) this September and October.

And speaking of grisly old-school Swedish death metal, I received through the ether an electronic copy of a new EP from Mexico’s Zombiefication called Reaper’s Consecration. I’ve only listened to two of the five tracks so far, but it is a fucking brain assassin, and the EP includes this sweet cover art designd by the band’s vocalist Mr. Hitch: Continue reading »

YOU WILL HATE ME FOR THIS

 IQ Subtraction, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  37 Responses »
Jun 052012
 


 

Here is what will happen:

You will watch this video. You will be tempted to stop it almost immediately, but you’ll be in “what the fuck am I seeing?” mode just long enough for the song to change gears and then you’ll get sucked in, but then you’ll still want to vomit and have to swallow a little spew because everything about it is offensive, from the band’s name to the lyrics to the music, but you’ll keep watching, and then you’ll play it again and then you’ll go watch the video of the song that’s got the lyrics on the screen, and then you’ll walk around the rest of the day humming to yourself, “Is anyone up?” or maybe “your pussy, your boobies, on the world wide web”, and you’ll hate yourself for doing that and then you’ll hate me for making you hate yourself, and you’ll wonder what you did to deserve having this video inflicted on you, and then you’ll remember that thing you paid to watch on your computer the other night when you thought no one would know and then you’ll realize that I know everything you do and you’ll be afraid I’ll use what I know to extort sexual favors and you’ll hate me more and you’ll want to leave some really insulting comments which I will enjoy reading, and it will dawn on you that you’ve fallen into a sadomasochistic relationship with NCS from which you can’t escape, and then you’ll hate me some more.

Okay, okay, I suppose there’s an infinitesimally small chance my prediction is wrong. It could be that you’ll just shut this thing off within 10 seconds and go straight to the hating me part. Either way, you’ll hate me. But I’ll make it up to you — you’ll see. This is how I’ll make it up to you: Continue reading »

THE GHOST INSIDE: “ENGINE 45”

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 052012
 

I don’t listen to much hardcore or metalcore these days, which I suppose is obvious because we write about it so infrequently at NCS. But I used to be pretty heavy into that music years ago, and I still follow a handful of bands, The Ghost Inside from L.A. being one of them.

The band have a new album called Get What You Give that’s due for release by Epitaph Records on June 19. This morning, Absolute Punk premiered The Ghost Inside’s official video for a single from the album (which is available on iTunes and Amazon) called “Engine 45”. I fell into the song pretty fast, with a smile on my face, because these guys punch pretty fuckin’ hard . . . and then I got a surprise that I didn’t immediately love: clean vocals.

They definitely weren’t necessary, and The Ghost Inside haven’t needed them in the past. As the first part of the song demonstrates, the emotionally affecting chorus melody could have been carried solely by the lead guitar, without Jonathan Vigil departing from his hardcore vocal style. But I do understand why this was done. The song makes a transition (quite seamlessly) from the physical attack with which it opens to a sweeping melodic finish, with the clean vocals being added to the guitars to underscore the change (a change that’s further underscored in the imagery that’s interleaved with shots of the band performing).

Given the usual profile of this site, I don’t expect many of you are going to fall for this song in the same way I did, but we’ll see. Check out the video after the jump and let me know what you think. I’ve also added a stream of another song from the new album called “Slipping Away”, which came out last week. Continue reading »

BYZANTINE UPDATE: THE “PATHOGEN” PLAYTHROUGH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 052012
 

I’m writing this post in the Seattle ferry terminal at 11:45 p.m. on a Monday night, waiting for the 12:15 a.m. sailing that will take me home. But being still awake in a place I’d rather not be, instead of fast asleep in my own bed, turns out to have its compensations. I turned on my laptop, because that seemed like a better idea than staring at the other bleary-eyed derelicts waiting for the same ferry boat, and what did I spy but a just-released play-through video of a new Byzantine song by Chris (“O.J.”) Ojeda.

We’ve been spreading the gospel of the reborn Byzantine since we first found out about their reunion in January. More than four years have passed since their last album, Oblivion Beckons, and it seemed for a long time than Oblivion Beckons was the band’s swan song. But they are back, with the original line-up in place, anchored by Chris Ojeda and Byzantine’s other masterful guitarist Tony Rohrbaugh.

Byzantine was way ahead of their time, and the passage of time has only proved just how far ahead of things they were, because their albums still sound fresh and immediate. I can still vividly remember my wide-eyed reaction at hearing their full-length debut, The Fundamental Component, and then watching with fascination as they progressed through …And They Shall Take Up Serpents and Oblivion Beckons. They’ve already staked their place in the evolution of metal, but they clearly haven’t lost the drive, the song-writing creativity, and the technical skill that produced those albums.

Last night, Chris Ojeda finished tracking the rhythm guitars for the band’s new album, at past 2 a.m., West Virginia time. And to celebrate the occasion, he ripped a play-through of a song called “Pathogen”, which he said nearly didn’t make the cut for the new album. And sitting in the un-cozy confines of the Seattle ferry terminal, I heard it soon after it went up on YouTube, and now you can, too. Continue reading »

THINGS I HEARD AND SAW THIS MORNING

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 042012
 

I don’t really intend to make a habit of these posts, even though this is the third one like this I’ve done in a week. Or maybe it’s already a habit, like smoking hair through a gasoline bong. I don’t know.

Anyway, I heard a new song from King of Asgard today. The last time I wrote about this Swedish band was all the way back in September 2010, via a MISCELLANY post in which I sampled their last album, Fi’mbulvintr. They now have a new album set for release by Metal Blade on various dates from July 27 to July 31, depending on where you live. The album title is …To North, and above is the extremely cool oil-on-panel cover art by Mattias Frisk.

The new song, which began streaming today, is “The Nine Worlds Burn”, and it’s also extremely cool. Basically, King of Asgard are doing it again — combining deeply charred Viking metal with enchanting, clean female vocals. It’s like Naglfar, but with a surprising and effective folk accent. Check it out:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/47946772″ iframe=”true” /]

Continue reading »

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