HIT AND RUN: A NEW ABSU SINGLE AND NEWS ABOUT THE NEXT OAK PANTHEON ALBUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 132012
 

I’m still in kind of a work-related trash compactor, except it’s my mind and my time that are being compressed. I’ve had just enough time to glance around the interhole to realize that there’s a fuckload of happenings I’d love to share with our readers, but not enough time to package all of them together in a single post. But rather than just give up, I’m going to dash off a post here and then one or two more a bit later — quickly tossing out at least a few of the items that have caught my eye. This post has a black metal theme.

ABSU: “HALL OF THE MASTERS”

As they’ve done in the past, The Cartoon Network is again providing free new music as part of their “Adult Swim Singles Program”. Surprisingly, the single they released today is more extreme than what we would have expected. It’s a new single called “Hall of the Masters” from Texas-based Absu, a kvlt black metal band that’s well loved around NCS. It’s a hell-ripping thrasher of a song, and you can download it for free by visiting this page.

You can also give it a listen right after the jump. Continue reading »

A WHOLE FUCKLOAD OF ALBUM RELEASE AND TOUR NEWS (AND A NEW GRAVE TRACK)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 112012
 

If you made your way through today’s earlier post about the first direct observation of Dark Matter, then you know we now have an official definition of “fuckload”: It’s a number that’s equal to the number of miles in 18 megaparsecs, which is (yes, I finally did the math) 1,126,656,000,000,000,000,000. Conveniently, that’s about 1.1 sextillion of whatever you’re counting, which is why it makes so much sense to just call it a fuckload.

And today there was a fuckload of news about forthcoming albums, with album art and release dates and such, plus a press release about a hellacious new tour. I don’t have time to write about the entire fuckload of news items, so I’m just going to pick the four that got the most “fuck yeah’s!” in a random survey I did of myself.

The bands in question are: Hooded Menace, Eyeconoclast, Cryptopsy, and Obituary.  And then at the end, I’ve got a new song from Grave’s next album, because we always have to have the musics.

HOODED MENACE

We’ll start this fucker off with Finland’s Hooded Menace. Today it was announced that their first album for Relapse Records, Effigies of Evil, will be released on September 11 (it can be pre-ordered in a variety of formats and bundles here). David D’Andrea did the album cover, which is cool. Relapse describes the album as “combining the grooving riffs of Black Sabbath and early Cathedral with the fire of classic Autopsy and Asphyx”. Fuck yeah. Continue reading »

5 OF MY FAVOURITE . . . GUITAR SOLOS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Jul 112012
 

(You can probably tell from the spelling in the post title that our UK-based writer Andy Synn is responsible for this post.  What do you think of Andy’s picks?  What are your favorite solos?  Leave comments!)

Greetings true-believers! Ok, so after the review-fest of “Unofficial UK Week” last week (which I swear, wasn’t intentionally timed to coincide with Independence Day) I’m easing up a bit this week. I should have a review of a truly badass new album by a certain Norwegian band for you in the next few days, and I’m slowly working on another Synn Report and a longer column or two for next week, but for now I thought I’d drop the inaugural column in what I hope to be a semi-regular series highlighting “5 of my Favourite…” things.

Today I’ve chosen to pick out 5 (ok, 6 actually, but I refuse to change the title) of my favourite guitar solos. Not of all time exactly, just five that came to mind when I was doing some random listening recently. Future iterations of the column, if it proves a success, will feature other random “5’s” in whatever order they happen to occur to me.

Enslaved – “Ground”

First off we have the defining solo in “Ground” by Enslaved. It’s a well-known fact that Ice Dale is a true guitar god, managing to rock both a killer solo and a series of iconic rock poses with a shirtless flourish. I’d swear he was the black metal reincarnation of Jimmy Page, if not for the fact that Page isn’t dead yet. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP (Part 2): SYBREED, ANCIENT ASCENDANT, KHONSU, SELFHATE, AND MORE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jul 112012
 

I’m still catching up with developments in metal that I missed while cut off from the web during my recent mini-vacation. And I saw some things yesterday that also perked my interest. In our last post yesterday, I rounded up some of the recent developments I thought were worth sharing. Here are some of the rest. They involve Sybreed (Switzerland), Ancient Ascendant (UK), Khonsu (Norway), Selfhate (France), Beak (U.S.), and Ensiferum (Finland).

SYBREED

The first item is the revealing of the cover art to Sybreed’s next album, God Is An Automaton. It’s by the very busy and very talented Seth Siro Anton, who is also the front man for Septic Flesh, whose headlining North American tour we posted about yesterday. The album will be released by Listenable on Sept 24 in Europe and on October 2 in North America.

Sybreed have been posting excerpts of songs from the new album, and they’re up to five so far. I don’t really find short song excerpts worth mentioning, except I did it yesterday with respect to the forthcoming Napalm/Converge split, so what the hell. The Sybreed excerpts released to date are collected right after the jump, in reverse order of their appearance. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP (Part 1): ENSLAVED, DAN DANKMEYER, NAPALM DEATH, AND CONVERGE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 102012
 

So much happens so fast in the world of metal that even being out of touch for two days means that you miss a lot, and some of what you miss is actually worth knowing about. I was in a remote location over the last two days with no internet connection, and since returning last night I’ve made an admittedly incomplete effort to find out what I missed that was important/entertaining to me. Turns out, there was a lot — so much that I’m dividing what I found into two posts, of which this is the first. The second one will start off our postings tomorrow.

In no particular order, this post includes news, new music, or new videos from Enslaved, Dan Dankmeyer, Napalm Death, and Converge.

ENSLAVED

Enslaved made a few announcements about their twelfth studio album RIITIIR — including the name of the album, the disclosure of the cover art (above) by long-time collaborator Truls Espedal, and the release dates (via Nuclear Blast): September 28 in Europe and October 2 in North America.

“Riitiir” doesn’t appear to be a real word, even in Norwegian or ancient Norse. As the band explained today, it’s a version of the words for “rites” and “rituals” and is intended to mean “The Rites of Man”. How that concept or the artwork connects to the lyrics or the music hasn’t yet been revealed, but the band say they intend to “discuss some key concepts and potential interpretations in deeper song-by-song analysis” in the weeks and months ahead. Enslaved are so talented and so creative that I’m actually interested — though of course I’m most interested in hearing the music. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM DEPHOSPHORUS, GREAT FALLS, AND AEGAEON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 082012
 

If the name Dephosphorus rings a bell, it may be because Phro recently reviewed this Greek band’s April 2012 split with Wake (here). Yesterday, thanks to a tip from NCS kvrmvdgeon KevinP, I found out that the band have finished recording a debut album called Night Sky Transform, the cover to which you can see above.

The album will be released soon on heavy vinyl by the underground German distro 7 Degrees Records. Two songs from the album are now streaming on the Dephosphorus Bandcamp page (here) — “Cold Omen” and “Uncharted”.

But that’s not all.  In June, Dephosphorus participated in a 7″ split with a Seattle band named Great Falls, which is being distributed by a vinyl subscription club called Hell Comes Home. For people like me who are turntable-deprived (yeah, I still haven’t bought one), both bands’ tracks are also streamable and downloadable at the Hell Comes Home Bandcamp page (here).

After the jump, I’ll offer a few words about the music and play the songs for you. Also after the jump: a brand new song from Aegaeon from their forthcoming EP, Being. Continue reading »

SATURDAY SINGLES FROM MORBUS CHRON AND ERIMHA

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 072012
 

In this post are two new tracks I came across at different times this week that I thought were worth sharing, and now is as good a time as any.

MORBUS CHRON

I never got around to reviewing this Swedish band’s 2011 debut album, Sleepers In the Rift, but I sure as hell did enjoy it. It was a real throw-back, as in throwing all the way back to Autopsy’s first couple of albums. It had a genuine air of authenticity, and the songs were really varied and just a whole helluva lot of fun to hear.

In March of this year, Century Media announced they had signed Morbus Chron, with plans to release a second full-length in 2013. To tide fans over until then, Morbus Chron recorded a three-song EP — A Saunter Through the Shroud — that Century Media will be releasing in limited numbers on July 23 as a 10″ vinyl. The cover art is above. For now, it appears the EP can only be obtained by pre-order from the European site for CM Distro here.

Earlier this week, the German Rockhard magazine web site (here) premiered a song from the EP called “Channeling the Numinous”. It begins with an attention-grabbing drum roll and a blast of chainsaw grinding and then it falls off a cliff into a pit of slowly boiling gore, spiced with death-prog guitar leads, ghastly mid-range vocals, and a head-whipping solo. Awesome song. Give it a spin after the jump.

Continue reading »

SATURDAY MORNING IS FRIDAY NIGHT, EXCEPT WITH MORE VOMIT AND LIGHT

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jul 072012
 

I apologize to all of our faithful readers. I usually put our first-of-the-day posts to bed the night before, so that I can sleep like a disgusting sloth with mouth open and drool oozing like alien slime while people in some time zones even earlier than mine read what I wrote the night before.

BUT, tonight there’s a catch to those best-laid plans: I’m too fucked up to write much on this Friday night, but I still intend to sleep like someone in cryosleep a century from now on their way to Alpha Centauri.

Which means I just have a few quick pieces of metal, some news that involves free music, and very few other words. And with luck, my wife won’t wake up in the night and decide the time has finally come to string me up by my ankles and bathe in my gore, and I’ll be able to correspond with you again on the morrow. And if there are no more posts on Saturday besides this one, you’ll know my luck ran out.

AUROCH

Not long ago we featured the dark, eye-catching artwork for the new album by Vancouver’s Auroch. Today (or from the perspective of you as you read this, yesterday), they or their label chose to premier a track on Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, which as far as I can tell didn’t even give them their own unique post, instead including their track in a player that begins with Testament. Who am I to question such decisions? Continue reading »

THINGS I SAW AND HEARD TODAY: RAGNAROK, BOARGAZM, AND SOUTHWICKED

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jul 062012
 

I saw and heard these things today. Don’t worry. I’m omitting the vivid sensory experiences of my bathroom breaks.

RAGNAROK

I saw Ragnarok’s official video for the title track to their 2010 album Collectors of the King. It made an impression mainly because of the music, because I stupidly didn’t hear this album when it was released, or since then. It’s familiar Norwegian black metal, with classic clawing vocals, the muffled blasting of drums and barely audible bass rumbles, and riffs masquerading as dense hornet swarms. This song is a thrashing assault, full of vehemence and vitriol, but it includes cool black ‘n’ roll breaks that will snap your neck and a trilling melody that’s awfully damned catchy.

Shockingly, the well-made video depicts a kind of satanic black mass, with lots of glowing candles, the inverted cross at the altar, and blood glistening wetly on the shadowed face of the “priest”. And what was the girl in the white slip thinking? You just know this isn’t going to end well for her . . . Continue reading »

WINTER IS COMING: A WINTERSUN UPDATE AND A WINTERUS SONG

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jul 052012
 

We previously reported that after 8 long years, Finland’s Wintersun will soon be returning with, not one, but two new albums: Time I and Time II, with each album containing approximately 40 minutes of music — 80 minutes of new Wintersun altogether. Based on an earlier press release, the mixing and mastering of Time I is scheduled for completion this month. Today, we learned that Nuclear Blast has finally set a release date for that album: October 19, 2012.

And that’s not all. Yesterday, Nuclear Blast posted a short video trailer on YouTube showing Jari Mäenpää playing orchestration effects for a part of the song “Sons of Winter and Stars”.

Man, am I looking forward to this album. It will be difficult to resist posting every future teaser and trailer that leads up to the album’s release. Maybe I won’t resist. This first video trailer is after the jump.

Yesterday also brought new music from another wintry band — Winterus, who we first featured way back in October 2010 through a MISCELLANY post. This Michigan-based USBM outfit is at work on a new album to be titled Dark Womb, and yesterday they released the cover art and a first demo track from the album, “Hell Form”. A rumbling current of drums flows beneath, tremolo’d guitars rise and fall above, a clean lead guitar weaves an enchanting melody, acid vocals slice through the middle, and an acoustic interlude provides a change of mood. It’s a promising teaser for the album.

The cover art for Dark Womb and a stream of “Hell Form” are after the jump, too — but first, that Wintersun trailer . . . Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries