INTERLUDE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 122012
 

This is a day for album reviews at NCS. We started with Andy’s SYNN REPORT on V.A.S.T., and a couple more are on the way. But I thought I’d mix things up a bit by posting two videos before the next review appears. These are not new, but they made this grey Seattle day brighter for me, and I thought they might brighten your day, too, unless you’ve already been staring at the sun, in which case I guess you probably can’t read this. You could get a friend to play the videos and just listen while you get used to your new burned-out retinas.

ASG

Until yesterday I had never heard of this band. I found them through a Facebook link from XII Boar. The link took me to a video for a song called “Horeswhipper”. With a name like that, I had this powerful psychic intuition that I would like it, because in general I like metal that makes me feel like I’m being horsewhipped. And no, I’m not into BDSM, or maybe I am and just don’t realize it.

Anyway, I think maybe one reason I liked it so much is because I had been listening to Borracho, and I think their music re-aligned my neurons into a configuration that increased receptivity to this song. Or it could have been because the song is such a titanic riff-fest, with such attention-riveting dynamics and acidified by punk-like vocal snarls and balls-out attitude. Headbanger heaven. Continue reading »

AN UPDATE: KARTIKEYA AND ARSAFES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 122012
 

I’m thinking about having the words “Kartikeya Pimp” tattooed on my forehead. I’d have to convince my wife that Kartikeya is the name of a Russian metal band instead of a middle school cheerleader with a budding crack habit, but other than that it should be clear sailing, don’t you think?

I’m just trying to be honest, because we do write about this band a lot at NCS, and for good reason. They put the BAD in badass and the ASS in ass-kicking. Their latest release is the Durga Puja EP, which emerged last fall. It included two rewritten songs from the band’s debut album, two outstanding covers, and one new original song — the EP’s title track.

Yesterday, TheMadIsraeli tipped me to the fact that the band’s main man Arsafes had uploaded a video of himself performing a guitar playthrough of “Durga Puja”. It’s a reminder of how great that song is, and it’s just fun to watch Arsafes extract such beastly rhythms in the flesh.

The video is after the jump. It will tide us over until June 22, when Kartikeya has promised delivery of their next single (“Vayu”), which we presume (though we’re not sure) will appear on their next album, Samudra, and which will include guest appearances by NCS favorite Keith Merrow and Serbian vocalist Aleksandra Radosavljevic.

While I’m on the subject of Kartikeya, I want to mention that the band has now made all of their releases available for streaming and download on Bandcamp, which you can find via this link.

And while I’m on the subject of Arsafes, I also want to provide an update about one of his other bands — Above the Earth, which last week released their first single, “Trapeze”. Continue reading »

BALANCE: BORRACHO, PALLBEARER, AND YES SIR! MISTER MACHINE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 112012
 

I spent so much goddamned time this past weekend researching and writing today’s ridiculously long post about Facebook that I fell even further behind in doing what I like to do best: finding new metal to feature on this site. So, unfortunately, I don’t have much ready for the site today in the way of music. But I’m not totally empty-handed. I have the following collection of musical goodies, which should provide some balance to the site today.

BORRACHO

Borracho are a band based in Washington, DC, who recently made us aware of a new music video they’ve created for a song called “Concentric Circles”, which is the first single from their June 2011 debut album, Splitting Sky. The video was self-produced by the band, directed by their friend Dicky Southcott, and edited by Kevin Bradley. It’s a combination of the band performing the song live, interspersed with film clips of “destruction, atrocity and mayhem” — the band’s words, but quite accurate.

And on top of that, the band have suggested a drinking game of “Boom!” to be played while watching the vid: Every time you see an explosion, chug a beer. Having seen the video, I’d suggest you get a shitload of beer and be prepared to drink fast.

But frankly, you can have a shitload of fun with this video even without a shitload of beer, because the song is irresistible. It’s a high-energy, heavy-assed, rifftastic blast of stoner/doom that will brighten your day and give you a natural buzz. But wait . . . there’s more! Continue reading »

APOSTATE: “THE TOWN”

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jun 102012
 

I came across this song and video after I had finished the post that preceded this one today, or I would have included it there. On the other hand, that post was pretty long anyway, and besides, this song deserves a spotlight of its own.

The band is Apostate. They’re from Prague in the Czech Republic. Almost exactly a year ago, I reviewed their debut EP, Seaborne. They’re now putting the finishing touches on a follow-up, five-song EP called Λ ♦ Λ ♦ Ø.

Near the end of last week, they put up a video in collaboration with Vice magazine for the first track on the new EP, “The Town”. I’ve been listening to it over and over again since yesterday afternoon. It’s a beautiful piece of music — beautifully imagined and beautifully rendered. It’s almost entirely instrumental, in a style I suppose could be branded post-rock, until the explosion near the end (and I love that they ended it the way they did). 

There were hints of this kind of song in Seaborne, but in most ways it seems quite different to me, and makes me even more curious to see what else Apostate have gotten themselves into on Λ ♦ Λ ♦ Ø. They’re showing that, musically, they’re mature way beyond their years.

The video shows the band playing the song in what looks like a rehearsal studio, with no distractions from the music other than the sights of some serious dudes playing some serious music, which works just fine. Check it it out following the jump and let me know what you think.

UPDATE! Apostate has just made “the Town” available for free download on bandcamp (though I’d encourage you to chip in some bucks to help the band finish recording their latest release). HERE is the link for that. Continue reading »

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 »

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