NEW MUSIC: MARDUK, MITOCHONDRION, AND DEATH GRIPS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  28 Responses »
Mar 282012
 

Work, work, work.  That’s me right now, though I would rather be blog, blog, blog. So this will be short.

MARDUK

You know Marduk. They’re from Sweden. They play tumultuous black war metal. They have a new album coming on May 28 called Serpent Sermon. The album cover is after the jump. So is the first song from the album, which premiered yesterday on Metal Hammer. It’s called “M.A.M.M.O.N.”

It’s not exactly what I was expecting from Marduk, which is not a bad thing at all. Yes, there are bile-vomiting vocals. Yes, there are weapon-like blast beats and double-bass. Yes, the guitars come in menacing waves. But there are changes of pace in which the guitars also ring out slow, chiming melodies while the bass audibly bounds along beneath them in a jazzy progression. Interesting. Continue reading »

METAL FROM 30,000 FEET

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 272012
 

Through the miracles of modern wi-fi technology, I am writing and posting this piece from a Boeing 737-800 airplane crossing the vast, imbecilic American continent on my way from one coast to the other, because my fucking day job demands it.

My traveling conditions aren’t ideal. The tight-sphinctered woman sitting next to me is grumpy. I am nearly deaf, and even though I have the volume turned down, noisy metal is apparently still leaking from my earbuds and polluting her personal space. Fuck her, I can handle the acidic looks, because I’m doing this for you.

The man across the aisle from me has been using a nasal inhaler, and I don’t think he has a cold. His pupils are now the size of pin pricks. I know this because he is staring at me. Fuck him, too, if he doesn’t try to fuck me first.

Worst of all, I haven’t started drinking yet . . . but I intend to make up for lost time as soon as I click the “Publish” button on my blog software.

Here’s what I found this morning that I thought worth sharing: A band from Australia named Ocean of Zero, a band from Germany named Black Shape of Nexus, and a band from parts unknown named Crator (whose creepy artwork is up above and whose membership is very intriguing). All of these bands are new to me. Continue reading »

GOATWHORE, “WHEN STEEL AND BONE MEET”: THE VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 272012
 

Goatwhore’s 2009 music video for “Apocalyptic Havoc” is one of my all-time favorites. It’s not terribly fancy, though it’s well-made. There’s no story. It’s just the band playing in something that looks like the interior of a church (except for the inverted crosses), with assorted close-ups of spark-shrouded Ben Falgouth looking badass (which is not difficult, since I bet Ben Falgouth looks badass even when he’s asleep) and Sammy Duet looking serious and cool, carving those tasty riffs with the neck of his guitar almost vertical.

I’m sure the song has something to do with how much I like the video. To be honest, Goatwhore could have been filmed playing dominoes and eating shelled pecans in a NOLA icehouse and I still would have loved it, as long as “Apocalyptic Havoc” was blasting out of the speakers.

But now Goatwhore have gone and gummed up the video works. Yesterday, we witnessed the debut of the video for “When Steel and Bone Meet”, which is a track on their most recent album Blood For the Master (reviewed here by Andy Synn). They could have just let the song carry the video again, as they did for “Apocalyptic Havoc”, because the song is great. To borrow Andy’s word, “When Steel… is a bar-room brawl set to music, chains and fists flying in a drunken, grooving orgy of violence that manages to cram in a swaggering groove, pummeling power-riffage, and some switchblade soloing in barely more than 3 minutes.”

But no, they had to throw in brief shots of two unclothed chicks licking blood off each other. I mean, really, who wants to see that? Bor-ing. Continue reading »

VIDEO ROUND-UP: OUROBOROS AND XII BOAR (AND A NEW VORKREIST SONG)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

The first two bands featured in this round-up have been the subject of previous features at this site, so we already know and like their music. But what we have here are new music videos that are worth a gander. And then the third piece of this triad is a new song from a band called Vorkreist (sans video).

OUROBOROS

TheMadIsraeli reviewed this Australian band’s latest release, Glorification Of A Myth, back in June 2011. He described the music as “a mix of Pestilence, Dark Angel, some slight Cannibal Corpse-isms, Vader, and a good dose of neo-classicism in the melodic moments” — a powerhouse collection of “killer riffs” and “face-melting guitar antics”.

The new video is for a song from the album called “Sanctuary”. It confuses me. It’s clearly telling a story, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Are the children at the end younger versions of characters we’re seeing at the beginning? Why the leap off the cliff? And what’s the snake man chopping with that cleaver? If you get it, leave a comment.

The YouTube version of the clip includes the lyrics, which are much better than average for a metal song, but they haven’t helped me figure out the video. I’ll link to them after the video. Continue reading »

BLOODGUARD UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

Earlier this month, Andy Synn passed his 18-month anniversary as a writer for NCS. His first post was a review of Dimmu Borgir’s Abrahadabra album. In all that time, Andy has rarely mentioned that in addition to writing about metal, he is also the vocalist for a UK metal band called Bloodguard. Maybe it’s that famous British reserve, or perhaps it’s because Andy is a gentleman and a scholar in addition to being a writer and a howler. I, however, am not limited by good manners or any sense of humility, and I have some news about Bloodguard that needs to be spread like the plague.

First, the band have now set the official track-listing for their debut album, Patterns In The Infinite, and this is it:

1. Eye Of The Paradox
2. Vanguard
3. Footsteps (Of The Dead)
4. Our Lady Of The Flood
5. Black Math Ritual
6. Panopticon
7. Final Prayer
8. Bridgeburner

After the jump, you’ll find an album preview video that will give you a taste of what the songs sound like in their unmixed form, although the order of the samples in the video doesn’t match the track-listing. But first, there’s even bigger news, because I’ve discovered from Andy the identities of five guests whose talents will be enhancing Bloodguard’s new album — and it’s quite an exciting list: Arthur von Nagle (Cormorant), Michiel Dekker and Ivo Hilgenkamp (The Monolith Deathcult), Seth Hecox (Becoming the Archetype), and Demonstealer (Demonic Resurrection). Continue reading »

ENSHADOWED: “INNER PSY-TRIP”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 252012
 

This three-man black metal band from Greece is blowing my mind and not even leaving the tiniest scraps of tissue behind.

I discovered Enshadowed for the first time in January because I saw that fantastic album cover up there, and I promptly included them in this feature. The artwork — created by the band’s guitarist N.E.C.R.O and an unidentified friend who did the design for the Lucifer figure — is for the band’s third album and their first on the reliable Pulverised label: Magic Chaos Psychedelia.

The title of the album (which was recorded by Fotis Benardo of Septic Flesh) is descriptively accurate, at least based on a song called “Inner Psy-Trip” that was released for streaming yesterday. It swarms like demon hornets, it blasts like anti-aircraft armament, it shrieks like a black cloud of wraiths, it crawls with reptilian menace, it lurches like a damaged golem, it thunders like an orcish army on the march.

The tempo changes constantly, the guitars alternately buzz and chime, the music attacks voraciously but also reverberates with grim, even funereal melodies. It starts with teeth bared and ends with slow piano keys over an electronic drone. Fascinating song. Listen after the jump. Continue reading »

BEFORE THE DAWN: “THRONE OF ICE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 252012
 

At this rate maybe we’ll get the whole album for free!

About two weeks ago, we featured the official music video by Finland’s Before the Dawn for a song called “Phoenix Rising” from their new album, Rise of the Phoenix. We also included this link for a free download of the song, courtesy of Nuclear Blast (and the download offer is still available).

Yesterday, another song called “Throne of Ice” became available for free download via the Finnish language EMI web site. You have to register on this page to get the download, but it doesn’t seem to be limited to residents of Finland, because I got it. The registration page is in Finnish, but with a little help from Google Translate, I can tell you that the boxes you’ll need to fill out ask for the following info in the following order: a first name, a last name, an e-mail address, a gender selection, and a year of birth. After that is a box with stuff you can sign up for like e-mail alerts (you’ll probably want to uncheck what’s in that box). Then click the “Rekisteroldy” button and you’ll immediately get a download link.

Why am I giving you this tedious step-by-step info? Because the song fuckin’ rocks hard, that’s why. Listen to it after the jump if you don’t believe me. What the hell, we’ll include a stream of “Phoenix Rising” after the jump, too, just in case you missed it the first time. Continue reading »

AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED MAKES BANDCAMP’S NOSE BLEED

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 242012
 

In 2005, Relapse Records released a double-CD album by Agoraphobic Nosebleed titled Bestial Machinery. It collected all of the band’s recorded material before their Relapse debut, Honkey Reduction, including tracks from the Agoraphobic Nosebleed splits with Cattlepress, Laceration, and Enemy Soil, plus out of print material and previously unreleased tracks.

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with ANb, it is the mutated offspring of the infernally talented Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer) and a drum machine from Hell. The rest of the line-up (mainly vocalists) has varied over time, and I don’t think the current group was around when the material on Bestial Machinery was recorded. And what’s on Bestial Machinery is a rampaging cybernetic grindfreak on steroids, just as violent and otherworldly as Florian Bertmer’s magnificent album cover.

The main reason I’m posting about an album that’s now about seven years old is that I just discovered that it’s available for download on Bandcamp. I’m not sure how long it’s been there, but I think the addition is pretty recent.

Also, I’m posting about it because the album consists of . . . wait for it . . . 136 tracks!!! Now, a bunch of the songs are less than 10 seconds long, and the vast majority clock in under a minute, but still.

I can’t resist embedding all 136 tracks here at NCS, because that’s what having the album on Bandcamp permits me to do. The player is after the jump. Go listen and get fucked hard in the head. Should you choose to buy the album, you may do so HERE. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: IN MOURNING

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Mar 242012
 

THAT, my friends, is the cover art for the new (third) album by Sweden’s In Mourning, The Weight Of Oceans, which will be released by Spinefarm Records on April 18. The artwork is by none other than Kristian Whålin (Necrolord).

This is old news, since the album art and details about the album were released in late February — except I didn’t pick up on it until TheMadIsraeli started chatting with me about In Mourning earlier today on FB.

Necrolord has created so many stupendous metal album covers in his career, but this is definitely one of my favorites.  This excerpt from his bio at The Font of All Human Knowledge includes some info I didn’t know (and after the jump, I’ve got some music from The Weight of Oceans):

At the age of 17, Wåhlin formed Grotesque (as guitarist) with school friend Tomas Lindberg on vocals, Alf Svensson on guitar, and Tomas Eriksson on drums. The 1990 break-up of Grotesque would lead to the formation of At the Gates, who would be credited as instigators of the “Gothenburg Melodic death metal sound”. Wåhlin would collaborate with Lindberg and other At the Gates members a short time additionally in the death metal band Liers in Wait, and would go on to design the “Russian icon” cover-art of At the Gates’ cornerstone release, Slaughter of the Soul.

Dissection, who shared practice quarters with At the Gates, would display illustrations by Wåhlin on the cover of The Somberlain and also Storm of the Light’s Bane; the latter featuring the infamous scene of the “grim reaper horseman” in the middle of a snow-covered forest tundra. In the Nightside Eclipse, the debut of seminal Norwegian black metal band Emperor, would also be graced with his work on the cover. Wahlin would continue as an album artist for several other bands in the European death, black, doom, power and gothic metal collective throughout the 2000s.

Continue reading »

MOONLOOP

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 242012
 

My fucking day job forced me to be away from my computer most of yesterday. It was like a severing of the umbilical cord between fetal me and the mother web who gives me the sustenance of new metal, except no one slapped me on the ass to get me breathing on my own. This morning I was able to reconnect the umbilical and re-establish blood flow to my brain, although oxygen deprivation may have caused some brain damage. With me, it’s difficult to tell, because I come up with bad metaphors even at the best of times.

Anyway, I started catching up with metal news over the last 24 hours by browsing my Facebook news feed. I stopped when I came to a Listenable Records post about a band called Moonloop. I stopped because they are called Moonloop. How could I not check out music from a band named Moonloop?

It turns out that Moonloop are from Barcelona, Spain, and Listenable signed them last month for release of their second album Deeply From the Earth, which will come out in Europe on May 28 and in the U.S. sometime this summer. I found one of the songs from the album on Soundcloud. It’s called “Strombus”, and I dig it deeply.

Listenable says Moonloop’s music will appeal to fans of Gojira and Opeth. References to Gojira and Opeth in the description of other bands’ music are over-used (I’m certainly guilty of it myself), though in listening to “Strombus”, I can sort of see the connections. The structure of the song, the combining of harsh and clean vocals, and the incorporation of progressive musical elements could call Opeth to mind. And I suppose there’s a certain elephantine stomp in the guitar tuning and chord progression in parts of the song, along with the timbre of vocalist/guitarist Eric Baule’s voice and the environmentally themed lyrical focus, that could explain the Gojira reference. But as I heard other songs from the album, I also thought of Cynic and Obscura.

Regardless of which references might best capture the feel of the music, “Strombus” and the other two songs I found are definitely worth hearing. Continue reading »

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