FULL ALBUM STREAM: MESHUGGAH’S “KOLOSS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 242012
 

Meshuggah and Nuclear Blast did a cool thing. They created this massive widget that allows you to stream the entire album and allows people like us to embed it in our web sites. If you hover your mouse over the center of the image, you will see a semi-circle of circles. If you then hover your mouse over each circle, you’ll see a song title and then you can play it. Magic!

You can also read BadWolf’s early review of KOLOSS, which Meshuggah themselves featured on their Facebook page, by going here. KOLOSS was released by Nuclear Blast in Europe yesterday and will be released in North America on Monday.

NEW VIDEOS FROM INSOMNIUM AND PARADISE LOST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 222012
 

I’m just taking a short break from slaving away at my fucking day job . . . just long enough to tell you that TERRORIZER just premiered brand new videos from Insomnium and Paradise Lost in advance of their UK tour next month, the poster for which you can see above.

The Insomnium video is for “Regain the Fire” from One For Sorrow. The Paradise Lost video is for “Honesty In Death” from their new album Tragic Idol.

To see these videos, go past the jump. I haven’t even seen them yet, so please let me know what you think so that I will know what to think when I watch them during my next momentary break from my fucking day job.

Thank you for your service. Continue reading »

THE SWEATPANTS MOSH UPDATE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Mar 222012
 

(We’re pleased to welcome guest columnist JJ “Shiv” Polachek, the vocalist for both 7 Horns 7 Eyes, whose debut full-length Throes of Absolution will be released on April 24 by Century Media, and Ovid’s Withering, whose debut EP we recently reviewed here. In this first of what we hope will be many posts, Shiv gives us some slamz.)

So I’ve been given an opportunity to stand on a soapbox and deliver a brain dump to you faithful readers of NCS, and I’m gonna utilize it to aware you all of something that the major metal news and media sites always seem to overlook: SICKASS NEW SLAMZ.

I’m not talking about artsy-fartsy stuff like Deeds of Flesh, Disgorge, Blasphemer, or the new Condemned (even though I love all those bands). I’m talking about good old-fashioned, blue-collar, working-class SLAM. Bands that make a conscious decision to not get too out-of-the-box because that would take away from the crushing sickness throughout, and they don’t have time to worry about luxuries and privileges like “counterpoint” and “polyrhythms”. As a direct result of this, they always kick infinite ass 100% of the time. I could wax pretentious like any typical Internet Metal Nerd, but these jams speak for themselves. I’ll still write about them though, I guess, whatever:

PIGHEAD

 

Continue reading »

UFOMAMMUT: “EMPIREUM”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 212012
 

February 22, 2012: a day that will forever after be remembered as U-Day.

Okay, well at least I’ll remember it because I was so damned clever in coming up with that post title for a Feb 22 feature about new sounds from bands whose names begin with U.

Okay, I probably won’t remember it either.  In fact, the only reason I remembered it at all is because one of those bands was Italy’s Ufomammut, and today brought us a new Ufomammut track in the form of an official video. The music is called “Empirean”, and it’s the first movement on an album titled Oro: Opus Primum — “primum” because it’s the first of two albums that together will form the Oro saga in 10 movements. Neurot Recordings will release the first one on April 17 and the second in September.

Ufomammut plans to release videos for each track from both albums over the coming months and then collect them in a DVD that will be sold with a limited edition vinyl on the band’s own Supernatural Cat Records.

Now, with those details behind us, let’s move on to “Empirean”. The video, which is embedded here after the jump, originally debuted today on a fascinatingly eclectic metal blog called The Obelisk that I used to read before I sacrificed most of my reading to NCS (and congrats to The Obelisk on landing the debut). “Empirean” is about 14 minutes long, and it’s a disturbing, hypnotic journey. Continue reading »

TUESDAY VIDEOGRAPHY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 212012
 

This morning I woke up, dressed hurriedly, slugged caffeine, drove a friend to the airport, and drove back — by which time it was 4 a.m. I feel like a reanimated corpse, but only partially reanimated. The only upside to this agony is that it gave me time to snoop around in search of new music, which I found in the form of videos from De Lirium’s Order (Finland), Job For A Cowboy (U.S.), and Horseback (U.S.).

DE LIRIUM’S ORDER

I came across this band because their drummer, Ukri Suvilehto, is also the live session drummer for Before the Dawn, which is one of our favorite bands. Also, they are from Finland, and you know what that means.

WIthin the last couple of days, De Lirium’s Order debuted a video for a song called “Autistic Savant”. It’s the opening track from their latest album (their third), Veniversum, which is being officially released today. According to the band, “the video was shot in freezing conditions, minus 30 degrees Celcius, in an abandoned factory located in Joensuu, Finland.” This may explain why they’re playing so fast.

Whatever the reason, the song is very cool and so is the video. The music is a proggy, techy take on melodic death metal, with lots of spidery picking and hammering percussion, a resonant melody, and in the mid-section, a soft piano bridge leading to attention-grabbing solo’s by both of the band’s guitarists and a bass solo! I think this is a band we need to know better. Continue reading »

THE WRETCHED END: “DEATH BY NATURE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 202012
 

It seems to be the day for new videos — Wretched new videos. First we had the new video from North Carolina’s Wretched. Now we move across the Atlantic for a new video by a Norway-based band called The Wretched End.

This band started in 2008 as a collaboration between Emperor guitarist Samoth and Mindgrinder bassist Cosmo — both of whom played together in Zyklon — joined by Swedish drummer Nils Fjellström of Dark Funeral. Their debut album Ominous made NCS writer Andy Synn’s list of 2010’s greatest albums, and it was one of my personal favorites, too.

Naturally, we’re really looking forward to the April 23 release of the band’s second effort, Inroads, which will be distributed by Nocturnal Art Productions and Candlelight Records. Today we got our first taste of the music with the debut of an official video for the album’s third track, “Death By Nature”.

Ominous was a hell-ripping dose of blackened death-thrash, and “Death By Nature” punctures the same vein, but if anything it’s even darker. The pneumatic riffs in this song will kick your body into movement while the ominous melody thunders like a breaking storm. And when the gang vocals hit the chorus, you WILL want to sing along with an evil snarl. The video is worth seeing, too. Continue reading »

GOD FORBID THAT WE BE WRETCHED AND RUINED

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 202012
 

Three videos from yesterday, packaged together for your viewing pleasure.

The first is the official video from God Forbid and Victory Records for the song “Where We Come From” off the band’s sixth album, Equilibrium, which is going to drop on March 26. This is the second track released from the album so far, the first being “Don’t Tell Me What To Dream”, which we featured in an earlier post (here). Both songs are strong. Although I thought the first one incorporated some “modernizing” elements, this new one sounds more like what I expected from these metalcore heavyweights. It’s immediately infectious and of course it brings the groove. It’s a fun video, too, transitioning from day-job clips to a live performance at a joint called Dingbatz on February 24.

God Forbid’s North Carolina label mates Wretched also premiered a new video yesterday. Victory seems to be staging the ramp-up to both bands’ albums in tandem (Wretched’s Son of Perdition is due for release on March 27). We included the first track from Wretched’s album in that same previous post that featured “Where We Come From”, because they premiered on the same day, too. The new song is called “Dilated Disappointment”, and it’s a heavy metal blizzard. In fact, it appears to have ionized the atmosphere where the video was shot, leading to an electric storm that matches the conflagration of the music.

The third video is one I discovered thanks to an e-mail tip from Ben C. (Church of the Riff). It’s a visually arresting CGI animated short called Ruin. It depicts airborne mechanized hunters chasing a human (who doesn’t seem to be entirely human) through a post-apocalyptic city. Fortunately, the prey has a Yamaha MT-01 in damned good running order, so he has a fighting chance. I’m not a gamer, so the level of visual detail and realism achieved in the video may be old hat, but it sure wowed me. It was created by Wes Ball and Oddball Animation.

All three videos come right after the jump. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM ARSIS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 192012
 

You know a band is close-knit when they share the experience of man-sized bowel movements. But can they rock as well as they can roll?

It’s been a little more than two years since Arsis released Starve For the Devil. Since then, the band have undergone some changes. Bass player Noah Martin re-joined the band, and less than two weeks ago, it was revealed that guitarist Nick Cordle had departed to replace Christopher Amott in Arch Enemy.  James Malone was forced to sit out the band’s “Frets of Fury” tour last fall “due to professional and personal commitments” — but Malone is back in harness, and Arsis are working on a new album for release either late this year or early 2013.

As proof that Arsis are still rocking on despite the line-up upheavals, today Guitar World premiered a pre-production demo of a new song called “Choking On Sand”.

I don’t think fans of Starve For the Devil will be disappointed.  Continuing the trend on the last album, this song is more melodic death metal than tech-death. Malone’s blackened rasp will be familiar, as will the Gothenburg-style riffs, and the song includes a shrieking melodic solo as well as healthy doses of double-bass pummeling. Check it out following the jump. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM OAK PANTHEON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 192012
 

When we last checked in with Minneapolis-based Oak Pantheon, they had created a “teaser reel” of rough instrumental mixes for three songs from their next album and had invited fans to vote on which song the band should preview in full before the album drops. This morning they released the chosen track.

It’s an unmastered version of a song called “Aspen” that the band have made available on both their YouTube channel and on Bandcamp. On Bandcamp, the song can be downloaded with a “name your price” option, and all donations will help finance mastering of the entire album.

I got an advance copy of “Aspen” on Saturday, thanks to producer Sean Golyer, and I’ve lost count of how many times I spun it around my head over the weekend. Oak Pantheon’s 2011 album The Void was a stellar debut. Based on “Aspen”, I’d say this is one band who won’t fall prey to the dreaded sophomore slump. Continue reading »

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