WRAITHCULT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 132012
 

Thulcandra is a German band whose 2010 album Fallen Angels Dominion (reviewed here) was an utterly faithful and beautifully rendered homage to Dissection. The band’s 2011 follow-up, Under A Frozen Sun, was also very good and proved that Thulcandra’s talents exceed even what was achieved on the debut, though it was one of many deserving releases I didn’t find time to write about last year.

Thanks to Thulcandra, I recently discovered a new band called Wraithcult. Its members include two Thulcandra participants, the “evil twins”, Sebastian and Tobias Ludwig (guitarist/vocalist and bassist, respectively). Both Sebastian and Tobias were also active for five years in yet a third band, the now-defunct Helfahrt, and two other former Helfahrt members have joined them to complete the line-up in Wraithcult: guitarist Markus Klüpfel and drummer Andreas Mecker.

Wraithcult have recorded a debut album called Gestalt (with Dark Fortress guitarist V. Santura at the helm). When I wrote the original version of this post, two of the album’s songs were available for streaming, and those were the two that convinced me this band is worth following. In doing a quick check for possible updates to this post, I discovered that the entire album is now available for streaming.

I tried listening to the album stream while working my fucking day job (which has become a fucking day-and-night job), because at the moment that’s the only way I have any chance of listening to music, but it didn’t work out very well. Continue reading »

TERRORIZER UNLEASHES THE ZOMBIE HORDES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 122012
 

To be brutally honest, I’m not my usual cheery self today. My fucking day job continues to interfere severely with the vastly more important job of entertaining the vast numbers of people (vast, I tell you) who count on NCS each day to give them a reason for living. But my spirits improved dramatically (albeit briefly) when I saw the new video from Terrorizer for the title track of their new album, Hordes of Zombies.

The band’s 1989 debut, World Downfall, is credited by lots of folks as being a landmark in the development of grindcore, but the band folded not long after, with its members going on to join little known acts such as Morbid Angel, Napalm Death, and Nausea.

There was a brief reunion of sorts, with Jesse Pintado and Pete Sandoval from the original band recruiting vocalist Anthony Rezhawk (Resistant Culture) and Tony Norman (Morbid Angel) to add guitars and bass, producing the 2006 album Darker Days Ahead. In the week following its release, Pintado died of complications from liver failure.

Now, Terrorizer has risen again, with David Vincent (Morbid Angel) on bass and guitarist Katina Culture (Resistant Cuture) filling out the line-up. So far, I’ve only heard the title track, courtesy of this new video, but I . . . fucking  . . . love it! Continue reading »

ANOTHER NEW GOROD SONG: “CARVED IN THE WIND”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  20 Responses »
Mar 122012
 

No, that’s not the cover to Gorod’s new album. It’s part of the artwork for a forthcoming 7″ by New Zealand’s Heresiarch. We’ve posted the Gorod cover many times already, and I thought the Heresiarch art was so sick that it should be shared.

Okay, that didn’t make a lot of sense, did it? Gorod and Heresiarch have nothing in common except they’re both metal. But my brain is kinda scrambled at the moment because I just listened to a new Gorod song. It’s called “Carved In the Wind” and it features a jazzy guitar solo by Christian Muenzner (Obscura). I presume the song will eventually begin streaming on YouTube or some other more frequently visited location, but for now it’s in a tiny player that you’ll have to squint to find at Vs-webzine (HERE). Look for the cover art for Violent Absolution and you’ll see the player to the left of it.

I haven’t yet listened to the Gorod album, but I have it on good authority from a respected blogger friend (who has heard the album) that it may be the tech-death album of the year. Those are strong words, given that 2012 has produced Incurso by Spawn of Possession., in addition to a new one from Psycroptic and one to come from Cryptopsy. I may have to shove aside other albums I’m supposed to be spinning and jump right to the Gorod. Actually, there’s no maybe about it.

“Carved In the Wind” is delicious. I love the swirling guitar lead and the pulsing keyboard tones. I love the funky bass line. I love that jazzy guitar solo. I love that Gorod have pulled together in a single song so many different stylistic elements in a way that seems natural and have produced music that’s not only head-twisting but also melodic, memorable, and a headbanger to boot. Go check it out and then come back here and write something that makes no sense in the Comments.

Speaking of making no sense, there’s more Heresiarch artwork after the jump, from their last EP, Hammer of Intransigence, plus a live Heresiarch song clip. Continue reading »

AUTHOR AND PUNISHER

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 122012
 

(BadWolf introduces us to Author and Punisher. Unlike most metal musicians, he engineers and builds his own instrumental devices. Prepare for massive nerdgasm.)

How would you like to be crushed by an army of giant robots? I’m afraid technology isn’t quite there yet, but the closest you could come is to jam on Author and Punisher.

Author and Punisher is the Industrial solo project of one Tristan Shone, and what an apt title it is. This is music that definitely follows a single creative vision (Author) and punishment is what he doles out. Shone’s new album, Ursus Americanus, will be released on April 24th through Seventh Rule records, the home of such sludgy marauders as: Indian, Harpoon, Lord Mantis, and the mighty Batillus.

Author and Punisher pulls influences from the more drone/groove oriented Industrial of Godflesh, as opposed to the thrashier (and poppier) Ministry school. Paradoxically, I find Author and Punisher heavier than those bands, but Tristan Shone does not use a guitar—and that’s precisely what is so metal about him.

He creates his own unique instruments—that resemble a Gundam cockpit. Check it out. Continue reading »

EL CACO: “HATRED”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Mar 102012
 

I remain short on blog time, but haven’t run out of the urge to headbang. “Hatred” feeds that need quite nicely. It’s a song by a Norwegian band called El Caco. It’s the first track released from a forthcoming album called Hatred, Love & Diagrams. It’s also the first El Caco song I’ve ever heard. I gather it’s different from what the band has done in the past, because they say so:

“On their new album, El Caco “push the envelope even further than they have done before,” according to a press release. “Having explored the melodic aspects of rock and metal for more than a decade, this album shows us yet another side of this multi layered band.”

I will say this: Based on this song I want to listen to more from that new album, which was released in January by Indie Recordings and is available from iTunes and Amazon mp3. The song has been turned into a music video, which appears after the jump. I’m afraid that’s all I have time to say, except . . . bang yo head. Continue reading »

BANG THAT HEAD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Mar 092012
 

As you may have surmised from the relatively small number of posts the last few days (and perhaps the content of the last one), work and work-related things have interfered with your humble editor’s dedication to metalness. Unfortunately, it’s likely that I will continue to be fucked with by such interferences over the next few days. However, I did manage to squeeze in a quick listening expedition earlier today and I found some items that got my head rockin’.

That’s really about the only common theme running through the music in this post. The styles are divergent, but they all trigger that natural, in-born urge to bang the head. Or at least that’s what happened to me, and that’s really all that matters, right? So even if the music doesn’t make you bang your head, you can rejoice in the knowledge that I got the shit cranked up loud and got myself a good head banging, and that ought to make you blissfully happy.

The bands are these: 4ARM (Australia), Tukkanuotta (Finland), Iblis (Poland), and Cancer Bats (Canada).

4ARM

4ARM is a thrash band from Australia who released their third album (and their first for Rising Records) in February. It’s called Submission For Liberty. Also last month, the band released an official video for the title track, which I happened to come across today for the first time. Continue reading »

THE FBI FUCKS WITH NCS AND WE FUCK BACK WITH ATOMA

 Exceptions to the Rule, IQ Subtraction, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  55 Responses »
Mar 092012
 

It was just a matter of time. You can’t write about the kind of vicious, seething, anarchic, soul-rending noise that we cover here at NCS — stuff like shamisen rock, Lacuna Coil, The BadPiper, and BabyMetal — without The Man coming down on your ass eventually. I got an e-mail from the fucking FBI yesterday! And they weren’t writing to wish me a happy World Kidney Day either.

But they picked on the wrong fucking people. I gave ’em a piece of my mind, and I’m not talking about the piece that loves kitties and sleeps a lot. That’s our motto here at NCS — you get fucked, you fuck back . . . hard. And I’m fucking back with a new music video by Sweden’s AtomA, the latest band to be joined by Christian Älvestam as the vocalist. I believe this is the 1,623rd such band.

We’re not going to let the FBI try to fuck with us in private either. You have to expose this kind of heavy-handed bullshit for everyone to see, so the masses can rise up in solidarity and strike back like a big fucken rattlesnake that’s been roused from its slumber — give The Man a big dose of lethal venom! So, after the jump . . . the piece-of-shit e-mail I got from the FBI, my courageous response, and the AtomA video. Continue reading »

BEFORE THE DAWN: THE “PHOENIX RISING” VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 082012
 

Read this:

“Enioy the official video clip for the first single “Phoenix Rising”, taken from BEFORE THE DAWN‘s upcoming melodic death metal sledgehammer Rise Of The Phoenix (OUT on April 27).

The song is also available as a free download at Nuclear Blast:http://bit.ly/ziaxYI

Pre-order “Rise Of The Phoenix” at the Nuclear Blast web shop:http://bit.ly/xQtGxu“

Now, watch and listen to this: Continue reading »

BEREFT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 082012
 

This is me doing something I should have done long ago. The story begins in May 2011, when my former NCS comrade IntoTheDarkness alerted me to the existence of a band called Bewilderbiest, which was sufficiently intriguing that I promptly wrote this post about them. Despite the absence of any music at that time, the news was intriguing because the band included Sacha Dunable  (Intronaut, Graviton),  Charles Elliott (Abysmal Dawn), Derek Rydquist (ex-The Faceless), and Derek Donley (National Sunday Law, Graviton).

Later I read that the band had changed their name to Bereft and had signed with The End Records to release an album called Leichenhaus (which is the German word for “mortuary”). Later still, I heard a song from the album called “Withered Efflorescence”, which really made an impact. Even later still, MetalSucks premiered another song called “The Coldest Orchestra”, which the band have now added to their Facebook song-player. More impact.

So I decided it was really time to say something at NCS about the band and the music. The first thing to understand about the music is that it’s very different from anything you may have heard by Intronaut, Graviton, or Abysmal Dawn. Here’s Sacha Dunable’s explanation of the band’s origins (from that MetalSucks post):

“Back in 2008, around the time Intronaut’s Prehistoricisms was released, I was unemployed for about four months, and had very little to do with myself besides stay home and write music all day. One thing I did to stay semi-productive was sit in my room and record music for a few fictitious one-man bands. The only one that wasn’t completely embarrassing was basically me ripping off a bunch of old doom metal records that I used to be obsessed with. Four years later, I decided to get some friends together and make it into what is now Bereft.”

That sounds very casual, very oft-hand . . . sitting around the house with nothing else to do . . . ripping off old doom records . . . grabbing some friends and doing some recording. Either there’s a lot of humility in those words, or he’s just embarrassingly talented (and I’m voting for the latter), because Bereft’s music is really good. Continue reading »

UNLEASHED: “RISE OF THE MAYA WARRIORS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 072012
 

This is going to be really fast (see earlier post today about me being fucked by my fucking day job). Here’s the news:

“Legendary Swedish Viking/death metal masters UNLEASHED and DecibelMagazine.com have made the brand new track “Rise of the Maya Warriors” available for streaming here. The track comes off their upcoming album Odalheim. Bassist/vocalist Johnny Hedlund had this to say about the song:

“After years of struggle and toil against the armies of White Christ, the Midgard Warriors went across the open sea to gather the battalions there, and to build an army big enough to fight in the final stand,” rails lead hornblower Johnny Hedlund. “At the end of the (Vinland) North American journey, the Midgard Warriors and their growing armies traveled through the Sierra Madre and into Central America to meet with the Toltecs, Olmecs, Aztecs and others. It seemed they had all joined forces to build a rebellion against White Christ. They were now known as the Maya Warriors. We joined for Blot and Celebrations to our common task and for life long freindship. We had now grown to be a very respectful army of warriors that set off to the European continent again…”

Now I’m not a well-educated historian, I’ll admit, but this doesn’t sound quite like any history I’ve ever heard about. I mean, I know there’s such a thing as Mixed Martial Arts, but Vikings, Toltecs, Olmecs, and Aztecs teaming up under the “Maya Warrior” banner and venturing to Europe?  That’s some new shit right there! Sounds awesome.

So does this song.  Check it out at DECIBEL or after the jump. Odalheim will be released on April 20 in Europe and April 24 in North Am by Nuclear Blast. Continue reading »

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