BEHOLD, THE WAGES OF OUR BEST INTENTIONS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 022018
 

 

(As we reach the mid-year turning point, Andy Synn highlights a baker’s dozen of releases from the year’s first half to which we haven’t previously paid sufficient attention but recommend now.)

How did you all like that utterly pretentious/portentous title? Originally I was going to give this piece a much more mundane header, but then I thought “hey, I’m trying to get people’s attention… so why not go with something eye-catching?”

You see, we’re now officially in the second half of 2018, and, despite our best efforts and our best intentions, we’ve still failed to cover a significant percentage of the multitude of Metal albums released over the last six months.

Now I’m not a fan of those “Best of the Year So Far” lists (though others at the site seem to view them more favourably) but, in an effort to make at least some small recompense for this terrible dereliction of our duties over the preceding 182 1/2 days, I decided to put together this column highlighting thirteen different records which you might otherwise have overlooked. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: MANTAR AND CANCER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 022018
 

 

We have a couple of fine premieres coming later today, and because I devoted some time to writing about those, I didn’t have time to prepare a full SEEN AND HEARD round-up for this Monday — but with a few spare minutes and a bit of a lag in our publication schedule before the first of those premieres is due to arrive, I thought I’d give you a quick hit — two recent songs that made very positive impressions when I heard them this weekend. I might have time for another one of these posts in between those two premieres as well.

MANTAR

I may have mentioned before that Mantar are one of my favorite bands on the planet. And without meaning to detract from the impact of their recordings, they have become one of my favorites because of their live performances, which I’ve been lucky to witness on three occasions. The power and electrifying impact of what these two do on stage can’t really be captured in a studio, in part because they’re so riveting to watch.

Having said that, I’m still eager to hear their new album, The Modern Art Of Setting Ablaze, which will be released by Nuclear Blast on August 24th. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE AND A REVIEW): VANHELGA — “FREDAGSMYS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 292018
 

 

Today Osmose Productions releases the fifth album by the Swedish black metal band Vanhelga, the name of which is Fredagsmys, and a complete stream of which you’ll find at the end of this article. Long ago, Vanhelga proved themselves to be powerful spellcasters, capable of creating intense and lingering emotional responses to their varied summonings of human darkness. In plumbing those depths they’ve achieved impressive highs in their previous releases, but Fredagsmys really is their best album yet.

Unmistakably, Fredagsmys is the work of people who have a firm grasp on who they are as musicians. What inspires them is carried forward into sound with remarkable assurance and consummate skill. Even if what they see in their mind’s eye and feel in their fractured hearts is something you might rather not confront or dwell upon, they have a way of defeating such resistance and carrying you down with them. And if it’s any consolation, every now and then there’s a sign in the music that (maybe) all is not lost… not quite yet… and they continue to reveal glimpses of beauty in the most terrible of tragedies. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): DEICIDE, IN PURULENCE, CREATE A KILL, INVOCATION, HESPERIAN DEATH HORSE, SECOND TO SUN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 282018
 

 

Completing the round-up for today that began here, I’ve made some selections of new music and videos that cross a range of genres, and therefore should appeal to a range of preferences. Four of these bands are making their first appearances at our site; one is an old favorite.

But before we get to that, I’ll begin with a late-breaking news item.

DEICIDE

On June 5th I received an e-mail from someone I don’t know pointing me to a page at Metal Kingdom listing a new Deicide album named “The Devils of Saint-Médard-en-Jalles”, and identifying the line-up as Glen Benton (Vocals, Bass), Steve Asheim (Drums), Kevin Quirion (Guitars), and Mark English (Guitars). I couldn’t find anything to corroborate what was on that page, so I didn’t write about it. But today… Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXTREMITY — “LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 282018
 

 

Extremity’s debut EP, Extremely Fucking Dead, spawned legitimate comparisons to the music of Carcass, Death, Exhumed, Repulsion, Autopsy, Bolt Thrower, Impaled, Vastum, and Entombed, and the comparisons didn’t stop there. Depravity, gore, and a fanatical taste for destruction were rampantly on display, along with a knack for crafting insidious melody and skull-plundering grooves. The veteran musicians who had joined forces to record all those monstrous tracks had plainly found a shared passion and an electric connection in what they were doing together. And thankfully, Extremely Fucking Dead didn’t exhaust their morbid creative impulses — there’s now a new Extremity album headed our way.

The name of the new record is Coffin Birth, and it’s calendared for a July 20 release by 20 Buck Spin. It’s our extreme and sadistic pleasure to bring you a track from the album called “Like Father, Like Son“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): OSKU KINNUNEN, SOULLINE, ATLAS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 282018
 

 

I’m going to make this fairly quick because I’m working on some other things I want to post today, including a second installment of this round-up, before I have to turn to non-blog stuff for the day.

I collected these three new songs, one of which comes from an album that’s already out, partly for nostalgic reasons. Although my own tastes in metal have grown increasingly extreme over the years, melodic death metal and metalcore were my gateways into the heavier corners of metal. Their popularity seems to have waned, or maybe it’s only my taste for them that’s waned. But they’re not dead letters, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the music you’ll find here, for reasons that I think go beyond the rekindling of fond memories.

OSKU KINNUNEN

Finnish musician Osku Kinnunen was once in a UK-based band named Karhu, which no longer exists. He tells me that he had little time to invest in music for some period of time after that band’s dissolution, but eventually began writing and recording songs again. He released an EP in 2016 that I haven’t heard (you can find it here), and is planning to release an album later this year on which he’s doing everything except the drums — guitars, vocals, bass, mixing, etc. An e-mail from him led me to check out the first single from the album, “Beginning“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PIG DESTROYER, BURIAL HORDES, AGELESS SUMMONING, MARDUK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 272018
 

 

I had hoped to prepare a massive round-up for today, given how many excellent new tracks have been thrown at us this week, and how many fine new things I’ve recently discovered that appeared in previous weeks. Alas, other distractions have prevented me from making this post as gargantuan as I’d hoped. But there’s always tomorrow….

PIG DESTROYER

To begin, I have only a teaser… but what a titillating teaser it is. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SATHANAS — “THRONE OF SATAN”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 272018
 

 

If it were possible to do a comprehensive census of metal bands who released their first demo in 1988, we’d undoubtedly find that the vast majority are no longer among the living. The same could be said of metal bands whose first releases were in 1989… or 1990… or just about any other year preceding the current decade. If there were a catacombs for deceased metal bands, it would be filled to overflowing with dried bones and moldy bullet belts. Of course, mere longevity isn’t something that requires celebration: Some bands have survived for a very long time who should have been laid to rest years ago.

And then there is that very small group of long-lived survivors who just continue to slay rather than be slain, who seek neither fame nor fortune, who don’t compromise or sniff hungrily along the trail of trends, and who deserve a lot more credit than they’ve gotten. Which brings us to Sathanas.

They did indeed release their first demo in 1988, and nine albums (plus many shorter releases) since then, and a tenth one is on the way via the band’s new label, the rapidly expanding Transcending Obscurity Records. Necrohymns is the name of the new full-length, and today we’re bringing you another beast of a track off that record — “Throne of Satan” — before which you shall bow down. Continue reading »

SPLIT RELEASE: ORGAN DEALER / NERVE GRIND / INVERTEBRATE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 272018
 

 

(We present DGR’s review of the three-way split between Organ Dealer, Nerve Grind, and Invertebrate, which will be released on July 1st by Arizona-based Night Animal Records.)

Spinning the new 7″ split from the trio of West Coast and East Coast grinders comprising New Jersey’s Organ Dealer, Los Angeles’ Nerve Grind, and Oakland’s Invertebrate is like firing the grind genre into a prism and watching it refract off into three separate directions. It’s easy to see the common object that unites the three bands, but where each one takes things outside of the short-song, burst-of-excitement style of songwriting is what makes this sub-twenty-minute split a whole lot of fun.

Organ Dealer show up with their branch of frenetic and hyperactive grind spread across six songs (fun fact: when added to the material from their split last year with BirdFlesh and the “Insominia Chamer” single, this means the band have now completely cleared the amount of material they put on their 2015 album Visceral Infection). Contrast that with the West Coast tag-team, starting with the three songs of Napalm Death’s long-lost relative, Nerve Grind, the music thick-as-hell and hammering tuned low to the bowels of hell, and Invertebrate closing out the whole affair with another burst of songs, coming across as a slimmer and more punk-rock-leaning branch of the grind tree — leaving just one song “Untitled”, granting a different one the name of “Fuckface”, and from a sheer numbers perspective making up half the track listing with a snappy and teeth-bared nine songs that all keep the run times sub one-minute-thirty. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: GOJIRA AND KATECHON

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 262018
 

 

Given what I’ve planned to write for the site today, I don’t have time to compile the kind of typically large SEEN AND HEARD round-up I’d like to assemble, but enough time to do something shorter. And so I’ve resorted once again to the QUICK HITS concept that ran almost every day for a week not too long ago. Better than nothing, right?

GOJIRA

In August 2010 one of the people who started this site with me, but hasn’t been involved since 2011, wrote a post with this title: “Why Gojira Is the Best Metal Band in the World“. Almost eight years later, I’m pretty sure he still believes that. And after almost eight years that post still gets hits; in terms of traffic, it’s in the all-time Top 5 pages visited on our site.

Eight years ago, that writer was trying to draw more attention to a band that had only toured the U.S. once, as a support band for In Flames, and not even principal support — that position went to All That Remains. Now, of course, Gojira are a global phenomenon, and still have a soul. And In Flames and All That Remains? The less said about them in their current musical incarnations, the better. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries