SHADES OF BLACK: PLAGUESTORM, CLOAK OF ALTERING, ENSCELADOS, THE NIGHTLY DISEASE, RAAT

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 132018
 

 

There’s a mountain of black music in today’s column — five full releases, the shortest of which is more than 20 minutes long. Moreover, one of those releases is a single song that itself tops 20 minutes in length. I don’t expect everyone to make their way through all of this; tastes do vary, as does the amount of time people are prepared to set aside for the exploration of new music. Recognizing that, I’ve provided previews of the music (at least as I hear it), and in the case of the releases other than the two that consist of long-form monoliths, I’ve selected specific songs that I think provide a good test for whether you’ll like the rest of what’s there.

PLAGUESTORM

Eternal Throne is the debut EP by a Swedish black metal band (from Malmö) named Plaguestorm. According to the two labels who are releasing it (Helter Skelter and Blood Harvest), it was recorded in 2015 but is only now being released for the first time due to unspecified “hardships and delays”. Their description of the music peaked my interest:

Eternal Throne, they wrote, “features four tracks in 21 minutes, where all possible aspects of black metal is being mixed into one, big gruesome bowl where everything from the classic guitar leads of Mercyful Fate, and the chaotic mayhem of Katharsis has its righteous place”. Continue reading »

SET FIRE TO YOUR SATURDAY WITH IMMORTAL, NERVOSA, LELAHELL, ALIEN WEAPONRY, SAHON, AND KARNAR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
May 122018
 

 

One of my friend Andy’s objectives in launching our Saturday Waxing Lyrical series (the new edition of which is here) was to make it possible for me not to worry about coming up with something to post on Saturdays. I get to party on Friday nights, sleep in on Saturday mornings, and loll around like a walrus in penguin shit for hours after waking.

So I’m sort of defeating the purpose of Andy’s generous gesture by doing this post… but only sort of. I couldn’t resist throwing these brand-new hell-blazing tracks and videos at you because I had so much fun listening to and watching them yesterday and this morning, but I’m not going to take the time to explain what happens in the songs or why I like them so much. I’ll just give some basic info and let you have at it.

There’s some good geographic dispersion in this collection, as well as a lot of enviable talent on display. Also, if you happen to have some asbestos underoos, you might want to pull those on to protect your nether regions. Continue reading »

AT THE GATES: “TO DRINK FROM THE NIGHT ITSELF”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 092018
 

 

(We present DGR’s review of the new album by some Swedish upstarts whose name will eventually be well-known if they keep doing stuff like this. It will be released on May 18th by Century Media.)

You’d be forgiven if, like your dear author here, the shock of At The Gates being an active band still hasn’t worn off yet. It’s been four years since the release of 2014’s At War With Reality, the group play shows and tour regularly, and yet every moment they’re around feels precious.

Recording an album that has transcended into a metal cultural landmark and leaving a near-twenty-year gap until the next one will do that to you, one guesses. Yet, here we are on the cusp of a second release from the group after that long hiatus in the form of their sixth album, To Drink From The Night Itself, and the first to feature new guitarist Jonas Stålhammar (whose own resume is pretty stacked and most recently played alongside vocalist Tomas Lindberg in their more old-school-focused The Lurking Fear).

In the lead-up to At War With Reality we all had a lot of fun pontificating on the many thought exercises of “What will a new At The Gates album sound like after the band has been gone for so long”, as the band had essentially watched and been part of a whole genre-explosion while its various members were involved in a slate of other projects. When the album was released, the answer was a pretty solid “it sounds like At The Gates” — which has to be one of the most frustratingly difficult things to pin down. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: WAYFARER, ATAVISMA, NATTVERD, THRONEUM, FINIS, 酸葬儀 ACIDFUNERAL, WITCHSKULL, HAMMERS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
May 082018
 

 

I had enough time last night to turn myself into a musical glutton. Just kept stuffing myself to the point of swelling up like a dirigible, hoping I’d come across something that wasn’t tasty before I exploded. That didn’t happen, so I had to summon the last vestiges of willpower and make myself stop.

So here’s a whole bunch of music, and only pithy impressions from me.

WAYFARER

Wayfarer’s third album, their first for the Profound Lore label, is described as “a reflection of the Rocky Mountains and high plains of their native Colorado”, “drawing influence as much from the dusty, dark Americana of the ‘Denver Sound’ and the scores of epic westerns as they do the fury and melody of black metal….” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LAGO, MAJESTIC DOWNFALL, ANICON, DARK DIVINITY, RASGO

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 032018
 


Lago

You know the drill: From the frothing torrents of new music that continuously rush through the stinking catacombs of the metal underground I sift out a handful of nuggets that appeal to me, and present them in these posts in the hope that they will appeal to you as well.

Today I’m beginning with a couple of bands in whom I have perhaps a more personal interest than most because the front-men are such good dudes… though I’ll quickly add that I was a big fan of their music before I got to know them.

LAGO

I go back a ways with the music of the Arizona death metal band Lago, back to the discovery of their very impressive Tyranny demo in January 2013. They released an even more impressive debut album of the same name in 2014, from which we had the pleasure of premiering the first advance track. They followed that at the end of 2016 with a tremendously good split release with Poland’s Calm Hatchery, from which we also premiered a secret bonus track by Lago.

Since then Lago have completed work on a new album named Sea of Duress and signed with Unique Leader Records for its release, which will happen on June 8. And yesterday Metal Sucks premiered a video for one of the new album tracks, “Soiled Is the Crown“, which was directed by Matti Way (From the North Films). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ROTTING CHRIST, WOMBBATH, MORTUOUS, DIABOLIC OATH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
May 012018
 

 

We have a couple of premieres coming later today (what a shock), but I found myself with a little extra time on my hands before we get to those, so I thought I’d package up a few new things that I heard yesterday. The first two come from established bands who are always dependably good. The second two come from new names that should become better known once the songs below get spread around.

ROTTING CHRIST

First up is a pro-shot live video of Rotting Christ performing the title track from their 2013 album Κατά τον δαίμονα εαυτού. It was filmed on June 30, 2017, during the band’s headlining anniversary concert in Athens. From the looks of this (and of course the sounds), I really wish I’d been able to astrally project myself into that venue. And I think that’s all the introduction this video needs. Enjoy: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SUNDAY: CONSTRUCT OF LETHE, ROTTENDAWN, SULPHUROUS, EZKATON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 292018
 

 

This being a Sunday, you might have been expecting a SHADES OF BLACK post — and there will be one later today — but I wanted to recommend some other new discoveries first. The music in this collection is more genre-scattered than the format of SOB would allow, but I have included an excellent new black metal track at the end, sort of as a segue from this post to the next one.

By the way, I decided not to include the new tracks that appeared last week from At the Gates, Marduk, Skeletonwitch, and The Agony Scene, despite the urgings of some of my NCS comrades, mainly because I wanted to go more under-the-radar (and also because I had mixed feelings about a couple of those tracks). But if you missed them, the hyperlinks will take you right there.

CONSTRUCT OF LETHE

I would have listened to the new Construct of Lethe song eventually, even without seeing the headline for Toilet Ov Hell’s premiere, because I have very good memories of their 2016 EP, The Grand Machination, for which we ourselves premiered two songs. But I got to the new song faster after seeing this headline, though I did allow enough time to enjoy the entire ToV article first: “CONSTRUCT OF LETHE BRING RIFFS SO THICC THEY’LL CLOT YER DICK“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AMORPHIS, YOB, GRAVE SUPERIOR, ZARRAZA, INTERNAL SUFFERING (AND MORE)

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 252018
 


photo credit: Lars Johnson

 

For this mid-week round-up I was again up to my eye-brows in worthy new music to choose from. I decided to do something a little different from usual, combining the formats of these SEEN AND HEARD collections and the occasional OVERFLOWING STREAMS columns. In other words, I’ll begin with some new songs and videos that I’ve introduced with my own descriptive verbiage (beginning with a couple of “exceptions to the rule”), and then followed that with a few more music streams that will somehow have to represent themselves through sound alone, difficult as that may be to imagine. (I also intend to present a rare week-day edition of SHADES OF BLACK later today or tomorrow in order to foist some more recent music on you.)

By the way, did you see that on July 6 Nuclear Blast will be releasing the first new Immortal album (Northern Chaos Gods) since All Shall Fall? It’s just Demonaz and Horgh, of course, but with Peter Tägtgren as session bassist. Even without Abbath in the line-up, I’m kind of excited.

AMORPHIS

I was also kind of excited about the prospect of a new Amorphis album when I first learned of it. That band has been the source of many joyous moments for yours truly in the past, and they put on a hell of an exciting show the only time I’ve seen them live (at Maryland Deathfest). Of course they and I have evolved to the point where their music isn’t as “extreme” as most of what I listen to these days, but when they’re on their game, even in these later days they still produce a thrill. Continue reading »

W.A.I.L.: “WISDOM THROUGH AGONY INTO ILLUMINATION AND LUNACY VOL. II”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 222018
 

 

Out of nowhere, this album appears like a comet blazing in the heavens.

I nearly didn’t bother to listen. On the surface it seemed like a daunting undertaking — one track more than 24 minutes long and a second one almost 35, and a title just as linguistically daunting: Wisdom Through Agony Into Illumination and Lunacy Vol. II. And it seems that this Finnish band’s name is simply a selective acronym for the same collection of words: W.A.I.L. (I might add that the band’s description of the album’s conceptual foundation (a quite articulate one) runs to 461 words.)

However, after receiving recommendations for the album from a couple of esteemed sources (Miloš and eiterorm, the latter of whom I must credit for the “selective acronym” phrase), I girded my loins and began listening — and emerged stunned. “Visionary” seems like too pretentious a term for this, but the magnitude of the ambition and the scale of the achievement are exceptional, and at times astonishing. Continue reading »

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