DIRGE WITHIN: “THERE WILL BE BLOOD”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 052012
 

 

(DemiGodRaven has turned into a reviewing machine. I want whatever he’s on. Here’s his third review in as many days — and the subject is the forthcoming release from Dirge Within.)

Dirge Within are one of those bands whose rise is seemingly unexplainable. Any question of where these Chicago-based metalcore warriors came from is met entirely with a response of, “Uh…well…uhm”, and then nothing. They just seemed to appear one day and had an AWESOME VIDEO FILLED WITH SAWDUST, SAND, AND EXPLOSIONS, and then there was silence. The group’s previous release, Force Fed Lies, did them well enough to justify a second disc, but the main thing that’s difficult to understand is the overarching question of…why?

Since I have buried myself in all things -core lately, I figured I’d give these guys another shot, and boy, let me tell you. If you thought Silent Civilian’s second album Ghost Stories was a disappointment, then what you need to do is take this disc and pretend that it’s the followup to Silent Civilian’s first release. For those not in the know, Silent Civilian was a metalcore offshoot of Spineshank, with the lead singer on guitar and vocals, and I came to find out that their debut was actually pretty goddamn solid. The only problem was that their followup was like their debut again, and they quickly fell to the wayside in favor of a reunited Spineshank.

I know this sounds like one hell of a wild-ass tangent, but just bear with me here, because I will be goddamned if Dirge Within’s There Will Be Blood doesn’t sound like, and is on par with, Silent Civilian’s debut release — a solid if not guilty-pleasure piece of metalcore. Continue reading »

BLOODBEAST: “BLOODLUST”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 052012
 

In a year that has already delivered enough superb tech-death releases to give frenetic-metal addicts a month’s worth of wet dreams, we now have one more from a remote locale: South Africa. But the debut album by Bloodbeast is not the precision music of accelerated, machine-like aliens. It has no avant-garde injections of jazz fusion. It isn’t the musical equivalent of a chalkboard crammed with the formulas of quantum mechanics.

No, Bloodlust is the maniacal fever dream of ghouls, a canvas sprayed with blood splatter, a landscape decimated by a lurching horde of the electrified undead. It’s a technically masterful fusion of death, grind, and thrash that takes no prisoners and wants to drink your spinal fluid. I was fortunate to get an advance listen to the music, but thankfully, the album has now become available for everyone on Bandcamp.

Bloodbeast is a new band, but its members are veterans of the S.A. metal underground. The band’s leader, Van Zyl Alberts (aka Van666), was also the guitarist and co-vocalist of Architecture of Aggression, a long-running progressive death metal band we’ve written about several times at this site (e.g., here). The other members have paid their dues in outfits such as Bile of Man, Fuck the Corpses, and Demented Martyr. Joining together in Bloodbeast, they’ve clearly found a musical vehicle that suits their interests and successfully integrates their talents. Continue reading »

DEMON HUNTER: “TRUE DEFIANCE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 042012
 

(DemiGodRaven follows his review of Impending Doom’s new album yesterday with a review of the forthcoming Solid State release by yet another stalwart of Christian metal — Demon Hunter.)

Previously in the Impending Doom review, I mentioned that I was also listening to Demon Hunter’s True Defiance. Demon Hunter are one of the few religi-core bands (I’m still trying out new labels here folks!) that I do happen to enjoy, partly because the references to religion have been relatively subdued (mostly about defiance and perseverance) and partly because the music they put out has been pretty solid. I’ve followed them since Summer Of Darkness, so I’ve had the opportunity to really watch the band change their sound and progress from being a solid metalcore act to something heavier and faster, with an odd contrasting habit of kicking out ballads.

I thought that the group’s last CD, The World Is A Thorn, was a bit of a disappointment (though it continued the tradition of badass album art). It sounded almost exactly like Storm The Gates of Hell again, just a little heavier on the ballad side. There were still some good songs, such as the title track, but it is probably the one Demon Hunter release that I listen to the least.

Two years removed from that disc, and I find myself reunited again with Demon Hunter, this time through True Defiance. It’s an interesting album. The music includes some changes compared to the group’s last release, yet everything remains familiar and easily identifiable as Demon Hunter. From the perspective of someone who has enjoyed quite a lot of Demon Hunter’s music, listening to True Defiance is like being re-united with an old friend after an extended vacation, yet I must also admit that some of what the band have done on the new album isn’t very inspired. Continue reading »

JOB FOR A COWBOY: “DEMONOCRACY”

 Album Reviews  16 Responses »
Apr 042012
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn reviews the new album by Job For A Cowboy, which is scheduled for North American release on April 10, 2012 through Metal Blade, plus we have the three songs from the album publicly released to date.)

Looking back at their career thus far, it’s definitely been an upwards trajectory for Job For A Cowboy. Some might say that’s due to where they started from; Doom is definitely showing its age these days, although still surprisingly spritely in places. Good but not great (despite what the more entrenched fan-boys might claim), the EP was largely a product of its time, seeing a talented band of youngsters riding the crest of the myspace/social networking wave and combining their burgeoning (though undeveloped) talents with new methods of marketing and self-promotion. Though castigated by many for this, there’s no shame in it, particularly as the group have used every subsequent release in an attempt to prove their worth as one of American death metal’s up and coming contenders, improving their instrumental skills and technical abilities at every turn.

If the massive growth demonstrated between the release of Doom and Genesis was an early sign of the band attempting to justify the hype surrounding themselves, then the even bigger leap between Genesis and Ruination was definitely the product of a band “finding themselves”. Having laid these solid foundations, Gloom served the key purpose of an EP perfectly, showcasing some different shifts in direction around this established core. And there we have it, a consistent upwards trajectory that has demonstrated both growth and drive, often in the face of an intransigent metal community

So how does Demonocracy fit in? Continue reading »

IMPENDING DOOM: “BAPTIZED IN FILTH”

 Album Reviews  18 Responses »
Apr 032012
 

(DemiGodRaven (ex-The Number of the Blog) delivers this review of the new album by California’s Impending Doom, which is out now on eOne Music.)

As a band and a music fan, Impending Doom and I have a bit of a stormy history (not that we’ve actually fought, they seem like nice people). I’ve been one of many who have spoken out against the group’s too-on-the-nose gimmick of using ‘goreship’ to describe their brand of Christian deathcore. While I’m sure the band have said it somewhat cheekily in response to being pigeonholed, it has stuck with them.

I also reviewed their last disc, There Will Be Violence, back when TNOTB was alive and found the whole experience to be underwhelming. I felt that the mix on the album was a little flat, and a lot of the songs fell on the bland side. There were a few standouts, including the song “Orphans”, but three or four good songs do not a good CD make. Had those songs taken the form of a There Will Be Violence EP, I may have reacted better, but as an album the whole thing became a slog I never really felt any desire to go back to.

However, I do believe in a clean slate of sorts, and so with that in mind I decided to check out Baptized In Filth, if only because I was already buried in religious metalcore listening to Demon Hunter’s latest (more on that later). Continue reading »

ELYSIAN: “WIRES OF CREATION”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 022012
 

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Australia’s Elysian.)

Melodic Death Metal is a style that had a mighty sad fall from grace when the metalcore explosion took off.  The metalcore bands milked the melodic aspects of MDM dry while the melodic death metal bands themselves were often left behind by metalheads who simply considered the style to have become old hat.  The problem was exacerbated by the horrific selling out by big names such as In Flames (we won’t go there) or Soilwork as well as just the stagnation of certain legends such as Dark Tranquility and Arch Enemy.  Luckily, the style was kept alive and legitimate by long-staying underdogs like Darkane or Before The Dawn.

However, significant changes in approach seem to have revitalized melodeath.  We all know and love the mighty Insomnium, with their melancholy, sorrowful melodic taste and the mood of doom metal in their sound.  It’s what has set them apart from the pack, that is until lately.  In the last 6-7 years, there has been a rather unexpected surge of mid-paced or slow-paced melodic death metal by bands who use the vocals, energy, and dual guitar antics of melodeath but mix with those elements the macabre, melancholy, and anguished melodies and tempos of doom metal, and Funeral Doom in particular.  I’m thinking of bands such as Daylight Dies, In Mourning, and now 7 Horns 7 Eyes.  These bands, for me, have breathed new life into a style that I originally loved but held on to mostly due to nostalgia.

Elysian are ANOTHER entrant into this new guard of melodic death metal.  About ten days ago we premiered a stream of their debut album Wires Of Creation, but I was so enamored with this album that I felt compelled to review it.  These guys deserve as much press as they can get. Continue reading »

MESHUGGAH: “KOLOSS” (TAKE TWO)

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Mar 302012
 

(In February, we published BadWolf’s early review of KOLOSS (here) — he got his greedy hands on it before his NCS comrades did. Now that the rest of us have had a chance to enjoy Meshuggah’s latest output, TheMadIsraeli weighs in with his own review.)

It’s time for me to put in my two cents on this beast.  I realize BadWolf already did a stellar review of this album, but I really want to get my take out there as well.  Meshuggah is one of my favorite bands of all time.  I mean, not only in the top 10 favorites, but definitely in the top 3 on that list.  Their sound is unmistakable, undeniable, and most of all, ever-moving.

But Meshuggah haven’t been moving forward in a straight line. Instead, they have often chosen to move sideways, contorting their signature sound since Nothing in whatever way they can while still maintaining its identity.  Now Meshuggah are back with their much anticipated opus Koloss.  Does it live up to the hype?  Does it solidify Meshuggah’s legacy as renovators and innovators of the ways of brutality?

Yes, but not in the way that you might have expected.

In significant ways, you will hear a different Meshuggah on this album, a Meshuggah who have become comfortable with their position and esteem, choosing now to play with their sound in less limit-pushing ways and to pursue instead an interesting idea: Evolution through regression. Continue reading »

AVENGER: “BOHEMIAN DARK METAL”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 282012
 

 

Record Label: Deathgasm | Year: 2012 | Genre: Black Metal

By Willard Shrapnelspear

I always feel awkward reviewing an album sung and written in a language that is not English. Maybe it is because it makes me feel like I’m doing a half-assed job. Oh well, here I go again.

Apart from not being able to read a single word in the track titles (as they are all in Bohemian, the main language of the Czech Republic), obviously, I can’t figure out a single word vocalist and talented multi-instrumentalist Honza Kapák is spewing forth either. You might be thinking that that’s a pretty pointless statement, since who the hell can actually figure out harsh vocals. Well, seasoned listeners of extreme metal can actually make out a word or two from a set of harsh vocals even without first looking at the lyrics or track titles (but of course, some badasses like BadWolf can make out Carcass’ lyrics… wait wut?), and of course, I’m referring to extreme metal sung and written in English.

But guess what? When it comes to listening to foreign extreme metal and being so damn clueless as to what the vocalist is singing about and whatever the hell the lyrics are saying, it’s really not that bad a thing! It actually accentuates that feeling of exoticness found only in exotic metal, which is kind of like being lost in a random Vietnamese village (after watching a hungry village kid gobble up your tasty-looking map) and not having a clue as to what your next move should be.

In musical terms, your next logical move should be allowing the foreign music to wash over you and take you places; and boy does this fourth studio album from Avenger wash over you like a murky wave filled with bits of rotten leaves and soggy twigs, and carry you all the way to some twisted, paganized version of the Caribbean. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: THOSE WHO LIE BENEATH – “ANTICHRIST”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

Sometimes, changes in a band’s membership become catalysts for changes in their music. Sometimes, with the passage of time, musicians’ tastes change and they move to a different place musically because they have become different people. I have a feeling that both things happened to Those Who Lie Beneath.

Those Who Lie Beneath are a metal band from Portland, Oregon, whose debut album An Awakening we reviewed (here) in December 2009. The band have undergone significant changes since then. From a five-piece, they’re now a three-man outfit. The most noticeable change was the departure of their vocalist Jamie Hanks, who joined Seattle’s I Declare War.

I remember when Hanks earned the band a measure of notoriety by giving an interview to Noisecreep in which he said: “We all love Cannibal Corpse. But they’ve been doing the same shit for years. We want to be Between the Buried and Me and Cannibal Corpse and the Black Dahlia Murder, all in one.” In the same interview, Hanks told Noisecreep, “What we’re trying to do is be not only as brutal as we can but as evil, man. We want to have people look at us, and go, ‘Fuck, these guys are scary.'”

I was impressed with An Awakening, but I have to say that I like the direction of the band’s new EP, Antichrist, even more. And it beats An Awakening on the brutal/evil/scary scale, too. Continue reading »

FULL ALBUM STREAM: ELYSIAN’S “WIRES OF CREATION”

 Album Reviews, Metal News, Premieres  9 Responses »
Mar 232012
 

We’ve premiered individual songs before, but this is a red-letter day at NCS because today we’re premiering a full-album stream. The album is Wires of Creation (scheduled for release on March 26), and the band is Australia’s Elysian.

We first came across Elysian through one of our EYE-CATCHERS experiments — in which we listen to new music based solely on the appeal of the album art (the Wires cover was then, and still is, very cool). At that time, only one song from the album was available for listening (“Mans Design”), and it was a powerhouse piece of music. Now we’ve heard the whole album, and it fulfills the promise of that first song.

Elysian’s metal is both complex and primal, stylistically diverse and intricate in its composition, yet infused with atmospheric melodies and head-busting grooves. Wires of Creation is a dynamic work that both leads the mind down a labyrinthine path and packs a physical punch. It’s progressively minded melodic death metal that brings to mind an imaginary collaboration between Dark Tranquillity and pre-Harvest Opeth, but with other ingredients in the mix as well.

The band was founded by guitarists Gabriel and Nathan Hutchinson, and their interplay — part throw-down duel and part harmonious collaboration — is a large part of what makes the music so engrossing. They jab in a blur of hard punches, they bring the fiery shred, they spin webs of atmospheric melody. Gabriel is also responsible for keyboard additions that enhance the music with beats of electronica and soaring ambience. Continue reading »

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