HIGHER CRITICISM: SLAYER (PART 9) — “DIABOLUS IN MUSICA”

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Sep 272019
 

 

(This is the ninth installment in a series by TheMadIsraeli devoted to a retrospective chronological analysis of the discography of Slayer, and today’s subject is the band’s 1998 album Diabolus In Musica. Links to the preceding installments are at the end of this post.)

While people point to God Hates Us All quite often, I’ve always felt that the real black sheep in Slayer’s body of work (even more so than the album covered yesterday) is this album right here, new logo and all.

I actually have a soft spot for Diabolus In Musica. I like MOST of it.  It has some awful songs, but the good songs on it are VERY good.  What I respect first and foremost about this album is just Slayer’s willingness to try new things.  I will say, the fact that the album plays to the particular bents it does shouldn’t be a huge surprise, looking at the band’s preceding discography. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: VENEREAL BAPTISM — “REPUGNANT CORONATION OF THE BEAST”

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Sep 262019
 

 

On the surface (and it’s the kind of surface you don’t want to touch without wearing surgical-grade antiseptic gloves), the South Texas black metal band Venereal Baptism is naaaasty. From their band name to the outrageous song titles on their new album Repugnant Coronation of the Beast, they just blare filth and depravity (and a complete disregard for modern mores and tender feelings) straight out of a bullhorn. It’s all so over the top in its offensiveness that it might even make you dubious about listening.

However, if you choose not to subject yourself to the full album riot that we’re premiering today on the eve of the record’s release by Osmose Productions, you’ll be missing a balls-to-the-wall thrill-ride, and one that proves to be fiendishly addictive. Continue reading »

ASAGRAUM: “DAWN OF INFINITE FIRE”

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Sep 262019
 

 

(The Dutch black metal band Asagraum released their second album digitally on September 13th and Edged Circle Productions  will release physical editions on September 27th. What follows is a review of it by TheMadIsraeli.)

Over the last few years I’ve really made a turn-around on black metal as a style and have come to love it, but I’ve only settled on a particular bent. It has to really engage in that very meta-spiritual vibe of melancholic and enigmatic melody while retaining a sense of brutality and mercilessness.  This has led me to more concise, more  “lean” (for the lack of a better word) riff-driven black metal like Old Man’s Child, Nidingr, Naglfar, Dark Fortress, and so on.  I like my black metal to definitely strive for peak musicianship, instead of relying on the gimmicks and the edginess the style sort of has a reputation for.  If you can channel the sensation that your music is an attempt at invoking some kind of ritual or summoning, then that’s even better.  That’s the sort of ritualistic take on black metal I’m very fond of.

Which brings me to Asagraum. Continue reading »

VISCERAL DISGORGE: “SLITHERING EVISCERATION”

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Sep 262019
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the long-awaited second album by the Baltimore brutal death metal band Visceral Disgorge.)

This time around the subject is Slithering Evisceration, the long-awaited sophomore album by Visceral Disgorge (Baltimore, Maryland), released via Agonia Records on September 13th. This project was formed back in 2007. They released their debut album Ingesting Putridity in 2011 and that was well-received, gaining the band a lot of fans worldwide.  One of my favorite aspects from that record was the riffs of Steve Rosenzweig (R.I.P.), such an amazing musician who left us too early.

Thanks to the overall reaction to the first album and the massive following it produced, the band was able to tour quite a bit, and I was fortunate to see them at Chicago Domination Fest III in 2016. To say the least, their performance was among my favorites from that fest. They leveled the placed. That was not an easy task — Gorgasm, Lividity, Inherit Disease, and Malignancy played as well, and their performances were also among the best. So, I was quite impressed with the stage show of Visceral Disgorge. Continue reading »

HIGHER CRITICISM: SLAYER (PART 8) — “DIVINE INTERVENTION”

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Sep 262019
 

 

(This is the eighth installment in an extensive series of posts by TheMadIsraeli devoted to a retrospective analysis of the discography of Slayer, and today’s subject is the band’s 1994 album Divine Intervention. Links to the preceding installments are at the end of this post. Our plan is to continue posting the remaining Parts on a daily basis until the series is completed.)

I’ve always perceived Divine Intervention as Slayer’s black sheep sort of release.  It’s an odd album to be sure, seeing Slayer write more tempo-complex songs, explore more death metal sorts of sounds, and adopt some of the other sounds they themselves had inspired in others.

But I like Divine Intervention quite a bit.  It’s weird, and Slayer have always been pretty good about being weird the few times they’ve done it.  There’s something unhinged about this album, and that lines up with a lot of the really bleak and depraved lyrical content.  There’s a lot of shit about serial killers on this album, and the album SOUNDS like the subject matter it addresses.  It’s sick.  It also helps that Tom Araya just sounds PISSED on this record, a tonality he’s never had before. He also sounds unhinged. Continue reading »

CRANIAL: “ALTERNATE ENDINGS”

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Sep 252019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Germany’s Cranial, which will be released on September 27th by Moment of Collapse.)

It’s either an incredibly ballsy, or completely coincidental, move for German sludgemongers Cranial to put out Alternate Endings just one week after Post-Metal titans Cult of Luna released their new, long-awaited album, A Dawn to Fear.

After all, there’s only so much time, money, and mental energy available to potential listeners, and big releases like ADtF do tend to monopolise people’s attention for a long time both before and after they come out (heck, this is exactly why you often see movies getting pushed back or bumped up… no-one wants to go up against Star Wars at the box office unless they really have to after all!).

I’m inclined to think that it was a purposeful move by the Bavarian quartet though, as not only did they explicitly select CoL’s Magnus Lindberg to master their new record, but each of the four songs presented here is written and performed with such brash, bullish confidence that I can’t imagine any of the members of Cranial were at all worried about being compared to their Swedish brethren! Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LAMBS‡ — “MALICE”

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Sep 252019
 

 

As we rapidly approach the last quarter of the year, 2019 has already proven itself to be the bearer of some tremendously good post-metal and sludge releases, but it’s far too soon to close those chapters of the year’s book. In particular, the debut album by the Italian band LAMBS‡ hasn’t been released yet — though it will be on Friday (September 27th), via Argonauta Records — and it more than holds its own with releases by more established and widely-heralded names.

Aptly entitled Malice, it combines elements of post-metal and sludge (along with black metal and hardcore) in ways that deliver catastrophic heaviness, unearthly atmosphere, unnerving tension, harrowing gloom, and absolutely obliterating violence. It’s relentlessly gripping, and unsparingly intense, and we have a full stream of it for you now. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ROUND-UP (PART 2): THE RITUAL AURA, HOPE DRONE, ORPHEUS OMEGA

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Sep 252019
 

 

(NCS scribe DGR is catching up on reviews after a long hiatus with a multi-part collection, of which this is the second of three parts.)

This was not intended to be the Australia segment of this roundup when I started. In fact, as I found myself bouncing around this whole archive of intended reviews, the ones I cut out to send off to the teeth machine that is this website kept lowering these down while I was adding to them, until I had the three resting on top of each other, much in the same way a puzzle game will collapse pieces on top of each other in unplanned fashion.

While I mentioned earlier that this archive has found itself both swelling and shrinking in size as the year has gone by, and even as some other writers were kind enough to pick up some of the releases I had been hoping the site would cover, these three managed to stay pretty firm in their places while we waited for their release dates to hit.

For the most part, they were always on the radar screen. It just so happened that two of them would release in close proximity to one another toward the later part of the year and the third is one of those that is strictly in this writer’s wheelhouse and basically found itself spoken for before anyone else could even get the chance to call it. Continue reading »

HIGHER CRITICISM: SLAYER (PART 7) — “SEASONS IN THE ABYSS”

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Sep 252019
 

 

(This is the seventh installment in an extensive series of posts by TheMadIsraeli devoted to a retrospective analysis of the discography of Slayer, and today’s subject is the band’s 1990 album Seasons In the Abyss. Links to the preceding installments are at the end of this post. Our plan is to continue posting the remaining Parts on a daily basis until the series is completed.)

If you had asked me five years ago or more, I would’ve told you that Seasons In The Abyss is my favorite Slayer album, and the best of them all.  Nowadays, frankly, I look back on it with some fondness but I also wonder what I was smoking.

Seasons… has some of Slayer’s best SONGS for sure, but as an album it’s extremely uneven. It finds the band for the first time re-treading old ground in an uninspired manner and suffers from an awful mix, even by the varied degrees of Slayer. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HORROR GOD — “CURSED SEEDS”

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Sep 242019
 

 

After a seven-year hiatus (interrupted only by their 2017 split with Techne), the Russian dissonant black/death metal band Horror God are returning this year with their third album, and their most electrifying, unpredictable, and thoroughly explosive creation yet. Bearing the title Cursed Seeds, it will be released on September 27th by Lavadome Productions, but today we present a full stream of the record — and the following thoughts about the impact of listening to it.

The releasing label makes comparative references to Gorguts and Deathspell Omega, to Ulcerate and Aosoth, to Immolation and Sunless, among others. As those references suggest, the music is multi-faceted — delirious and devastating, technically extravagant and ruthlessly bludgeoning, hallucinatory and harrowing. In its rapidly changing and often riotous permutations, it has an experimental, avant-garde quality, yet is unmistakably bestial in its ferocity. Keeping your balance as you listen is difficult; tearing yourself away from it would be even more difficult. Continue reading »

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