SHORT BUT SWEET Archives - Page 87 of 114

SHORT BUT SWEET: IRON EAGLE — “ON THE ATTACK”

Nov 042014

When a band’s first three listed influences on their Facebook page are Bolt Thrower, Discharge, and Bad Brains, that’s a good sign. When their line-up seems to include current members of Human Cull and a former member of the UK powerviolence band Witch Cult, that’s another good sign. When their album art depicts a giant fuckin’ octopus about to pull an aircraft carrier into the depths and starts with a sample about Godzilla — sold. And I haven’t even gotten to the music yet.

The band’s name is Iron Eagle and their debut EP is On the Attack, and is that ever a true title.

That Godzilla sample takes up the first few seconds of “Winta of Discuntent” and then the hammer comes down with a completely unstoppable, completely primal chug onslaught. And it goes from there to a crusty hardcore kerb stomp and back again. And that’s basically what happens over the course of all five songs. Continue reading »

A SAMHAIN HARVEST (Part 3): CRYPTICUS, ABORTED, SAILLE, TWIST ENDING

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Nov 012014

Ideally I would have posted this collection yesterday, to accompany the first two “Samhain Harvest” posts, but I take comfort in the fact that Samhain lasts until sunset today (November 1), even though most of the costumes will have already been retired for another year and some of you are now suffering from apocalyptic hangovers.

CRYPTICUS

Yesterday, just in time for Halloween, Patrick Bruss and Brynjar Helgetun, also known as Crypticus, released Horror Grind Mixtape #2 “Chains For Devils”. I wrote about two songs from this album when they debuted in August, but now we have the entire monstrosity.

On Bandcamp it’s organized into two tracks — “Chains For Devils” and, as a bonus, a cover of one of my all-time favorite Asphyx songs, “Scorbutics”. But “Chains For Devils” actually consists of nine parts, two of which feature a special guest appearances — Rogga Johansson (Paganizer, and many, many more) providing growls on “Strike the Iron Stake” and Stevo do Caixão (Impetigo, Twist Ending) providing shrieks and lyrics on “Among the Absurb”. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: URZEIT AND AKATHARSIA – A SPLIT

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Oct 312014

Urzeit from Portland, Oregon, and Akatharsia from Oakland, California, have united for a split release that recently became available on Bandcamp and will be released on vinyl near the end of November. Though the two bands manifest the shroud of black metal in different ways, they both deliver a caustic, corrosive, and gratifyingly venomous listening experience.

URZEIT

I first came upon Urzeit through a guest review of their impressive first demo posted on this site back in February (they have since released a second one). The band’s three-person lineup reportedly includes two members of Ash Borer and Triumvir Foul, plus the sole member of Mizmor. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: WITHERING LIGHT AND BARGHEST — A SPLIT

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Oct 292014

About 10 days ago two Louisiana bands released a two-song split on Bandcamp which proves again that some of the best music these days is flying under the radar on the wings of short, unheralded releases.

One of the two bands is a new name to me, Withering Light from Hammond, Louisiana. Their song is named “Lantern”, and it’s a shining example of post-black metal done very well.

At the beginning, and returning again at the end, guitar notes ring out like the pealing of alien bells over a heavy, grinding low end. That reverberating melody proves to be very seductive, but so is the rest of the song, which features jabbing, start-stop riffs, acrobatic drumwork, tumbling bass licks, and a very nice dual-guitar harmony, as well as inflamed, scarring vocals. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: NUNSLAUGHTER AND WITCHTRAP (A SPLIT)

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Oct 272014

According to Metal-Archives, Cleveland-based Nunslaughter have released more than 140 recordings, only four of which have been full-length albums, the rest mostly consisting of splits, EPs, and live albums. Hells Headbangers is releasing two more splits this fall, and I spent some time with both of them this past weekend. I reviewed the first one, a split with Perversor, here.

In this second split, with Columbia’s Witchtrap, Nunslaughter spit their poison in Spanish for a change, with tracks named “La Ofrenda” and “Altar De La Muerta”. “La Ofrenda” is a meat-grinder on steroids, a venomous death metal romp with a breakdown guaranteed to produce sore-neck syndrome and thoroughly disgusting vocal filth. “Altar De La Muerta” is another jet-fueled riff-rampage that’s groovy as hell and never backs off the gas. Both songs will light a bonfire under your butt. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: NUNSLAUGHTER AND PERVERSOR (A SPLIT)

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET, Uncategorized No Responses »

Oct 262014

In this split with a relatively new Chilean band named Perversor, Nunslaughter contribute two tracks — “Impure Thoughts” and “Bless the Dead”. “Impure Thoughts” is a thick, black, boiling cauldron of riff liquor, a mix of d-beat rhythms, skin-flaying black thrash, and grisly corpse-crawling death metal. “Bless the Dead” switches up the beats and the styles, too, and at its core is a head-wrecking chug-stomp, catchy as fuck and impurified with a wash of vocal pollutants. The songs are gone before you know it, but it’s a sweet trip while it lasts. Continue reading »

DREMENUART: “WEIGHTBEARER”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Oct 242014

When I started this site almost five years ago I picked the name “NO CLEAN SINGING” not so much to announce a rigid rule we intended to follow about the site’s content but more as a protest against something that had happened to the music of one band I used to care a lot about — Bury Your Dead. Matt Bruso had left the band to teach school and he had been replaced by Myke Terry, who introduced clean singing into their music, and the music just seemed to lose some of its weight all the way around.

Even though my musical tastes have evolved in increasingly extreme directions and I’ve lost touch with a lot of what’s happening in whatever scene is left of the one BYD inhabited, I still keep the early BYD albums in my car and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of them.

So, when a Facebook friend recently posted a link to a brand new EP named Weightbearer by a Spanish band named Dremenuart and made comparisons to the”über-low-tuned hardcore metal” of bands like early BYD, that pushed the right button and I had to check it out. I’m so very glad I did. Continue reading »

ELEMENTAL NIGHTMARES-IV: CANOPY, HARASAI, KALL, OBITUS

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Oct 242014

Today the Elemental Nightmares project released the fourth of the seven vinyl splits in the series, with a fourth segment (above) of what will eventually become one massive piece of artwork for the series as a whole — and as of today it’s also now available for download on Bandcamp.

I’ve been especially looking forward to this split because it features two old favorites of this site — Canopy and Obitus — as well as two new ones, Harasai and Kall.

Last summer we had the pleasure of premiering the tracks by Canopy and Harasai, and I’m going to include the accompanying write-up below, along with thoughts about the Obitus and Kall tracks. In a nutshell, this is a great quartet of pleasingly diverse songs. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: CULT OF FIRE — ČTVRTÁ SYMFONIE OHNĚ

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Oct 192014

According to The Font of All Human Knowledge:

Bedřich Smetana was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country’s aspirations to independent statehood. He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride; for the symphonic cycle Má vlast (“My Homeland”), which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer’s native land; and for his First String Quartet, From My Life.

“My Fatherland” is described as a cycle of six symphonic poems. Interestingly, according to the article quoted above, it was composed after illness had rendered Smetana completely deaf in both ears. The second part of the cycle is entitled “Vltava” and it was finished in late 1874. As the article explains, it was named for, and inspired by, “the river that runs through Prague towards its junction with the Elbe [and] is Smetana’s best-known and most internationally popular orchestral composition”.

And why, you may ask, am I writing about Smetana and “Vltava“? Because the Czech black metal band Cult of Fire have recorded a two-song EP dedicated to the composer and will be releasing it on 7″ vinyl through Iron Bonehead Productions on the 140th anniversary of Smetana’s completion of “Vltava“: December 8, 2014. This is the band’s fourth studio release overall, and thus it’s entitled Čtvrtá Symfonie Ohně (The Fourth Symphony of Fire), with cover art created by David Glomba. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ASCENSION AND NECROWRETCH

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Oct 182014

I’ve included in this post reviews of two new short releases that I strongly recommend to lovers of infernal music.

ASCENSION

This five-person German black metal band whose members don’t publicize their identities released a 2009 demo (With Burning Tongues), an EP (Fire and Faith) in 2010, and then a full-length album (Consolamentum) later the same year. After the passage of nearly four years, they have now returned with a two-song release named Deathless Light that the World Terror Committee will release on Samhain (October 31).

Of the two songs on this release, both of which are long, the title track will appear on a forthcoming full-length album, while the second — “Garden of Stone” — was recorded exclusively to this release. Both songs are tremendously effective in creating atmospheres that are staggeringly heavy, grim, and often sorrowful — yet they are both charged with energy and passion, and the mainly clear production only magnifies their black power. Continue reading »

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