SHADES OF BLACK: ABIGOR, NIGHTBRINGER, SLAGMAUR, KULT OF TAURUS, BARBELITH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  10 Responses »
Jul 082014
 

This is a collection of news and new music I discovered last night and this morning. When I use the “Shades of Black” title, it doesn’t always mean that everything in the post will be black metal, but it does today. On the other hand, most of the music in this post isn’t likely to conform to any preconceptions that most casual listeners may have about the sound of black metal. If one were to construct a bell curve of the genre, almost everything in here would be out on the edges.

ABIGOR

Austria’s Abigor have finished recording their tenth studio album, entitled Leitmotif Luzifer — The 7 Temptations of Man. It will be released by Avantgarde Music on July 11. Despite Abigor’s long history, I’ve never listened to any of their previous releases from start to finish, and I’m not even certain I’ve ever listened to any individual songs. So this new album will be my first proper introduction to the band — and from what I’ve heard so far, it will be a very happy meeting.

Abigor have created a Bandcamp page on which they’ve uploaded two different teaser tracks, each of which contains excerpts from songs on the new album. They emphasize on that page that “no synthetic elements have been used” in the recording of the album — “the guitars are completely free of any effects, neither reverb nor any special effects edit were allowed to touch the string instruments on this album”, and “for vocals only reverb and delay has been used, no pitch or chorus or any other effect stained the purity and directness”.

The teaser clips collectively include nearly 18 minutes of music, though no complete songs. To say the least, the music displayed by these teasers is esoteric and eccentric, but it’s also fascinating and rich in its diversity. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (Part 2): INTO DARKNESS, SABBATIC GOAT, SERPENTRANCE, TREPANATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  8 Responses »
Jun 292014
 

This is Part 2 of a round-up I began earlier today (here). The new songs collected in both parts of this post are the result of my recent submergence in the deepest, dankest pits of black, death, and doom, from which I’ve surfaced with some kind of necrotizing disease that I feel the need to communicate to my fellow lepers. Enjoy!

INTO DARKNESS

After only one listen, I proclaimed the debut demo by Italy’s Into Darkness “one of the best death/doom releases of 2012″. After a line-up change, they then followed that auspicious start with a 7″ EP entitled Transmigration of Cosmic Creatures Into the Unknown (reviewed here), which proved that the 2012 demo was no fluke.

In between those two releases the band produced another demo named Cosmic Chaos (2013) (discussed here and available on Bandcamp), which included a rough mix of a song entitled “Shifted To the Red End of the Spectrum”. Finally, that song is going to be released on a vinyl split with San Diego’s Ghoulgotha, and today it became available inn revised form on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (Part 1): DEATH VOMIT, EASTERN FRONT, FŌR, FÓRN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jun 292014
 

This is another weekend round-up of recommended new music. A particular kind of new music. The kind that will wreck your head on the shoals of savagery and cast your soul into outer darkness. This collection turned out to be so large that I divided it into two parts; the second part will appear soon. The bands are presented in alphabetical order, which is about the only kind of order you’ll find here.

DEATH VOMIT

NCS supporter Utmu pointed me to the first song presented here. It comes from Gutted By Horrors, the debut album of a Chilean band named Death Vomit that’s due for release on July 1, 2014, by the Spanish label Xtreem Music. The song is “Indestructible Abominations”. It’s a noxious cloud of utterly destructive black/death war metal, whose gargantuan grinding riffs spread a morbid melody like the plague while the vocalist renders inhuman echoing howls and soul-devouring roars. Attractively obliterating music.

I’m including a stream of the song in two different players. The album will be available for order on CD at the Xtreem Music site. Based on past experience, I’m guessing Xtreem will eventually put the album on their Bandcamp page (here) as well. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: TEMPLE DESECRATION, TEMPLE NIGHTSIDE, MORTUUS, VUYVR

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
May 162014
 

I started writing this post last weekend, when the featured songs were fresh out of the blast furnace and had just appeared online, but every day since then has thrown distractions in the way of finishing it. Finally, it is done. I’m afraid there’s nothing in this collection that’s suitable for the faint of heart, but if you’ve become acclimated to ravaging sonic assaults I think you’ll find a lot to like.

TEMPLE DESECRATION

I re-ordered the appearance of Temple Desecration since I began writing this post because what started as a feature about a single song is now a review of a two-song 12″ EP, the name of which is Communion Perished. It’s due for release by Germany’s Iron Bonehead Productions on June 27.

Temple Desecration are a blackened death metal band from Poland and their previous output consists of a 2012 demo named Abhorrent Rites, which I’ve not heard. The new release includes two songs — “Ghoul Prayer” and “Apotheosis”. Both of them intertwine passages of rapacious, storming riffs and merciless percussive fusillades with ghastly doom dirges, the guitars and bass drenched in distortion and the bestial vocals reverberating as if recorded in a catacombs. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ROTTING HILLS, SCHAMMASCH, SABBATORY, BLACK MONOLITH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Apr 032014
 

Over the last 48 hours I found a lot of really good new metal. I’ve picked three of those new songs to feature in this post. The “Shades of Black” post title doesn’t mean all the music is black metal, and it isn’t.

ROTTING HILLS

Rotting Hills are a Vancouver sludge/doom band consisting of four drummers, two guitarists, and a bass player (and one of them is a vocalist, too). As far as I can tell, they’ve put out three singles so far, all of which are available on Bandcamp. The second of those, released in mid-2012, is named “Belgrave”. For that song, the band’s Brian Sepanzyk wrote and directed a striking video with a different title — “Seventh Prayer” — that premiered just a few days ago.

Everyone who worked on the video should be congratulated; it’s beautifully made, with a high level of professional skill. And Rotting Hills should be congratulated on the song as well. It’s slow, spare, and deeply sombre, a gradually unfolding piece that moves from the beautifully melancholy to a wrenching cataclysm. The video is one of those prized accomplishments in which the music and the visuals not only complement but also enhance each other. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DEATHWINDS, KHONSU, NIGHTBRINGER, SARCOLYTIC

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  11 Responses »
Mar 162014
 

Hey there. Happy goddamn Sunday to one and all. Most metal blog proprietors take the weekend off, to rest from their work-week labors and to recover from their binge drinking on Friday night. We’re not smart enough to do that. For the last four-plus years we’ve treated Saturdays and Sundays as just two more opportunities to mess with your earholes. Onward to the messing, with four items I filtered from the effluent of the interhole yesterday, presented in alphabetical order:

DEATHWINDS

I came across this Vancouver band via a Facebook post by Vault of Dried Bones, who will be releasing a cassette EP or album (I’m not sure which) by Deathwinds named Endless Wastelands. The only other thing I know about the band is that their three-person line-up (Nocturnal Black, Filth Destroyer, and Desolator) includes members of Chapel and Radioactive Vomit.

Yesterday Vault of Dried Bones began streaming a song named “Black Tombs’ Spirit” on SoundCloud, but after a little poking around I discovered that both “Black Tombs’ Spirit” and another song (“Death Rule”) are up on Bandcamp as pay-what-you-want downloads. I think I can safely say that I love the shit out of them. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: NEFANDUS, SVARTIDAUÐI, ECHELON,

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Mar 102014
 

Collected in this post are new songs from three black metal bands that I want to recommend for your listening pleasure.

NEFANDUS

Nefandus are a satanic black metal band from Sweden whose third album, Reality Cleaver, is scheduled for release by Daemon Worship on April 30.  Though the band’s line-up has evolved over time, they trace their roots back to the mid-90s, with their first album coming out in 1996. However, my first exposure to the music came from the two new songs that Daemon Worship recently began streaming on Bandcamp — “Qayin’s Hunt” and “Reborn As Wolf”.

The first of those songs is a mid-paced procession, almost stately in its cadence and in the grandeur of its dark, minor key melody, yet thoroughly occult in its atmosphere (due in no small part to the filthy vocal delivery). The second track, “Reborn As Wolf”,  quickly accelerates into a gallop, the whirring melody needling like a drill bit seeking flesh within the teeth, though the song also exudes a kind of infernal majesty similar to “Qayin’s Hunt”. Very nice. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LORD MANTIS, SKELETHAL, INFESTUS, SARGEIST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Mar 032014
 

This round-up of news and new music is skewed toward the especially dark, depraved, nihilistc end of the extreme metal spectrum, hence the name “Shades of Black”, even though only two of the bands march under the black metal banner.

LORD MANTIS

Once you’ve seen Jef Whitehead’s cover for the new album by Chicago’s Lord Mantis, you really don’t forget it. I splashed it across the top of our site when it became public about two weeks ago, though back then I hadn’t yet heard any of the music from Death Mask. Now I have, and man, it makes a scarring impression, too.

The song that premiered last Friday is the album’s searing opening track, “Body Choke”. Three things about it stand out. First, there’s the visceral pounding of the rhythm section, with Charlie Fell’s bass and Bill Bumgardner’s drumming interacting like men at work on a demolition project. Second, there are Fell’s vocals, which sound like a man drowning in sulfuric acid. And third, there are the doomed, devastating, degraded riffs; they create a choking, noxious atmosphere.

You will want to headbang. You may also want to open a vein. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ENTARTUNG, NIGHTFELL, TORTORUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Feb 092014
 

I’ve collected in this post two new songs and one new album, all of which I discovered yesterday. As the post title suggests, two of the bands are solidly in the black metal camp and the third, sandwiched between them in this feature, is “blackened” — although their music is a striking amalgam of styles. All three are doing some very exciting things with their music.

ENTARTUNG

As is true of all three bands in this post, Germany’s Entartung ambushed me yesterday. Before then, I hadn’t heard of them. Their debut album Krypteia appeared in 2012 and their second, entitled Peccata Mortalia, is due for release by the World Terror Committee (W.T.C. Productions) on March 8. Two days ago DECIBEL premiered the album’s first advance track, “Blasphemaverit in Spiritum Sanctum”.

The strength of the song lies principally in the powerful tremolo-picked melodies that heave in the music like ocean swells, and in the shifts between the bleak, frigid atmospheres they create and the black, rocking rhythms and other transitions that segment this long song. It’s easy to become immersed in the wintry tale Entartung are spinning. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LOATHING, HISS FROM THE MOAT, SMUTEČNÍ SLAVNOST, AND DRAKWALD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  9 Responses »
Jan 312014
 

This is a collection of new songs and videos I discovered over the last 24 hours. Some of it, but not all, is black metal. I’ve used that “Shades of Black” label again because there’s a lot of dark, malevolent power in all the music — and a lot of evil fun to be had, too.

LOATHING

I heard from this Polish band two weeks ago, with the news that their debut album We Are the Hunt was set for release on January 20. I dicked around and failed to pounce on it, but yesterday I did discover both a lyric video for “Warspite” and a second song from the album, “I Rot Inside”. They’re both supremely good, and although I’m now very interested in hearing the whole album, I’m so behind in writing reviews that I at least wanted to make sure I said something about these two songs.

I suspect that many Polish death metal bands get tired of being compared to Behemoth or Hate, or maybe they’re flattered? I do mean to flatter Loathing with those references, although I don’t mean to suggest they sound exactly like either of those other magnificent bands. Their music does convey a similar kind of demonic majesty, the huge booming riffs and spine-shaking drum beats thundering with titanic might, the occult melodies writhing like freed serpents, the deep vocals roaring with malignant power (and howling with passion in the second song). Continue reading »

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