Jun 182016
 

Gatecreeper-2016 split

 

My helpful WordPress blogging software tells me that I started writing this post on March 30, 2016, and then I got sidetracked — repeatedly. I’m so tightly wound that I nag myself about things that I start but don’t finish. My life is full of self-nagging. Sometimes, however, that incessant buzzing in my head produces a result. Hence, this post.

This MISCELLANY series is one of several that I started at NCS in the early days, but it has become very irregular in recent years. So a refresher on the MISCELLANY game is probably worthwhile: On a fairly random basis, I pick releases I’ve not heard before, usually by bands I’ve not heard before; I listen to a song or two (usually without much advance idea of what the music will sound like); I write my immediate impressions; and I then stream what I heard so you can make your own judgments.

GATECREEPER

In my “refresher” above, I forgot to add that I sometimes violate the rules of the MISCELLANY game, and for this first item I’ve done that because I knew something about Arizona’s Gatecreeper before listening to this song. Two years ago I featured one of their videos in a round-up, and after that I grabbed the EP that included the song in the video. Continue reading »

Jun 172016
 

Mr. Trash Wheel-Baltimore

 

(DGR takes over round-up duties today, featuring commentary and a wide array of recent song, video, and album streams. This would have been posted much earlier in the week if our editor weren’t so lame.)

If you’ve been reading the site recently you’ve no doubt noticed that quite a few of us shirked work and decided instead to go out to Maryland for the Maryland Deathfest shindig that the internet likes to talk so much about. However, the internet doesn’t take time off like we do and quite a bit of stuff came out during that period that despite our best efforts slipped right by us.

On top of that, since we’ve been playing catch-up for the last two weeks, a veritable pile of new music landed on top of us as well. And so I find myself opening my great maw wide in order to capture as much of it as possible — as well as using this as an opportunity to share some stuff that flew right past us long before we had MDF as an excuse for being terrible people.

Contained in this here news roundup is a veritable smorgasboard of new music, some of which came to us by the bands themselves and other times was discovered whilst I was spinning in circles on the internet. Either way, there’s a ton of stuff what floated down the river here — only to be captured by my net/boat/if only there was some sort of metaphor or object I could compare my news capturing ability to… ah well, maybe next time. Let’s get on with it. Continue reading »

Jun 172016
 

Orphalis-The Birth of Infinity

 

Orphalis hit the death metal scene in Germany in 2010 and since then have released a debut EP (2011’s Watchmaker Analogy) and a debut album (2012’s Human Individual Metamorphosis). On August 12, the band will return with their second album, The Birth of Infinity, and we have for you the premiere of a lyric video for one of the new songs: “Encased In A Higher Intellect“.

So that you might prepare yourself for what you’re about to receive, we will disclose that Orphalis are highly adept at delivering a very stimulating beating. Continue reading »

Jun 172016
 

VIRUS-2400X2400

 

(We present this guest review of the new Virus album, written by Chrysostomos Tsaprailis, who also writes for Avopolis Music Network, Metal Invader, and for his own Industries Of Inferno blog.)

It’s really quite remarkable how a music genre, normally considered rather “off-limits” for a certain audience, can become accepted by it, if introductions are handled by a recognizable and trusted (by the particular audience) artist. In the case of experimental avant-garde rock, the Trojan horse in question, responsible to a large degree for its acceptance by the black metal audience, is one of the most congenial members of the Norwegian extreme music scene, namely Carl-Michael Eide, or Czral as far as his Virus persona is concerned.

He was certainly not the only one responsible for the embrace of unconventional (for the scene) music by a large part of the scene’s fans; remember that during the years around the millennium’s turn Norway teemed with experimentation. Still, Carl-Michael, firstly with the short-lived but ultra-influential Ved Buens Ende, and afterwards with Virus, managed, with an almost extraordinary casualness, to engraft the mind of a seemingly stiff audience with components that on a first level appeared incompatible with it. What is more, he managed that without losing any of the listeners’ respect, most probably due to his simultaneous participation in more traditional acts. Continue reading »

Jun 172016
 

Sister Iodine-photo by Ani Samperi
Photo cred: Ani Samperi

(Our guest writer Ani Samperi is a music journalist based out of Berlin. Here, she dives into ravenous pits of noise in an attempt to map out the layers of controlled chaos.)

French experimental noise rock band Sister Iodine, formed by Lionel Fernandez, Erik Minkkinen, and Nicolas Mazet in 1992, is an assault on the rational mind that simultaneously evokes feelings and images of health and sickness. Scratching itself out of a translucent skin defining the bounds between raw atonal no-wave and scathing noise music, it is a spectral beast that quietly dominates its audience with terminally latent portents of imminent madness.

The black-washed walls of Urban Spree’s main showroom were [dis]graced with their presence on Saturday, May 14th. Juxtaposing prenatal red lighting interrupted by white flashes of light, the live experience is a familiar, primordial feeling laced with guttural screams, at once indicating a clawing desperation to remain inside the visceral bounds of embryonic safety vs. the harrowing inevitability of pain and confusion that comes from exposure. Continue reading »

Jun 172016
 

Gigan logo

 

(In this June edition of The Synn Report, Andy reviews the discography of Gigan.)

Recommended for fans of: Gorguts, Cephalic Carnage, Wormed

I try my best to keep things (relatively) fresh and exciting here at The Synn Report, and a big part of that is keeping things varied and different between editions. As such we’re taking a leap away from the monolithic fields of Post-Metal we explored with last month’s offering and jetting off into the bleed between dimensions in the company of Gigan and their mind-melting, brain-bending brand of calculated Tech-Death chaos.

Hailing from Chicago (by way, originally, of Tampa, Florida… something which potentially explains the undercurrent of semi-lucid lunacy present on every song), the three-piece clearly take a warped sense of pride in pushing Tech-Death into some truly weird and wonderful places, anchored by the unholy talents of multi-instrumental main-man Eric Hersemann, who not only handles 99% of the guitar-work across the band’s three albums, but also the bass, synths, theremin, and xylophone(!) to boot.

So, if you’re in a particularly masochistic mood, and fancy having your brain reduced to a quivering mass of over-cooked and over-stimulated neurons, then by all means, please click on… Continue reading »

Jun 162016
 

Carnage Inc-Fury Incarnate

 

In a day at our site filled with premieres, we have one more left, and it comes from a band based in Mumbai, India, named Carnage Inc. The name of the song is “Defiled” and it comes from the band’s new EP, Fury Incarnate. To introduce what you’re about to hear, we’ll begin with some words from the band:

“We’ve been working on this material since last year. Each song was created with one riff followed by some intense jams and bouncing off ideas. If you love bands like Kreator, Exodus, Slayer, Metallica, you will really find our music reminding you a little of them, yet sounding quite different. You can say our sound is 50% Bay Area thrash, 25% Mumbai attitude, 20% rage, and 5% alcohol”.

Continue reading »

Jun 162016
 

Warm-The Human Exemplar-1

 

The day will come when Connecticut’s Warm are going to get tired of hearing this, if they haven’t already: Warm are not warm, or at least mostly they aren’t. In some ways they’re ice-cold, mostly they’re hot, but warm? That’s not the word I’d use for the genre-bending marvel of an album they’re going to release tomorrow: The Human Exemplar.

The band have already drawn comparisons to the older glories of Mastodon before they got radio-friendly, and there have been allusions to the likes of Baroness as well. But while there is merit in those comparisons, they don’t fully capture the head-spinning, spine-fracturing trip that lies ahead of you in this album. Continue reading »

Jun 162016
 

Thrawsunblat-Metachthonia

 

There’s a chance that Thrawsunblat will always live, at least in part, in the long shadow cast by the much-beloved Woods of Ypres — or perhaps will always be buoyed by that band’s legacy, depending on how you look at it. Apart from the presence of Woods‘ guitarist Joel Violette, Thrawsunblat also drink from the dark, crystalline wellsprings of melancholy that fed Woods of Ypres’ sublime creations. Yet from the beginning Thrawsunblat have also sought sustenance, and given spiritual sustenance to their listeners, through other musical traditions. The evolution of the band’s sound continues — and reaches a high-water mark — in their new album Metachthonia, which it’s our great pleasure to premiere for you today, one day in advance of its official release.

We are told that “Metachthonia” is an ancient Greek word that means “the age after that of the Earth,” which can be understood as a reference to today’s modern world. In taking that word as the title of this new concept album, Thrawsunblat signify an effort to express a yearning for elements of the natural world, both physical and spiritual, that have been shoved aside by the encroachments of technology and the ant-like scrabbling of human industry. And the result is a wild, beautiful, and inspiring album.

(Take a good look at the album cover — it provides significant clues to what lies within.) Continue reading »

Jun 162016
 

Insane Vesper-Layil

 

The song you’re about to hear burns with arcane energy. It’s so immediately transfixing, so dynamic in its progress, and so ingeniously conceived and powerfully performed that it should vault the name Insane Vesper high up on your radar screen.

The name of the song is “Of Serpent’s Embrace” and it comes from this French black metal band ‘s new album LayiL. This is the band’s second full-length and is set for release on July 1 by Art of Propaganda.

It’s rare that we resort to quoting from press releases in writing about the music we feature at this site, but in this instance the descriptions ring true and the wording is agreeably vivid and evocative: Continue reading »