THE SYNN REPORT, PART 59: SCARVE

 THE SYNN REPORT  7 Responses »
Jun 302015
 

Scarve – 2003

 

(In this new edition of The Synn Report, Andy Synn reviews the discography of Scarve.)

Recommended for fans of: Strapping Young Lad, Darkane, Gorod

 

Often tagged with the ever-so-damning “Modern Metal” moniker (shudder), French musical metallurgists Scarve – whose most recent line-up includes Darkane vocalist Lawrence Mackory, Soilwork guitarist Sylvain Coudret, and Extreme Metal’s resident VID (Very Important Drummer) Dirk Verbeuren – can be a hard-to-classify beast.

Existing somewhere in the irradiated wasteland between Death and Thrash, the strong hints of Meshuggah-esque futurism and Fear Factory-style mechanised rhythms have, at varying stages of their career, seen the group lumbered with awkward references to “Cyber-Metal” and “Industrial Death Metal”, neither of which seem to accurately capture the band’s overall sound and style.

Still, we’re not here to bandy genre terms and stylistic tags, we’re here to experience some damn good Metal! So, without further ado, click onwards and feast your ears on the blisteringly technical, ferociously aggressive, and enigmatically progressive Cyber-Metal assault of Scarve…

Dammit, I said it didn’t I? Continue reading »

MEGIDDO: “THE HOLOCAUST MESSIAH”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Jun 292015
 

 

For those of you who happened to come across a review I wrote of the new album by Toronto’s Megiddo in mid-June, I have to apologize — because I later discovered that what I wrote about The Holocaust Messiah was not based on the complete version of the album. I based it instead on what was then available for streaming on Bandcamp, and that stream did not include the Intro and Outro tracks, nor did it include the title song — which may be the strongest track on the album. After making that discovery, I ordered the CD version of the album from Barbarian Wrath, and now I’ve heard it as it was meant to be heard, in its entirety. So, allow me to begin again….

Roughly 13 years have passed since Megiddo last put out an album, and aside from a trio of splits in 2003, I don’t think there’s been any new music from the band at all since then — until Barbarian Wrath released The Holocaust Messiah this month. It consists of seven tracks, plus an intro and outro — and it’s a gem. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 75: SLAVE HOUSE, KADAVRIK, CHURCH, MORBID PANZER

 MISCELLANY  4 Responses »
Jun 292015
 

 

Welcome to the glorious 75th edition of MISCELLANY, the highly irregular series in which I go exploring into the unknown. For those new to these excursions, I pick bands whose music I’ve never heard before, I try to listen to not more than one recent song per band (though sometimes I cheat and listen to more), I scribble my immediate impressions, and then I stream the music so you can judge for yourselves. (I cheated a lot on my one-song rule today.)

Usually, I make the MISCELLANY selections in a highly random fashion, not knowing whether I’ll like the sounds or not. Today, however, the last three of the four picks were recommended by friends who know something about what I like, so that increased the odds of success. But I still didn’t know exactly what was coming…

SLAVE HOUSE

I’ve already forgotten when or exactly where I noticed the 2014 demo by this band from Columbus, Ohio.  I’m pretty sure someone posted about it on Facebook, and I kept the link for future reference. Yesterday I decided to check out the music, which CVLT Nation put up on Soundcloud last summer. Continue reading »

SIFTING FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE: IN DEFILADE, KARLAHAN, AERNUS, ORGAN DEALER

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jun 292015
 

 

(DGR prepared this review of new songs and albums from four bands.)

These Sifting articles are ones that I like to hammer out from time to time, as I have a habit of discovering so much new music in an effort to feed the NCS readers’ gullets that I absolutely cannot cover it all, much less dedicate a huge review to each discovery. However, I also feel like I’m doing the bands wrong by simply going, “I’ll try to get around to it”, because a lot of these groups are quality musicians who deserve a chance to get out there. So, Sifting was born — a series of articles in which I dig through the various recent collections of music I’ve accumulated and try to get some shorter summaries up to share out with people.

Of course, as I am prone to do, I still get stupidly wordy, and some of these summaries are longer than the reviews we run on this site — but still, its all about the thought, right? So sit down with me, as we travel the world and I blather on with more long-winded phrases and stupid similes to share with you about quite a few different bands, bouncing across the US and then over to Europe and back again.

In-Defilade

Fun fact: I have never for a moment toyed with the idea of joining the military — but were I ever drafted or forced into it, the one thing that I could see myself doing would be trying to join a drum corps. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: JUST BEFORE DAWN, AMIENSUS, LYCHGATE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 292015
 

 

I was outside all day yesterday, untethered from my computer, and astonishingly did not spontaneously combust as do most vampires exposed to the sun. I had some plans for today’s first post that I intended to execute this morning, but those plans did go up in a burst of flames when I awoke to discover three new songs by three favorite bands that premiered over the last 24 hours. Here they are:

JUST BEFORE DAWN

Sweden’s Just Before Dawn, who have been a fixture at our site since the band’s first release, have just delivered a new single named “Graves Without Crosses“. For this new song, JBD mastermind Anders Biazzi (guitars, bass) is joined by vocalist Jonny Petterson (Wombbath, Ashcloud, Skineater, Syn:drom) — who also mixed and mastered the track — and drummer Fredrijk Van Daaten (Ashcloud), with a finishing guitar solo contributed by Håkan Stuvemark (Wombbath, Skineater). As expressed in Jonny Petterson’s lyrics, the song is dedicated to the heroes of war — “not the ones mentioned in the history books”, but

“the forgotten souls that fight side by side in a rain of fire, the ones to defy a hail of bullets, to give their life, not for the cause or the country, but for their brothers in arms!!” Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: NEGATIVE MANTRA — “A HYMN TO DISAPPOINTMENT”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  15 Responses »
Jun 282015
 

 

Negative Mantra is a new band, but its members are well known from other projects over a period of many years. When I saw those names — as well as the name they chose for their band — I had a high level of confidence that their just-released debut EP A Hymn To Disappointment would be heavy, grim, and hard to forget. I wasn’t wrong.

Here’s the line-up:

John Porada (Terminate, ex-Nachtmystium) – Vocals, guitar, bass
Jeff Wilson (Abigail Williams, Wolvhammer, Chrome Waves) – Guitar
Charlie Fell (Abigail Williams, Cobalt, ex-Lord Mantis) – Drums

The EP emerged last week on Bandcamp without any fanfare. No press release, no advance dribbling out of teasers or song excerpts. One day it wasn’t there, the next day it was. I discovered it only because I noticed brief Facebook posts about it by a couple of people in the band, mentioned almost in passing. But word of this release needs to be spread around, because it’s very good.
Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2014’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 27): FALLS OF RAUROS, SAOR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2014  6 Responses »
Jun 272015
 

 

In case you missed the announcement last week, I’ve resumed the roll-out of our list of last year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs — a scant five months (ugh) after the last installment in the series. If perchance you don’t know what this list is about, you can find an explanation here.

Today’s two additions to the list are a bit out of the ordinary, because both songs are long. There’s a lot to be said for long-form music, but I would guess that “infectious” isn’t a word that typically springs to mind. In the case of these two songs, however, I think it fits.

FALLS OF RAUROS

Very tough choice, this one. Not the choice to include something from this band’s album Believe In No Coming Shore — that was a given (though the songs on the band’s 2014 split with Panopticon were also strong contenders) — but which song? That was the hard decision. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST 2016: FIRST BANDS ANNOUNCED

 Metal News  20 Responses »
Jun 272015
 

 

Yesterday the organizers of Maryland Deathfest announced the first group of bands for the 2016 edition of North America’s best metal festival. They also released 350 “early bird” passes for on-line sale — which sold out in approximately 15 seconds. Your humble editor wasn’t quick enough on the draw to get one of those. But more tickets will be released for sale after MDF finishes announcing the bands for next year’s event. For now, let’s talk about the first group of 30 bands revealed yesterday.

There’s a lot to talk about.

About three weeks ago, NCS contributor KevinP rolled out his own wishlist for MDF XIV (here), and that led lots of readers to roll out their own lists in the Comments. There were tons of good bands in those lists, and many people got at least some of their wishes granted yesterday. KevinP, for example, is a happy camper because his Number One pick — Hail of Bullets — were included in yesterday’s announcement. On the other hand, none of the rest of his wishlist of 10 bands was included. But of course there’s still time. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AGAINST EVIL — “BULLETPROOF”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 262015
 

 

Against Evil hail from Visakhapatnam in India, and their debut album Fatal Assault is slated for release by Transcending Obscurity Distribution on July 20. The band previously unleashed the album’s last track “War Hero”, which led to their deal with Transcending Obscurity, and now that these plans are in place we give you the album’s penultimate song, “Bulletproof”.

In an era when every band must be obsessively slotted into the proper micro-genre, perhaps it’s best in this case just to call the music “heavy metal”. It’s got grooves, it’s got melodic hooks that prove to be sharp and memorable, it’s got a mix of soulful clean vocals and nasty jagged growls, and it comes with slick dual-guitar harmonies and an awfully tasty solo. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEFECT DESIGNER — “THE TERRIBLE”

 Premieres  8 Responses »
Jun 262015
 

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a new song by Defect Designer.)

It seems like a long time since Defect Designer last appeared on our site in 2013 courtesy of Islander posting about them. Now in 2015, this multi-national death metal supergroup are set to release a scathing hellstorm of twisted fury on their soon-to-be-released record, Ageing Accelerator.

If you haven’t heard of these guys yet, you really need to. They are in my estimation one of the finest modern death metal acts, combining far too many influences to count into a formula that generates numerous deadly riffs alongside numerous unique, non-repeated segments per song. Continue reading »

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