KRONOS: “ARISEN NEW ERA”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jun 252015
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by those French titans in Kronos.)

Since Unique Leader has come into prominence over the last few years, the label has been the overseer of a tech-death explosion, one that has seen them dredging up all kinds of different groups from the rubble and ash piles of local scenes while at the same time ensuring that in the wake of their roster of bands there would be absolutely no notes left for anyone else to play on guitar.

As something of a genre-label, Unique Leader have acquired a sound — the type of noise where you can see their logo on a group’s album and more often than not usually guess what they will sound like. Not to knock them, of course, as the label has been the savior of the Nor-Cal death metal scene up here, picking up some of the most highly technical and underrated bands and at least giving them a shot after they’ve been scrapping it out for years. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2014’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE ROLL-OUT RESUMES (TOMORROW)

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2014  22 Responses »
Jun 242015
 

 

Some of you will remember that late last fall we actually began our annual roll-out of the list of “Most Infectious” extreme metal songs released during the year that was drawing to a close. Some of you will also remember that the roll-out just sort of… stopped… without even a polite interval of the gas gauge showing “Empty” or coasting for the last dozen yards before the machine just turned into a giant, half-formed paperweight.

There was a reason for this (sort of): I was rudely interrupted by a protracted grind at my fucking day job, and by the time life returned to a semblance of normalcy, so much time had passed that I just gave up on finishing the list. I guess I needed a tardiness support group. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RAISING THE VEIL — “QUBIT COMPUTED MULTIVERSE”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jun 242015
 

 

In the wake of a successful crowd-funding campaign this spring, the multinational group Raising the Veil are preparing for the release of their debut album, Bosonic Quantum Phenomena, and today we’ve got for you the premiere of the album’s first single, “Qubit Computed Multiverse“.

The new album marks the band’s second release overall, following their 2012 EP Yucatanimvs. In its current configuration, the band includes Austrian vocalist George Wilfinger (Monument of Misanthropy, Disfigured Divinity, ex-Miasma), Canadian guitarist Daniel McLellan and bass-player Denis Landry, and Necrophagist drummer Romain Goulon. Together, they’ve created some brain-scrambling, pulse-pounding, progressive-minded tech-death capable of re-wiring your neurons and firing their synapses at will. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SATANARCHIST / RESIGNED TO FATE — A SPLIT

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 242015
 

 

The split we’re premiering today is an unusual one. One of the bands is alive and kicking (like a mule), one is defunct. One is as raw, raucous, and chaotic as you could want, and the other has a well-produced sound, with a lot of smartly crafted dynamics and stick-in-your-head melodies. And the split is a DIY effort that came to us out of nowhere.

But hang on to your seats, because if you like metal with megawatt energy that will give you an adrenaline-inducing rocket ride, plus enough interesting contrasts to keep you rooted in place, this thing is going to grab you hard from beginning to end.

Satanarchist, from Portland, Oregon, is the first of these two bands, and this split marks their recording debut. The second band, once based in Denton, Texas, is Resigned To Fate. They have a few things in common, including the fact that Satanarchist’s guitarist John was once a member of Resigned To Fate, plus the incorporation of thrash riffs in the melting pot of their respective sounds. But it’s still best to take them one at a time. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BARÚS — “BARÚS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  8 Responses »
Jun 242015
 

 

(Andy Synn wrote this review of the debut EP by a French band named Barús.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I need you to stop whatever you’re doing and listen to this. This deserves your complete attention. All of it. There will be no exceptions.

Are you listening yet? Good.

Welding the mutated megaton guitar heft of Meshuggah at their slowest and heaviest to a heaving undercurrent of soul-crushing Doom and touches of the sort of hypnotic, almost ritualistic, atmosphere that would make your average occult-obsessed Black Metal band turn green(er) with envy, French Death Metal types Barús have managed to create something with their debut EP that simultaneously embraces and defies convention – something utterly dense and uncompromising, yet surprisingly progressive and introspective in nature. Continue reading »

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER: “VLAD, SON OF THE DRAGON”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  31 Responses »
Jun 242015
 

 

Under normal circumstances, I would have included this song in a round-up of other new songs, but I decided to give this one stand-alone attention because the trajectory of The Black Dahlia Murder has been such an interesting one to watch. For an extreme metal band, they are tremendously popular, they have a lot of musical talent in their ranks, and they’ve got a larger-than-life, charismatic frontman. But in certain quarters of metal fandom, they’ve sort of been permanently stuck with a metalcore or deathcore label despite the evolution of their sound since 2005’s Miasma and Trevor Strnad’s self-professed “long, intimate love affair with death metal”.  And if you haven’t been paying attention, their sound clearly has evolved, and the evolution has clearly been purposeful.

I’m one of those people who wasn’t a big fan in the band’s early days, even as their visibility and popularity skyrocketed, but have been warming up to them as time has passed (for example, I enjoyed Everblack more than any of their previous releases). And so I’ve been curious about what their new album Abysmal would sound like, especially after seeing the fantastic cover art, which seems to scream “magnified brutality inside!”.

This morning one of the new songs popped up on YouTube, apparently a leak, and so it probably won’t be around for long (though today is the day previously appointed for release of the first single and the launch of album pre-orders). Its name is “Vlad, Son of the Dragon“. Continue reading »

CUT UP: “FORENSIC NIGHTMARES”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Jun 232015
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Cut Up.)

There are a few death metal bands that just instantly turn me into a foaming-at-the-mouth violent super-brute — Hail of Bullets, Vader, and Bloodbath. Those bands are the epitome of no-bullshit consistently killer riffs, consistently savage speed, consistently relentless songwriting, and consistently skeleton-crushing grooves. Join Cut Up to that group.

Cut Up are a band who have a lot of pedigree due to the backgrounds of the members, and it shows. Forensic Nightmares is the most perfect death metal album I’ve heard this year, and it too turns me into a foaming-at-the-mouth violent super-brute at heart when I listen to it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MALIGN, BROKEN FLESH, NECHOCHWEN, CREEPING

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  24 Responses »
Jun 232015
 

 

Because I only write about metal that makes me enthusiastic, these round-ups of new music necessarily reflect my own idiosyncrasies. Fortunately, I suppose, I get enthusiastic about lots of different styles of metal (though I vehemently deny the accusation that I like everything I hear). And so it’s true again today that what you’re about to hear ranges far and wide across the metal landscape. Still, to ensure further diversity of viewpoints, you’ll also find a recommendation from Grant Skelton in addition to my own.

MALIGN

Here are some questions for you:  Do you enjoy writhing black metal extremity, with riffs that swarm with reptilian menace and hammer powerfully at the gates of doom? Does your pulse quicken at the sound of a drummer who rocks out as well as he blasts with mechanistic precision? Do you relish bestial growls that come straight for your throat with teeth bared? Do you search for black metal songs that get stuck in your head as well as generating an atmosphere of infernal menace, befitting the rising of a vengeful sun that emanates death? Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PREMARONE

 Interviews  1 Response »
Jun 232015
 

 

(Comrade Aleks brings us this interview (with music) of the Italian doom band Premarone.)

Sometimes I start to think that I’m the best friend of Italian doom bands! Though sometimes I think the same about Russian, French, or Peruvian bands – depends on different periods. As some of our readers know – the Italian doom scene has deep roots in retro psychedelic rock and often has a lot of common elements with old-fashioned horror movies. It’s a kind of trademark, but it’s not a rule. I like to find exceptions to rules as well as confirmations when they are cool ones.

It’s hard to describe what Premarone is… They have a pretty original opinion on the questions about how doom music should sound. They have these doom riffs and some old-school arrangements with all their tastiness, and yet at the same time they practice a punk approach to it and don’t limit themselves in their experimentations. And Premarone released their first full-length Obscuris Vera Involvens in January 2015. It’s worth a listen, and that’s why we’ve done this interview with Alessandro Lugano (drums) and other seigniors of Premarone’s collective mind. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AMIENSUS — “ONE IN SPIRIT” (AND A TOUR UPDATE)

 Premieres  13 Responses »
Jun 232015
 

 

In the wake of Amiensus‘ excellent 2013 debut album Restoration, their split that same year with Oak Pantheon entitled Gathering, and their cover of Forefather’s “Wolfhead’s Tree” last fall, the band’s new album Ascension has become one of our most highly anticipated of 2015.  In May we had the pleasure of bringing you the premiere of the album’s first single (“What Worlds Create”) and today we bring you a second one: “One In Spirit” — and an update about the band’s forthcoming tour.

“One In Spirit” displays the band’s talent for uniting sublime melodies with hammering riffs and rhythms that get the blood pumping fast and hard. The pairing of clean, soaring vocals and harsh growls symbolizes that joinder of beauty and the beast, as does the integration of an acoustic interlude side-by-side with a charging gallop of jolting riffs and driving percussion, and the contrast of a mesmerizing guitar solo gliding over heavy, booming bass notes. Continue reading »

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