SEEN AND HEARD: SÓLSTAFIR , DAWNBRINGER, DARK FORTRESS, UNCLE ACID & THE DEADBEATS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 202014
 

Photo by Guðný Lára Thorarensen and Guðmundur Óli Pálmason

Here’s a quartet of things I saw and heard over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth your time. I could have sub-titled this “The Exception to the Rule Round-Up”, because the vocals are almost all of the clean variety.

SÓLSTAFIR

I’ve written about every advance track that has appeared from Sólstafir’s new album Ótta, which will be released by Season of Mist on August 29 in Europe and September 2 in North America. So I guess it stands to reason that I’m going to write about the full-album stream that premiered yesterday at Noisey.

I love the album, but I’m not sure were going to review it. We didn’t get our promo copy of the album from the label until less than 24 hours before the stream went up (and only about 10 days before the European release date), and I do sometimes wonder what the point is of writing a review when everyone can hear the album for themselves, especially when there are so many other albums whose music is less accessible that are also worth praising. There’s always a point to bringing music to the attention of people who might not be aware of it, but anyone who regularly visits our site couldn’t possibly remain unaware Ótta.

Anyway, whether we write more about the album or not, you really should go listen to it. Among the previously unreleased songs, “Non” in particular has been getting repeated spins among our staff. The goddamn riff at the end is just glorious. Go here — you’ll be glad you did: Continue reading »

NOVEMBERS DOOM: “BLED WHITE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Aug 202014
 

 

(In this post DGR reviews the new album by Novembers Doom.)

Chicago-based Novembers Doom are a band of many, many albums over the span of a twenty-year career, and many musicians if you want to be funny,. They’re also a band of many descriptors, hailed as a variety of things over the years — a death metal group, a doom metal band, a gothic-doom metal band — and often incredibly hard to pin down. Some even go so far as to call them America’s answer to Opeth… which I’ve seen in more than one review.

With such a long and storied career the band have pretty much earned the right to be whatever the fuck they want at any given moment, but they’ve always stuck to a pretty strong foundation comprised of doom with a heavy gothic influence a la My Dying Bride, a death metal band, and a mournful, clean-sung group that absolutely thrives on despair.

It’s a bastard offspring of differing genres, but ones so closely related that Novembers Doom figured out not only how to combine them but also how to jam them together so well that nobody really veers close to their style. Bled White, with its spare cover art, is only the group’s latest chapter in a very large book at this point. It sees the band sounding as strong as they’ve ever been, and fully confident.

Some of the best and most miserable work they’ve have ever kicked out lies within the album’s hour-and-eight-minute run time — establishing it as a worthy successor to the band’s previous records and also providing an excellent starting point for people who’ve long heard the name but have never jumped in before. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FAIL TO DECAY — “ALL SEEING EYE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 192014
 

 

We don’t write much about deathcore at this site, which may be why we’re not exactly a “go to” location for bands in that space who are interested in getting some increased exposure for their music. But Fail To Decay from Rochester, Minnesota, happen to include James Benson of Amiensus in their ranks, and that’s a band we’ve written about more than once in glowing terms. So when he asked us to check out Fail To Decay’s new music video, that got our attention — and now we’re bringing the video to you as well.

It was directed, filmed, and edited by Rico Roman Productions (The Human Abstract, Born of Osiris), and it’s for a song named “All Seeing Eye” off Fail To Decay’s 2014 EP, The Black Book., which was mixed and mastered by another favorite of this site, Roman “Arsafes” Iskorostenskiy (Kartikeya, Arsafes). Continue reading »

AMORPHIS DEATHMATCH Round 5: “AM UNIVERSUM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 192014
 

 

Editor’s Note:  Have you heard the news? Have you heard that Amorphis will be playing Tales From the Thousand Lakes (1994) in its entirety at Maryland Deathfest XIII next year? Our old pal Trollfiend heard the news and seemed pretty excited about it, especially since, if memory serves, it was the last Amorphis album he liked (or at least part of it).

I couldn’t leave him in a state of unmitigated excitement, what with his high blood pressure and all, so I reminded him that he had never finished his no-holds-barred cage match with the discography of Amorphis, the one he started (here) way back in December 2011. Apparently, Trollfiend is vulnerable to guilt-tripping, and so here — more than two years after he engaged in “no rules” combat with Tuonela — we bring you Round 5. This promises to be gory…

********

It has been more than two years since I set foot in the arena.

I have forgotten many things, but the brutal reality of my last battle against the hordes of Amorphis still cuts deep into my soul. I wander the sands, once watered with fresh blood. I am Alone.

I stand at the spot where the assassin Tuonela fell, her neck broken by my own hands. I remember then, as I do now, the horror that I felt; that I could be so callous, cold, unfeeling. That I could discard my oath so readily. I had sworn to serve, and had felt betrayed, but her words haunted me still.

“It is you who are the betrayer.”

Nothing makes sense to me anymore. The harsh cries of circling vultures sound like wails through a bent metal tube, perhaps an alto sax. They grate on my nerves like her accusal. I was the victor then, but now? She has become the Goddess at whose feet I weep, and I am but a Sad Man.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EMETH — “AETHYR”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Aug 192014
 

 

The Belgium death cult Emeth were the subjects of Andy Synn’s 18th SYNN REPORT for NCS, in a series that’s now approaching its 50th edition. Back then, in August 2011, the band had produced three albums of striking savagery mixed with seismically shifting tempos, technically immaculate instrumental work, and incisive hooks. Now Emeth are on the verge of releasing their fourth album through their new label, Xtreem Music, which has proven to have a reliable eye for brutality that’s a cut above the ordinary.

The band’s new album is entitled Aethyr and it’s expected to hit the streets in September of this year, with pre-orders coming soon. Given the passage of six long years since the band’s last full-length (Telesis), one might well wonder whether time has pacified Emeth’s ferocity or dulled the edge of their blades. Well, wonder no more, because today we’re bringing you the premiere of the new album’s title track, and it should banish all fears. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRIEG — “RETURN FIRE” (AND A REVIEW OF “TRANSIENT”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Aug 192014
 

 

There’s a song premiere at the end of this post. It’s a really good song. Those of you who are squeezed for time or afflicted with attention deficit disorder, I won’t blame you if you jump to the bottom and press Play. But I’m going to have my say about the whole album, because Transient is one of the most interesting I’ve heard in 2014. It might even be the best album Krieg has yet produced in a career that’s coming up on two decades. And if you think that any one song on this album will faithfully represent all the rest, even the one we’re premiering, you might want to read on.

Increasing age is a double-edged sword for all of us, and it’s a particularly unpredictable blade for musicians, one that’s just as liable to cause self-inflicted wounds as to carve new trails through the underbrush. On the one hand, skills can improve and the accumulation of life experiences can add maturity and new depth to an artist’s creativity. But goddamn, it can also make you boring, or lazy, or both. Some bands are content to tread water, some of them try to force-feed a fire that died out long ago, and the sparks sputter instead of blaze. Transient is about the furthest thing you could imagine from that.

Neill Jameson (aka Imperial), the man behind Krieg, cemented his place in the black metal underground a long time ago. He’s older now. By the sounds of Transient, he might not be any happier, but he sure as hell isn’t treading water. What he’s done instead is to feed the smoldering fires of the black metal vehemence he has tended so well with an array of new and different fuels, producing flames of different colors, though the overarching emotional hue of the album as a whole is still mostly bleak, blasted, and broken. Continue reading »

THE STRIKE OF MIDNIGHT: A REVIEW AND FULL-ALBUM STREAM OF “NO MERCY FOR MAYHEM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Aug 182014
 

 

Fortune (or Satan) has smiled on us, because today we have been chosen to deliver unto you a stream of the new album by Midnight, from beginning to end, from “Penetratal Curse” to “Aggressive Crucifixion”, and beyond. And we introduce you to No Mercy For Mayhem with this review of the album by our brother BadWolf:

 

Jamie “Athenar” Walters spent a long time recording demos, 7-inches, and splits as Midnight before he released his debut album, much like many other solo black metal musicians in America. But that long gestation period, I’m afraid, is where the similarities end. Midnight is nothing like Krieg, Xasthur, or Weakling. Bedroom black metal? More like satanic sex dungeon metal-n-roll. The only thing atmospheric about Midnight is the thin film of grindhouse sleaze that permeates its propulsive stew of old-school black metal and cock rock.

Further far afield from midwest black metal, Midnight has a distinct look and aesthetic. With painted cover art featuring hooded executioners and scantily clad women, the band has a sense of style, all wrapped up in violence, delinquency, and BDSM naughtiness. For a pretty anonymous, gender-indifferent genre, Midnight deals with sexual subjects, while sporting a strong, theatrical sense—something that used to be a big part of black metal until everyone but Immortal forgot about it. Live, Midnight comes across like a crust-punk KISS, albeit with hoods instead of platform shoes (an upgrade, if you ask me).

Walters’s 2011 debut, Satanic Royalty, wound up being one of my favorite albums of that year—too bad I didn’t get a chance to hear it until 2012. That record mixed Venom-and-Motörhead-isms with arena-ready hooks. For the past two years, I’ve been frothing at the mouth to get a taste of its followup, and the Complete and Total Hell compilation album (reviewed here), though incredible, just did not scratch the itch. Seeing Midnight’s energetic performance at Maryland Deathfest 2013 only made the wait more unbearable. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: WEED PRIEST — “WORSHIP”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 182014
 

(In this post DGR reviews the 2014 EP by Ireland’s Weed Priest.)

Let’s sit down for a moment and have a quick heart to heart chat. I’m not the most worldly when it comes to heavy metal, but if you name your band Weed Priest, you can really only be one genre right? A name like that has to point to the stoner doom spectrum of things. Especially when it comes paired with artwork and a logo like what you see above (my goodness I like that artwork). So, while Galway, Ireland-based band Weed Priest may never be accused of burying the lead, you could definitely say that the group have the image side of things pinned down to a T.

Their newest release, the EP Worship, released August 1st, has a lot to live up to then — because a group who have so finely honed their image, down to the point where each member now refers to himself as “Brother _____” in their line-up listings, had better be good on the music side of things. Otherwise, it’s all wasted potential. Fortunately, Weed Priest do live up to their outward appearances and public personae about the best that anyone could have hoped for.

Worship is a retro-as-hell sounding disc, as if it were crafted as a worship ritual for the early seeds of doom, the occult, and stoner rock that were planted in the early 70’s. It sounds like it was recorded after a massive Sabbath binge, and it stands as an all-too-brief preview of what could be a really good run from a band with only two other releases to their name, if they stay on the course where Worship is pointing. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST ANNOUNCES THE THIRD AND FINAL ROUND OF BANDS CONFIRMED FOR MDF XIII

 Metal News  9 Responses »
Aug 182014
 

Minutes ago the organizers of Maryland Deathfest XIII announced the third and final round of confirmed bands for next year’s event (whose names have now been added to the flyer you see above). Without further ado, here’s the list, as copied from MDF’s Facebook page:

ADVERSARIAL (Canada)
AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED – First ever live performance!
AMORPHIS (Finland) – Playing the ‘Tales from the Thousand Lakes’ album in its entirety. Exclusive US appearance!
ANTIGAMA (Poland)
ARTIFICIAL BRAIN
BACKSLIDER
BEVAR SEA (India)
BLOODBATH (Sweden) – First time in the US and first live performance in 5 years! Exclusive US appearance!
CEPHALIC CARNAGE – Playing songs from the first 3 albums!
CHAINSAW TO THE FACE
CIANIDE
CIBORIUM
COKE BUST
CONAN (UK) – Exclusive US appearance!
DEVOURMENT Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PHOBOCOSM — “KNIVES IN THE SENATE HOUSE”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Aug 182014
 

 

Last spring I discovered the existence of a Montréal death metal cult named Phobocosm, who had just recently signed with Dark Descent for the release of their debut album, Deprived. In the spring, one song had been posted for streaming. Its name is “Solipsist”,  and it’s a monster. The dreadful chiming chords that begin the song are like the bells that herald the final doom, and the rest of the song provides a reasonable approximation of that world-ending event. Today we’re lucky to bring you the premiere of a second track from Deprived. This new one is named “Knives In the Senate House”. It, too, is a monster.

The music creates an atmosphere of choking, poisonous miasma with bleak, ripping riffs that grind and vibrate as if emulating the super-heated process of radioactive decay. Huge bass and drum hammers punctuate the storming onslaught with concrete-splitting force, and a sinuous melody slithers through the toxic storm, giving the music character as well as a potent aura of dread and imminent destruction. The drum performance throughout the song is both acrobatic and brutally effective, and the deep, gargantuan vocals enhance the music’s message of utter catastrophe.

Phobocosm are practicing a very dark art, one that displays mastery in the creation of both oppressive atmospherics and sensations of physically compulsive power. Like “Solipsist”, “Knives In the Senate House” heralds the advent of an album that will be a must-listen experience by all true acolytes of lethal death rituals. Continue reading »

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