SEEN AND HEARD: DARK FORTRESS, NE OBLIVISCARIS, BASTARD FEAST, THOSE WHO BRING THE TORTURE, GORGASM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jun 262014
 

Yesterday was an eventful one in the realms of metal, with enticing new-album announcements and new songs. I’ve collected a few of the most interesting items here. I stayed up late at a metal show last night and am now rushing to get my ass out of the house and onward to my fucking day job, so I’m presenting the new songs without my usual commentary (which I may add later).

DARK FORTRESS

More than four years have passed since Germany’s Dark Fortress released the fantastic Ylem. Finally, after a few postponements, a new album is ready. Entitled Venereal Dawn, it’s scheduled for release by Century Media on September 2 in North America (and September 1 everywhere else) and yesterday its cover art was revealed. The cover is a painting by a Netherlands-based artist named Nespress Danielewski and it appears he has created other art for the album as well. I really, really like this cover and am interested to see what else he’s done for Venereal Dawn.

Of course, I’m really interested in the music, too. The press release says: “Expect epic song structures, mighty sonic cathedrals, virulent and sinister magic and lots of unexpected twists and turns as the bands drags you screaming and headbanging through the abysmal roller coaster of their universe once more.” Oh yes…

https://www.facebook.com/officialdarkfortress Continue reading »

INANIMATE EXISTENCE: “A NEVER-ENDING CYCLE OF ATONEMENT”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 262014
 

(Austin Weber reviews the new second album by Inanimate Existence.)

With their first record, 2012’s Liberation Through Hearing, Santa Cruz-based Inanimate Existence showed themselves to be much more than a technically competent brutal death metal act. A full half of the album was an experimental instrumental affair of great diversity. As a result, the evolution of their sound present on their sophomore follow-up, A Never-Ending Cycle Of Atonement, is not completely surprising. Yet it’s still stunning that they’ve managed to merge their progressive and experimental side with a series of ferociously cutthroat, frenetic death metal songs.

It’s an eloquent feat that works far better than it sounds on paper. Even more, the whole experience is bound to a philosophically rich lyrical focus of cyclical failure, potential redemption, and the eventual return to start the process again.

A Never-Ending Cycle Of Atonement is a worthy sequel to their first album, similar but bolder, more extravagant, and still intent on further branching out from the confines of mere brutal death metal. There is a larger melodic focus this time as well — verging on the sound of both Decrepit Birth and Necrophagist at times. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRIEG — “WORTHLESS NOTHING”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Jun 252014
 

On July 15, Unholy Anarchy Records will release a four-song split by Krieg and Ramlord, and today we’re delighted to premiere one of Krieg’s two tracks, “Worthless Nothing” — a cover of a song from the 1993 LP The Greatest Invention by the seminal UK crust band Doom.

As I wrote in my recent review of this excellent split, Krieg’s decision to cover this particular song makes perfect sense in the context of this release. It’s a natural pairing with both Krieg’s other song, an original composition named “Mocking Dead Empires”, and the blackened crust-punk assaults mounted by Ramlord. “Worthless Nothing” drives hard and fast, propelled by a combination of virally infectious jumping riffs and doused in acid by one of the best voices in US black metal.

Krieg long ago cemented its place as one of the cornerstone bands of black metal in the U.S. After two decades in the trenches, Krieg has nothing left to prove — but the creative fires are obviously still burning hot and bright. Listening to Krieg turn back the clock to the spawning grounds of crust while putting the band’s own vicious stamp on the sound is proof of that, and it’s also an enticing tease for the Krieg full-length (Transient) that’s expected later this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXXXEKUTIONER — “MANIAC ASYLUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 252014
 

I hadn’t even made it to the last song on my advance copy of Fear the Priest before I was blasting an e-mail to the publicist for Exxxekutioner, begging for the chance to premiere a track from this debut EP. I got my wish, and now you’ll get a taste of what got me so pumped up about this six-song main-line of pure mosh fuel.

This group of four twenty-somethings from the vicinity of Manchester in the UK have only been together since the spring of last year, but you’d never guess that from the music they make. They have mature skills and old souls — and by that I mean a direct channel to the early spirit of bands like Venom, Sodom, and Destruction, delivering a brash and authentic blast of thrash, black, and speed metal like they’ve been doing it for decades.

The hell-ripping songs on Fear the Priest fly like a horde of bat-winged demons, the kind of speed you’d reach if you were on fire and the nearest water source was three blocks away. The riffs are to die for — super-charged with adrenaline and loaded with irresistible hooks — and the tumbling, rumbling drumwork and booming bass will get their hooks in you, too. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MARK KLOEPPEL (MISERY INDEX)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Jun 252014
 

(In this post we present BadWolf’s interview of Mark Kloeppel, frontman for Baltimore’s Misery Index, conducted live at Maryland Deathfest — with photos taken there by the talented Alyssa Lorenzon.)

One of the highlights of my trip to Maryland Deathfest was the opportunity to see Baltimore’s own Misery Index live twice in a single weekend. The No Clean Singing crew has a soft spot for relentless mixes of grindcore and death metal, and Misery Index are among the best bands in that vein at the moment—not only is their rhythmic attack, weighed down by bassist Jason Netherton (formerly of Dying Fetus) and drummer Adam Jarvis (also of Pig Destroyer), fierce in a way many of their peers are not, but their approach is also intellectual. The band has a strongly anarchist-liberal lyrical bent, which only adds to the vitriol and complexity of their music. It’s the kind of death metal that makes me want to revisit it over and over.

Mark Kloeppel joined the band in 2005, and plays guitar, as well as screams, on their finest run of albums. His vocals and melodic guitar lines dominate the band’s 2014 album, The Killing Gods, which made up much of their MDF set lists. It’s the most melodic album in the band’s discography, but Kloeppel himself seems less than harmonious. He sat down with me behind a tent in the blazing Baltimore sun to talk about the new album, parenting, and how, economically speaking, we all lose.

********

It seems like there wasn’t a lot of activity on the Misery Index front for a couple years there. I remember Heirs to Thievery came out when? 2010? Four years ago?

Yeah. In 2010, the touring cycle started with us going out with Dying Fetus and then picking up our new lead guitar player. We did some other stuff… We toured with Grave. We did a whole bunch of stuff. It’s kind of hard to remember everywhere we went. I know we went to Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and a lot of places in South America like Brazil and Colombia. We did a tour with Cannibal Corpse in the States. That was the last thing I think we did in the States before this.

 

Why the recording gap? You guys were on a pretty steady two years per album clip for almost a decade.

Yeah, and that sucks! It’s like when you first start a band. When you first start a band, you spend a good five years crafting your very first songs. You go play shows, and it’s awesome because you’ve spent so much time crafting good songs and you grow and stuff like that. Being a seasoned musician and not being able to dedicate the proper amount of time to make a quality record, you feel like you’re being robbed. 

We stuck to the tight schedule that was imposed upon us by the label. It was kind of necessary to build the band for Discordia, Traitors, and Heirs to Thievery. After that, we were done with that schedule. We didn’t want Misery Index to do that anymore. We just spent the time you’re supposed to spend writing a record. 

 Continue reading »

LISTEN TO A NEW BELPHEGOR SONG: “GASMASK TERROR”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 252014
 

Belphegor’s new album Conjuring the Dead is set for release by Nuclear Blast on August 5 in North America (August 8 in the EU/Brazil, August 11 in the UK and France). It was recorded at Mana Studios in Florida with Eric Rutan. Within the last hour the band debuted a lyric video for the album’s first track, “Gasmask Terror”.

You can watch it right here… Continue reading »

VINTERSORG: “NATURBÅL”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  1 Response »
Jun 252014
 

(Andy Synn wrote this review of the new album by Sweden’s Vintersorg.)

So it’s probably worth starting out this review by clearing something up. When Vintersorg (Andreas Hedlund and Mattias Marklund) announced that they were going to release an interlinked quartet of albums, each based on one of the four classical elements, I’m sure that a lot of you, like myself, initially expected each one to be quite different from the others, as befitting the divide between the elements themselves. Something akin to the way Thrice explored very different tonal and musical textures with The Alchemy Index I-IV, perhaps.

Well, we were wrong about that it seems. With the release of the first two albums, Jordpuls (“Pulse of the Earth”) and Orkan (“Hurricane”), which dealt with the elements of earth and air respectively, it became clear that the band’s core sound – a melding of archaic, folkish melody and blackened, progressive metal – remained enviably focussed and largely unchanged.

That’s not to say there weren’t differences between the two albums, of course. Jordpuls certainly possessed a certain earthy flavour and an ageless tone, while Orkan captured the flighty, intangible nature of the wind remarkably well with its ethereal song structures and skittering flutes. But, ultimately, neither was a major shift in style or sound for the band. And that’s ok. They weren’t meant to be.

Really, this whole experiment is more about filtering and refining the established Vintersorg sound in interesting, incremental ways, than it is about altering it wholesale. It’s about changing the little things, the small shifts in focus or delivery, adding a few deft touches and artful rearrangements here and there, all designed to re-envision the band through a different, elemental lens. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: A WOLVHAMMER-KRIEG SPLIT

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 242014
 

Two of my most highly anticipated 2014 albums are Crawling Into Black Sun by Wolvhammer (due for release by Profound Lore on July 8) and Transient by Krieg (coming from Candlelight Records in September). And today Broken Limbs Recordings has released a split by both of those bands that just provides more reasons to get stoked for the coming albums.

WOLVHAMMER

Wolvhammer’s contribution to the split is “Slaves To the Grime”, an alternate version of a track that will appear on Crawling Into Black Sun.

I’ve heard the album version, which is a standout song — a body-moving bulldozer of concrete-heavy riffs and vocals that are acid enough to etch glass, with other alternating segments that lumber into a sludgy, soul-sucking abyss and gallop like a hell-horse. The version on the split is, if anything, even more thoroughly pulverizing. The production gives it a thoroughly radioactive quality, and it’s shot through with bolts of squealing, squalling lead guitar, like that crazy part of your brain trying to get out of its prison. And man, when it hits those doomed, dragging segments, it falls like granite blocks dropped from a great height.

Truth be told, I like this version even more than the album track (and I’ve been a big fan of that one since the first listen) — completely crushing, but also infectious enough to warrant a call to the Center for Disease Control. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NEW SONGS FROM SÓLSTAFIR, PALLBEARER, AND EXORDIUM MORS

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 242014
 

Once again I waded through the fetid swamp of the interhole this morning in search of new things worth blabbing about. Once again, I found new riches in the muck. Here are three of them.

SÓLSTAFIR

If you think I’m ever going to get tired of pimping Sólstafir, think again. My pimping energies are endless. The latest excuse for writing about them is today’s premiere of yet another new song from their next album, Ótta, which will be released by Season of Mist on August 29 in Europe and September 2 in North America.

The new song is named “Lágnætti”. From the slow piano chords, the sound of strings, and Adi Tryggvason’s plaintive vocals at the beginning, the song builds in intensity with a driving beat and riffs that moan and claw at the sky. Tryggvason’s voice turns searing, but the haunting melody persists through to the end, the piano and the distorted guitar chords forming a duet that sinks it home. Wonderful.

To stream “Lágnætti”, go to this place (and pre-order the album here, or you and I will be having some words):

http://www.revolvermag.com/news/solstafir-premiere-new-song-lagnaetti.html

Find Sólstafir on Facebook here. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ELLIOTT’S KEEP — “TALES OF GRIEF IN DAYS OF HELL”

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Jun 242014
 

(Our doom-addicted Russian contributor Comrade Aleks returns with another interview — and this time he talks with guitarist Jonathan Bates from the critically praised Dallas band Elliott’s Keep. We’ve got music from the band in here, too)

Elliott’s Keep is a strange example of an original and professional band who have stayed in the shadows despite all of their merits. This Dallas-based trio have worked in their own way, composing a tight and both epic and sinister mix of thrash, progressive, and doom metal since 2006. Their third work Nascentes Morimur was released in November 2013, and since then I have been immersed in this record, listening to it time after time. In the end, I found myself thinking that I needed to spread the word about Elliott’s Keep further, and these thoughts disturbed me until I finished this interview with Jonathan, the man with the black distorted guitar.

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Hail Jonathan! The third Elliott’s Keep album Nascentes Morimur was released in November 2013.  What has happened in your lives since then?

Greetings again, Aleksey!  Things have settled down a bit after the busy times associated with the release of the new record.  We played locally and have been starting to work on new songs.

 

Nascentes Morimur shows the band’s strongest sides and it took three years to write, record, and release it. Can you tell us the story of this release?

After releasing Sine Qua Non, we dealt with various life issues, including a significant vocal paresis for Ken that sidelined him in that aspect for nearly six months.  We also took time to build our own practice studio, which is now a convenient and efficient asset.  As we composed and polished the songs for Nascentes Morimur, the months did turn into years and, before we knew it, three years had passed.  As with each of our albums, we recorded with J.T. Longoria at Nomad Studio in Dallas.  That was a four-month process, through tracking, mixing, and mastering.  Once that was finalized, Joel had the art ready and it was off to duplication and release. Continue reading »

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