LISTMANIA 2013: THE DECIBLE TOP 40

 LISTMANIA 2013  44 Responses »
Nov 272013
 

There it is, the cover of Issue #111 of DECIBEL magazine, with a cover date of January 2014, because how in good conscience could you create a list of 2013’s best albums before 2013 is actually over?

Ha!  I kid. I take this shot every year — but I’m only half-kidding. I do wonder what would be wrong with having all Best of 2013 lists appearing in January 2014 instead of November 2013 when those poor bands whose albums were released in the last quarter of the year simply get overlooked in the year-end chase. But that’s not the way the world of metal journalism works. We start seeing year-end lists now, and we talk about them even if they’re a tad premature.

DECIBEL’s list of the year’s Top 40 albums appears after the jump. As you may have read already, the comeback album by Carcass got Album of the Year honors. And Tribulation and In Solitude are in the Top 10, along with Gorguts and Inquisition. But Melt Banana and SubRosa are in the Top 10, too. Continue reading »

OBSCURE BRUTALITY NO. 1

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Nov 262013
 

(Our supporter xBenx has compiled a series of guest posts, numbered 1 through 5, though with luck we may receive more. Each one focuses on a different band, beginning with Aftershock.)

I don’t know how or why it happened, but since the age of 16 I have been consumed by the urge to unearth genuinely head-crushing obscure brutal gems that have been overlooked by the masses. Fourteen years later, this impulse still runs through every fibre of my being. Of course, this premise is entirely subjective, but in my best estimation, you may have been unaware, or unwilling, to submerge yourself in a band’s brand of brutality because of their cursed obscurity. These posts will look to put an end to that.

We’ll start with one of my first loves: metallic hardcore, And I mean the fierce chug-fests that underpinned the mid- to late-90s and very early 2000s. Some of those bands have battered my eardrums for nigh on a decade, and will probably do so until I can hear no more. Principal among these is Aftershock, a fire-breathing behemoth from Boston, Massachusetts, who had one Adam Dutkiewicz in their ranks. Whereas Killswitch have become increasingly enamoured with melody and straightforward song structures, Aftershock were the antithesis, the blackened yin, weaving dense labyrinths of riffs and tortured vocals that forged metal’s potent heaviness with hardcore’s grit. Continue reading »

SPAWN FROM DECEIT: “WOVEN PROMISES – UNRAVELED VICTIMS”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Nov 262013
 

(DGR, feeling grindy, reviews the latest album by a group of Finns who’ve taken the name Spawn From Deceit.)

Even though it has felt like a system oft overlooked in favor of newer, shinier services like Spotify and Pandora, I have to give a huge shoutout to the last.fm recommendations system because it seems I find more new music through that site than I do the other ones, especially considering the rarity of commercials on the last.fm site player vs the other services.

Lately it seems to have noticed that I’ve been in a deathgrind mood and it has recommended bands accordingly. It did me a huge solid this time in the form of Spawn From Deceit, a Finnish grind band that is just starting to get its feet off of the ground – their first demo was released in 2010, just a year after the project was formed by a couple of guys in the group Ithaquan, and their first actual disc hit in 2011 with the title At Least We Did Care.

However, I found myself at their doorstep via the song “Volition” from the group’s 2013 release Woven Promises – Unraveled Victims, and, as we are wont to do on this site when it comes to music we enjoy, we had to share it, if only for its stark differences from the other, grindier bands that I’ve been reviewing as of late. Continue reading »

MORBID ANGEL, TENNESSEE MURDER CLUB, TORN THE FUCK APART, MARASMUS: LIVE AT THE GRANADA THEATER (Nov 20, 2013)

 Concert Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Nov 262013
 

(One of our most frequent commenters and the alter ego of Godless Angel, djneibarger, answered our call for guest posts with this show review straight from Lawrence, Kansas, and photos.)

My introduction to Morbid Angel happened in 1993 courtesy of the music video for “Rapture”, the opening track from their seminal album, Covenant. The ominous imagery and savage, hypnotic pulse served as my gateway drug to the death metal scene. And although my interest in the band waned after the departure of David Vincent, that legendary album is still as mesmerizing to me now as it was twenty years ago. When it was announced that Morbid Angel would be performing the album in its entirety and that the tour would be making a stop in my hometown, I knew I had to be there to witness it.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AVICHI, THE KENNEDY VEIL, KOWLOON WALLED CITY, BATILLUS, GIZMACHI

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 252013
 

Are you like me? Do you think packing for a long trip is much more fun if you wait until the last minute and then scurry around like a rat with rabies, thereby increasing the odds that you’ll forget a bunch of things and then feel like a dumbass when you get where you’re going? Yeah, I thought so. Everyone loves to do that. Which is why I’m sitting here banging out this round-up of diverse new items I saw and heard over the last 24 hours instead of packing for my vacation trip, which begins . . . (shit!) . . . in a few hours.

AVICHI

I saw that Profound Lore’s first release of 2014 will be the much-delayed third album by Chicago-based Avichi, Catharsis Absolute, which was recorded by Andrew Ragin (The Atlas Moth) and mixed by Sanford Parker (Nachtmystium, Twilight). The official release date is January 21. This album will be entirely the solo work of Andrew “Aamonael” Markuszewski (also in Lord Mantis). PL has also begun streaming one of the album’s new songs, “Lightweaver”.

“Lightweaver” is a study in winding the coil and then letting it go. Avichi builds the tension, ratcheting it upward with storming, tremolo-picked scales . . . and then lets the storm break in a rocking beat with a bounding bass line . . . and then proceeds to tighten the spring again. And so it goes, back and forth. And through it all, Aamonael howls like a winter wolf while weaving a trilling (and thrilling) guitar melody, chaining together chaos and something approaching beauty. Listen next: Continue reading »

THE SCHOENBERG AUTOMATON RELEASE A LYRIC VIDEO FOR “ULTIMATEWHIRRINGENDMACHINE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 252013
 

(NCS contributor Austin Weber brings us two videos, one that just appeared and one that’s older, from Australia’s The Schoenberg Automaton.)

Lyric videos in metal trend are rarely done well, as the majority of metal bands have terrible/boring/cliched/wordy-but-goofy lyrics. In some cases viewing a lyric video has made me like songs less, as I’m forced to focus upon cringe-worthy words that are otherwise easily ignored when listening to the music. I say all that because The Schoenberg Automaton just dropped the greatest lyric video I’ve ever seen, for the song “ULTIMATEWHIRRINGENDMACHINE” from their Vela album; it’s practically a music video.

I enjoy their lyrics, as they are often atypical of metal and/or they put a great spin on lyrical tropes. Tracks such as “Arecibo” are rife with painful observations such as, “We are losing the connection with our natural world,” and that lyric has parallels to the apocalyptic themes found in “Ultimatewhirringendmachine”. Included below, along with the new lyric video, is a well-shot horror-themed music video for “A Stone Face Of Piety” that’s been out for a while but I forgot to post about it. I particularly love that they draw you in by giving the story a start before the song kicks in, and that not a moment of it consists of performance footage. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: REDUX (Part 1)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Nov 252013
 

(NCS contributor Austin Weber has delivered unto us a three-part introduction to new and forthcoming releases by 7 bands. In this first part, he focuses on The Conjuration and Order of Leviathan.)

The end of the year is usually a slower time for new music releases, a time when much alcohol is consumed and countless amounts of money are wasted on bullshit soon forgotten. But fortunately I’ve got plenty of releases and new songs to catch up on and spread the word about.

THE CONJURATION

I wrote about them a few months back regarding their 2012 release The Human Condition, an unhinged album with a schizophrenic avante-garde meets progressive take on death metal unlike anything I’ve heard before. Recently a new album titled Surreal was announced, with a release date coming up soon, sometime in December. They just premiered “Capricorn” through their Facebook. In addition to that track, sole member and composer Corey Jason sent me another track to check out called “Kaleidoscopic Thoughts”.

“Capricorn” starts in a keyboard meets groovy death metal interlocking mass before transitioning to thrashy blasting death metal that is soon layered in the same keyboard flourish that starts the song. As per how The Conjuration usually structure their music, the song suddenly splinters off to somewhere new, which is a tantalizing heavy groove that lasts for only a moment. Continue reading »

NETRA FEATURING WE’REWOLVES: “DREADING CONSCIOUSNESS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Nov 242013
 

I’m probably one of the least qualified people imaginable to review this new EP. However, every day I read about, and occasionally meet, all manner of motherfuckers who are unqualified to do what they are doing, so I don’t know why that should stop me. Besides, unlike all the motherfuckers to whom I refer, at least I’m being honest about my lack of qualifications. Putting to one side the question why you should continue reading this review in light of my disclosure, I shall forge ahead.

The title of this EP is Dreading Consciouness and it was released on November 18 by Canada-based Hypnotic Dirge Records. That label releases an eclectic range of music, but Dreading Consciousness is an odd one even for them. It’s a collaboration between netra (the one-man project of Steven LeMoan, a Frenchman who now lives in Norway) and an underground rap duo (Hockeymask and Konsept) who call themselves We’rewolves. Netra provides the music, We’rewolves the rhymes.

And here’s where my lack of qualifications come in — because I am not well-versed in either the kind of trip-hop backing music that dominates most of the three songs on the EP or hip-hop, yet I do like this. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: TORTURE DIVISION — “THE SACRIFICE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Nov 242013
 

Two days ago Torture Division released their latest offering of “the world’s best death metal”, The Sacrifice. I’ve written about Torture Division so often at this site that explaining who they are and their approach to releasing music runs a high risk of redundancy, yet there’s always the slim chance that a few lost souls are discovering them for the first time. For them, here’s the back story:

The three members of this Swedish band – Lord K Philipson (guitar), Tobben Gustafsson (drums), and Jörgen Sandström (bass/vocals) — collectively have over 60 years of combined death metal experience, including membership in bands such as Grave, Entombed, Vicious Art, The Project Hate MCMXCIX, Vomitory, and God Among Insects. Their modus operandi is to release short demos and give them away for free. Every time they finish releasing a group of three demo’s, they or a record label package them up and sell them as a compilation CD. So far, this has happened three times; the latest compilation, The Army of Three, was released as a digipack earlier this month and has already sold out.

In June of this year, Torture Division gave away the first three-song demo in a new trilogy. That one was named The Worship, and I reviewed it here. The new one, which was again mixed and mastered by Dan Swanö at Unisound, delivers three new songs — “Queen Sacrifice”, “Fähund”, and “Flesh Before My Eyes”. Continue reading »

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