DOOM QUIZ PART 3: ALTAR OF OBLIVION, BARABBAS, BONEWORM, MATUS, EVOKE THY LORDS

 Interviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 142014
 


Altar of Oblivion

(Today our Russian contributor Comrade Aleks brings us Part 3 of a six-part series in which he puts the same five questions to doom bands from around the world, and introduces us to their music at the same time.)

Sometimes I use this unpopular “quiz” format because there are too many interesting bands that I would like to bring to light, and in my opinion it’s a good way to spread some news and to get new points of view on a few issues (including even some political questions). The list of questions I put to the bands is below:

1. What is the band’s latest news and what are your plans for the near future?

2. What do we get (in the broadest sense) from the release of your last album?

3. What is the best response that your band has ever received?

4. What role does the church (or any other religious organization) play in your life or (let’s take it wider) in the life of the heavy scene? Is there any spiritual, religious, or antireligious component in your songs?

5. What does the Media in your country tell about the situation in Ukraine? And how do you see that situation? Some people from other countries have asked me strange questions about Russia’s policy, and let me say that I have a few friends in Ukraine and my colleagues have relatives there, and believe me, there’s no media in ANY country that is showing the problem as it really is. We can watch as the Cold War turns into real warfare.

Today, we bring the answers to these questions from Altar Of Oblivion (Denmark), Barabbas (France), Boneworm (USA), Matus (formerly Don Juan Matus) (Peru), and Evoke Thy Lords (Russia). Continue reading »

LISTEN TO THIS NEW ENTOMBED SONG (AGAIN): “VULTURE AND THE TRAITOR”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Jul 142014
 

 

Sweden’s Entombed A.D. have recorded a new album named Back To the Front, and it’s finally due for release by Century Media on August 4 in Europe and August 5 in NorthAm. As you can see, it features a great piece of cover art by Zbigniew Bielak. It also features the talents of L-G Petrov, Nico Elgstrand, Victor Brandt, and Olle Dahlstedt. Why this group are calling themselves Entombed A.D. instead of Entombed is a long story that you can read about somewhere else. What I want you to do is listen to this new song “Vulture and the Traitor” from the album.

Actually, you may be listening to it a second time, because it briefly appeared on YouTube last November. That turned out to be an unauthorized posting because it was removed after I wrote about the track back then. If you missed that clip, don’t miss this one. It has a definite old-school feel in its sludgy riff tone and in its mix of d-beat, punk, and hardcore rhythms. L-G Petrov’s completely distinctive throaty vocals are in great form, and the song also boasts a hot-as-hell guitar solo. I really am enjoying the song (again).

You can also bang your fuckin’ head to a previously released single from the album named “Bedlam Attack”, which appeared in late May; it includes some very cool off-speed sections in addition to all the curb stomping — and holy shit, those vocals… Both tracks come right after the jump. Continue reading »

JUMP-START YOUR MONDAY WITH TEMPLE OF VOID, DAJJAL, MUTILATION PROCESS, AND ZOMBIEFICATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 142014
 

If you’re like me, you have a hard time getting your game face on for the work week when Monday mornings roll around. But assorted friends of mine pointed me to two new songs yesterday that seem tailor-made to juice up all those sluggish Monday-morning brains out there, and I’ve also included a review of a murderous two-song EP plus one phenomenally good new Zombiefication track I found on my own that will finish the job nicely. Death fucking metal.

TEMPLE OF VOID

In June 2013 I praised a three-song demo by Detroit’s Temple of Void, which included some truly staggering, mega-weight riffs and a blanket of indigo melodies, usually delivered at a lumbering pace, along with elements of viscera-draped death metal a la Autopsy, a pummeling of Bolt-Thrower-style hammer blows, and some inspired psychedelic guitar solos. Now these dudes have finished a full-length album (Of Terror and the Supernatural), and yesterday an advance track became available for listening.

“Savage Howl” is a fitting name for this thing. The big gear-grinding guitar chords are savage, the gruesome deep-throated vocals are savage, the morbid melodies are savage, and when the band start rolling out a repeating cycle of enormous, stomping riffs, you will headbang savagely. This is top-shelf supernatural death/doom and a really enticing teaser for the album to come. Continue reading »

PANOPTICON’S “ROADS TO THE NORTH” — A REVIEW AND A NEW SONG TO STREAM

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Jul 142014
 

 

Let’s face it: Kentucky is a very hard act to follow. In my case, it would probably be impossible for anyone, including Panopticon’s Austin Lunn, to re-create that experience of slack-jawed wonder when I first heard it. But Panopticon’s new album Roads To the North isn’t a re-creation of Kentucky, any more than Kentucky was a repetition of the albums that preceded it. It is, however, every bit as good.

The Panopticon albums with which I’m familiar (from Collapse on) have been very personal records. They’re a function of Lunn’s moods and the subjects that happened to inspire him when he wrote the songs. Social Disservices was full of righteous fury. Kentucky reflected Lunn’s deep feeling about the history and culture of the state he then called home; it dealt with tragic aspects of Kentucky’s coal-mining industry, but you could also hear in the music that it was at least equally inspired by feelings of affection and passion for the place.

Unlike the last two albums, political themes don’t run through Roads To the North, or at least not as overtly. As Lunn has disclosed in interviews, it’s more a reflection of changes in his personal life over the last several years, including time spent in Norway learning a new profession (as a craft beer brewer), relocating from Kentucky to Minnesota to practice his new skills, and becoming a father, as well as changes in his perspectives about the world around him. But although the music may not be as politically charged as before, it’s no less passionate. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SERPENTS ATHIRST, KNIFE OF MELQART, UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN KULTEN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Jul 132014
 

This is a small collection of new songs I discovered yesterday that explore the dark in very different ways. Two of the bands are newcomers, while the last is on the verge of releasing its third album.

SERPENTS ATHIRST

Serpents Athirst are a Sri Lankan black metal band whose discography consists of a 2011 split and a 2012 demo named Prevail. They have a new three-song EP coming out later this year entitled Heralding Ceremonial Mass Obliteration, and one of the new songs is now up on YouTube. I’m assuming that the image on the YouTube clip (above) will appear on the cover of the EP, because I really like it. I really like the song, too.

It’s appropriately named “Ritual Vomitting”, and I’ve listened to it a half dozen times since finding it yesterday afternoon via a link from a Facebook friend. The sound is utterly filthy, with a thoroughly grit-caked and grime-coated production, and for most of its putrid length the riffs and drums just roll forward in a repeating rampage of hammer blows, accented by the tick and shimmer of cymbals — but it’s electrifying. And the echoing vocals are fantastically horrific, ranging from rancid roars to something that sounds like the vocalist is being forcibly turned inside out. I’ll probably listen to it another half dozen times today. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: DAWN, ELUVEITIE, EXTOL, GHOULGOTHA, LOUDBLAST, MAVETH-EMBRACE OF THORNS, NEOCAESAR, TYRANT OF DEATH

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 122014
 

It was a rare Friday night for your humble editor, in that your humble editor didn’t get completely shit-faced. This means that I was able to listen to music on this Saturday morning without experiencing severe brain pain and heaving waves of nausea. I made my way through a long list of new songs and videos I had collected over the last few days, from which I’ve sifted a still pretty long list of things I commend to your ears and eyes, presented in alphabetical order with a minimum of words. But before getting to those, here’s a piece of somewhat older news I only discovered recently.

DAWN

Over the years since I began getting into metal I’ve done a lot of deep diving back into music that was released before I wised up, but I didn’t know about Dawn until just a few days ago. They were formed circa 1990 by guitarist Fredrik Söderberg (Cranium) and recorded a smattering of demos plus two albums (1994’s Nær Sólen Gar Niþer For Evogher and 1998’s Slaughtersun (Crown of the Triarchy)) before disbanding for nearly a decade. They’ve reactivated, and the line-up now includes, in addition to Söderberg, original vocalist Henke Forss (Retaliation) plus drummer Tomas Asklund (Gorgoroth, ex-Dissection, ex-Dark Funeral) and bass player Philip von Segebaden (ex-Afflicted, ex-Cranium). That’s a hell of a line-up.

Beginning in April, Century Media has reissued the band’s discography from the 1990s on vinyl, and Dawn have also been working on a new album. A “semi-official rehearsal track” has been up on YouTube for a while, though the song title apparently isn’t correct. Here it is, followed by a full stream of Slaughtersun: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EMPIRE AURIGA — “JUBILEE WARLORD”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 112014
 

Millennia of evolutionary adaptation are supposed too have given human beings certain survival instincts, and yet we’re inexplicably drawn to explore dark, haunted places where hidden dangers lie in wait and comfort, warmth, and light have been banished. Michigan’s Empire Auriga have seemingly made it their mission to capture those frigid, bereft sensations in their music. Eight years after their debut album Auriga Dying, they’re about to deliver a new album named Ascending the Solarthrone, and today we bring you the premiere of a new song from the album: “Jubilee Warlord”.

The word “jubilee” connotes a kind of celebration, but there is no joy in this song, only a dense atmosphere of mourning and anguish. The music moves glacially across icy waves of eerie, distorted, ambient melody punctuated by cannon-blast drum beats and wretched, skin-clawing howls. Prolonged piercing notes rise up and fall again, like rays of light trying to escape a crushing gravity well — without success. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: OUBLIETTE AND ZOM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 112014
 

I’ve been distracted over the last couple of days and haven’t kept up as well as I’d like with the appearance of new songs and videos. I have a long list, and with luck I’ll have a big Saturday catch-up post to share more of what I’ve found. For today, I want to throw you some recommended music from two bands who together have been dismantling my sanity quite effectively.

OUBLIETTE

Oubliette are a Tennessee-based melodic black metal band whose members include guitarist Mike Low of Inferi — whose latest album DGR reviewed here — and his wife Emily Low (vocals), plus bassist Vincent Jones (Æther Realm) and drummer Doug Mesich. Apart from the fact that I’m a fan of Inferi and Æther Realm, I was attracted to Oubliette after I had the chance to hear an unmastered version of a song named “Creatures of the Endless Slumber”. Yesterday the band released their debut album on Bandcamp, where the final version of that song and 7 others are now available for streaming and download.

I’m still really high on “Creatures of the Endless Slumber”, and although I’ve only started making my way through the rest of the album, it’s sounding really good, too. “Creatures” beautifully integrates sensations of the ethereal and the physically savage. The effectiveness of this combination is due in no small part to Emily Low’s remarkably versatile vocal talents, which range from ghostly clean song to bestial snarls, as well as to the juxtaposition of soft acoustic melodies with storming riff and blast assaults. Continue reading »

PANTHEON I: “FROM THE ABYSS THEY RISE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jul 112014
 

(Andy Synn reviews the new fourth album by Norway’s Pantheon I.)

Now, strictly speaking, From The Abyss They Rise is a compilation album, comprising an EP’s worth of new tracks combined with a collection of rare tracks and early demos. For the purpose of this review I’m going to be focussing entirely on the EP itself, although that’s not to say that the rare/unreleased material is without merit – “Enter The Pantheon” (the band’s first ever demo) and their cover of Emperor classic “Thus Spake The Nightspirit” in particular are definitely worthy of your interest and attention.

These new tracks are the first Pantheon I have written/recorded with the involvement of new guitarist Aethyris (aka Shandy MacKay – Horizon Ablaze, ex-Absu, as well as live session work for both Melechesh and perennial NCS favourites Khonsu), and his impressive talent and pedigree certainly serve the band well on these five songs, adding a touch more proggy ingenuity and melody to the band’s acid-drenched Black Metal assault. Continue reading »

HANNES GROSSMANN AND CHRISTIAN MUENZNER HAVE LEFT OBSCURA (AND HAVE YOU HEARD OF ALKALOID?)

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Jul 112014
 

Germany’s Obscura announced a few hours ago that guitarist Christian Muenzner and drummer Hannes Grossmann have left the band, each for different reasons. As a result, Obscura have postponed the recording of their fourth album to the end of 2014 while they audition potential replacements for Muenzner and Grossmann.

Muenzner says, “There is no bad blood between me and any of the other members of the band”, but that “my heart is not fully into the music anymore” and that “I just want to devote the biggest part of the time I have to work on my own music and visions”.

At least as important, Muenzner explained that his decision to leave Obscura was also driven by the persisting neurologic condition in his fret hand known as Focal Dystonia, which almost robbed him of his ability to play guitar by late 2011/early 2012: Continue reading »

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