MISCELLANY NO. 63: BARROWLANDS, LAUGHTER, KAIJU

 MISCELLANY  6 Responses »
Mar 132014
 

Every time I write one of these MISCELLANY posts I promise myself that I will do them more often. But, as ever, the promises you make to yourself are the ones most easily broken: My last installment in the series came more than three months ago! But hope springs eternal, so I’m promising myself I won’t wait that long to write the next one. Why I would trust a proven liar I don’t know.

Anyway, here’s how this game is played:  I randomly pick bands whose music I’ve never heard, I listen to one or two songs and write my impressions, and then I stream what I heard so you can form your own opinions. This time I decided to just pick the last three bands I heard about with recent Bandcamp releases. They’re all from the U.S.

BARROWLANDS

I learned of this Portland band’s new album via an e-mail alert from Bandcamp that I found yesterday. The name rang a faint bell, and through a search of our site I learned that our guest BreadGod had put their 2012 demo in the “Honorable Mention” category of his “Best of 2012” list for NCS. The new album, released March 11, is entitled Thane and I knew I had to listen simply because of the wonderful cover art by Sam Ford. Continue reading »

WINTER OF SIN: “VIOLENCE REIGNS SUPREME”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Mar 132014
 

(In this post Austin Weber reviews the forthcoming fourth album by a Dutch band with an eye-catching new line-up — Winter of Sin.)

Lately I’ve been craving a fist-pumping metal album, the kind that kicks your ass from the first minute and never relents (save for maybe one tiny little breather, the almost required instrumental break). Very recently I was allowed to hear such a glorious album, by a decade-and-a-half-old melodic black/death metal band from The Netherlands called Winter Of Sin, whose line-up now includes two former members of the sorely missed God Dethroned.

I freely admit to not having heard the band’s prior albums so I can’t say how this compares, but I can confidently say that on its own merits Violence Reigns Supreme is the sort of album whose high consistency and powerful energy make it hard not to replay frequently. Beyond the relentless nature of their music, they get an extra boost from the cancerous, throaty screams and stout mid-paced growls of God Dethroned mastermind Henri Sattler. His howled proclamations cover these unholy hymns with a pained damnation that adds materially to the experience.

Right from the start, opener “Astral Death Reign Algorithm” sets the tone and palette of the album: Wailing, sinewy black metal interlocks with melodic bursts and fiery buzzsaw death metal riffs — supplemented by thrash undertones, accented by sinister leads, and topped off with a coating of orchestral flourishes. All these ingredients are smashed together into a deadly union of speed and finesse, a sleekly crafted vehicle designed for the purpose of superior serrated destruction. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: A NEW FEAR YAWNS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 122014
 

(In this jumbo post Austin Weber puts the spotlight on recommended recent music from nine (9!) bands plus some tour news about a tenth.)

By now you know the drill, I’m going to throw a bunch of music your way and see if any of it sticks. While 2014 has seemed sort of slow, release-wise, so far, I managed to find a number of under-the-radar goodies and I’ve also included two established-band updates. As usual, you are free to loathe or love all or none of it. While I usually only listen to ambient grindcore, I’ve been branching out lately. So, lots of different kinds of music besides ambi-grind are included below. With deathqueef making up more of the music mentioned this time, but also delving into colostomy-bag-fueled post-electronic, instrumental scat, and nu-grunge.

EMBRYONIC DEVOURMENT

With their latest release Reptilian Agenda, Embryonic Devourment have even further embraced old school death metal tendencies into the fold of their technical brutal carnage that warns of the true reptilian nature of reality. This is a big step up for them, and fans of old school death metal should certainly give this a listen. In spite of its swarming Origin-meets-Malignancy veneer, a lot of the riffs are superbly evil, meaty, and groovy in an old school way.  Continue reading »

A NEW MISERY INDEX SONG! “CONJURING THE CULL”!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 122014
 

As previously reported: Season of Mist will release the fifth album by Misery Index on May 27 in NorthAm and May 23 elsewhere. The title is The Killing Gods, which in the case of this band is kind of like making it a self-titled release. It was recorded with Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer). As you can see, I found the very cool cover art for the album today, too (conjured by Gary Ronaldson).

Today Lambgoat premiered the first advance track from the album, entitled “Conjuring the Cull”. My initial impressions:  Goddamn, motherfucker, those opening riffs are headbang dynamite! Fuckin’ snare tone! Such a grisly serpentine lead guitar! So infectious! So evil! Such beef! Such slithery soloing! Why are my pants wet?

The song is an exclusive premiere and therefore not embeddable without being devious, so run over to this location and fill your ears. The album can be pre-ordered here from Season of Mist. Here’s what the cover of the gatefold LP looks like: Continue reading »

WATCH MASSACRE’S NEW ANIMATED VIDEO FOR “BACK FROM BEYOND”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 122014
 

They say that death metal will never die, and Florida’s legendary Massacre seem to be living proof of that. After making quite an influential impact in the early 90s, they folded, but now they’re coming back 20 years later with a new album entitled Back From Beyond. We’ve previously featured one of the new songs, and this morning Terrorizer delivered the title track along with a great new animated music video.

If you’re a fan of ravaging old-school death metal mixed with crawling, horror-themed death/doom, you will dig this memorably ghastly new song. And the horror-themed animation is a hell of a lot of fun to watch, too. Throw some horns to director Doug Cook and to animators Nick Johnson and Ryder McLean.

Massacre consists of original membersz Rick Rozz (guitars, ex-Mantas, ex-Death), Terry Butler (bass, Obituary, ex-Death, ex-Six Feet Under),  as well as vocalist Ed Webb (ex-Diabolic, ex-Eulogy) and drummer Mike Mazzonetto (ex-Pain Principle). The new album’s cover art was created by the talented Toshihiro Egawa. Now, check out the video: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EPISTASIS — “WITCH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 122014
 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a song from the new EP by NYC’s Epistasis with this review.)

Change and evolution in a musical context is a mighty double-edged sword for artists and fans alike, with fickle listener attitudes and the artists’ desire to keep the fans interested providing both a reason to change and a reason not to change. If we are being honest, evolution is necessary for any artists to feel they are not stagnating, but we as fans often have a hard time accepting this. At this perilous point of intersection is where Looking Through The Dead Glass, the new EP from New York City natives Epistasis comes in.

When I wrote about their 2012 self-titled EP last year at NCS they were a quirky, adventurous group tackling a potent merger of classical influences, metal, and elements of rock to create a dense web of ever-shifting madness. Now they’ve added vocals, and evolved their sound to include a strong black metal undercurrent. Both are bold moves that pay off for Epistasis, allowing them to explore new frontiers musically, while not repeating what they have done before. Continue reading »

SEPARATIST: “CLOSURE”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 122014
 

(In this post DGR reviews a resurrected album by Separatist from Hobart, Tasmania.)

This disc has become something of an obsession.

The way I discover music these days is an odd combination of factors, some of which can be more old-school grognard than others. I know I’ve sung the praises of last.fm many a time, despite the fact that it seems like everyone has jumped to Spotify or Pandora and, speaking of old-ass technology, I still find quite a few bands just surfing through the many concentric circles of bands on Facebook — a service I have been told many times is uncool and old these days. Often it’s a way to discover stuff that we may never have gotten press releases about, really good bands who may have no idea how PR works, or likewise, stuff that just never seems to cross our paths. Occasionally, we even discover smaller foreign bands just starting out, and sometimes you even pull off something like landing on the Facebook page of a melodeath/doom band hailing from Iran.

You can thank Psycroptic for this review though, because it was out of curiosity that I found myself bouncing from band to band, sating my “What the hell has _____ been up to?” sense as it struck me, and I saw a small shoutout to a band called Separatist on their page. We here at NCS seem to have had pretty good luck with bands from Australia, New Zealand, and surrounding areas as of late — especially those that lie on the death metal side of the spectrum, so the jump on my end was one easily performed.

However, what I found was not only a really good death metal band but also a small story that was part relic, part lost to time — a story of an album lost after a distressingly frequent issue that heavy metal bands seem to have, an issue known as a hard-drive crash, and a band long since broken up — everyone going their separate ways after the disc was lost, before one of the members — their vocalist — would attempt to resurrect the group and add a new chapter to a band that was a part of his life. Such is the story behind the recently released album Closure, by a now-solo musician hailing from Tasmania and going by the name Disho (name: Sam Dishington) and his group, Separatist. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “I THINK I CAN” BY WTCHDR

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Mar 112014
 

When I reviewed the debut EP by Vancouver’s WTCHDR in 2012, I wrote: “WTCHDR brings together a bit of gory old Carcass, a bit of Dismember, a bit of crawling death/doom, a bit of crust-punk, a few nail-bombs, and some arson at a nursing home. Put all those bits together and you get an earful of chainsaw violence that will hold your interest from start to finish.” The comments were even better. One compared the band’s speed and fury to Trap Them. Another commenter wrote: “That guitar tone makes me want to do things with 4 liters of whiskey and half a mascot suit.” Only the top half, no doubt.

I also admitted in the review that I was kind of afraid to listen to the EP before I started, given the presence in the band of two marauders (Cam and Kevin) from the Vancouver grind band Burning Ghats. Perhaps you can imagine my trepidation when I learned that WTCHDR are about to release their debut album, which is entitled Triumph and Despair. But I girded my loins with sheet metal and even agreed to premiere a song from the album named “I Think I Can”, which features guest vocals by Andrew Drury of Southern Lord artist Baptists — as if WTCHDR weren’t hardcore enough on their own without a terrorist like that in the mix.

“I Think I Can” rumbles like a freight train and stomps like your spine is a snake that needs killing. Selfishly I would have preferred that the song were longer, but on the other hand I still had one working leg by the time it ended, so there’s that. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: EYEHATEGOD, KHONSU, SOCKWEB, METSATÖLL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 112014
 

So many excellent new songs have begun streaming in recent days that I’ve shoehorned two of these round-ups into our schedule today, and I’m still not covering everything I want you to hear. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re bored with the state of metal in 2014, you’re not really listening.

EYEHATEGOD

Fourteen years after Confederacy of Ruined Lives, New Orleans’ Eyehategod will finally be releasing a new, self-titled full-length album on May 27 in North America (May 26 in Europe) in North America via Housecore Records. It was mixed by the ubiquitous Sanford Parker and includes some of the final recordings from late Eyehategod drummer Joey LaCaze.

Today the band premiered a squalling track from the album entitled “Agitation! Propaganda!” which can be streamed below. It will get your blood pumping with a meaty punked-out fist in the face and then kick you tumbling down into a sludgy pit of tar.  Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ENTHRONED, PRIMORDIAL, TERRA TENEBROSA, THE WAGAKKI BAND

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Mar 112014
 

I have a lot of new discoveries from the preceding 24 hours that I want to share with you today in between the two premieres we have scheduled. I’ve divided them into two of these “Seen and Heard” posts. In this first one I tried to mix things up. Some of what’s here isn’t metal, but it’s all good.

ENTHRONED

As I previously reported in these pages, Agonia Records will be releasing the 10th studio album by Belgium’s Enthroned on April 15. The title is Sovereigns, and it’s now available for pre-order at this location. Earlier, I featured the first advance track from the album (“Of Feathers and Flames”), and today Noisey premiered another one — “Of Shrines and Sovereigns”. This one is ravaging and rapacious, but it also includes  a somber interlude, something similar to Gregorian chant that transforms into a black metal processional, and it really makes the song.

Enthroned’s Facebook page can be accessed through this link. Here’s the new track: Continue reading »

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