FIREWORKS FOR THE FOURTH: PANTHEON I, MAN MUST DIE, BOTANIST, THE RAGNAROK PROPHECY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Jul 042014
 

 

Google Analytics tells me that over the last 30 days 40.10% of the visitors to our site were located in the United States. Because we math like some motherfuckers, we are able to determine that 59.90% of visitors over the last 30 days were from other nations. For them, today is just another day. So we’ll get the obligatory USA! USA! USA! chant out of the way by celebrating one of our nation’s greatest accomplishments on this July 4th via the video above.

Okie dokie, now that we’ve had our Fourth of July celebration, let’s move along to some musical fireworks. Here are four recommended new metal songs that appeared over the last 48 hours.

PANTHEON I

As we’ve previously reported, Oslo’s Pantheon I have a new album entitled From the Abyss They Rise that’s due for release on August 14 by Non Serviam Records. It includes both an EP’s worth of new songs plus older compositions, including their first demo tracks from a decade ago. Yesterday I caught up to a stream of one of the new songs that appeared on July 2. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM NECROS CHRISTOS: “NINE GRAVES”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 032014
 

I was caught napping. In an April round-up of new music, I included just a snippet of a song from the then-forthcoming EP Nine Graves by Germany’s Necros Christos — a release I’ve really been looking forward to. And then about 15 minutes ago I noticed that Nine Graves is now out and available for order on CD from Sepulchral Voice Records and Ván Records.

What’s more, I noticed that the album’s cover art (above) had been released (I’m trying to determine who created it) — and after a bit more poking around I found a stream of the album’s title song in its entirety.

Nine Graves includes nine tracks, described as “two new exclusive songs [the title track and “Black Bone Crucifix”], re-recorded yet totally new arranged versions of two old band classics [“Va Koram Do Rex Satan” and “Baptized By The Black Urine Of The Deceased”], plus four interludes [Temples I – IV] and one huge, persian influenced midtro… [the latter named “Gate”]”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CROSS VAULT

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jul 032014
 

(Our Russian contributor Comrade Aleks brings us this interview he conducted with “M.” of the German doom band Cross Vault, whose debut album appeared earlier this year.)

The split-ups of some bands are really sad events. I still miss Earthcorpse and Aphotic, and a lot of doom-heads still find the fact of Warning’s disbanding quite dissapointing. But new bands raise their voice here and there and sometimes they become a good replacement for those who have gone.

Germany’s Cross Vault, with their debut album Spectres of Revocable Loss, is like a bitter balm for the wounds of those who miss Warning. These two Germans follow the path of Patrick Walker’s band and do their best to enrich the original sound of old’n’good doom metal with their own ideas. Their first work is a very successful and masterful monument to all the things we love in this genre. This interview with M. of Cross Vault sheds some light upon the past, present, and future of this promising project. Continue reading »

R.I.P. DEATH GRIPS (AND SOMETHING TO CHEER US UP TOO)

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Jul 032014
 

We were early supporters of Death Grips, and have written about them repeatedly since the beginning. They were “metal”, even though they weren’t metal. They’ve always gone their own way, not only in their unusual approach to making music but also in refusing to conform to expected behavior in the music industry (remember when they gave a big FUCK YOU to the Epic/Columbia label by releasing No Love Deep Web for free download in advance of the label’s official release?). And now they’ve done it again — disbanding at the height of their popularity, with an announcement late yesterday that was just as unexpected as the timing of their album releases.

Above is a photo of a farewell note that they posted on their FB page. It promises one last double-album later this year. Many bands have announced their break-ups only to resurrect themselves later. I don’t think this band will do that. Here’s the text of the hand-scrawled note:

“we are now at our best and so Death Grips is over. we have officially stopped. all currently scheduled live dates are canceled. our upcoming double album “the powers that b” will still be delivered worldwide later this year via Harvest/Third Worlds Records. Death Grips was and always has been a conceptual art exhibition anchored by sound and vision. above and beyond a “band”. to our truest fans, please stay legend.”  Continue reading »

AVOIDING SHAME: FUNEREAL PRESENCE (“THE TOWER FALLS”) AND SHORES OF NULL (“KINGS OF NULL”)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 032014
 

I’m mainly putting these two songs here so that, six months from now, when I include them in our list of 2014’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, I won’t have to cringe in shame and admit that I never wrote about them.

FUNEREAL PRESENCE

This New York band’s debut album The Archer Takes Aim was released in March by The Ajna Offensive. It’s “only” four tracks long, but those songs add up to nearly 50 minutes of music. The opening song is “The Tower Falls”. It’s 12 1/2 minutes long and still ends too soon, as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t need to tell you that some of the best metal songs in creation are long-form creations. But our Most Infectious list isn’t necessarily about the best songs. The songs have to be good, mind you, but the main criteria is that they have to be catchy, hard to forget, addictive — and those aren’t the first qualities that principally come to mind (or at least my addled mind) when you think about epic-length music.

No doubt, long jams can have more powerful and lasting effects on your mental and emotional states than short blasts of hook-filled, neck-throttling energy. But you often live in them “in the moment”. They don’t necessarily drift back into your mind and start replaying themselves without any conscious volition of your own. But “The Tower Falls” does that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORTALS — “CURSED TO SEE THE FUTURE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jul 022014
 

Brooklyn’s Mortals have been turning a lot of heads as advance tracks from their new album, Cursed To See the Future, have been appearing around the web over the last month. But the time has finally come to unveil the album in its full power, as we bring you a stream of the work from start to finish.

The reason heads have been turning is that Mortals are so successful at unifying disparate strands of heavy metal into highly memorable — and viscerally potent — songs. Woven into their dark tapestries you will find strands of sludge, doom, black metal, and thrash. The result is music that’s massively heavy, massively headbangable, and almost always decimating to the core.

Elizabeth Cline clearly has a genius for concocting riffs, and Cursed gives her the chance to show the range of her talents. Bassist Lesley Wolf gets plenty of opportunities to shine as well, because her nimble yet concrete-heavy rumbling is never out of ear shot — and her voice rakes with steel claws. Not to be outdone, drummer Caryn Havlik turns in a highly varied (but always spine-shaking) performance that’s a big part of why this music is so damned interesting.

Continue reading »

BLACK THRASH: TRIUMPHANT, SLAUGHTER MESSIAH, DRUIDUS, GOATHAMMER

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Jul 022014
 

Relatively late in my life as a metalhead I’m discovering that I like thrash/speed-metal riffs best when they’re served up black on the outside and bloody on the inside. In this post I’ve collected some music from four underground bands that have been feeding that particular hunger.

TRIUMPHANT

Triumphant is the name of a band from Innsbruck, Austria, that used to be called Manic Disease. Their debut album, Herald the Unsung, was released in March of this year in vinyl by Heavy Forces Records and on CD by Cyclone-Empire.

My pal KevinP recently sent me a link to the album’s title track, and I was hooked from the opening seconds by the highly infectious and caustically blistering riffs that propel the music like a rocket. The song does have its off-speed moments, which are drenched in dark melody and surrounded by an aura of doom, and they’re part of what makes this long song so appealing. The vocalist, by the way, sounds like he has rabies — unhinged and biting. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INVIDIOSUS — “EXACERBATED PSYCHOSIS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 022014
 

 

(Austin Weber introduces a new song we’re premiering today from the debut album by Minnesota’s Invidiosus.)

An issue that seems to especially plague metal bands and impede their future is the high number of members many bands go through. It takes a hearty group with guts to stick through a revolving-door line-up, and few can understand this struggle better than Minneapolis, Minnesota natives Invidiosus. Since forming as a group in 2006, they have gone through 20 members, releasing a few demos and EPs along the way and now preparing for the imminent July 7th arrival of their debut full-length, Malignant Universe. It’s an album that includes an eclectic mix of powerful older compositions alongside bold new ones. It’s the silver lining to their unfortunate revolving door issue: With so many different people (collectively) having written the music contained on Malignant Universe, there is a healthy diversity to their generally grind-blasted death. Malignant Universe exhumes the past and yet doesn’t reside their. It takes restrained guidance from modern, more technical deathly forms, and yet doesn’t wholly reside there either.

“Exacerbated Psychosis”, the song we’re premiering today, is a putrid trip to the graveyard, with all the offal trimmings and horror intact. The opening riff and drum combo hints at a barrelling Origin-style sound, and yet the lacerating and churning build that follows gnaws at you with more primitive teeth and bestial vocal charm. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CEREMONIAL CASTINGS, MARTYRDÖD, MUTILATION RITES, ONI, THROES

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jul 022014
 

Collected here are four new songs and one teaser reel of new music from five bands that I heard over the last 24 hours and believe are worth throwing at your head like a nail bomb. I present the music in alphabetical order by band name.

CEREMONIAL CASTINGS

Go ahead, click that image above to enlarge it. I’ll wait.

Pretty fuckin’ cool, isn’t it? It’s the creation of Belgian artist Kris Verwimp and it graces the cover of a new album entitled Cthulhu by Ceremonial Castings. Cthulhu will be this Washington State duo’s eighth album and it’s due for release on July 8. Based on descriptions on the band’s Facebook page, it will be a monumental concept album spanning 2 CDs, the first consisting of 11 tracks divided into three chapters, with a total run-time of more than 70 minutes, and the second consisting of a single 61-minute work entitled “Cthulhu Unbound”. Continue reading »

CANNIBAL CORPSE DELIVER A NEW SONG: “SADISTIC EMBODIMENT”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Jul 012014
 

This morning we gleefully delivered the cover art, album title, and projected release information for the new album by Cannibal Corpse — A Skeletal Domain. And now, a few short hours later, we find that Metal Blade has released the first advance track from the album for public streaming. The song’s name is “Sadistic Embodiment” — and goddamn, it’s a scorcher. This album was produced by Mark Lewis (The Black Dahlia Murder, DevilDriver) instead of Erik Rutan, who produced the band’s last three albums, but it still sounds decimating.

The album will be released on September 16 and pre-orders are now being accepted here. Listen to the new track next. Continue reading »

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