Hot off the presses, we present a brand new music video by Baltimore’s Misery Index for “The Calling”, from their most excellent 2014 album The Killing Gods. It’s a fast-cutting montage of black-and-white, close-up film of the band performing the song and B&W scenes from one or more old movies with occult themes.
As you will see, the imagery suits the song very well. It was assembled by director David Hall at Handshake Inc., and he has once again done a bang-up job. Continue reading »
I just saw a press release from Century Media in the NCS in-box that elevated by pulse rate: It announces that the seminal Swedish melodic death metal band At the Gates have completed pre-production work and are now ready to begin recording their new album, At War With Reality.
The album will be recorded by the same line-up who recorded Slaughter of the Soul (1995), and studio updates are expected either later this month or in July. The album is projected for release in October or November of this year. After the jump, you can watch a brief video message from vocalist Tomas Lindberg providing further details about the upcoming recording sessions.
To be honest, this is an enterprise seemingly fraught with peril. On the one hand, after having seen this band perform twice in recent years, including at MDF XII, I could hardly be more excited to hear new songs from them. On the other hand, how can they top themselves — or even equal the massive impact their existing albums produced, given the passage of so much time? Continue reading »
(DGR reviews the third album from Canada’s Dissolution, released in April 2014.)
There probably isn’t a single thing that ignites the self-righteous music fan’s fury more than the “for fans of” sticker that will often grace the front of their favorite underground bands’ CD releases. Rarely, we proclaim, is such a thing ever right — those other bands have never even gotten close to my favorite band’s genre, or their sound. It pigeonholes them! And why in god’s name do all of the stickers say, “For fans of The Black Dahlia Murder?!”.
We then usually shake our fists at the sky and go outside and download the thing from Itunes anyway.
However, and I preface this with some hesitation since I have been known to rage on the “for fans of” sticker myself, they do occasionally get it right and nail a band right in the wheelhouse of their sound. It’s a bit too reductive of a practice, but considering that the labels have a split-second to capture someone’s attention in a record store, I can see why it is done.
I open this review of Canada-based death metal band Dissolution’s newest album Natural Selection with such a musing, because this is a disc that I can easily recommend to people via the “for fans of” sticker method. Do you enjoy Carcass? Have you missed The Absence during their seemingly endless break? Because if so, then do I have the album for you. Continue reading »
Welcome to another edition of MISCELLANY. Here’s how this game works: I pick bands whose music I’ve never heard, usually focusing on under-the-radar groups who may have been overlooked by our readers. The selection process is fairly random. In this case I picked a couple bands who were recommended to me by a friend and a couple whose names came from the band themselves or their PR people.
I try to limit my listening to a song or two and then write my impressions, while streaming what I heard so you can form your own opinions. I don’t know in advance whether I’ll like the music, so there’s an element of surprise involved (good or bad) — though in this case I had some reasons for believing the music would be worthwhile. Here we go…
VIT
Vit’s 2013 EP The Dry Season came highly recommended from Ryan Schutte of Seattle’s Lb.! (he called it “a masterpiece”). The EP is available on Bandcamp, and upon visiting that page I saw that the EP includes guest appearances by Austin Lunn (Panopticon) on resonator guitar and banjo and Johan Becker on violin.
A little more poking around revealed that Vit’s drummer John Kerr is also a bandmate of Lunn’s in Seidr. And then I saw that the EP was mixed by Topon Das (Fuck the Facts) and mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, OLD) — and after all that my expectations had grown quite high. Continue reading »
Well, it’s Sunday, and that means … more blog posts! I have three in mind for today. Of course, having them in my mind and getting them out on the web are two different things, but at least there will be this one — a Sunday round-up of things I spotted yesterday.
KILL-TOWN DEATH FEST
This first item falls into the category of Things Worth Applauding Even Though I Will Never Hear Them. This is a very small category, especially when it comes to tours and festivals that I can’t see, because if they look really enticing they usually just make me green with envy and kind of ill-tempered and not in an applauding mood.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, the Kill-Town Death Fest. It will take place on September 4-7, 2014, in Copenhagen, Denmark, which might as well be Mars as far as I’m concerned. But good god almighty, look at that just-announced FINAL line-up on the above poster! (If you’re having any trouble reading it, clicking on it will make it bigger.) I mean, all those bands are so up my alley that I can’t even take a piss in it any more because there’s no room left! Hail Santa and all his elves!
If you’re lucky enough to live within striking distance of this thing, please don’t tell me because that will open my bile ducts I’m very happy for you. More info and ticket sales can be found here. Continue reading »
Hey motherfuckers, what up? (I feel I can call you a motherfucker because this is a metal blog and about half the metal bands I’ve seen on stage call me and everyone else in the audience a motherfucker at least a dozen times per set.) I’ll tell you what up with me.
I’m not watching the World Cup, because if I wanted to watch dudes run around for 90 minutes trying to score, I’d rather go to a bar. (I read that on the internet.) Or I’d go outside and set an ant bed on fire (they’d run around faster, though no more intelligibly, and it would all be over sooner). What I’ve been doing is crawling through the interhole finding things to write about on a Saturday morning. In particular, these things:
PANTHEON I
I saw the recent news that this Norwegian band have prepared a new album named From the Abyss They Rise and have signed with Non Serviam Records for its release on August 11. In fact, it’s already available for pre-order (here). From what I read, it appears the album will be a compilation, beginning with an EP’s worth of new songs and ending with music from their first demo. This is their first work in four years, and based on what they’ve done before, it should be worth checking out. Continue reading »
I spied three videos this morning that I commend to your attention.
BLACK CRUCIFIXION
I am a pathetic excuse for a human being. Among other reasons, I failed to review one of the 2013 albums I most enjoyed — Coronation of King Darkness by Finland’s Black Crucifixion. I only managed to write about a single song after it premiered in advance of the album’s release. Pathetic.
This morning I was reminded of my abject failure by the debut of an amazing video for a song from that album named “Heroes End Up On Gallows”. The video was eight months in the making, and it is a striking work of dark and fiery beauty. We are seeing it now because Coronation of King Darkness will soon be released on vinyl by Svart Records, with a gatefold sleeve and new cover art (above). Continue reading »
Most instrumental intro tracks on metal albums are forgettable. They may mean something to the bands, providing some link to a concept behind the album or a reflection of what inspired the music, but to listeners they often sound like nothing but filler, something to skip past to find the meat of the matter. But the instrumental first track on the debut album by an Iranian band named Azooma makes an impression. It’s the first sign, but certainly not the last one, that A Hymn of the Vicious Monster is something special.
And by special, I mean hands-down the best technical death metal album I’ve heard so far this year.
That first track features an acoustic and electric guitar duet that will quickly tell you there are some talented instrumental performers in this group. But, really, you will still have no idea how remarkably accomplished everyone in this band is until the first full track explodes. And from then until the brief closing track, Azooma set off a non-stop musical fireworks display.
This is the kind of technical death metal that is as much progressive metal as it is “tech death”, incorporating not only extravagant instrumental forays but also exotic melodies and beautifully timed interludes that interweave elements of jazz fusion and even Latin rhythms. As a result, Azooma are more in the camp of bands such as Gorod and Gorguts (with a bit of Dysrythmia in the mix) than the kind of alien ant swarm that a band like Spawn of Possession serves up. Continue reading »
I mainly wanted to put up a couple of cool new album covers before calling it quits for the day, but I just saw a new video that I decided to throw in here, too, because we always need music.
YOB
The first cover is for Clearing The Path to Ascend, the new album by YOB, which is due for release by Neurot Recordings in September. I’m expecting great things from this album. I take PR reports with a grain of salt, but this excerpt from today’s announcement still gets me pumped up:
“Those threads of progressive rock and drone that have always underscored the music of YOB are now fully realized with Clearing The Path To Ascend, as each track forges into the next with a ferocity that’s as completely unhinged as it is utterly focused. Drummer Travis Foster wields his signature rhythmic furore here with bombastic precision while bassist Aaron Rieseberg, coils around the sonic tide with an unforgiving churn – all the while in a deadly synchronicity with Scheidt’s uncanny vocal range and its pendulous movement between the triumphant howls of a medieval madman and the earth splitting growls of a war-battered titan.”
(Austin Weber delivers this review of the new album by Cannabis Corpse, and we’ll also link you to a full-album stream that premiered today.)
While Cannabis Corpse have always reeked of a strong Cannibal Corpse odor through and through, the group deserve to be analyzed outside the bounds of mere gimmickry and the pothead puns to which their music is joined at the hip. From Wisdom To Baked carries on their death metal lyrical send-ups; the title itself a fine and funny nod to Gorguts, and another Gorguts reference appears within the title of “With Their Hash He Will Create”. But the music is outstanding.
If Cannabis Corpse do one thing well, it’s their ability to play Cannibal Corpse’s dope doppelganger perfectly without boring you for a second. This time around there’s a stronger focus on vocal hooks, with almost all the songs repeating their title several times. There is also a newfound variety in their music, courtesy of some obviously Morbid Angel-influenced sections along with a smattering of old school death metal non-Cannibal Corpse-sounding leads and solos on a few tracks, plus numerous slower-tempo moments, all of which combine to infuse the music with the band’s own identity.
These subtle additions to the Cannabis Corpse playbook help them to step out from the shadow of their undead forefathers. It also helps that this time around the bass has a much more prominent focus in the music and mix, and that nimble bass playing that engulfs From Wisdom To Baked would make Alex Webster proud. Continue reading »