SEEN AND HEARD: SÓLSTAFIR, GOD MACABRE, OAK PANTHEON, ELUVEITIE, ALESTORM

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jun 122014
 

Here are some new things I found over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth sharing around. I’m doing my best to finish a review, so I’m going to atypically attempt to be brief. I know this will cause mass depression among readers, but that’s just the way it has to be.

SÓLSTAFIR

As previously reported, the next album by Iceland’s Sólstafir is named Ótta and will be released by Season of Mist on August 29 in Europe and September 2 in North America. Today the album became available for pre-order in triple-LP format (here) and the cover art was disclosed (above). I don’t know what thinking is behind the use of this photo or how it relates to the music and/or lyrics, but I like it — such a dramatic setting, and such a fascinating face. Bought it.

Also today Stereogum premiered the new album’s title track. You may not be prepared for it. You may not even think it’s metal. But I think it’s goddamned awesome. It’s icy and adrift, bleak and beautiful, melancholy and memorable. But it has a harsh edge as well, it rocks in its own way, and the soaring of the vocals into a howl near the end are very cool. And is that an electrified mandolin I’m hearing, along with the synth and strings? (Answer:  Nope, it’s a banjo!)

Go HERE to listen.

GOD MACABRE

I’ve written before about the Relapse reissue of the one and only album by Sweden’s God Macabre — a band who’ve frequently been on my mind ever since seeing their magnificent set at Maryland Deathfest XII last month. One of my friends who was there with me surprised the hell out of me a few days ago with a gift of the special MDF edition of the LP. And then yesterday I noticed that the digital version of The Winterlong reissue is now available on Bandcamp. If you haven’t heard it, you should. It has lost nothing in the two decades since its original release. Here it is: Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: VINTERBRIS AND KIM HOLM

 Eye-Catchers  11 Responses »
Jun 122014
 

If you look on the right side of this page under the heading of “Categories” you’ll see a link to something called “Eye-Catchers”. It was an irregular series of posts I started a very long time ago and then sort of forgot about. The original idea was to pick music to write about based solely on the cover art, as a way of testing the hypothesis that cool album art tends to correlate with cool music. I still often check out new music in just that way — because the artwork catches my eye — but writing about what I’ve found in that way as a test of the “Eye-Catchers” hypothesis has fallen by the wayside. I’m going to try to do more of that.

I’ve already written (twice) about music from the forthcoming album (Solace) by Norway’s Vinterbris, and I first paid attention to it precisely because of the cover art, which was created by an artist I’ve praised frequently at NCS: Kim Holm. The last time I wrote about this partnership was after the release of a video showing Kim Holm’s creation of a drawing for the album with the song “Dysphoria” as musical accompaniment. I’m going to embed that video again at the end of this post in case you missed it. But the main reason for the post is to collect in one place all the other pieces that Holm created for Solace — because he created separate pieces for each song on the album (just as he did for Sólstafir’s Svartir Sandar — that art is collected here.)

Solace will be released on June 16 by Nordavind Records. You can order it now on CD either here or here, and that second link will take you to a Bandcamp page where digital downloads can also be pre-ordered. But of course one reason to spring for the CD (which is what I’ve done) is to get the booklet with the art you’re about to see (a CD pre-order gets you immediate download of two songs). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: TOMBS, SEPTICFLESH, CEMETERY LUST, DEVANGELIC

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 112014
 

The following are some of the best things I saw and heard in my ramblings through the interhole today.

TOMBS

I have idiotically failed to write anything about Savage Gold, the new album by Brooklyn’s Tombs which is out today. But because it’s out today, the entire album is also now streaming on Bandcamp, where it can also be ordered. It defies simple classification, with a mix of elements drawn from black metal, hardcore, death metal, and post-metal, among others. It’s a powerful album as a whole, and one in which each song also has its own potent identity. There is no joy in the music, but there is a lot to enjoy.

I go back and forth as to which song is my favorite, but today it’s “Edge of Darkness” (yesterday it was “Seance”), so if you’ve only got time to sample the music, you might start there. The whole album is after the jump.

http://tombsbklyn.bandcamp.com/album/savage-gold
https://www.facebook.com/TombsBklyn Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: MASTODON AND DISTRESS OF RUIN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 112014
 

Collected in this post are two brand new videos that debuted this morning, one from Mastodon (who, of course, need no introduction) and one from a Finnish band named Distress of Ruin.

MASTODON

Mastodon’s new album Once More ‘Round the Sun will be released on June 24 by Reprise. In April, the first advance track from the album — “High Road” — hit the internet. In May, Mastodon announced that they would be filming a video for the song in the L.A. area. They said they were looking for “both eccentric character actors and real-life Live Action Role Playing enthusiasts.” They added:”We are looking for elves, orcs, wizards, rangers, mages, knights! Experience with ‘LARP’ combat a huge plus. Preferably 18+. Come in your own LARPer costumes or MASTODON-themed LARPer costumes!”

Today we got the video. Pitchfork, who premiered it not long ago, describes the video as “Karate Kid-meets-Napoleon Dynamite-meets Game of Thrones”. That about covers it, though the last frame leaves the story hanging… Continue reading »

RESURRECTIONS: SOULBURN AND SANCTUARY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 112014
 

Soulburn 2014

This morning brought news of new albums on the way from two bands whose last recorded efforts date back many years. I’m intrigued by both announcements, and thought you might be, too.

SOULBURN

Soulburn are a Dutch band formed in the mid-90’s by original Asphyx drummer Bob Bagchus and his former Asphyx bandmate, guitarist Eric Daniels, with Wannes Gubbels from Pentacle on bass and vocals. Century Media released their well-regarded debut album Feeding on Angels in 1998 (reissued in 2009) — and there has been no recorded music from Soulburn since then. But that’s about to change.

According to an interview with Bob Bagchus published today by Terrorizer, a revived Soulburn will finish recording a new album in July, with the working title of In Suffocating Darkness. Bagchus says it will be released by Century Media and he describes the music as “our darkest one since Asphyx’s Embrace The Death, with lots of old Bathory/Venom/Celtic Frost love in it”. The new vocalist/bassist is Twan van Geel (Bunkur), and Bagchus says, “Instead of the typical deathgrunt he sings in the more aggressive way like Dissection/Watain kind of vocals which fit our music 100% perfectly.” The current band also includes guitarist Remco Kreft (Grand Supreme Blood Court). Continue reading »

SERDCE: “TIMELESSNESS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 112014
 

 

(In this post Austin Weber reviews the forthcoming album by Serdce on the Blood Music label.)

The vast riches lying within the reach of Google have included a lot of bands I’ve discovered by typing long strings of words bookended by “metal” in an effort to root out underground music of varying sub-genres that I might enjoy. Forum posts often proved most fruitful, those splendid user-generated gifts of musical knowledge. One particular band I heard mentioned glowingly a few years back via a forum post was Serdce.

They are a Minsk-based group and one whose 2004 album, Cyberly, was being billed as an unknown classic. I take comments like that with a pound of fucking salt. Yet it turned out to be true. So it gave me much pleasure that Blood Music worked with Islander here at NCS to premiere music from Serdce’s soon-to-be-released record, Timelessness. It was doubly nice that Heavy Blog Is Heavy began to post about them as well with yet another song premierel, because Serdce are a quirky progressive death metal band worth checking out — and worthy of that tag.

I admit to feeling jarred when I first heard this album. It’s a big shift from their last record, 2009’s The Alchemy Of Harmony, a record I worship and regard as a masterpiece, although the changes make sense because they’ve been expanding toward a more prog-metal-focused sound with each release. As this was always a big part of their style, the shift away from calculating, mid-paced death metal into lighter Cynic-focused realms works phenomenally well. And it’s not as confined or as prog-by-numbers as you might think. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: SYBARITIC, BELLICIST, INFINITUM

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

(This is part 2 of a piece written by Austin Weber about recommended releases from up-and-coming bands. Part 1 can be found here.)

SYBARITIC

I knew as soon as I turned in my Remnants of 2013 article that I would probably find more from last year that went unmentioned or praised. Sybaritic certainly fall in that category. The last I heard, they were on hold as a group, having last recorded a 2009 album, Being Human, now quite a long time ago. Like many groups, I found them on Metal-Archives while searching for the projects of individual band members projects — in this case, through Atheist, as Sybaritic used to count Jonathan Thompson (who played on Jupiter mind you) in their ranks until 2007. Somehow, I missed that Sybaritic dropped a killer EP last year called Serenity In Darkness. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARCH ENEMY — “NO MORE REGRETS”

 Premieres  27 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

Arch Enemy live at Sweden Rock — photo by Am. Creations, used with permission.

The new album from Arch Enemy, War Eternal, is being released today in North America by Century Media and to celebrate the occasion we bring you the premiere of the band’s official video for the album’s fifth track, “No More Regrets”.

For a genre of music that at its core is about wrecking convention, metal has a surprising number of fans who tend to resist change. Arch Enemy, of course, experienced a big change this year with the end of the Angela Gossow era and her replacement by new frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz. That has led to some upheaval in the ranks of the Arch Enemy faithful — an upheaval that has sometimes seemed to overshadow the music on War Eternal itself, which happens to be excellent.

As our writer Andy Synn put it in his review of the new album, “[T]he recent changes to the band’s line-up really are a blessing in disguise. Throughout War Eternal the new Arch Enemy sound renewed and re-energised, a band firing on all cylinders and with something to prove – to themselves as much as to everyone else…. [The album] succeeds in taking the by-now familiar formula of the Arch Enemy sound and sharpening it, strengthening it, giving it teeth and claws and a fresh appetite for destruction.” Continue reading »

SPANISH DEATH METAL: DOMAINS, BOKLUK, MORBID FLESH, APOSENTO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

(In this post our guest Kunal Choksi (Transcending Obscurity) puts the spotlight on new releases by four death metal bands from Spain.)

Here are some rather new and interesting, but most importantly effective, Death Metal bands from Spain to check out. The originality is questionable but these guys are doing it better than most out there – Domains is a worthy competitor of Dead Congregation’s latest one released in the same year, Bokluk is playing devastatingly raw but catchy and old school Death Metal, Morbid Flesh is sticking to its tried-and-tested but concrete old school Death Metal, and lastly, you have the comeback album, in a sense, of the old Spanish legend Aposento, who have been around since the early ‘90s and only now unleashed a debut full-length. Let’s delve more into the bands, shall we?

Domains – Sinister Ceremonies (The Sinister Flame)
http://www.thesinisterflame.com/

Sinister Ceremonies is only the debut album but it’s thorough and comprehensive in its sound and aesthetics. Unlike the usual Immolation–Incantation worship or Blasphemy added to the sound, Domains creates its own template of music, borrowing or rather incorporating influences of bands like Krisiun, Behemoth, and even Deathspell Omega to create something that is rooted in dark Death Metal but is also reaching out to different styles and traditions. Continue reading »

MDF XIII: MARK YOUR CALENDARS

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

A metal friend of mine from Denmark e-mailed me recently that “Reading your MDF travelogues were a joy because they were so non jaded, they kinda read like the experience of a child in a candy store :).”  I think that pretty accurately nailed the way I felt about attending Maryland Deathfest XII. It was not only my first MDF experience, it was my first-ever metal festival of any kind, and it could hardly have been more perfect.

How do you improve on perfection? I guess, by definition, you can’t. But you can achieve something equally wonderful, but also different. And so I’m already excited about the 13th edition of this festival, the dates of which have now been announced: May 21-24, 2015. And the first round of bands, plus info about early-bird ticket sales, will be announced by August 1.

I’m well aware that for a great many people this festival is out of reach — too far away, too expensive to attend, falling on dates that don’t work. I’m not even sure I can go again. But I’m already fantasizing about it.

Part of the fantasizing involves wishful thinking about the bands who might attend next year. There’s an event page for the festival on Facebook that’s filled with people’s wish lists. Reading them (at least the serious ones) makes me salivate — in part because it really does seem possible that anything you wish for could actually come to pass.  Given MDF’s track record, you don’t even have to limit yourself to bands who are still active; even bands who’ve been dead for decades could come back to life for one last hurrah in Baltimore. Continue reading »

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