NO CLEAN SINGING

ARSIS, NE OBLIVISCARIS, THE BINARY CODE, SADISTIC BUTCHERING, ANION

Aug 102013

I know you didn’t ask what I’ve been watching and listening to on this gray Pacific Northwest morning, but I’m telling you anyway, because that’s how blogging works.

ARSIS

A new Arsis video premiered yesterday. The song is “Scornstar” from their 2013 album Unwelcome. It was directed by Scott Hansen. It’s footage of the usual kind of thing that happens at an Arsis show. You know, people foaming at the mouth, chicks showing their tits, dudes ripping their hearts out of their chests, people’s guts exploding, bodily fluids and intestines spraying every which way. For people who’ve seen them play live before, it’s kind of old hat. But if you’re new to the band I guess it might be interesting.

I don’t really understand why this kind of regular occurrence was newsworthy. Must have been a slow news night at the TV station that broadcast the report. You can watch it next if you want. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 39 — AZARATH

THE SYNN REPORT 5 Responses »

Aug 102013

(In this 39th of his reports, Andy reflects upon the discography of Azarath.)

Recommended for fans of: Hate Eternal, Dark Funeral, Krisiun

We’ve had a couple of more proggy, melodic acts featured in the last few Synn Reports, so I think it’s about time we got down to something really nasty.

Polish blasphemers Azarath deal exclusively in a brand of raw, bestial, blackened death metal which has its touchstones in the unrelenting assault of Hate Eternal and Dark Funeral and the bone-grinding riff-contortions of Insision and Blood Red Throne, along with occasional flashes of wickedly evil anti-melody a la Necrophobic or Belphegor.

Formed in 1998, the only remaining original member is infamous Behemoth blast-master Inferno, but despite this, the band’s modus operandi – corrupt, brutalise, blaspheme – has never changed. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: RUSSIAN CIRCLES, BLACK TABLE, AND A JENSEN-ENGLUND (THE HAUNTED) GUITAR PLAYTHROUGH

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 14 Responses »

Aug 092013

Here’s a collection of recommended things that caught my eyes and ears over the last 24 hours.

RUSSIAN CIRCLES

My introduction to Chicago’s Russian Circles came at a live show in Seattle a few years ago, and I was sold, fast. Their fifth album, Memorial, is due on October 29 via Sargent House. Long way off, but based on a track that premiered yesterday at Pitchfork it’s a date worth remembering.

For anyone who still thinks instrumental “post rock” doesn’t pack enough visceral kick to shake your skeleton from skull to tarsus, listen to “Deficit”. Man, it’s a heavy beast. It sets a doomy tone with a moving wall of guitar noise and a hypnotic drumbeat at the outset. The intensity builds from there, and beginning at the 3:00 mark it’s fuckin’ headbang city all the way forward (accompanied by a memorable chiming melody). Listen to “Deficit” below all these links. Continue reading »

MELVINS COVER BUTTHOLE SURFERS, IN A CHICAGO PARK, WITH FREE ICE CREAM, AND JEFF PINKUS

Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Aug 092013

Well, this was just too damn cool not to share.

It’s a new video produced by The Onion’s AV Club of Melvins covering a song by Butthole Surfers in Chicago’s Humboldt Park. Joining in on the song was the Surfers bassist Jeff Pinkus in place of Jared Warren. Behind them is an ice cream truck.

According to the AV Club, the ice cream truck was basically there as a prop. But then Buzz Osborne had the bright idea of yelling “free ice cream!”, and before you know it the band had an enthusiastic audience. The fact that the audience consisted of a bunch of kids didn’t stop the band from playing “Graveyard”, or from causing the song to collapse into a squall of bass-driven feedback while Osborne tossed ice cream into the crowd and Melvins drummers Dale Crover, and Coady Willis beat the shit out of their kits.

“You lie in the graveyard / Well, you’re rotting away / When I talk to you daily / You’ve got nothing to say”. Such wholesome lyrics. Such a heart-warming sight. Watch the video after the jump.

BLOODSTOCK 2013: LIVE STREAM NOW!

Metal News 5 Responses »

Aug 092013

If you can’t be in Derbyshire, England this weekend for one of the world’s biggest metal festivals, fret not, because many of the main stage band sets at BLOODSTOCK will be streamed live through the interhole. According to the festival, the streams will begin running at 11 a.m. local time in the UK (which is 3 a.m. here in the glorious Pacific Northwest) starting today (Friday, Aug 9) and going through Sunday, August 11. In fact, it’s happening right fucking now!

The screen cap up above lists just a few of the bands scheduled to play the main stage at this year’s edition of the festival. The stream is available at this location — but I’ve also embedded it right after the jump:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x12kc97_live-steam-bloodstock-festival-2013_music

The full line-up can be found here. What are you waiting for? Continue reading »

DUNKELNACHT: “REVELATIO”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Aug 092013

Before beginning this review of DunkelNacht’s forthcoming second album, Revelatio, even before listening to all of it, I did some research about the band. I listened to a few songs from their previous full-length (2010’s Atheist Desekration) and read about the assortment of demos and splits that preceded it. If you’ve come across any of that music, I’d advise you to just forget about it in considering Revelatio, because this album is a very different beast. And if DunkelNacht are new to you, then you’re in the perfectly receptive place.

I can’t see the future, and so I can’t say that Revelatio is the culmination of a musical journey by the band’s principal song-crafter Heimdall. Who knows where he may go next? But he’s certainly in a different place than the ambient black metal that appears to have been the band’s earliest motif, or the scathing yet melodic trem-blast assaults that marked what I’ve heard of the last album. What Revelatio represents is nothing less than an explosion of creative exuberance, an extravagant combination of diverse styles that defeats easy summarization.

Believe me, I tried to come up with a neat, one-sentence summing up. I thought about saying, “It’s like a three-way orgy among Belphegor, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and The Black Dahlia Murder,” but that doesn’t make any sense, does it? Actually, that’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SHINING (SWEDEN), KATAKLYSM, THE RUINS OF BEVERAST, ARMAGEDON

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 5 Responses »

Aug 082013

Here’s the promised second part of today’s effort to catch up on noteworthy new things from the last several days.

SHINING

Sweden’s Shining announced a while back that their next album, 8 ½ – Feberdrömmar I Vaket Tillstånd (scheduled for release by Dark Essence on Sept 23), would feature many guest vocalists, in addition to frontman Niklas Kvarforth of course. As of today, we know who they are, and it’s an interesting list that includes more than a few black metal luminaries:

1. “Terres Des Anonymes” featuring FAMINE of PESTE NOIRE
2. “Szabadulj Meg Önmagadtól” featuring ATTILA CSIHAR of MAYHEM, TORMENTOR
3. “Ett Liv Utan Mening” featuring PEHR LARSSON of ALFAHANNE
4. “Selvdestruktivitetens Emissarie” featuring GAAHL of GOD SEED, WARDRUNA, ex-GORGOROTH
5. “Black Industrial Misery” featuring MANIAC of SKITLIV, ex-MAYHEM
6. “Through Corridors Of Oppression” featuring KVARFORTH

The songs themselves date back to an earlier era in Shining’s life. Original pre-production tracks of the songs were used as the foundation, with the addition of newly recorded bass and guitars as well as keyboards performed by Lars Fredrik Fröslie (Angst Skvadron, Wobbler, Asmegin). Should be worth checking out when it arrives. Continue reading »

MUMAKIL: “FLIES WILL STARVE”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Aug 082013

(DGR reviews the latest album by Swiss grind marauders Mumakil.)

Mumakil are a band that I discovered late into their career. The group have been active since 2004, yet it took a split with a personal fave Misery Index for them to land on my radar. But, it is proof that splits can have some success in promoting bands because what Mumakil got up to during the six minutes they occupied on that split grabbed me, and I then found myself somewhat enamored with the group’s 2009 release Behold The Failure – especially because it partially served as my entry and tutorial to more death metal oriented grindcore, as opposed to the usual short blasts and Napalm Death that was my previous exposure.

It’s hard to believe that four years have passed since Behold The Failure; and you sound like a crazy person when trying to tell people that you’ve waited four years for another thirty-five minutes of music. However, Mumakil are a band who have fused death metal into grindcore without morphing into full-blown deathgrind, instead creating the sort of ugly, angry grind that is fueled entirely by blastbeats. When you name your band after the giant war elephant of Lord Of The Rings fame, it’s a signal that you will be a representation of that thing during a war charge. It’s going to be loud, brash, fast, and all too reckless. If you aren’t doing that, then you’ve done a disservice to the mumakil name.

Mumakil deal in spades with the sort of hammering grind mentioned above that just feels absolutely ugly. Everything about it sounds like a sweaty, roaring beast. It makes everything around it feel that way, so much so that one can only imagine a live show being a beer-fueled, swamping, swirling vortex. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW (Part 2) AND AN ANNOUNCEMENT: MIKE VAN MASTRIGT (AND NEOCAESAR)

Interviews, Metal News 2 Responses »

Aug 082013

(Late last month we brought you Part 1 of KevinP’s interview with Mike van Mastrigt of Houwitser (ex- Sinister), and we promised you that Part 2 would include an announcement you wouldn’t want to miss. KevinP gets to it without delay as we present Part 2 below.)

K: Okay, now onto the announcement you wanted to make. The floor is yours……

M: I’m proud to announce that I’m working again with Bart van Wallenberg (Sinister guitarist/bass on Diabolical Summoning —> Creative Killings). We have a new band called NEOCAESAR. When we started we had an idea of the music we wanted to write, only this did not work out (it was not the quality we were used to). So I told Bart just to come up with anything he feels fine with. We started working with that new material and found ourselves back in our Hate time period. We initially tried to work with international drummers, but we needed to spend time practicing. So we decided we needed someone from Holland, which left us with only one option (and there are a lot of good Dutch drummers), Eric de Windt. I worked with him before (and he was also the vocalist on Sinister’s Aggressive Measures album). When Eric said yes, I called Michel [Alderliefsten] (Houwitser guitarist) with the good news. Michel will be our bass player.

K: So Bart has been quiet since his departure with Sinister many years ago (and I simply loved his work on Diabolical Summoning & Hate). How long has this been in the planning?

M: A few years ago we talked about it, even had a Sinister reunion night. With Bart, Aad, Michel and myself. We came up with the idea to reform Sinister, only Aad could no longer play drums anymore. We talked about getting a different drummer, but at the time Bart had other things to worry about (and it wouldn’t be nice for Aad, as an original member of the band). Little did we know the “rat” would use Sinister for his own benefit. So this has been in the planning for a while, but finalized just a few months ago. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BROKEN HOPE, EVOCATION, NEW DOMINION

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Aug 082013

You may have noticed that new music round-ups have been scarce this week. We’ve been going overboard on the reviews instead. However, I have been maintaining a constant vigil and collecting worthwhile new things as I’ve seen them. Only problem is that the list has grown so damned long, even after just a few days of watching and not writing, that the list has become unwieldy. So I’ve done some fairly random paring down and split this catch-up round-up into two parts, this being the first.

BROKEN HOPE

Do you sometimes wish that revered old bands who have fallen apart would just stay down, so you can be left with your fond memories instead of having them tarnished with a mediocre comeback? Unfortunately, it seems that comebacks tend to be mediocre a lot more often than awesome. But judging from the first new song in this round-up, that probably won’t be the case with Chicago’s Broken Hope.

They recorded five albums between 1991 and 1999 and then split up, but they’re coming back with a new album named Omen of Disease that’s due on October 20. The song that premiered yesterday is “Flesh Mechanic”. It’s a grisly riff monster, fresh guts dripping from its teeth, and trench-level roars bellowing from its throat. The solo in the song is white hot, and the whole thing is brimming with feral energy. If only all comebacks sounded this putrid. Continue reading »

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