BISPORA: “THE PINEAL CHRONICLES PHASE I: FURTHERANCE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jul 162013
 

(DGR reviews the new release by Sacramento-based Bispora.)

Back in 2011, local Sacramento group Bispora released an EP called The Cycle. For a group that pretty much came out of nowhere, The Cycle was a fantastic twenty minutes of music. It combined a love of prog metal, some djent elements, and a serious bit of Between The Buried and Me influence into something that you couldn’t really find elsewhere. It was a very guitar-centric disc too, with a pretty amazing melody that was intertwined throughout the first and last songs.

With a first release like that, Bispora became a band to watch. While they occasionally played with the same genre tropes as a lot of other bands, they managed to morph them into something all their own, so that they didn’t sound like just generic musician exercises. That’s why they gained the following that they did and why so many folks have been watching and waiting to see how they would follow it with the now-titled The Pineal Chronicles Phase One: Furtherance. (For the sake of my own fingers I’ll probably alternate between Phase One and Furtherance.)

Phase One was released the evening of July 4th and was free for an hour, before the band decided to start selling it for the pittance of $5. So is the first half of a promised two-part release worth the time of day? Have the band managed to pull away from the tractor beam that is the ‘difficult second release’? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KRALLICE, STOMACH EARTH, AND OCCULTIST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 162013
 

Did you miss our usual daily round-up yesterday? Well, you’re not alone. I missed it, too. In other words, I failed to write one. Instead, I decided I ought to do some of the work I actually get paid to do, even though I didn’t have a gun to my head. What a dumb idea. That meant I had to spend a few hours late yesterday and last night catching up on what I missed in the world of metal instead of continuing my experimentation on the development of pocket-sized nuclear fusion engines and the negotiation of lasting peace in the Middle East. But, you know, a person’s got to have his priorities straight. Here’s what I found:

KRALLICE

I like Krallice. I also like synchronicity. Less than a week ago I reported that Krallice spent a week in the studio this month recording three songs for a forthcoming split release with a project of Blut Aus Nord’s Vindsval named Vjeshitza. And then last night I found that the unparalleled (((unartig))) had filmed a Krallice set at Public Assembly in Brooklyn on July 14 that included two untitled new songs. Could these be two of the songs on the forthcoming split? Oh, I bet they are.

The videos are kind of dark, but the sound quality is good, as it usually is with an (((unartig))) production. But you should boost the volume so you don’t miss Mick Barr’s guitar leads, or for that matter what Nick McMaster, Colin Marston, and Lev Weinstein are also doing. Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN PRESENTS: REVIEWS IN HAIKUS

 Album Reviews, Reviews In Haikus  8 Responses »
Jul 162013
 

(Andy Synn delivers another installment of his irregular series of album reviews in haiku. Two more reviews come after the jump. With music.)

DEVILDRIVER – WINTER KILLS

More brawn than Beast. More

vigour than Villains. Hamstrung

By some weaker tracks.

https://www.facebook.com/DevilDriverOfficial1 Continue reading »

VARG VIKERNES ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF PLOTTING A TERRORIST ATTACK

 Metal News  36 Responses »
Jul 162013
 

This is breaking news, and therefore the details are sketchy and, as is often true with early reports of just about anything scandalous, there may be inaccuracies. However, news reports have appeared in Europe that Burzum’s Varg Vikernes has been arrested at his farm in France by the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (DCRI) on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack. Reports indicate that Varg’s wife Marie Cachet has also been arrested.  I’m just going to quote THIS REPORT at Euronews for now (with a few comments after that), and update the post as more info becomes available (additional info has appeared at French publications, such as this one):

“Black metal musician and neo-nazi sympathiser Kristian “Varg” Vikernes was arrested in southwestern France on Tuesday after his wife bought four rifles, raising suspicions he could turn to violence, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

The police suspect the Norwegian national of planning a “massacre” and searched his house for weapons and explosives. His wife, a French national and a member of a shooting club, had recently legally purchased four rifles.

The anti-terrorist prosecutor has been put in charge of the investigation. In a statement, the French Ministry of the Interior deemed him “likely to prepare a large-scale act of terrorism.” Continue reading »

PLAY VELCRO BALL WITH ARSIS AND GET A HAIRCUT FROM JAMES MALONE

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 162013
 

The day will come when crowdfunding campaigns reach the saturation point, but we’re not there yet, and we may not ever get there if more bands become as creative as Arsis.

You may remember that earlier this year Arsis was to be part of the End of Disclosure North American Tour along with Hypocrisy, Aborted, and Krisiun. And then, as we sadly reported here, Hypocrisy was forced to drop off the tour due to delays in obtaining visas, and that led to Aborted’s cancellation as well. But instead of just writing off the whole enterprise, Arsis and Krisiun soldiered on, despite the negative impact of those last-minute cancellations. That bought them a lot of respect from a lot of people, including me; I saw the Seattle show on that tour, and those bands killed it, despite playing to an embarrassingly small audience.

But what goes around comes around, and we gleefully reported that Arsis had become part of another North American tour beginning in August with Wintersun, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Starkill. But this is going to cost Arsis a pretty penny, as it turns out, and they’re making an appeal to fans to help them underwrite the expense. Before you blow this off, check out some of the perks they’re offering. Continue reading »

DARKANE: “THE SINISTER SUPREMACY”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Jul 152013
 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Sweden’s Darkane, their first in five years and out now on Prosthetic Records.)

There are certain bands who, I will admit, I am incapable of being objective about.  Bands whose music has an effect on me that, let’s be honest, is just plain fucking unfair.  Darkane is that band to me. Not only have Darkane been consistently excellent, they are to me THE flagship band for how modern metal should should be, creating a succinct core sound with so much hybridization at work that it’s full of nooks and crannies to get lost in.

With a compelling combination of Bay Area thrash, melodic death metal, death metal, progressive tendencies, jazz fusion detours, and classical foundations, they should be bigger than they are.  It’s a real shame.  The Sinister Supremacy marks album number six, and yet I fear that it may not expose their music to many more people than normal.  The Darkane fanbase, even the most rabid, seems to be rather insular in nature.

I think  the discography is flawless, the sound always far ahead of its time, and the musicianship unrivaled in many respects.  The core of guitarists Christofer Malmstrom and Klas Idleberg, bassist Jorgen Lofberg, and drummer Peter Wildoer is quite possibly one of the tightest, most in-tune-with-each-other musical units you will ever hear.  While keeping vocalists around has always been a problem, I was also immensely stoked to learn that Lawrence Mackory, the band’s original vocalist on their debut, Rusted Angel, had returned for The Sinister Supremacy. Continue reading »

ATTENTION EUROPEANS: AMON AMARTH AND CARCASS ARE COMING YOUR WAY, YOU BASTARDS

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 152013
 

I love our European brethren and sistren so much that I’m belatedly sharing this news even though it makes me slightly bitter. Okay, more than slightly bitter. More accurately, it makes me want to bite you in my bitterness.

This fall Amon Amarth and Carcass are linking horns in a tour called DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH IV, and they’ll be joined by UK’s Hell. The flyer you see up above just spotlights the UK dates on the tour, where Bleed From Within will also join the tour. But many other countries will be visited as well.

That’s really all I have to say about this. The complete tour dates can be seen after the jump.  Bastards. Continue reading »

ALTAR OF PLAGUES BREAKS UP

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Jul 152013
 

Times passes, things change, bands break up, musicians move on. And now it’s happening to Ireland’s wonderful Altar of Plagues. It’s sad news, as it always is when a band whose music you dig calls it quits. In this case, as you’ll see, the creativity of AoP will likely continue in some other form. Here’s a statement from guitarist James Kelly that just appeared on AoP’s Facebook page:

“Altar of Plagues will conclude this year.

I decided before writing “Teethed Glory and Injury” that it would be our final album. It was executed with this fact in mind. I can state it no more simply than this; it is time to move on.

We considered whether or not we would say anything at all regarding this. But at the very least, we would like to give people an opportunity to see us perform again should they care to. And so, these upcoming shows will be our final.

Our very final performance will be on October 19th, at Unsound Festival Poland. As a festival that celebrates the eclectic and the eccentric, I can think of no other place that would be more appropriate for this occasion. It is exactly the type of environment in which I have always aspired to share our work, and it will be a celebratory occasion to conclude at what I believe will be the peak of our existence as a group. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 77.5)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  8 Responses »
Jul 152013
 

This isn’t a full-blown edition of THAT’S METAL!, because I didn’t get my butt in a high enough gear to do one this week. It’s just one item that I found via a link from our buddy Phro, and it’s so fuckin’ cool that I decided to go with it now instead of adding it to the pile of other items from which the next full edition will be assembled. (And for any newcomers, this series is about photos, videos, and news items that I think are metal even if they’re not music.)

This is a story about Justin Vigile, the drummer for a Philadelphia metal band named Extractus, and about the doctor (Hartzell Schaff) who gave him back his life. There are other messages in this story, too, but you can draw your own conclusions about those. I just want to tell you what happened.

The facts are based on a May 14 story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune by Jon Tevlin. It begins with these sentences:

“When a Mayo Clinic surgeon showed a short film featuring the drummer of the heavy metal band Extractus at the Minneapolis Convention Center last week, he probably wasn’t hitting the band’s target audience. They were suit-clad doctors, in town for the annual convention of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. They seemed pretty button-down for the drummer’s exuberant style, but they were impressed nonetheless. That’s because the drummer, 22-year-old Justin Vigile, had been bedridden and dying with end-stage heart disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy [HCM], or thickening of the heart muscle, just months before the video was shot.“ Continue reading »

PURE AUDIO DESTRUCTION: ANAAL NATHRAKH LIVE AT ROSKILDE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 142013
 

On July 6, 2013, Britain’s Anaal Nathrakh played the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. The entire set was streamed live over the internet and it was filmed for posterity as well. The band received a DVD of the show and they’ve been “tweaking” the footage to improve the audio and alter the visual appearance a bit. Tonight they uploaded the first clip to YouTube, and more will be coming.

The first clip is the very beginning of the set and includes “Drug-Fucking Abomination” from their 2011 album Passion. The visuals have been given a kind of grainy, sepia-toned quality, which looks very cool. The sound is just absolutely obliterating.

For those of you unfamiliar with AN, this is a good example of the band’s cross-genre conflagration, and an introduction to the four different vocalists who live in Dave Hunt’s body. For those who are already fans, you’re gonna love this.

There is only one way to listen to the clip — VERY FUCKING LOUD. Boost that volume ’til the goo comes out your ears and you feel your internal organs beginning to liquify. Watch and listen/liquify after the jump. Continue reading »

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