ROUND-UP: NORTHLESS, AEGAEON, IN DEFENCE, GODLESS ANGEL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jul 142013
 

I’ve had a busy weekend, with two late nights in a row catching Deafheaven and Autopsy/Black Breath in Seattle (yes, they all killed), on top of more activity than usual during the daylight hours. But I did manage to do some web surfing and e-mail reading and found quite a lot of new things to like. I’ve collected a few of them in this post and will try to round-up the others for another post tomorrow.

NORTHLESS

I heard a lot of good things about this Milwaukee band’s last album Clandestine Abuse (2011), but somehow it got lost in the mountainous piles of music I intended to check out. I’m not going to miss the next one. Its title is World Keeps Sinking and it’s due for release on August 23 by Gilead Media. And why am I not going to miss it? Because this morning I heard the album’s first advance track, “Kuru”, and it kills.

The mid-paced song is freighted with earth-splitting sludge riffs and laced with caustic hardcore-style howls, heavy as fuck and doomed as a village in the path of a lava flow. But there’s more to the song than the weight of sledgehammers coming down on fragile skulls and the dissonance of squalling guitars. The band incorporate some surprising instrumental segments that hint at post-rock and even jazz, without diminishing the music’s suffocating atmosphere of hopelessness. Good stuff — which you can hear next (the album can be pre-ordered here). Continue reading »

CLOUDKICKER: “HELLO”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jul 142013
 

(Better late than never, DGR reviews a single released by Ohio-based Cloudkicker earlier this year.)

Cloudkicker is one of those projects that people really should know more about. At this point, one-man band Ben Sharp has taken this project beyond being interesting for just guitarists and moved into a realm where people who love music generally should have a couple of his releases. Especially when he’s been kind enough to put out his material for free and then offer up some beautiful physical packages later on. He’s also got quite the varied discography at this point, writing music that was technically impressive and then moving into an area that is very ambient and ethereal.

I think he hit a major high point with 2010’s Beacons, which is one of the few instrumental discs I can do front to back without getting bored, and then reached it again with the recent Fade. Both discs represent two different eras in the Cloudkicker history, and way earlier this year he put out a single song called Hello that falls right in line with the mastery he displayed on Fade. Some folks may think it ridiculous that six months out we finally decide to discuss the song, but Hello is a powerful bit of music that travels further into the ambient realm than this project ever has before. On top of that, it contains slight elements of drone to create a warm and inviting song that, cliched as the description is, you can get absolutely lost in and just drift. Continue reading »

THE GENIUS OF MIKE PATTON + JOHN ZORN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jul 132013
 

John Zorn is a composer, multi-instrumental performer (though probably best known as a saxophonist), arranger, producer, improvisor, impresario, and MacArthur Fellow. Over a career spanning four decades, he has he has explored a wide spectrum of music and worked with a vast array of other musical artists. This year he turns 60 years old. In celebration of his birthday, he has been performing a series of worldwide concerts called “Zorn@60”. Last night, July 12, he put on one of these birthday parties at the Barbican’s concert hall in London. He had a few notable guests with him on stage, including Mike Patton.

I’m going to assume you know who Mike Patton is. Patton and Zorn have collaborated in the past (for example, on the 2002 experimental electronic/jazz album Hemophiliac), and Patton has also guested on releases by Zorn’s Painkiller and Naked City groups. Along with Joey Baron and Trevor Dunn, Patton was part of the “Moonchild Trio” that first appeared as the performers on Zorn’s 2006 composition, Moonchild: Songs Without Words, and went on to record other Zorn compositions.

So, this has been a long run-up to the main reason for this post, which is to show you some videos from the Patton-Zorn collaboration at Barbican last night. All four apparently feature music from Zorn’s album Templars: In Sacred Blood, with the composition again being performed both on the album and last night by the Moonchild Trio. What Patton does with his voice blew my shit away. The experimental music is also very cool. I think I need to track down this album. Watch and listen next. Continue reading »

TORTURE DIVISION AND BENT SEA: “DOUBLE PENETRATION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 132013
 

It was barely more than a month ago when Torture Division released their latest three-song assault on the senses (The Worship, reviewed here), and damned if they aren’t already back with another release. And damned if they don’t have company this time, because Double Penetration is a split release by Torture Division and Bent Sea, which is another super-group, and one we haven’t heard from in a while.

I had to crawl all the way back to November 2011 to find the post I wrote about Bent Sea’s debut album, Nostalgia. At that point the band consisted of guitarist/drummer Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork, Scarve), vocalist Sven de Caluwe (Aborted), and bassist Devin Townsend (you read that right). Devin Townsend didn’t participate in Bent Sea’s contribution to Double Penetration, his shoes having been filled by none other than Napalm Death’s Shane Embury.

The Bent Sea track is a ditty called “Partners In Grind”. It’s a bone-shaker and a neck-snapper, a death-grind marauder with a beastly off-tempo mid-section. I’ve taken the liberty of uploading it to our Soundcloud account so you can hear it. And then of course you should go download it from Torture Division’s web site (more on that later). Continue reading »

A LIFE ONCE LOST BREAKS UP

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 122013
 

Well, I just saw some very sad news via Lambgoat: A Life Once Lost is breaking up, again, and it sounds like this may really be the end. I’ve been a big fan for a long time. A Great Artist, Hunter, and Iron Gag, in particular, got so many plays in my car that I feared the CDs would eventually just melt. So this really is a bleak development. I’m just going to quote verbatim from the Lambgoat story:

“This has slipped under the radar for the past week, but A Life Once Lost frontman Bob Meadows recently sat down with the Doylestown, PA edition of the blog Fig to discuss his transition from musician to carpenter. The interview (which you can read here) seems mundane enough until you get several questions into the interview, at which point the following exchange takes place:

This time in your life also marks the end of your popular metal band, A Life Once Lost, fill me in on this new phase. Why leave the band after 14 years of success?

I feel like I need to step back a little bit from that to just better myself as a person. I just felt like I wasn’t really able to handle that aspect of being in a band or that commitment. I really had to put so many things aside. I’m 33 years old now and I feel like my life has been on hold since I was 19. I’m not complaining about where it’s taken me, it’s been pretty awesome. I’ve been able to put out 6 records, film videos, see countries I would have never seen before and I’ve taken a band further than a lot of people have in their lifetime. It’s a lot of fun and it feels really rewarding.

… Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 38 — PERSEFONE

 Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT  8 Responses »
Jul 122013
 

(In this 38th edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy reviews the discography of Persefone from the small nation of Andorra, including the band’s new 2013 release, Spiritual Migration.)

Recommended for fans of: Wintersun, Into Eternity, Edge of Sanity

It’s funny how things work out. Persefone had been on my list as a potential Synn Report for some time, and what with them recently releasing their fourth album it was pretty clear that I could kill two birds with one stone and link a short appraisal of it in with the usual Synn Report format. I decided pretty much straight away after finishing Part 37 that the Andorran prog-metallers were going to have to feature in the next edition, and then by coincidence a good number of our readers started mentioning Spiritual Migration as one of their albums of the year so far. It’s crazy how these things line up.

Persefone are the first Andorran artist to feature in The Synn Report, but their sound has worldwide appeal – indeed, their progressive proclivities, ostentatious keyboards, and epic song structures have a fair bit in common with In Vain, who were the subject of the previous edition of this column.

To put you in the right state of mind, a flurry of other names which have been thrown out in response to the band’s music are Dream Theater, Edge of Sanity, Symphony X, Opeth, Into Eternity, Borknagar… all prog-metal behemoths, ranging from the Power Metally inclined to the Death Metally devoted. The fact that these acts are so frequently referenced when talking about the Andorran sextet should (hopefully) give you some indication of just how highly regarded their albums – and their musical abilities – are by those in the know.

After the jump – four albums’ worth of technical skill, creative flair, grandiose ambition, and magnificent storytelling (and keyboards)… Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DEIPHAGO AND RITUAL COMBAT — “ACCEPT THE MARK”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 122013
 

Last fall a U.S. label named Red Stream Inc. made a limited CD release of a split entitled Accept the Mark by two sonically destructive bands — Deiphago and Ritual Combat. Now, the German label Iron Bonehead Productions is on the verge of giving the split the vinyl treatment, and that gave me the opportunity to hear the split for the first time. Here are some thoughts about it, plus the chance for you to hear one track from each band’s two contributions (we thank Iron Bonehead for giving us permission to do this).

DEIPHAGO

Deiphago, who we’ve written about repeatedly in the past, were initially what caught my interest in this release. Originally from The Philippines and now based in Costa Rica, they’ve mastered the art of inflicting black/death musical assaults that are both incinerating and transfixing. Their 2012 full-length Satan Alpha Omega was one of the best in this genre that I heard last year, and their two songs on Accept the Mark are just as compelling.

“Beast of Annihilation” is an original song that will eat you alive from the head down. It’s a mass of uber-distorted, vicious riffing, snare-heavy beats, and reverberating bestial barks and howls. Massive bass vibrations segment the maelstrom in brief slowdowns, and a shrieking solo tunnels into your skull like an overheated drill. It’s an eviscerating, brain-slamming experience. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: SUNBURSTER — “SOLARBIPOLAR”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 122013
 

One thing leads to another. In late May I came across a compilation by the name of Anthrosphere IV assembled by Philadelphia label Anthropic Records. It includes some stellar tunes, and so I wrote about it here. One song that I singled out for specific praise was from a stoner/sludge/doom band I hadn’t heard of before named Sunburster. And that led to the discovery that they’ve got a new EP coming this August named SolarBipolar, and a chance to hear it in advance.

The EP includes three songs of increasing length. All three remind me that you don’t need brain-scrambling complexity or high-wire instrumental acrobatics to make a great song. Sometimes the simplest tunes can be the ones you remember the longest and enjoy the most, though it takes a special kind of songwriting ingenuity to pull off that trick, and it helps a lot for the band  to have the power of the music in their blood. Sunburster bring all that to the table on SolarBipolar.

“War Torn” is the shortest and simplest of the EP’s songs. From start to finish, it’s essentially one repeating riff, in sync with the drumbeats. It’s immense, spine-smashing music that exerts its magnetic pull almost immediately, and most definitely will bind itself to your head by the end. Mike Murro’s raw, high-pitched, bleeding-wound vocals contrast effectively with the music’s staggering low end. Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (BEST OF 2013 . . . SO FAR)

 Listmania  24 Responses »
Jul 122013
 

(Earlier this week we asked NCS readers to share with us their lists of the best 2013 albums they’ve heard so far — and man did we get lists! More than 60 at last count, plus a bunch of interesting discussion. Our long-time supporter and occasional contributor SurgicalBrute decided to save his list for a post, and this is it, with sample music from each of his 25 picks.)

Anyone who’s ever made one of these lists knows how difficult they are to come up with. The truth is, for every one band that makes it onto a list, there’s probably another fifteen that are every bit as impressive and could have easily been chosen (which explains why some of you listed every band you could think of…seriously guys, save some albums for the rest of us ☺).

Personally, I’ve found the first half of 2013 to be extremely strong…new releases by metal stalwarts like Horna, Autopsy, and Amon Amarth…long awaited debuts by Lantern, Krypts, Vorum, and Sacriphyx. Hell, if things were to somehow totally tank from this point forward, I think we’d still come out ahead. Fortunately, we know that’s not going to happen, and it makes me eager to find out what’s in store for the rest of the year.

So, here’s my top 25 albums so far…Tell me what else you think I need to grab. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ULCERATE, TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, CRAVEN IDOL, EVOKEN, CRYPTOPSY

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Jul 122013
 

Here’s a collection of items I saw and heard yesterday while surveilling the interhole. The featured bands are Ulcerate (New Zealand), Twilight of the Gods (multinational), Craven Idol (UK), Cryptopsy (Canada), and Evoken (US), .

ULCERATE

The new album from New Zealand’s Ulcerate has been high on our “most anticipated” list for this year, and yesterday finally brought a lot of fresh news. The title of the album is Vermis, it includes 9 tracks, it’s nearly 55 minutes long — and it will be released by Relapse on September 17 in North America (September 13 in Germany and the Benelux countries and September 16 in the rest of the world). Pre-orders for the album and related merch are being fielded at this location. You can see the newly unveiled album cover above.

Yesterday also brought a video teaser for Vermis. It includes just an itty-bitty, teenie-weensie snippet of music, but it was enough to rattle my teeth. I think, just to be safe, I’ll make a dental appointment for the day after I get my hands on this album. The teaser is next. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries