NO CLEAN SINGING

WILLOWTIP SIGNING BONANZA: NAUSEA, MITHRAS, PLAGUE WIDOW

Nov 032013

In the last three days I saw three signing announcements for three bands who kick so much ass that they produce epidemic proportions of asslessness. It finally dawned on my foggy mind that all three signings were with the same label: Willowtip Records, based in the incomparably named borough on the left bank of Connoquenessing Creek — Zelienople, Pennsylvania. The three bands are Nausea, Mithras, and Plague Widow. In case these names are unfamiliar to you, here’s a bit of background along with more details about the new albums that are headed our way — and some music to hear from each band.

NAUSEA

An introduction is probably unnecessary in this case, but here goes: Nausea are a seminal SoCal grind band whose earliest demos go back to 1987, yet their only full-length album was 1991’s Crime Against Humanity. They split up in 1994 but reformed in 2001, and they’ve been playing a lot of live shows in the last three years, including Maryland Deathfest and a recent European tour. The current line-up consists of original vocalist/guitarist Oscar Garcia and original drummer Eric Castro, plus two new members: Bassist Alejandro CB (Pounder, Chemical Bitches) and guitarist Leon del Muerte (Murder Construct, ex-Exhumed, Phobia, Impaled, Intronaut).

The new album is entitled Condemned To the System, and Willowtip will be releasing it on January 7, 2014. It will include both new songs and previously unreleased vintage tracks. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: AUROCH — “SEVEN VEILS”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Nov 032013

This is a review of a forthcoming 7″ EP by Vancouver’s Auroch, but it happens to coincide with a piece of significant news announced yesterday, so we’ll start with that: After making a particularly striking impression with their 2012 album From Forgotten Worlds, Auroch have now signed with Profound Lore, who will be releasing the band’s next album during 2014. Recording is expected to begin in February. Congratulations are in order, both for the band and for the label. That album goes on our highly anticipated list for the new year.

Now, back to the new EP. The name is Seven Veils and it includes two songs — the title track and a b-side called “Coronation”, which is a re-titled and re-recorded version of a much earlier demo track.

“Seven Veils” is a rip-roaring, no-holds-barred onslaught of blackened death metal, with meat-tenderizing drum blasts and a maelstrom of ravaging guitar and bass distortion. The blast-furnace effect of the music is regularly punctuated by brief moments of separation, sometimes no longer than one big twang of a bass string or a few morbid arpeggio notes. The music finds its groove here and there, but its mainly a fascinating over-the-top frenzy. The vocals are also completely unhinged, ranging from boiling-in-oil shrieking to the rapid-fire barking of what sounds like a really big mastiff. When you listen, your first impulse may be to duck and cover. Continue reading »

YIN AND YANG: BLOOD MORTIZED AND AQUILUS

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Nov 022013

I’m late with this Saturday post. I have excuses: I was out carousing until the wee hours of the morning and then slept in, and then have been dealing with intermittent power outages (3 so far) at my island home due to high winds in the Puget Sound area. I can’t tell you how much fun it has been to be in the middle of listening and then writing, only to have the computer go black in mid-stream, and then have to start over — three times. Fuck.

Anyway, before it happens again, here are two new songs that began streaming on the web over the last 24 hours. You’ll figure out the “Yin and Yang” title to this post after you hear them.

BLOOD MORTIZED

Sweden’s Blood Mortized have a new album due for release by Chaos Records (I’m told it will be around mid-November). I reviewed it here about a week ago. The punch line of the review was this: “You can look far and wide and you won’t find a better offering of old school Swedish death metal this year than The Demon, The Angel, The Disease.”

With the review I streamed a track named “Bastard”, and this morning Blood Mortized made a second advance track available. This one is “My Soul Your Flesh”, which I described in my review as a “hell-king headbanger”. Now you’ll be able to understand what I was talking about. You might want to strap on a neck brace before the rampaging begins. Listen next . . . Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM HOODED MENACE AND BONES

Eye-Catchers, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Nov 012013

I’ve been distracted today, more than usual, by my fucking day job (the nerve of them expecting me to work for my pay!), but I didn’t want to let this Friday crawl to a close without one more post. I’ve seen and heard a handful of new things today that are worth spreading around, but time being short, I’ll limit this to two excellent items, and perhaps include the rest tomorrow.

HOODED MENACE

The ultra-crushing, doom-dealing blood drinkers in Finland’s Hooded Menace appear to have been working on a follow-up to their gloriously heartless 2012 album Effigies of Evil. The new work will be released as a 12″ EP by Doomentia entitled Labyrinth of Carrion Breeze. The beautiful cover art (and by “beautiful” I mean loaded with fuckin skulls and ghouls) was unveiled on Halloween, and credit goes to Joshua Brettell (Ilsa’s drummer) and Adam Geyer for the creation (Brettell drew, Geyer did the gorgeous coloring). The front panel is above and the gatefold layout can be viewed after the jump (click for bigger views).

In addition to sharing the cover art, Hooded Menace has also made a part of a song called “Chasm of the Wraith” available for streaming. It’s low, slow . . . and actually beautiful, in a dreadful way. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CRYPTICUS, ZMEY GORYNICH, GRAILIGHT, SCORNED DEITY, SUCHTHAUS

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Nov 012013

Halloween Day turned out to be quite a day for discovering new songs and video debuts. In our first post of this post-Halloween Friday, I collected five new videos that came out yesterday, and in this post I’ve got some other recommended new songs that I discovered on Halloween (or first thing this morning), presented in the order of discovery.

CRYPTICUS

Crypticus is a collaboration between American vocalist/guitarist/bassist Patrick Bruss and Norwegian drummer Brynjar Helgetun that I came across (and wrote about) through their 2012 EP, Insieme Verso Terrore. That was enough to land them a place on our recent list of the best Swedish-style death metal released in the last five years by newer bands. Their third album, The Barrens, is due for release on December 1 and can be pre-ordered on Bandcamp now.

To celebrate Halloween, Crypticus released a free Horror Grind Mixtape on Bandcamp, which they describe as “an original Death Metal mini-anthology”. It’s one nearly 11-minute adrenaline rush called “The Belasco Bequest”, the kind of expertly executed, blast-force chainsaw death metal (with surprises) that Crypticus do so well. Tasty riffs, tasty drumming, tasty lead guitar melodies, varying rhythms, carnivorous vocals — and it’s free! Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: BELPHEGOR (“IN BLOOD”), DEICIDE (“THOU BEGONE”), GROAN (“WOMEN OF DOOM”), PYREXIA (“INFLICTION”), and VENOMOUS MAXIMUS (“HELLENBACH”)

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Nov 012013

In the realm of metal, Halloween has become a big day for news and for the premiere of new music and videos. We had more than our average number of posts yesterday in an effort to keep up, but we still didn’t even come close. So to start this post-Halloween Friday, here are five new videos that premiered yesterday.

Because there’s so much to see and hear, I’ll be cutting back on my usual verbose introductions — literally — by largely eliminating the use of verbs. In the next post, we’ll present some new Halloween Day songs that debuted in non-video form.

BELPHEGOR

The music: “In Blood — Devour This Sanctity”, a song inspired by “The Hungarian Dances” by Johannes Brahms. The album: Blood Magick Necromance (2011) (reviewed here). The video: filmed live at “Moskva Hall”, Moscow, October 6, 2013, plus assorted Belphegorian imagery.

Impressions: spine-tingling; heat lightning indoors; holy shit that drumming; satanic imperialism extends its reach; next album due May 2014, bring it! Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (A HALLOWEEN EDITION): BLACK ALTAR, NECROPHAGIA, OLD SKIN, THE CHASM, GAPED, AND SARTEGOS

Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 5 Responses »

Oct 312013

We’ve already delivered quite a flood of posts today, at least measured by our modest standards, but since tonight is the most metal holiday of the year, I couldn’t end our posting day without a round-up of newly discovered music suitable to the occasion. This is a big bag of special treats for your ears, the musical equivalent of those apples embedded with razor blades and worms that I like to keep around in case any neighborhood brats come calling. Just think of it as a big playlist of putridity, and feel to skip my words, as long as you don’t mind the thought of me weeping.

BLACK ALTAR

Black Altar are a black metal band from Olsztyn, Poland, with two albums and assorted shorter releases to their credit since 1997. Their latest offering is a five-song EP named Suicidal Salvation. I had never heard Black Altar’s music before, and all I knew about this EP was that it includes songs that were intended for a split with Shining that apparently didn’t come to pass.

I found two streaming examples of the EP’s music — a full track named “The Sentence” and a teaser reel of excerpts from all the songs. I’ve embedded both of them below. But I’m so taken with the band’s music that I also found two of the four tracks that they contributed to a 3-way split (Emissaries of the Darkened Call — Three Nails In the Coffin of Humanity) with Thornspawn (Texas) and Varathron (Greece) that came out at the end of 2012. Those songs are “I’m Demon” and “Nighthunter”. Continue reading »

HORROR FOR HALLOWEEN: WATCH PORTAL’S NEW VIDEO FOR “CURTAIN”

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Oct 312013

Not long ago Australia’s Portal released a new official music video for the song “Curtain” from their tremendous 2013 album Vexovoid. It was produced by Panorama Programming and directed by Zev Deans, who drew inspiration for the video from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Conqueror Worm”.

And the video really is inspired. “Curtain” is a horrifying assault of blackened death metal, thoroughly inhuman, oppressive, and doomed in its atmospherics. The video matches the music in its hopelessness and its ominous obscurity. You can watch it after the jump, and I thought it might also be interesting to include the text of Poe’s poem, too.

Trick or treat! Continue reading »

MDF UPDATE: 30 NEW BANDS CONFIRMED!

Metal News 8 Responses »

Oct 312013

Talk about a Halloween treat: Today the MARYLAND DEATHFEST confirmed the appearance of 30 new bands at next year’s 12th edition of North America’s best extreme metal fest — bringing the total to 63. And even that fairly recent flyer up there is still incomplete. Check out this list of the names announced today:

Aeternus (Norway) – Exclusive US appearance!
Arcagathus (Canada)
Birdflesh (Sweden)
Castevet
Coffins (Japan)
Creative Waste (Saudi Arabia)
Cryptic Slaughter
Dropdead
Enthroned (Belgium) – Exclusive US appearance!
Entrails (Sweden)
Final Conflict
Immolation
Incantation
In Disgust
Mesrine (Canada)
Mitchondrion (Canada)
Mutilation Rites
Necros Christos – Exclusive US appearance! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LISTEN TO A FULL-ALBUM STREAM OF EAST OF THE WALL’S “REDACTION ARTIFACTS” RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 1 Response »

Oct 312013

Two days ago New Jersey’s East of the Wall released their latest opus, Redaction Artifacts. It has already been showered with praise from many quarters, including Austin Weber’s review for our own humble site (here), which called the album “eclectic and captivating”, “a swirling hodge-podge of hostility, soothing calm, frequent tempo shifts, and beautiful singing mixed with hoarse bellows⎯all while being shred-filled and shaded by mercurial melodic explosions”, and the band’s “finest album yet”.

While we would like to believe that all right-thinking people accept our word in such matters as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — despite the fact that we rebelled against our own site’s name in recommending the album so strongly — the music speaks more powerfully than mere words. And while two songs from the album have previously been made available for streaming, we are privileged today to bring you Redaction Artifacts in its entirety. So listen to it next, and if you like what you hear, the album is available now, on CD through the band directly HERE, CD and digital at Amazon HERE, and the LP via Science Of Silence HERE.

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