BEASTWARS: “BLOOD BECOMES FIRE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 262013
 

Matt Hyde has soul, and when he sings it sounds like he’s hacking up hot, smoking chunks of it. And while he vomits up his own soul in a vocal conflagration, his bandmates in Beastwars will pull yours down into an abyss. But you won’t mind. You’ll be too busy banging your head, caught up in the power of the riff.

I don’t mean to take anything away from the united contributions of the band as a whole, but when I think back on Beastwars’ stellar second album, Blood Becomes Fire, those are the two ingredients that leap to mind first — Hyde’s utterly dominating vocals and a phalanx of compelling, sludgy Clayton Anderson riffs. Add in James Woods’ bass lines, which mimic the grinding of tectonic plates deep in the Earth, and Nathan Hickey’s bone-breaking drumwork, and you get metal that’s as apocalyptically heavy as it is neck-snapping.

As far as I’m concerned, this New Zealand band had nothing else to prove after only one album. Their 2011 self-titled debut was that good. But although Beastwars may not have needed to prove anything after their first album, they have proved that they will have staying power, because their second one is even better than the debut. Continue reading »

THE AMENTA: “FLESH IS HEIR”

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Mar 262013
 

(DGR reviews the new album by Australia’s The Amenta.)

It has been a long and interesting wait for fans of Australian group  The Amenta – whose new disc Flesh Is Heir was just released a little bit earlier this week (and is streaming here). Officially it’s been almost five years between the group’s full releases, although the band have kept up a steady stream of EPs and singles (such as the VO1D EP which was released in 2011 and is still available on Bandcamp as pay what you want) in between n0N and now. However, even between VO1D and now, three years have passed with only a couple of small releases in between. The group’s releases were becoming very promising and mature, too, so when time came for the official release of Flesh Is Heir, it was easy to assume that it was going to be a big time in the band’s history — and so it has proven to be.

Flesh Is Heir is a massive and incredibly dense album packed into forty-five minutes, with moments ranging from calculated ferocity to sheer chaos in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t sound polished; it sounds distorted and disgusting. Man, what it does offer though is a crushing bit of extreme music that whiplashes from industrial, to death metal, to black metal, to every spectrum the band could come up with in between – so long as they could blast and scream over it. Continue reading »

THE “YEAR ZERO” VIDEO: AN INSIDE LOOK AT GHOST B.C.’S PRE-PERFORMANCE RITUAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 252013
 

The Nameless Ghouls in Sweden’s Ghost B.C. have jealously guarded their true identities, which makes it so surprising that without much fanfare they’ve now revealed them for all the world to see.

Earlier this month the band released a track named “Year Zero” from their forthcoming second album Infestissumam (Latin for “hostile”), which is due for release on April 9. Today they premiered an official video for the same song. Apart from cryptic images of children, the main action consists of a group of women of different ages assembling for a visit by their lord and master and a light repast of raw steak, grapes, and goblets of wine.

All of this proves to be simply spiritual and material nourishment in preparation for donning the costumery of Ghost B.C. and finishing off the track in the garb to which we Ghost fans have become accustomed.

So there you have it. Secrets revealed. And that’s not all that’s revealed: we get to see the band members buck nekkid when they change clothes. Which means this video is NSFW. Continue reading »

UNEARTHED: SHEVILS, ÖGENIX, THE SOLEMN CURSE, AND TAKEN BY THE TIDE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 252013
 

Yesterday I devoted space to four under-the-radar bands with divergent styles of metal that I thought deserved more attention from fans of extreme music. Shining the spotlight on deserving but relatively unheralded bands has consistently been one of this site’s objectives, but my recent day-job death march put me way behind in doing it. So I’m doing it again today, with four more bands unearthed from the underground who have recently released new music. Once again, their musical styles are all over the map.

SHEVILS

Shevils are based in Oslo, Norway. They released their debut EP last year under the title Necropolis, and earlier this month they premiered a new song named “We Walk On Shattered Glass”, which will appear on an upcoming album that’s projected for release in the fall of 2013. I took a chance on the song, not knowing anything about the band, and it kicked my ass right up between my shoulder blades. This has made it difficult to sit down, but I’m not complaining.

The new song delivers hardcore vehemence with musical flair, combining skull-pounding grooves, vein-bursting vocals, and a catchy melody that will get stuck in your head. Continue reading »

TROLLFEST COVER BRITNEY SPEARS (and TOM WAITS) AND SUIDAKRA REVEAL NEW COVER ART

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 252013
 

This morning brought new goodies from two of our favorite folk metal bands, who enjoy capital letters so much that they refuse to stop at just one: Norway’s TrollfesT and Germany’s SuidAkrA.

SUIDAKRA

SuidAkrA will be releasing a new album via AFM Records on May 24. Its name is Eternal Defiance and it will include 10 tracks plus a bonus song (“Mrs McGrath”). This morning the band unveiled the album’s cover art by Kris Verwimp. It’s an eye-catcher, and one that makes me curious about the significance of the four faces superimposed on the red dragon. Time will tell . . . I’m hoping for good things from this album.

TROLLFEST

The world’s premier exponents of True Norwegian Balkan Metal also have something new on the way — a 12” picture vinyl entitled A Decade Of Drekkadence, which the band is releasing in celebration of their 10th Anniversary. The picture disc, created by Swedish cartoonist Jonas Darnell and designer Terje Johnsen, is also an eye-catcher, but in a different way — nutty instead of dramatic — but what did you expect from these guys? Here it is: Continue reading »

SEPTEKH: “APOLLONIAN EYES”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 252013
 

 

I couldn’t help but be intrigued by Sweden’s Septekh before ever hearing a note of their new four-song EP, Apollonian Eyes. They claim as influences not only Motörhead and Slayer but also Fenriz (Darkthrone) and Frost (Satyricon, 1349), not only The Exploited and Death Breath but also DHG and Emperor. They embrace the label “dirty thrashy death metal” but they profess a fondness for vintage Sherry, they sport blazers and vests on stage, and they cultivate a nice assortment of Snidely Whiplash moustaches.

If you have trouble wrapping your mind around all that and what it might portend for Septekh’s music, join the club. Perhaps you now begin to understand why I was intrigued. Of course, curiosity has killed some cats — this could have been a mess — but Apollonian Eyes left this cat purring.

All four songs on the EP are jet-fueled, rip-roaring, fast-paced romps. They’re loaded with jagged, rapidly jabbing riffs and frenzied drumwork, but that’s balanced by hard-chugging, road-eating, Motörhead-style heavy rock rhythms and a nice assortment of guitar solos that alternately spit flames and whirl like a dervish. Continue reading »

FALLUJAH: “NOMADIC”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Mar 252013
 

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli reviews the new EP by the Bay Area’s Fallujah. The digital-only EP will be released by Unique Leader on April 2, exclusively through iTunes.)

Let’s talk about the state of modern death metal for a moment.  When I reviewed Fallujah’s The Harvest Wombs back in 2011, I wrote this…

“Death metal, especially the more extreme and overtly technical forms, has split into two very distinct camps.  One focuses on the atonal and chaotic as much as ever (e.g., Brain Drill, Aeon, Origin) and one focuses on a more melodic, proggy, jazz-toned sound (e.g., Obscura, Anata, Necrophagist).  Fallujah definitely belong in the latter camp, looking to make a name for themselves while going up against some of the current modern titans of death metal as we speak.”

Fallujah really accomplished something spectacular with their long-awaited debut. Their odd combination of technical death metal, melodic death metal, black metal, and modern ambient elements, forged in the attempt to capture a “death metal in space” sound, cemented an identity that couldn’t be denied. So it stands to reason that people like me who loved their debut would be apprehensive about whether this band could touch base with the power of their initial output and yet move forward.

Have no fear: Nomadic, the band’s first material since then, only shows us a Fallujah who are truly maturing into their own now. Continue reading »

OBSCURITY: GEVURAH, SYN:DROM, THRAWSUNBLAT, AND ODRADEK ROOM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 242013
 

We’re sitting on a cornucopia of promos for forthcoming releases by relatively high-profile bands such as Amorphis, Arsis, Children of Bodom, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Finntroll, Heaven Shall Burn, and Hypocrisy. We will be reviewing some of those, and more that I haven’t named. But this morning I felt like exploring new music from more obscure bands whose music I’d never heard. As usual, there’s no rhyme or reason to what I picked.

GEVURAH

The obscurity of this two-man Montreal band is likely to be short-lived since they’ve now been signed by Profound Lore. PL plans to release Gevurah’s five-track debut EP Necheshirion (Hebrew for “snake-like”) on May 28. I haven’t yet seen much publicity about this news, but I did find a stream of one song from the EP, “Flesh Bounds Desecrated”.

That song is an unmitigated aural assault of blackened death metal (or deathened black metal). With almost overpowering force, the band deliver a fast-moving wave-front of blasting drums and harrowing guitar and bass licks, with raw mid-range vocals that scrape like sharpened nails on skin. Continue reading »

THY ART IS MURDER: “HATE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 242013
 

(TheMadIsraeli delivers this review of the forthcoming album by Australia’s Thy Art Is Murder.)

I really think at this point deathcore has become like an abusive husband to me. He keeps mistreating me, but I go back to him because he looks like he might’ve really changed this time, only to end up beating my face in with the dinner plate of the sandwich I didn’t make correctly for him that one time.

Thy Art Is Murder have definitely brought another one of those moments of blind hope as far as deathcore and I are concerned. I was ready to sign the restraining order, but Hate came along and made the kind of violent love to me that you just don’t get over.

Thy Art Is Murder have been around for a bit. With several EP’s and an acclaimed debut to fall back on, these Aussies definitely showed that they are a Grade A cut above their contemporaries. The thing is, with this new album Hate, Thy Art Is Murder now only consist of two founding members: drummer Lee Stanton and bassist Sean Delander, who actually gave up his guitar position to fill that role. The question, then, is how does Hate rack up when the band now lacks 3/5 of the members who produced what got them noticed? Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 71)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  No Responses »
Mar 242013
 

That month-long out-of-town stint for my fucking day job put THAT’S METAL! on ice for a while, but I’m getting it going again beginning today, and I’ll start resume posting it on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. For newcomers, this series is devoted to photos, videos, and news item that I think are metal, even though they’re not music.

In this installment, I’ve got coal divers, volcanic lightning, Mt Etna going all out, Sarcastic fringeheads, sculptured books, an underwater gallery, stupid and dangerous at 2500 frames per second, and close-up card magic that will drop jaws.

ITEM ONE

I whined a lot about my out-of-town work project over the last 4 weeks, and I’m glad it’s over and I’m back in the Pacific Northwest. But I also realize that I don’t really have much to whine about. At least I have a job, and at least it doesn’t involve going down into a fuckin’ coal mine like those vacuum-packed Belgian miners shown above (circa 1900). As the author of the site where I found this wrote, I’ll bet they weren’t singing “Heigh ho, heigh ho . . .” Continue reading »

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