EXTOL: “EXTOL”

 Album Reviews  16 Responses »
Jun 262013
 

(Andy Synn reviews the spectacular new come-back album by Norway’s Extol.)

So, all my cards on the table… I approached this album with an equal mix of awe and trepidation. This band mean a huge amount to me, and as much as I had been hoping for a reunion there’s always the fear that things simply might not be the same after so long.

Let me just say then that this album fulfils, and exceeds, all of my hopes and expectations. It is a truly phenomenal record which both reinstates the band’s legendary reputation and also primes them for a new era, and a new audience, recapturing the irrepressible spirit and raw passion of their earlier efforts, alongside an even greater sense of maturity and refined intelligence.

Now, to my fellow Extol acolytes, that should be all they need to hear. But what can I say that will entice the unfamiliar listener? How can I best describe the album’s (and the band’s) sound to a new potential audience?

Though the band’s distinctive sound is difficult to classify (if you read the SYNN REPORT I did about the band, you’ll see I chose to recommend each album separately, such was the variety on offer), the group could most closely be associated with progressive death metal – with the death metal elements drawing more from the post-Schuldiner school of thought rather than the Floridian corpse-yards. For a band that I feel often don’t get their due, their influence is surprisingly pervasive and far-reaching. In fact, if you want to know where The Faceless learned their Autotheistic chops, then Extol is a good place to start! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SOCKWEB, STATION DYSTHYMIA, FORLORN PATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 262013
 

For various reasons, mainly a long trip to the East Coast and back over the last weekend and catching-up to do at my job, I’ve fallen behind in listening to new metal. I’ve made a halting effort to catch up, and though I’ve not made much of a dent, I did select a few of the songs (quite diverse from each other) that I’ve heard since late last week to share with you in this post.

SOCKWEB

I don’t consider myself a cynic. In fact, I think I’m one of the least cynical people I know over the age of 12, more of a glass-is-half-full, give-everyone-the-benefit-of-the-doubt kind of guy. Yet I confess that I keep caged within me a black-eyed little cynic-monster, and the scaly bastard broke free when I first started reading about the duo from Richmond, Indiana, who call themselves Sockweb. Surely, that little monster screamed, this is pure gimmickry, one of those viral internet thingies that thrives solely on novelty (mixed with cuteness) rather than substance or merit.

Because after all, how could a father and his seven-year-old daughter really make grindcore that’s worth a damn, especially when it’s the little tyke who’s the vocalist?

And then I saw an announcement that first appeared late last week which caused me to reconsider: Not only have The Sockweb duo recorded a debut album (Werewolf), it’s being mastered by none other than Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer, Agoraphobic Nosebleed) and it will include guest appearances by Kat Katz (Agoraphobic Nosebleed), Joe Torchia (Flux Conspiracy), Erik Ebsen (Spiralmountain), and Jonathan Chun (Azure Noise, Ozoru Hammer). And so I relented, I shoved the monster back in his cage, and I listened for the first time to the four songs that are now out. And I was glad I did. Continue reading »

THE HAUNTED ARE COMING BACK — AND COMING BACK STRONG

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Jun 262013
 

Sweden’s The Haunted have been quiet for a while, and I had my doubts about whether the band would ever return to form after losing three members last year, and after what I considered a downturn in the quality of their output even before then. As an enthusiastic fan of the band’s earlier albums, this was a depressing state of affairs. But recently The Haunted have been hinting at a revival, with a new line-up, and today the new line-up was announced. Damnation, it’s a strong return!

As described in a just-released video on YouTube, founding member Peter Jensen succeeded in convincing two former members of the band to come back — vocalist Marco Aro (The Resistance, Face Down), who was with the band for The Haunted Made Me Do It, Live Rounds In Tokyo, and One Kill Wonder, and drummer extraordinaire Adrian Erlandsson (At the Gates, Paradise Lost), who was one of the band’s original members at the time of their self-titled debut in 1998.

But that’s not all. Guitar wizard Ola Englund (Feared, Six Feet Under) has also joined the line-up, and that’s another very strong addition.

There will undoubtedly be fans who will pine for the departed frontman Peter Dolving, but I for one am pretty damned excited about this revamped line-up. And not only because of the names now involved in the project: the video includes snippets of music from the new line-up’s rehearsal, and it sounds kickass. Watch it and listen after the jump. Continue reading »

FIVE ALBUMS THAT GAVE THE WORLD THE ABOMINABLE HAPPY METAL GUY

 Mosh Pit  34 Responses »
Jun 262013
 

(I’m still reveling in the continuing outpouring of wonderful comments that have been appearing on a post yesterday, which invited readers to list five albums that changed their lives. They are like a series of very personal memoirs about the writers’ journeys into heavy music, and I hope they continue coming. Fellow blogger Happy Metal Guy decided to do more than provide a list in a comment. This is the more that he decided to do; although HMG writes in the third person, he really wrote this, not I.)

Although Happy Metal Guy mostly blogs about stuff related to metal music nowadays, it does not mean that he had a long history with the genre. He actually started out listening to many bands that would be considered to be ‘unmetal’ by many heavy metal fans, and believe it or not, the following bands actually paved the way for his eventual interest in metal music, which happened merely seven years ago.

As the supreme headless cyborg Islander said in a comment on his post that prompted this very post you’re reading, recalling five albums that changed one’s life is different from traditional lists in that all one requires is honesty and a good memory.

So here’s what you have when Happy Metal Guy is honest and has a good memory: a brain-rupturing, ear-exploding, eye-bursting, mouth-frothing, nose-bleeding, skin-crawling, and abominable combination of words that would make many of you want to dismember and decapitate him, then send each piece back into various time periods and instruct the people of each time period to blunderbuss each piece before throwing it into the incinerator. Continue reading »

FIVE ALBUMS THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE

 Mosh Pit  109 Responses »
Jun 252013
 

Last week I came across an article on a site called Ryan’s Rock Show! in which the site asked Fuck the Facts founder Topon Das (above) to write about “five albums that changed his life”. His answers read like a sketch of a personal musical journey, one that began with Metallica’s …And Justice For All. As I read through his list, I couldn’t help but start thinking about what albums had a similar impact on my own musical journey. And then I thought, wouldn’t this be a nice subject for an NCS post! Everyone who is serious about metal must have their own personal list of life-changing albums, so why not ask what they are?

Five is an arbitrary number, of course, but it’s a manageable number. In my case, making lists tends to confound me. I think I take list-making too seriously. I usually start thinking too hard about it, partly out of fear that I’ll embarrass myself if I just shoot from the hip and partly because I have difficulty making choices even under the best of circumstances, unless I go with my first impulses. When I think too long and too hard, my brain tends to lock up like an engine that’s been victimized by a gaping oil leak.

So this time I thought for all of about 10 minutes. If I’d thought longer and harder, I have no doubt I would have hit a wall, and there would have been no list. But there’s also something to be said for going with the albums that leap to mind immediately. That means they made a lasting impression, right? You, of course, may choose to be more deliberate in your thinking, but however long it takes, I hope you’ll feel like adding a comment to this post and sharing the five albums that changed your life. But try to focus, as Topon Das did and as I’ve done, on the albums that led you into heavy music (Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony may have also changed your life, but this is a more focused kind of list). Continue reading »

REFLECTIONS IN THE VOID: THE SURVEY

 Mosh Pit  18 Responses »
Jun 252013
 

(This is the second in a series of guest posts by NCS supporter Utmu in which he poses questions and seeks answers.  Here, he hopes for answers that can become the foundation for a scholastic endeavor. Let’s not disappoint him. Put your thinking caps on!)

So, as you may remember, in the first installment of Reflections in the Void I told you about the essay(s) that I have to write for Composition, and I stated that I was focusing on a metal-related topic. At least one of the ideas I’m presenting in my essays will be somewhat complex and certainly controversial.

When answering the following questions it will be important to remember that some bands’ styles could be described as original and progressive, perhaps even genre-defining or groundbreaking (although this is a largely subjective judgment).

Other bands modify those sounds, and conversely others adhere strictly to those predefined genres whether or not they were a part of the original movements. Although they sound similar, Municipal Waste and D.R.I. were formed nearly two decades apart. Even these types of bands could be considered entities that have brought something new to the table, subjectively speaking. How you react to a band is dependent upon your experience as a listener (and perhaps as a writer and/or player) of music.

It is also important to remember that certain groups may mix and match styles within heavy metal. Still others even combine metal with external genres such as jazz, classical, folk, electronic, et cetera, ad nauseum. Continue reading »

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER’S “GOAT OF DEPARTURE” GETS THE VIDEO TREATMENT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 242013
 

Seeing The Black Dahlia Murder performing while dressed in tuxedos is only one of many “what the fuck?” moments in the band’s new official video for “Goat of Departure” from their new Everblack album. The montage of stills shown above gives a taste of some of the others, but there are a lot of ’em packed into the four minutes of mayhem you’re about to see.

The performance shots were filmed at the downstairs bar at The Magic Stick in Detroit. Ben Meyer directed it. Presumably, no goats were harmed in the making of this video. Watch it next. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 37: IN VAIN

 THE SYNN REPORT  8 Responses »
Jun 242013
 

(In this 37th edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy reviews the discography of Norway’s In Vain.)

Recommended for fans of: Vintersorg, Swallow the Sun, Leprous

Picking bands for The Synn Report is a task unto itself (I don’t just throw darts at a board, despite what you might have heard). Many factors are involved: the genre of the band (I like to keep successive columns varied if I can), the size of their discography (basically how much am I prepared to write at any one time), and the current status of the band are just a few. I recently bumped Man Must Die up the list so as to coincide with their funding campaign for their next album, I pushed Ludicra up the list when they announced their dissolution, and the last edition was written purely because I’d been putting off writing about The Funeral Pyre for far too long!

In the case of Norwegian prog-metal mobsters In Vain, the band made it into contention purely because their latest album was just released earlier this year, and has been sitting in my “To Review” pile for far too long. So it seemed prudent to kill two birds with one stone and fold a sort-of-review of their latest release into the traditional format of The Synn Report! Continue reading »

LORD WORM REJOINS CRYPTOPSY (BRIEFLY)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 242013
 

Okay, sorry about that somewhat misleading headline. I couldn’t resist (and I did put the word “briefly” in there).

Cryptopsy’s first two albums, Blasphemy Made Flesh (1994) and None So Vile (1996) are widely (and rightly) regarded as death metal classics, and the disgusting vocals of Lord Worm were a key part of the music’s violent impact. He left the band in 1997, returned long enough to record Once Was Not (2005), and then departed again.

However, at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Quebec, on June 15, 2013, Lord Worm joined Cryptopsy on stage, sharing vocal duties with the band’s current growler Matt McGachy. Today, a 9-minute video surfaced on YouTube showing Lord Worm performing a medley of tunes from Blasphemy Made Flesh. The audio quality is iffy (among other things, the volume randomly goes up and down), but it’s damned cool to watch . . . which you can do next. Continue reading »

WATAIN UNLEASHES LYRIC VIDEO FOR “ALL THAT MAY BLEED”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 242013
 

As we previously reported, the Swedish horde known as Watain have a new album named The Wild Hunt coming on August 19 in Europe and August 20 in the US via Century Media Records. A two-track single (All That May Bleed) was released last Friday (June 21). And this morning brought us the band’s official lyric video for the single’s title track.

As should be expected from Watain by now, the song is not standard black metal fare. It’s bombastic, thrashing, slightly industrial in its rhythms, and of course completely vehement and venomous. It also includes a memorable (and eerie) guitar solo, as well as a bass solo.

The new single can be downloaded at iTunes and it’s also being offered as a 7″ black or red vinyl, and on a 7″ picture disc. These can be acquired at http://www.wolfwear.net or from http://www.cmdistro.com. The lyric video is next. Let us know what you think. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries