ROTTING CHRIST’S NEW VIDEO: “666”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 182013
 

Andy Synn’s review for this site of Rotting Christ’s new album, Kata Ton Daimona Eaytoy, described it as “a heavier and more aggressive album” than the band’s preceding two releases, and “one that wraps itself in a more black metal aesthetic than we have seen from the band in some time, recalling the bands Non Serviam years, but with added extremity and muscle.” But as Andy noted, although the album is built more on a foundation of black metal guitars and thunderous drums, it’s not without its more esoteric moments, with the ominous, gothic vibe of doom-laden closer “Χ ξ ς” (666) as a prime example.

Today the band premiered an official video for “666”. The beautifully executed black-and-white film by Jon Simvonis captures the dramatic, occult atmosphere of the music and, like the song itself, leaves no doubt that Rotting Christ have not severed the black roots of their past. Watch it next: Continue reading »

DAGOBA: “POST MORTEM NIHIL EST”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jun 182013
 

(DGR reviews the new, fifth album by Dagoba, which is being released in North America today via eOne Music.)

“Groove metal” is one of those phrases that frustrates because it feels like it doesn’t really mean anything. It seems like a catch-all for bands that we have difficulty defining and it has wound up a resting place for groups that are, in essence, really heavy but don’t rely on guitar leads and solos as more traditional bands tend to. It has also become the bastion and hiding place for modern day nu-metal groups. Thus, it’s unfortunate when a band winds up being pigeonholed into said genre, because even if they’re a really good group, the amount of baggage attached to the label tends to bring out an insane amount of vitriol from fans.

In some quarters, such has been the fate of Dagoba, a four-piece groove-oriented band who hail from France and who alternate from being crushingly heavy to straightforward metal with clean singing implemented, often within the same song. They’re a band who’ve caught some undeserved flack (and some deserved, the band sometimes doing themselves no favors with their chosen performing names). I would almost breathlessly recommend two of the group’s previous albums, Face The Colossus and Poseidon, as examples of well-done groove and in general as really good albums. That’s why the new disc, Post Mortem Nihil Est, was so interesting from the outset. The group — armed with a new guitarist in Yves Terzibachian and some fucking incredible artwork courtesy of Seth Siro Anton — had some serious work to stand up to: Poseidon was one of my favorite discs the year that it hit. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AMON AMARTH, DARKANE, AND THRÄNENKIND

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 182013
 

Here is a trio of songs that I discovered yesterday that are worth hearing. The first two are brand new and come from well-known Swedish melodic death metal bands. The third is from a German band who are a pleasant new discovery for me, and maybe for you, too.

AMON AMARTH

I suppose there are people out there who are on the fence about Amon Amarth, or conceivably haven’t yet made their acquaintance. But I suspect most people who are reading this are either already fans or wrote the band off already. This message is addressed to the fans and to those who might not yet have given the band their time: The song that premiered yesterday is awesome.

Its name is “Father of the Wolf”, and it rocks very damned hard. It’s packed with irresistible riffs and megawatts of energy, and the wah-wah solos bring a different kind of guitar sound that gives the song a refreshing spin. With any luck we’ll soon have a review of the entire new album — Deceiver of the Gods — but in a nutshell I think it’s a standout for a dependably solid band. Here’s the new song: Continue reading »

FREE SHIT: DOOM NATION

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 172013
 

I know a lot of NCS readers have got a taste for doom. I’ve developed quite a strong taste for it, too, and my mouth juices started filling up my gob when I saw this piece of news: Our blog brethren at CVLT Nation have compiled a free doom mixtape that’s loaded with killer bands who specialize in the slow and low.

There are 19 tracks on offer, including music by the likes of Dopethrone, Bongripper, Loss, Primitive Man, Graves At Sea, Batillus, Atriarch, and Seattle’s own Bell Witch. There’s a lot of strong, devastating music on this comp (2 1/2 hours of it to be precise), and it’s even sweeter because, as mentioned, it’s FREE!

Go HERE to download it, and if you’d first like to see the whole tracklist and listen to the tunage, move on past the jump. Continue reading »

TERATISM: “LA BAS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jun 172013
 

Mark Riddick’s cover art for Teratism’s new MLP La Bas tells you something of what you need to know about the music: It is, in many respects, far out on the frontier of bestial extremity, dwelling in a poisonous landscape where demonic entities howl for the manifestation of the Adversary. Yet there are depths in this musical inferno, and the more you listen, the more you discover of its otherworldly dimensions.

The vocals are the most challenging aspect of the music, yet they are also a vital ingredient in the occult atmospheres that La Bas generates. In a word, they’re horrifying. V. Wrath delivers a series of distorted incantations, condemnations, and satanic proclamations that range from roars to shrieks to cracked, whispered chants. Often, the vocals are layered, producing harmonies that invoke sensations of bedlam. Whether agonizing, despairing, or furious, the ferocity of his delivery is convincing evidence that Teratism have indeed opened a fearsome channel to hellish realms.

Much of the accompanying music is also ferocious, with distorted, swarming guitars and blasting drums generating a dense cloud of evil noise, perhaps most intense and overpowering in the EP’s relentless third track, “Thy Swill Be Dung”. But La Bas isn’t thrashing black metal; it is instead mainly devoted to the creation of bleak, damned atmospherics. “Shadows Flee the Burning Sons of Light” becomes dirge-like and doomed, a miasma of contagion, soaked in illness, and “Gospel of the Heliophobe” splices its whirlwind of cacophony with moments of crawling malevolence. Continue reading »

TOURISM: “BACK TO THE BLACK” COMES TO THE U.S. (VADER, VITAL REMAINS, SACRIFICIAL SLAUGHTER)

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Jun 172013
 

Poland’s magnificent Vader spent the first part of 2013 laying waste to Europe in a tour called Back To the Black. Over the weekend, news surfaced that Vader will now be bringing Back To the Black to the U.S. For support, they will be backed by U.S. death metal veterans Vital Remains, California death/thrashers Sacrificial Slaughter, a Colorado death/black band named Execration, and a bunch of brutal death Floridians named Extremely Rotten.

I’m not familiar with all of these bands, but based on the ones I know, this should be a thoroughly maiming, blood-spattered experience. And of course, any chance to see Vader is a chance that should be seized.

Only an initial slate of 11 dates has surfaced so far, and more will be coming. Check out the first installment after the jump. Continue reading »

UNLOCKING THE TRUTH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 172013
 

Back in April, a video of three 12-year-olds playing music on a Times Square street corner made the rounds on the interwebs. A combination of three things made a lot of people sit up and take notice: the kids were black, they were playing metal, and they were pretty damned good — especially for 12-year-olds. The name of their band: Unlocking the Truth.

I’d like to think that the video would have drawn attention even if these were white kids, but let’s face it, at least in the US you don’t see many black kids of any age playing underground metal. But as I said, that’s really only part of the reason why the video grabbed some attention. It happens that these dudes have got some really good chops for their age, especially the guitarist.

Many other videos of Unlocking the Truth playing in public have surfaced over the ensuing weeks, and this weekend several friends sent me a link to a short documentary about two of the band’s members — Malcolm Brickhouse and Jarad Dawkins — that went up last week, and it’s an awesome (and endearing) thing to watch. Yeah, these are young kids, but both of them seem really committed to what they’re doing, and they’ve got big ambitions. More power to them. Continue reading »

DEEDS OF FLESH: “PORTALS TO CANAAN”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jun 172013
 

Let’s get one thing out of the way up-front: The new Deeds of Flesh album Portals To Canaan is a bewilderingly complex tech-death masterpiece. As a demonstration of pure physical speed and dexterity married to voracious brutality, it’s difficult to imagine any other release surpassing it this year.

The songs are one explosion after another of intricate instrumental extravagance: jabbing, darting riffs; swarming melodic leads; jackhammer bass rhythms; bursts of noodling notes and frenzied arpeggios that fly by almost too fast to follow; blistering reverberant solos; unorthodox rhythms; blinding, blasting drumwork. It’s as if the musicians were juiced up on exotic accelerants delivered from another star system when they laid down these tracks.

The music will no doubt spawn different mental images in different listeners, but for me I imagined an army of alien machines fabricating some immense incomprehensible structure in deep space, a thousand gleaming entities performing a thousand tasks at light speed according to perplexing blueprints drawn by monolithic sentient devices with computing power beyond the understanding of mere mortals: Vast frameworks lashed together by writhing metallic tentacles, tangles of wires threaded by nanobots into almost indecipherable patterns, titanium girders slammed into place and joined by explosive welders. Continue reading »

UNEVEN STRUCTURE: “8” (Re-recorded)

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jun 172013
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews a re-recorded EP by the French band Uneven Structure.)

2013 marks the return of “that word” (THALL). First we had the Means End debut, we have a new Vildhjarta EP on the way, and as of right now we have a new (and old) offering from Uneven Structure. I wrote a short review and hosted a download of the original version of Uneven Structure’s first EP known as 8, a twenty-plus-minute song, Meshuggah Catch-33 style, that presented a much different band than what they turned into on their debut Februus. Re-recording 8 was probably the best thing Uneven Structure could’ve done, in terms of offering people something until the next album is finished.

8 was a piece of work that deserved a new makeover. It was a great piece, but it had a sub-par production and it was kind of an oddity that the vocalist was none other than one of Vildhjarta’s two. Now we get 8 re-recorded with a new mix, vocalist Matthieu Romarin working his vocal magic, and the music enhanced with the lush ambience this band has become known for in the backdrop of what is otherwise still the heaviest thing they’ve written.

What the re-recording of 8 really does in the end is solidify it as a true Uneven Structure work rather than an outlier that merely served as a stepping stone for the band. The more aggressive, slightly industrial harshness is still prevalent, but by mixing in the atmosphere and ambience of their current sound, the band have turned it into a whole new beast. As a matter of fact it’s even more overwhelming than it was before. Even with Matthieu Romarin’s clean vocal incorporations amidst his zen-focused roaring, the music has a much darker undertone than anything on Februus did, adding also a bit of eeriness or unease to the mood. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: MONOTHEIST — “GENESIS OF PERDITION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Jun 162013
 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut EP by Florida’s Monotheist.)

Checkmate atheists, creationists win again.

No, I kid. However, it is a shame we never got to Monotheist’s debut Genesis of Perdition before now. We posted about it, like, once or something, but this has been a very sorely overlooked EP. It’s even more impressive considering this is a Christian band, and we all know how most Christian “metal” is. The thing that originally made me curious about Monotheist was the fact that 7 Horns 7 Eyes and Ovid’s Withering vocalist JJ Polachek is also the vocalist for this band. He has a record of taking part in exemplary musical projects. Turns out Monotheist are quite excellent, and if there was ever an EP to check out this year, it’s Genesis of Perdition.

Monotheist play a progressive style of death metal that is unrelenting on the br00tz scale, creating a mix of tech-death, slam, and black metal with occasional surprise moments and oddities. There is also a huge emphasis on classical drama within the music, even incorporating strings, pianos, and the like to add flavor. In fact, the album opens with a full string intro in the form of the title track. That’s followed by the first song, “Subzero”. The menagerie of tremolo-picked riffing, crushing chugs, and drama-filled technical expose’s is quite impressive, as Monotheist know their death metal very well. Continue reading »

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