AN NCS INTERVIEW: TUOMAS SAUKKONEN (BEFORE THE DAWN)

 Interviews  10 Responses »
Mar 092012
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Finnish multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and songwriter Tuomas Saukkonen is the driving creative force behind two of this site’s favorite bands — Before the Dawn and Black Sun Aeon — along with about 1,000 other musical projects. BTD’s new album, Rise of the Phoenix, is scheduled for release by Nuclear Blast on April 27, and just yesterday we featured a killer song and official video for one of the new songs, “The Phoenix Rising”. If you haven’t seen it yet, make haste to this location, where you’ll also find a link to a free download of the song.

Today, we’re fortunate to feature this interview of Tuomas Saukkonen by guest writer KevinP, which includes insights into the new album, the band’s line-up changes, and the shift in musical style that we’ll be hearing on Rise of the Phoenix, along with much else.

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This is your second album coming out on Nuclear Blast. What’s different this time around and why should people who didn’t care for you in the past now be interested?

The timing is a lot better than with the first album with NB. We signed the deal just before Christmas and the album came out in Europe 16.2. So there was not much time for promotion. With the new album we have totally 3 months, which is pretty big thing. Musically there has been a pretty big change in our scale, and there will surely be some changes in the fan base also. If you thought we were just one girlie metal band, you should really check out the new material.
 

Lars (bass/clean vocals) and Atte (drums) are out of the band and replaced with Pyry (bass) and Joonas (drums). What made you choose them as replacements?

Joonas and I have been friends for a looong time and we have been trying to find a band or project for a long time where we could be in the same line-up. I’ve been a fan of his playing for a long time. Also he has inspired my drum playing a lot. Pyry used to be my drum student a few years back but had been playing guitar since he was 10. Very cool and musically talented guy who started to play bass around the same time as drum, so he was an ideal choice. Continue reading »

BEFORE THE DAWN: THE “PHOENIX RISING” VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 082012
 

Read this:

“Enioy the official video clip for the first single “Phoenix Rising”, taken from BEFORE THE DAWN‘s upcoming melodic death metal sledgehammer Rise Of The Phoenix (OUT on April 27).

The song is also available as a free download at Nuclear Blast:http://bit.ly/ziaxYI

Pre-order “Rise Of The Phoenix” at the Nuclear Blast web shop:http://bit.ly/xQtGxu“

Now, watch and listen to this: Continue reading »

BEREFT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 082012
 

This is me doing something I should have done long ago. The story begins in May 2011, when my former NCS comrade IntoTheDarkness alerted me to the existence of a band called Bewilderbiest, which was sufficiently intriguing that I promptly wrote this post about them. Despite the absence of any music at that time, the news was intriguing because the band included Sacha Dunable  (Intronaut, Graviton),  Charles Elliott (Abysmal Dawn), Derek Rydquist (ex-The Faceless), and Derek Donley (National Sunday Law, Graviton).

Later I read that the band had changed their name to Bereft and had signed with The End Records to release an album called Leichenhaus (which is the German word for “mortuary”). Later still, I heard a song from the album called “Withered Efflorescence”, which really made an impact. Even later still, MetalSucks premiered another song called “The Coldest Orchestra”, which the band have now added to their Facebook song-player. More impact.

So I decided it was really time to say something at NCS about the band and the music. The first thing to understand about the music is that it’s very different from anything you may have heard by Intronaut, Graviton, or Abysmal Dawn. Here’s Sacha Dunable’s explanation of the band’s origins (from that MetalSucks post):

“Back in 2008, around the time Intronaut’s Prehistoricisms was released, I was unemployed for about four months, and had very little to do with myself besides stay home and write music all day. One thing I did to stay semi-productive was sit in my room and record music for a few fictitious one-man bands. The only one that wasn’t completely embarrassing was basically me ripping off a bunch of old doom metal records that I used to be obsessed with. Four years later, I decided to get some friends together and make it into what is now Bereft.”

That sounds very casual, very oft-hand . . . sitting around the house with nothing else to do . . . ripping off old doom records . . . grabbing some friends and doing some recording. Either there’s a lot of humility in those words, or he’s just embarrassingly talented (and I’m voting for the latter), because Bereft’s music is really good. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THE DEMONSTEALER (DEMONIC RESURRECTION)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Mar 082012
 

(In this post, Andy Synn interviews The Demonstealer (Sahil Makhija), frontman of India’s flagship metal band, Demonic Resurrection. As you’ll see, he has a lot of irons in the fire.)

 

Your last album The Return To Darkness was released back in 2010: it’s had amazing staying power and continues to attract new fans and positive reviews even now. Stupid question, but just how proud are you of what you have achieved with it?

I would say I’m quite proud of what we’ve achieved with it. We got signed to Candlelight Records to have it released, so that was kind of the biggest payoff for us. Musically, we’ll obviously aim to better what we did. We’ll probably say the new record is our best work to date (which musician doesn’t? :P). So yes, I’m quite satisfied with the way it’s gone, but there is a long long way to go yet.
 

What was the compositional process for the record like? How do you write, either individually or as a group?

Given the instability of the band’s lineup I’ve always remained the primary songwriter in the band and Mephisto has been the second key contributor musically.  I started writing songs in 2007/2008 for this record and that was about the time Virendra Kaith joined us as a drummer, so jamming with him had a huge influence on my riff playing because while our previous drummer was more straight-out death metal, Virendra bought a different style of drumming to the table, which was influenced by bands like Meshuggah, Sikth, Textures. etc., and we had to kind of get him up to speed to the death metal style. So I think that’s how we got most of the sound for the record.

Daniel Rego joined us in 2008 as a lead guitarist and he contributed mostly the solos and some riffs on the record. His lead playing in my opinion was absolutely stellar and exactly what we needed. So the songs were written and then jammed on and edited and changed around til we got the best possible result. We tend to record everything and then we have about 5-6 versions of each song and there is an evolution process involved with the tracks so we can get the best out of it. Continue reading »

UNLEASHED: “RISE OF THE MAYA WARRIORS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 072012
 

This is going to be really fast (see earlier post today about me being fucked by my fucking day job). Here’s the news:

“Legendary Swedish Viking/death metal masters UNLEASHED and DecibelMagazine.com have made the brand new track “Rise of the Maya Warriors” available for streaming here. The track comes off their upcoming album Odalheim. Bassist/vocalist Johnny Hedlund had this to say about the song:

“After years of struggle and toil against the armies of White Christ, the Midgard Warriors went across the open sea to gather the battalions there, and to build an army big enough to fight in the final stand,” rails lead hornblower Johnny Hedlund. “At the end of the (Vinland) North American journey, the Midgard Warriors and their growing armies traveled through the Sierra Madre and into Central America to meet with the Toltecs, Olmecs, Aztecs and others. It seemed they had all joined forces to build a rebellion against White Christ. They were now known as the Maya Warriors. We joined for Blot and Celebrations to our common task and for life long freindship. We had now grown to be a very respectful army of warriors that set off to the European continent again…”

Now I’m not a well-educated historian, I’ll admit, but this doesn’t sound quite like any history I’ve ever heard about. I mean, I know there’s such a thing as Mixed Martial Arts, but Vikings, Toltecs, Olmecs, and Aztecs teaming up under the “Maya Warrior” banner and venturing to Europe?  That’s some new shit right there! Sounds awesome.

So does this song.  Check it out at DECIBEL or after the jump. Odalheim will be released on April 20 in Europe and April 24 in North Am by Nuclear Blast. Continue reading »

BREAKING NEWS OF DUBIOUS ORIGIN ABOUT THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT

 Metal News  23 Responses »
Mar 072012
 

Only four days ago we decided to snoop around and see what we could find out about the nefarious machinations of one of our favorite death metal bands — the mysterious, often brutal, often comedic Dutch maniacs in The Monolith Deathcult. You can read what we learned through our sleuthing in this post, which includes demo tracks that may or may not become part of the band’s new album, TETRAGRAMMATON (like I said . . . mysterious).

Today we learned about developments that will be of riveting interest to TMDC fans. Some of what we have to report is officially confirmed, and some of it is . . . of mysterious origin. The first bit of news seems to be official, since it appeared moments ago on the TMDC Facebook page. It concerns the band’s signing by Dutch-based TMR Productions. I’m pretty sure the wording of the announcement will also give you some chuckles.

The second piece of news . . . not yet officially confirmed, arrived by way of a scrap of paper that drifted through the window of the NCS editorial offices from the opened claws of a member of the NCS carrier pigeon aeronaut squadron, who serve our needs for the timely delivery of important news, as well as pigeon droppings. If this is to be believed, TMDC have been signed to a global deal by Season of Mist for the release of TETRAGRAMMATON.

An image of that scrap of paper, which appears to be a draft announcement of some kind, appears at the top of this post. A larger, more legible version can be viewed after the jump. Continue reading »

TWO SIDES OF THE SHRED COIN: JEFF LOOMIS AND DANIEL BERGSTRÖM (VILDHJARTA)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 072012
 

Your humble editor’s fucking day job has stripped away almost all free time over the last 24 hours, and will continue to strip, strip, strip throughout today, and it’s not sexy. What that means is that my own poor contributions to NCS today will be skimpy. In fact, this is probably the only post I can contribute.

This will be greeted with applause in some quarters. But I’m sure that in many more quarters — many, many more — it will be greeted with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes. Also, please send quarters so I can quit my fucking day job.

Yesterday, I saw two new videos featuring the music of two very different guitarists — from two different generations and two very different styles of shredding. The first is an “album sampler” of music from the new album by ex-Nevermore member and all-around widely worshipped guitar wizard, Jeff Loomis. The second is a guitar play-through by Vildhjarta’s Daniel Bergström, who is himself a Grand High Wizard in the Exalted Order of Thall.

JEFF LOOMIS

On April 10, Century Media will release the new solo album by Jeff Loomis, titled Plains of Oblivion. To enhance the Seattle connection (and another reason why we’re paying so much attention to this album), it was produced by Aaron Smith of 7 Horns 7 Eyes, who themselves have a new album on the way. The album includes an array of tantalizing guest appearances.

Ex-Megadeth members Marty Friedman and Chris Poland make appearances with guest solo’s. Christine Rhoades, who provided guest vocals on the Nevermore track “Dreaming Neon Black”, does a vocal turn on  song called “Tragedy and Harmony”. Hungarian guitarist Attila Voros is in the mix, too, as is guitarist Tony MacAlpine. And last, but most certainly not least, Ihsahn contributes to a song called “Surrender”. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 21: BENEA REACH

 THE SYNN REPORT  6 Responses »
Mar 072012
 

(Andy Synn provides this review of the albums-to-date released by Norway’s Benea Reach.)

Recommended for fans of: Meshuggah, Extol, Isis

With the Second (well, eighth) Coming approaching, it seems fitting to return to The Synn Report with an edition focusing on one of the few bands to do post-Meshuggah metal right, deftly side-stepping the trends and tribulations of the “djent” scene and managing to create something distinctive and brimming with character. Indeed, this could be because although Meshuggah might be the obvious comparison, it’s also a limiting one,  which barely even scratches the surface of the various influences that combine to give birth to Benea Reach’s roiling, storm-tossed sound.

I’ve heard a variety of words used to describe Benea Reach’s nervous, energised sound. “Sludgey”, “doomy”, “melodic”, “atmospheric”, and more, have all been thrown around at various times, attempting to capture the band’s mutant, amalgamated noise. Genre descriptions such as “metalcore”, “progressive metal”, “math metal” and “post-sludge” all apply in certain respects, making the Meshuggah comparisons perhaps more misleading than your initial assumptions might lead you to expect. The post-sludge, bruising metallic-hardcore aesthetic of the much-missed Burst is as fitting a comparison as Sweden’s poly-rhythmic metal messiah’s, as is the light-and-shade, life-and-death dynamic of the now-departed Isis.

What these bands all have in common is a massive, Richter-scale-bothering rhythmic foundation on which can be built towering monuments of ageless, terrible glory. Continue reading »

GOJIRA, DEVIN TOWNSEND, AND FREDRIK THORDENDAL LIVE: “OF BLOOD AND SALT”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 062012
 

I bet the title of that post got your fuckin attention. The news sure as hell got mine.

Last May, Gojira released a song called “Of Blood and Salt” from the still-missing-in-action Sea Shepherd EP. It included guest vocals by that Renaissance man of metal Devin Townsend and a guest appearance on guitar by Meshuggah’s Fredrik Thordendal. At the time, it produced a worldwide mass ejaculation not seen since . . . uh . . . some other mass ejaculatory event (my metaphor machine failed me there, sorry).

Yesterday (March 5), at the Soundwave Festival in Perth, Australia, Gojira performed the song live in what I think was the world premiere live performance of the song. And wonder of wonders, guess who joined them on stage for the song? Yep — Devin Townsend on vocals and Fredrik Thordendal on guitar.

I’ve found two different fan-filmed clips of this thing on YouTube. Neither of them are great, unfortunately, but given what was being filmed, I’m sure as fuck going to put them up here on NCS — right after the jump. Continue reading »

AURA NOIR: “FED TO THE FLAMES”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 062012
 

I’ve written before that thrash is one of my least favorite genres of metal. It’s not that all thrash puts me off, but for some reason the thrash bands who really get me excited tend to be fewer and farther between than bands in certain other metal genres. I think part of the lack of attraction is the traditional vocal style. I like thrash riffing, but not thrash screaming.

What I’m discovering, however, is that black thrash tends to hit my sweet spot, particularly when it’s especially filthy and infernal. I like the ugly, glass-scraping vocals; I like the tremolo drilling; I like the dirty distortion. While we’re on that subject, I also like what I’m hearing from the new album by Norway’s Aura Noir.

They were formed in 1993 by Aggressor (also in Virus) and Apollyon (also a member of Immortal) with the goal of incorporating influences from bands such as Slayer, Sodom, and Kreator into black metal. Their first official release was the Dreams Like Deserts EP in 1994. Later joined by guitarist Blasphemer, (ex-Mayhem guitarist Rune Eriksen, who now also leads his own band Ava Inferi), they’ve created four full-length albums, though the last one (Hades Rise) is now four years old.

The next album, Out To Die, is scheduled for release on March 23 through Indie Recordings. Today Terrorizer premiered a song from the album called “Fed To the Flames”, which follows an earlier premiere by Brooklyn Vegan of a track called “Abaddon”. You can hear both of them after the jump. Continue reading »

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