(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new EP on Basick Records by the UK’s Chimp Spanner.)
Some of you may know who this is, but I have a feeling a lot of you NCS readers won’t know. Nothing wrong with that; the music of Paul Ortiz, or Chimp Spanner, long evaded me, too, despite being around since 2004. What do we have in store for today?
Instrumental djent-influenced prog metal. Continue reading »
Russia’s Abominable Putridity will release their second album, The Anomalies of Artificial Origin, via Brutal Bands on February 28. We featured two early song releases from this collection last May, along with Par Olofsson’s brutal cover art, but it appears the album has now leaked in full, and all the songs have now made their way to YouTube over the last couple of days.
What’s more, the band have themselves been linking to the YouTube videos via their Facebook page. We presume this means they want people to start listening to the music now. Who are we to disagree?
So, after the jump we’ve collected all of them. This isn’t the time or place for a full review — we’ll do that later. For now, let’s just say that if you’re a fan of wantonly destructive slam metal with pile-driving grooves and cavernously croaking vocals, this will probably make your day. Continue reading »
(In this interview conducted by phone last month, NCS writer BadWolf caught up with Bob Meadows of Philadelphia’s A Life Once Lost, who have a new album in the works — the first since 2007’s Iron Gag. The band played the inaugural Metal Suckfest in New York City last November (reviewed by BadWolf in a two-part feature here and here), and the live photos accompanying this interview except for the one above were taken at that show for NCS by Nicholas Vechery.)
Bob Meadows is angry.
And why shouldn’t he be? As vocalist for A Life Once Lost, it’s part of his job description. More than that, his band has been jerked around within the industry on a near-continual basis for their entire career. It’s a common story, but a tragedy nonetheless. It’s been nearly five years since 2007’s Iron Gag album, and since then A Life Once Lost has gone through innumerable lineup changes.
But all that’s in the past. This year, the Philly bastards will release a new album on Season of Mist. They’ve already done some smaller gigs, as well as played the Metal Suckfest.
So why is Bob so angry? Maybe it’s got something to do with the toxic in-fighting that pulls our great art-form into infamy. It might also have something to do with the youngsters following in Bob’s footsteps. These Djent youngsters owe him some credit as well: A Life Once Lost mixed Meshuggah-like math grooves with melodic hardcore sensibility (before Hot Topic co-opted that sound) over a decade ago.
His views on these and other subjects, after the jump! Continue reading »
On January 18 we announced a contest to help celebrate the release of Dismal Hollow, the fantastic new album by Virginia’s King Giant (glowingly reviewed at NCS here). Drawing on the sense of violent historical conflict that underpins the first track released from the album — “Appomattox” — we came up with this question for our readers (actually, BadWolf came up with it): Tell us what famous battle in history deserves a metal song immortalizing it and why?
We got quite an impressive list of submissions, most of which you can read in the Comments to this post. We turned all of them over to King Giant and asked them to pick the winner, and they’ve now done that. Here’s the message we received from King Giant’s David Kowalski:
“This was really tough to pick just one winner because the majority of the responses were really good!! But here it is: #5 – Ørsaeth – The Battle of Cameron.”
Ørsaeth will receive his choice of a CD of Dismal Hollow signed by the band or a signed copy of the colored vinyl LP of the album, plus one of the band’s shirts. After the jump, you can check out Ørsaeth’s winning entry. And if you haven’t yet picked up your own copy of Dismal Hollow, do that shit without delay. The CD is being sold by all the usual retailers, and it’s also available for download at Amazon mp3. We’re not the only people to praise this release — it’s racking up a slew of great reviews, including an 8 out of 10 in the March 2012 issue of Decibel. Continue reading »
Sometimes, the unfinished dreams of youth can be recaptured and brought to fruition despite the passage of decades. This is one such story.
I first learned about Altars of Destruction almost one year ago from fireangel of the Finland-based Night Elves blog, who provided me quite a lot of information about the band and their significance in the history of Finnish metal. To sum up:
AoD was founded in 1986 by the brothers Kimmo (guitar) and Pasi Osmo (bass) and Jukka Sandberg (drums). By 1988, the band’s line-up had solidified with the addition of guitarist Mika Ahlqvist, vocalist Mika Luoma, and new drummer Juhani Mäenpää. AoD was one of the earliest thrash bands in Finland, playing alongside Stone, who we featured in our Finland Tribute Week series (here) and whose former members are now in bands such as Children of Bodom (Roope Latvala) and SubUrban Tribe (Janne Joutsenniemi, who is also a producer for the excellent Finnish band MyGrain).
After the replacement of Mika Ahlqvist with guitarist Junnu Mäki, AoD released an EP (Painful Awakening) in 1989, but unfortunately dissolved due to internal and external difficulties before recording what was to be their debut album. But beginning in about 2006, the band began the process of re-forming, with Jussi Samppala (Tyrant Disciple) eventually stepping in on drums, and in 2010 — more than two decades after the band first formed — they finally released their “debut” album, Gallery of Pain. It’s a mix of old and new material and is available for streaming at MySpace (here). Continue reading »
(NCS guest contributor SurgicalBrute keeping it real with a collection of alerts about forthcoming releases from four underground bands — Maveth (Finland), Ketzer (Germany), Witchrist (NZ), and Anhedonist (Seattle) — plus examples of music from the featured bands.)
Another year is done, and everyone’s “best of” opinion has been given. So what’s a metalhead to do? Well, you forget about everything you got in 2011 and start looking forward to 2012.
A few big names are already being thrown around, some of whom are personal favorites (Desaster, Evoken, fucking Asphyx) and some of whom are enjoyed by the wider community (Meshuggah, Testament, Neurosis). So, with another potentially strong year ahead of us, here’s a few more bands to keep your eye on
MAVETH
Unholy blackened death, Maveth is composed of 3/5 of Finnish death metal band Cryptborn (one of my personal Best of 2011 picks). Mixing killer blast beats with some surprisingly melodic riffs, they never really let one style dominate, equally taking the best from both genres. Maveth’s first full length has yet to receive a release date. (Maveth music right after the jump . . .) Continue reading »
For most of today, I’ve felt like killing myself. Not because I’m depressed — I’m one of the least depressed people I know — but because I partied beyond my limits last night and have been paying for it with a cataclysmic hangover. It’s one of those hangovers that’s so vicious, I suspect it will still be punishing me when I wake up tomorrow, too. Correction, not when, but if I wake up, because the fucker is so vile that death has seemed like an attractive alternative.
But things are looking up. I’ve had a crisis intervention, a reminder of why continuing to live is worthwhile: I listened to a brand new, free, three-song EP by a Dutch band called Mondvolland. The name of the EP is Pestvogel, which means “plague birds”, and which coincidentally is the avian species that I believe has been roosting in my head all day. Pestvogel is stupendously good; in fact, I can testify that it has life-saving properties.
Mondvolland was formed in 2005 by Martijn on guitars and vocals and Mickeal (Heidevolk session member) on bass and vocals. They released a debut album in 2010 called d’Olde Roop. I’ve not heard it, but I gather from reading about it that the music was in the vein of blackened folk metal. Pestvogel, then, represents a change in direction, a turn toward more thoroughly blackened music. The band also now features a second guitarist (Harold) and Kampfar’s drummer, Ask.
I fell for the title track, “Pestvogel”, in the first 20 seconds. The immediately infectious riff, the big, rumbling bass, the pounding drums — they hooked me from the get-go. The rest of the song was a big payoff, too. The music is hard-charging and dynamically varied. The vocals effectively combine traditional, raking, black-metal howls and folkish clean vocals; the guitar tones and styles range from hammering rhythm chords to whirring, tremolo melodies, to clean guitar leads; the drums move from solid, rock-style beats to a blur of blasting; and that rumbling bass is never far away. It’s just a dynamite song. Continue reading »
(groverXIII brings us this introduction to a band who, as you can see, has fine taste in cover art as well as fine taste in band names.)
When it comes to stoner metal, above all else, the riff is king. Bands like High On Fire, Weedeater, and Down know this well and adhere tightly to the discipline of the almighty riff, and relative newcomers XII Boar have taken this knowledge to heart.
You may remember XII Boar from a brief mention on my 2011 year-end list, specifically in the EP section, for their 2011 release XII. Well, they’ve already firmly established themselves a spot on my 2012 list with their new EP Split Tongue, Cloven Hoof, another fantastic four-track EP of kick-you-square-in-the-dick stoner metal.
In describing XII Boar’s music, I described them as “a mix of High On Fire and Motörhead”, and that label certainly applies. The EP starts off with the breakneck pace of ‘Smokin’ Bones’, a track that carries more of the Motörhead influence mixed with a bit of straight-ahead stoner rock and some bluesy guitar licks. They up the intensity even more with the blistering riffing of the aptly-named “Hellspeed Viper”, a track that plays to the High On Fire influence in their sound. Guitarist/vocalist Tommy Hardrocks does his best impression of Matt Pike’s whiskey-cigarettes-and-broken-glass vocals as the rhythm section of Bad-Dog Williams and Dave “Couldn’t Think Of A Cool Stage Name” Wilbraham propel the track along, then slow down to a crawl for an extremely doomy, sludgy section that is more akin to Sleep or Goatsnake. Continue reading »
(NCS guest contributor The Baby Killer is back with us again, this time with an introduction to Rivers of Nihil.)
There’s a reason why people say if you want to find some of the best music, look to the underground. That’s where you’ll find bands who aren’t playing for a paycheck or releasing the same predictable, formulaic album over and over again, bands who are playing simply because they love what they do and want to be heard. To put it simply, underground bands just try harder, and once in a while a genuinely gifted act comes along that stands head and shoulders above the competition. Reading, Pennsylvania’s own Rivers of Nihil is one such band.
Now there are plenty of local unsigned acts who can write cool riffs and get your head bobbin’ and your feet tappin’, but it takes something really special to make you sit back and say, “Holy shit, that’s a bunch of locals playing that?” Rivers do just that with their personal brand of technical death metal, a unique blend of Aborted, The Red Chord, and a splash of Diminishing Between Worlds-era Decrepit Birth.
It’s certainly fast and heavy enough to keep the pits moving, but it also has just the right amount of atmosphere and melody to keep you interested the whole time. Blast beats and bass diddily-doo’s abound without being overbearing, and the guitars and harsh, almost-hardcore-but-not-quite vocals keep everything grounded. Continue reading »
(TheMadIsraeli returns with another quick heads-up about . . . something different from an English band called Hacktivist.)
I am either about to be extremely surprised or lose all metal credibility in front of all of you.
Rewind to the 90’s and early, early 2000’s.
I know, I know. You wonder to yourself why do I assail you with such trauma? Why have I caused your soul such ache? Why doth I penetrate thy conscience with such unfathomable knives of contempt!? Continue reading »