DEMONIC RESURRECTION LIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 222011
 

It was a good morning on our metallic island. The day here in the Pacific Northwest is dry and bright, I enjoyed BadWolf’s immensely entertaining interview with Arthur Von Nagel (Cormorant), and I’ve been filling my head non-stop with good metal — some cathartic black death from A Hill To Die Upon, a sampling of grindviolence courtesy of Alex Layzell, and a few head-wrecking tracks from Condemned.

I thought briefly about continuing my painful efforts to whittle down the list of most-infectious-song candidates into something less than 100 songs, but decided to put that off a while longer (“Procrastination” being one of my middle names) and instead check out news from the 5,000 bands I follow on Facebook. Turned out to be a wise decision, because in doing that I discovered some extremely high-quality concert video of the mighty Demonic Resurrection performing at the 26th annual Independence Rock festival in Mumbai, India, on November 26.

And by high-quality, I mean (a) it was filmed with about 100 cameras from about 100 different angles (including, like, just underneath the hand of DR’s keyboardist so you get a close-up of his fingers in motion), and (b) it sounds fucking awesome. Also, the stage is festooned with color and smoke and lights and looks killer.

As for the music, it’s over the top. Despite the fact that “Apocalyptic Dawn” is a single song, it almost sounds like a medley (even more so than on DR’s 2005 album, A Darkness Descends), with elements of symphonic black metal, death metal, power metal, and folk metal all effectively fused together — plus a heavy dose of hardcore vocal violence added by guest singer Sunneith Revankar of another Indian band we love around here, Bhayanak Maut. Continue reading »

CONDEMNED: “REALMS OF THE UNGODLY”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Dec 222011
 

(NCS contributor The Baby Killer returns to our site with a review of the new Unique Leader release by Condemned — a band previously featured at NCS here.)

I always love watching a band’s evolution; there’s something gratifying about seeing a band that you stumbled upon one day honing their craft and growing as both musicians and songwriters. Such is the case with San Diego’s Condemned, whose newest full length Realms of the Ungodly sees them transcending their humble slam beginnings and coming into their own as a promising technical brutal death metal band.

Of course, this isn’t to say that their key elements aren’t still there. Condemned have always had a unique sound, mostly due to Angel Ochoa’s distinct gutturals and Forrest Stedt’s extremely tightly tuned snare, and all of that is still available in spades, but this time around they’ve cranked everything up to eleven. Ochoa’s voice is deeper and more natural sounding, and the snare has a sharper ring to it now that it doesn’t sound so compressed. Combine that with Steve Crow and Paul Avila’s skillful blending of slams and tremolo riffs and you have the pandemonium that is Condemned.

The band’s previous album, Desecrate the Vile, was no lightweight to begin with, but it was still a fairly straightforward slam album, whereas Realms of the Ungodly could easily be mistaken for Defeated Sanity. Pretty impressive change in the space of just one album, even if they were a few years apart.

The songs tend to blend into each other after a while, but don’t let that deter you.  Usually when people say that about an album they mean it gets monotonous, but in this particular case it actually speaks to the band’s consistency. Some songs are better than others, sure, but even the songs that sound the same are all really good, and I don’t know about you but I certainly can’t complain about that. The solo in the title track helps break up the “monotony” for a bit, but it’s pretty brief and it’s the only one on the album. Who knows, maybe Condemned will continue to expand their sound and have more solos in the next one. Continue reading »

GRINDVIOLENCE: ALEX LAYZELL’S LIST OF 10 UNDERDOG RELEASES FROM 2011

 Listmania  7 Responses »
Dec 222011
 


(Here we have a list of recommended 2011 releases from Alex Layzell, the mastermind behind the awesome UK-based Grind To Death blog — and most of this nastiness is available for free download.)

So I recently received via pigeon mail an invitation by Islander to do a best of 2011 list thingy (do these things have an official name yet?), but truth be told, despite agreeing to it I didn’t want to do a best of list, because I produce one on GTD anyway, and there is no point in reproducing or rewording the same set of material twice when the material itself is likely to be ignored and clog up the precious resource known as the internet. Secondly I haven’t really given much thought as to the hierarchy of my favourite releases, nor is the year quite over yet, thus a month is sufficient time to tilt my listening schedule in favour of one band against another, or for a whole new game-changing release to explode on my radar.

So what do I intend to do with this assignment I have willingly agreed to do and in fact from my previous experience found to be quite rewarding given the community response (please set my family free now Islander, I have done as you ask! )? After much thought and deliberation the answer manifested itself quite clearly: Compile a list of 10 underdog bands whose 2011 releases cemented their names in the grind order amongst the regular merchants of grindviolence (on my playlist).

The problem is, this year dozens of newcomers have carved their names into my fragile mind. Not wanting to pick my favourite 10, what criteria do I establish to narrow it down to 10? arghhhhhh it’s no easy life being fair and ethical (fuck this shit I am going to beat a whale to death with a golf club!). So I thought, fudge the lot of ya,  first 10 to come to my head win. Maybe if I am feeling exceptionally festive and have plenty of time to kill in-between being a student, a terrible blogger, and general commitments, I may do a part 2 of this list, but we will have to see.

Without further ado here is a first-come, first-serve mental list of undercard bands who gave me such a savage musical beating in 2011 that it’s my turn to unleash these Baskerville hounds on your unsuspecting ears! Continue reading »

A HILL TO DIE UPON: “OMENS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Dec 222011
 

(We first came across A Hill To Die Upon in October and posted this feature as an introduction to their strikingly good music. Now, Andy Synn reviews their 2011 album, Omens.)

One of this year’s great discoveries, A Hill To Die Upon ply their trade in the bloodstained arena of blackened death metal, taking their cues from the crushing power of Satanica-era Behemoth and the decaying grooves of Sheol-era Naglfar all wrapped up in a monumental package of fire-brand riffage and pulsing drums that recalls Immortal in their prime.

The album itself is a phenomenal listen, ripe with potential and possessed of a godlike strength and tenacity. As empowering as it is devastating, its perfectly harnessed power grants listeners colossal strength and vigour, enough to challenge all the forces which hold sway upon their lives.

From the moment the imperial march of “Darkness That Can Be Felt” stomps into view, breathing fire and brimstone, A Hill To Die Upon lay all their cards out on the table. The drums pulverise with lightning fast blasting and thunderous kick rolls, while the jack-hammer guitars and rumbling bass combine into a terrifying war-machine of unstoppable groove and power. The majestic chorus refrain showcases the group’s ability to interweave melody and monstrosity, while the skittering guitar solo slices through the song with the cut-throat precision of a straight razor.

The vocals bite and growl with violent intensity, gnashing their teeth through the clashing cymbals and scattergun kick patterns of “The Perfection Of Evil” and the titanic grooves of “Adept In Divinity”. These tracks aptly demonstrate the dominating power of the band’s guitar tone, one akin to the huge, thrumming sound found on the most recent Immortal records but with an unholy life all its own. The former song is a serpentine offering of twisted, barbed-wire riffs and seductive melodies, while the latter is a more controlled burn, primed to ignite in a crippling explosion of earth-shaking drums and scorched earth vocals. Continue reading »

BADWOLF’S #1 ALBUM OF THE YEAR – CORMORANT’S “DWELLINGS”; and AN INTERVIEW

 Interviews, Listmania  18 Responses »
Dec 222011
 

(Yesterday, BadWolf revealed 19 of his Top 20 albums of 2011. Today, he unveils his No. 1 album of 2011 and interviews the top band’s vocalist/bassist/lyricist, Arthur Von Nagel.)

Cormorant’s Dwellings secured my Album of the Year status on the first listen. It’s a staggering achievement, one I’ve already covered in depth on this site [here].

In the following celebratory interview, Cormorant bassist/lyricist/vocalist Arthur Von Nagel broke down a few of Dwellings’ tracks, talked about Cormorant’s future, dished about his recent engagement (congratulations!), hinted to Cormorant’s touring(ish) future, and even dropped some super-kvlt metal recommendations.

BW:  How are you, my man?

Cormorant:  I’m doing very well, yourself?  I’m on cloud nine this whole week.

BW:  I bet you are, you lucky dog. Successful engagement, oodles of critical acclaim. You’re having ‘the best week ever.’

Cormorant:  The engagement was beautiful.  And yeah I’m really glad that so many people are enjoying the album.  The band Timeghoul just wrote to us to congratulate us on the album and then I died happy. These dudes are my heroes, you know?  It’s really an honor.  And then NPR list us with all these bands we look up to and have been influenced by.  It’s just fantastic and I can’t thank everyone enough for the kind words and support.  This album was a labor of love.

BW:  You can totally hear that. On both of them, I think. Well, know not think.

Cormorant:  Haha, well Metazoa was a different animal.  It was a more hopeful and excited record. Dwellings is just bleak in comparison. Continue reading »

REV. WILL’S TOP 20 LITANIES OF 2011

 Listmania  12 Responses »
Dec 212011
 

Hah! I Am Not Real, I Stare At Choo From A Painting

(Here we have a best-album list from a prolific writer who seems to have a nom de plume for every site he frequents. In his posts at NCS he’s “Willard Shrapnelspear”. At The Number of the Blog, he’s “Rev. Will”. At PopMatters and Pure Grain Audio, he’s Dane Prokofiev. I’m probably leaving out some . . .)

For the sake of those curious to know, the guy in the painting above was Frédéric François Chopin.

The flaw of any personal “Best of” list is as much its strength as it is a quirk, however oxymoronic this may sound. As the legendary Cosmo Lee once said on Invisible Oranges before he left our blogosphere for good, “the only list that matters anymore is your own”. It’s one of those common sense conclusions we all know and arrived at in our heads long ago, but we were all just waiting for some prominent Internet blogger to type it out.

With that said, some groundwork has been laid for what to expect from this list. As personal “Best of” lists are shaped by individual experiences from many aspects of everyday life such as work, exercise, play, dating, sleep, philosophical moments and such, every list has its own unique taste that gives you a little hint of how the list-maker has been living his life for the past year. Hence, it is quite an intimate affair for metal writers/bloggers to be showing our lists to the world; it’s kind of like letting everyone know our darkest secrets, but hidden behind the indirectness of lyrics and the subjective nature of the music’s sound.

One exception to this observation, however, would be some of the paid metal writers/bloggers who mainly roll such lists out annually like a toy factory conveyor belt, simply because it is their job to do so. In my opinion, unpaid metal writers/bloggers still make the most intimate lists around. Continue reading »

PHRO HELPS ABORTED REVISE THEIR TRACK LIST

 IQ Subtraction, Phro's Posts  26 Responses »
Dec 212011
 

Like gutted fish left waiting on a sunny river bank before a fry-up, we’re still basking in the glow of premiering a song from Global Flatline, the forthcoming album by those multinational gore-spatterers in Aborted. As is true of all Aborted albums, the track list for this one just gets your mouth watering:

01. Omega Mortis
02. Global Flatline
03. Источник Болезни (The Origin Of Disease)
04. Coronary Reconstruction
05. Fecal Forgery
06. Of Scabs And Boils
07. Vermicular, Obscene, Obese
08. Expurgation Euphoria
09. From A Tepid Whiff
10. The Kallinger Theory
11. Our Father, Who Art Of Feces
12. Grime
13. Endstille
Bonus track: “Nailed Through Her Cunt”

However, as delectable as this track list is, it could be improved. For example, that song we premiered — “The Origin of Disease”: Don’t you think it would have sounded better if it had been called “The Origin of My Penis”? I think so, even though I didn’t come up with that name (and he who did shall remain anonymous for now).

In an effort to enhance the appeal of the track list, we turned to Phro, our resident expert on branding (and I’m not talkin’ about coming up with names and slogans). Phro’s proposed revisions to Aborted’s album title and track list appear after the jump. Continue reading »

AN EXCLUSIVE NCS PREMIERE: ABORTED’S “THE ORIGIN OF DISEASE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Dec 212011
 

Instead of being institutionalized for long-term treatment, the psychopaths in Aborted are about to release their seventh full-length album, Global Flatline. This monstrosity will be vomited forth on the unprotected public by Century Media on January 24. Today, we’re as happy as zombies feasting on a putrid corpse to premiere the album’s third track, “The Origin of Disease”.

Over the course of their storied career, Aborted have churned out a grisly body of work that has stood the test of time and amassed a global following of fans who are now hungry for more. From what we’ve heard of the album so far, they won’t be disappointed.

“The Origin of Disease” is on the bleeding forward-edge of speed, propelled by a relentless drum barrage and scalpel-sharp riffing. It’s caustic and crushing, but it’s also loaded with powerful grooves and spiced up with infectious bursts of lead guitar and a solo near the end that spins out in unexpected directions. It features titanic bass lines, explosive bass drops, irresistible chugging, and dual vocals — Sven De Caluwé’s hair-raising shrieks and sink-hole gutturals courtesy of guest vocalist Julien Truchan (Benighted) — which carve quite viciously.

In short, it’s a fully loaded, jet-fueled, razor-sharp head-fucker of a song: a blast of modern death metal from a band who definitely aren’t just regurgitating the gory glories of the past, but who haven’t pulled up their roots from it either. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DANIEL BERGSTRÖM (VILDHJARTA)

 Interviews  9 Responses »
Dec 212011
 

(In what must have been one of the high points of his year, NCS writer TheMadIsraeli got the chance to do an e-mail interview of Daniel Bergström, the guitarist and principal song-writer for Sweden’s Vildhjarta and the producer of the band’s massively popular debut album, Måsstaden (reviewed here). In what follows, a discussion about chick-slaying and chainsaws, personal shittiness, gear, and the meaning of That Word. Here you go.)

TMI:  So, here we are: I and you guys, the mighty Vildhjarta, the gods of thallism, the magicians of massive, gravity-intensifying groove. How does it feel to release your first album?

DB:  feels pretty sweet, wasnt sure if anyone was gonna understand it but the reception’s been sehr gut.

TMI:  Is thall truly indeed thall?

DB:  thall

TMI:  Obscure word aside, if we go back and look at your catalogue of songs it’s obvious that your sound underwent a major overhaul for Måsstaden, so much so that it seems intentional. Was this the case or was it truly a natural progression? If intentional, why did you set out to undergo such a change? If natural, do you feel you’ve found your sound, or that this is merely a stepping stone in achieving sonic enlightenment of your identity as one cohesive thall?

DB:  i always want to try new things and see where it goes. i often get bored pretty quickly with the stuff i write so it’s pretty unintentional in that sense i think, everything has to sound new and crazy to my ears. Continue reading »

BADWOLF’S BEST ALBUMS OF 2011 – THE FINAL NINE

 Listmania  3 Responses »
Dec 212011
 

(In this two-part post, NCS and Invisible Oranges writer BadWolf reveals his picks for the Best Albums of 2011. Part 2 comes tomorrow, with the best album selection and a companion interview.)

2011 was such a strange year in metal for me that I’m not sure how to describe it. For years I’ve been all about odd, off-genre switches and progressive mentality, along with high-concept artistic edifice, and all those elements are present in my top 10 albums of the year… in force.

But 2011, to me, was mostly about shifting to minimalism and immediacy. I found myself guided to shorter albums full of straightforward, punchy material. I think the bumper-crop of technical death metal and djent this year has spoiled me, and great artists as well, on showoff guitar work. This was the year for singer-songwriters in metal and great musicians focusing on rock-solid iPod jams.

Without further ado, 9 of my top 10 albums of 2011, in alphabetical order. (#1 to follow later):

Cynic – Carbon Based Anatomy

Yes, this is technically an EP, but there’s more great music in this little gem than most metal bands crank out in the course of a career. My review of this record at InvisibleOranges [here] outlines most of my love for Carbon Based Anatomy. Continue reading »

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