TOMBS: VERMILLION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 262011
 

I’m still barely awake after a very late night at Seattle’s El Corazon partaking of Rotting Christ‘s current headlining tour of the U.S. I have a very sore neck, in addition to still being half-asleep. If I ever fully wake up, I will put up some photos of that show.

In the meantime, I did perk up when I saw the news that within the last 24 hours, Tombs began streaming a new track from their next album, Path of Totality, which is scheduled for release by Relapse Records on June 7. This is the follow-up to the Brooklyn trio’s February 2009 album, Winter Hours, which I thought was a fucking killer — a virtually non-stop vortex of grim, hateful, teeth-chattering, blackened doom.

The new song is called “Vermillion”. From the beginning, it crashes over you in a surging wave of tremolo guitar and not-quite-what-you-expect drum progressions — and it doesn’t let up. As on Winter Hours, all the hostility is leavened with ringing guitar melodies, but it’s mainly heavy as fuck, and Mike Hill is in prime, roaring, vocal form. My only complaint? This jam could easily have gone on for twice its actual length without losing one whit of interest. Jump past the jump and listen to “Vermillion”. I feel more awake already. Continue reading »

THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMIN’: SONS OF AEON AND ANOTHER NEW ONE FROM ALTAR OF PLAGUES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 262011
 

Seems like everywhere I turn these days, I run into more good metal. I ran into the music in this post yesterday and was just too damn busy to get it up on the site on a same-day basis.

Taking my enthusiasm with a grain of salt, which of course you should do because I seem to get enthusiastic so often, I will still tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed what I’m about to dish up. The first offering is music from a Finnish band of veteran musicians called Sons of Aeon. The second is yet another debut track from the forthcoming album by Ireland’s Altar of Plagues. It’s an unusually long song, but a stunning one.

SONS OF AEON

Sons of Aeon (pictured above) is a fairly new metal collective based in Jyväskylä, Finland. It includes former Swallow the Sun drummer Pasi Pasanen, plus two members of Ghost Brigade (guitarist Wille Naukkarinen and  Ghost Brigade guitarist Tommi Kiviniemi on bass), vocalist Tony Kaikkonen from Code for Silence, and guitarist Tapio Vartiainen.

They have a 3-song EP in circulation that’s available for free download — and things this good don’t usually come as gifts.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

AGALLOCH: LIVE FILMAGE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 252011
 

Agalloch – Into The Painted Grey / In The Shadow Of Our Pale Companion from (((unartig))) on Vimeo.

I finally got to see Agalloch play a live show in Seattle on the Winter Solstice last December. I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I frothed all over the place in an NCS post. Among other frothy things, I wrote: “I’ll say it briefly, but from the heart: I’ve never heard live metal better than Agalloch’s performance. A very few shows I’ve seen are in the same league, but none has been better. It was a long set — one that began at midnight and lasted almost an hour and a half, but I still wasn’t ready for it to end. I was dazed for long after the show ended.”

If you haven’t had the chance to see this band yet, you can at least watch some very high-quality footage of their show on March 22, 2011, at the Poisson Rouge in NYC. This clip includes two long jams, “Into the Painted Grey” and “In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion”. The clip is more than 20 minutes long. Worth every minute.

NEGURĂ BUNGET: NEW MUSIC

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 252011
 

In the spring of 2009, undisclosed disagreements led to the departure of two of the three members of Romanian black metal band Negură Bunget. But although founding member Hupogrammos and Sol Faur were on their way out the door, they finished working with co-founder Negru on a re-recording of the band’s 2000 album, Măiastru Sfetnic. The new work, called Măiestrit, was released last year, and as we wrote in our review, it’s a remarkably impressive work.

With Hupogrammos and Sol Faur gone, drummer Negru set about recruiting a new line-up, including a guitarist and vocalist called Corb and a guitarist called Spin. In all, the new Negură Bunget is a six-piece band constructed to give even more attention to traditional folk instruments. And the new line-up also released its debut album last year — Vîrstele Pămîntului. We reviewed that one, too (here), and found that it was “a passionate and entrancing combination of extreme metal and traditional folk melodies and instruments.” It also appeared on several of our guest contributors’ Best of 2010 lists.

With that background, we’re very fucking pleased to report that Negură Bunget is set to release an EP (MCD) of new music on April 25 via code666 Records. The name of the EP is Poartă de dincolo (which means “a gate from the above” or “carrying from the other side”). To whet our appetites, the band have just released a wonderful preview track from the EP. You can hear it after the jump . . . Continue reading »

TODAY’S ACRONYMS: END. AND TNOTB

 Metal News  16 Responses »
Mar 252011
 

In this post, we’re really just showing our support for some metal bro’s who we care about, but we’re tossing in some music, too.

ERYN NON DAE. (END.)

Last year, we published no fewer than four posts about this band from Toulouse, France. Those posts included a review of the band’s 2009 album Hydra Lernaïa, an interview with the band, and two updates that included videos of live performances. The last post, from June 2010, includes links to all the others. We paid so much attention to them because the music was such a head-scrambling rush. To repeat yet again what we said in the review:

“Alternating between brutal headbanging heaviness and shrieking turbulent intricacy, the music has a very experimental, discordant, anarchic vibe. It’s dense, intense, grim, sharply angled, and often surreal. . . .Hydra Lernaïa is an adventure in the unexpected. It’s obviously the product of considerable thought, extensive work, and a high level of technical proficiency in the playing — nothing less could have succeeded in realizing on such an ambitious game-plan. This is dark math metal with brains as well as brawn, and emotional power as well as rigorous complexity.”

When we think of current bands that are pushing the envelope of metal, this is one that immediately comes to mind. Given our attraction, it was only natural to follow the band’s news, whenever there was news to be had. We haven’t had much for a while, but yesterday we learned that END. is now in the throes of creating music for their next album.

Still untitled at this point, we’ve learned that the subject of the new music will be metamorphosis. Song titles include “Chrysalis”, “The Great Downfall”, “Black Obsidian Pyre”, and “Scarlet Rising”. In August, the band will be ensconcing themselves in Mobo’s Conkrete Studio to record the successor  to Hydra Lernaïa. We be excite with anticipation. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

A MISHMASH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  21 Responses »
Mar 242011
 

The word “mishmash” popped into my head when I was thinking about a title for this post. I thought I knew what it meant, but to be sure, I checked the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. It defined “mishmash” as “hodgepodge, jumble”. That was really fucking helpful. I hate it when a dictionary defines one word by using other words that are just as opaque.

The same source explained that the word could have derived from the combination of two Middle English words (mysse and masche) or perhaps from the “reduplication” of the Yiddish word mishn, meaning “to mix”. That made me wonder what the difference is between “duplication” and “reduplication”. REduplication sounds REdundant, but what do I know.

Anyway, I gave up on Merriam-Webster and tried another dictionary, which proved more helpful. It defined “mishmash” as: “A messy or confused mixture of different things.” Which explained why the word popped into my head, since my head is itself a messy and confused mixture of things. That definition did confirm that I’d come up with the right post title, because the music I’m serving up today is definitely a messy and confused collection. It could also be a hodgepodge and a jumble, but I’ve lost patience looking up word definitions at the moment, so I don’t know for sure.

Today I won’t make you guess about the music. The songs on offer are from Torture Division (Sweden), Hellen (Arizona) (pictured above), and Vile (California). I recommend them. They are a mishmash of innervating metal. They will also turn the organ you think with into a mishmash. You may even be reduplicated. (songs after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

PROTEST THE HERO: SCURRILOUS

 Album Reviews  16 Responses »
Mar 242011
 

Our own midwestern metalhead, BadWolf, delivers a review of Protest the Hero‘s new album, Scurrilous.

Perhaps you have been in a committed, long-term relationship with someone. Man, woman, transgender, it makes no difference because there are things within people that are universal, the same. There was, perhaps, a moment in that relationship when you realized that the primary devices of that person’s personality were no longer a mystery. You realized that, in all likelihood, that person would never provide you with a major surprise ever again. You may still love them, but that love will never again be a grand adventure: If you can live with that, it’s a good relationship. If not, it is time to end it.

Scurrilous is that moment in my relationship with Protest the Hero. I still love them, but they will never again give me a complete, breathtaking system shock – what their first two records both were, in different ways.

Perhaps the best compliment I could possibly give the young prodigies in PtH is that more than any other band they remind me of Queensryche—supremely talented and openly cheesy, highly conceptual and supremely catchy at the same time. Both bands use calculator riffs to deliver pop hooks, and use the songwriting techniques of their lesser peers so well that it redeems and damns their parent genres (metalcore and hair metal, respectively) all at once.

So if Fortress was their Operation: Mindcrime, Scurillous is their Empire. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE HAUNTED: UNSEEN

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Mar 232011
 

Our UK contributor Andy Synn joins us for the second day in a row, this time with his review of “Unseen” — the latest album by The Haunted, which was released to the masses in NorthAm yesterday.

I’ve sat with this album for quite a while now. My initial response to an early stream of the album was cautiously guarded, almost negative even, as I felt that although I enjoyed many of the songs, certain elements (particularly Peter Dolving‘s voice) seemed far more disjointed and separate from the tracks as a whole than ever before. All this quickly changed when I got my own copy of the album on cd and dedicated some real time to getting to know the album in depth. I loved it. Yet again I refrained from writing about it at the time, wanting to see if these initial feelings were themselves merely a response to my original disappointment or a symptom of my general worship of Dolving-era Haunted.

In the end I’ve found that the album is incredibly strong, although in many ways a true “grower” of a record, although not without its flaws. The early disparate comparisons (Tool, Korn, In Flames, Corrosion Of Conformity) prove themselves to be premature, as listening to the record  in full provides a much better picture of a singular and united piece of work that is consistently The Haunted, but works to naturally expand the remit of their sound. It reminds me in spirit, if not entirely in sound, of Vision Of Disorder‘s misconstrued masterpiece “From Bliss To Devastation”, wallowing in a similar mire of depravity and dysfunction that makes it just as heavy, but in a way totally different from their past work in general.

If you want me to give a simple summing up of the record, then I would say that it’s not quite as brilliant as The Dead Eye and stands perhaps on a par with (or perhaps just superior to) rEvolvEr, a record which has higher “highs” than this album, but also a greater incidence of filler. If nothing else, it’s a huge improvement on the inconsistent mess of often ill-judged experimentation that was Versus – I’d go so far as to pull out the old cliché about this record being the album Versus should have been, just as experimental but with more focus and overall better song-writing. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MYSTERIES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  20 Responses »
Mar 232011
 

I decided to fuck with you a little bit today. Not in the carnal sense, of course. I mean fuck with your minds.

Below are two songs I discovered yesterday and am diggin’ mightily. I not telling you what they are. The first one is by a band I bet you haven’t heard of. The second one is by a band you’ve definitely heard of, but unless you’re one of the few people who have already heard the song, I bet you won’t be able to guess who it is, because the song doesn’t sound quite like anything they’ve done before.

If I lose either of these bets, I will send you $100.

Wait, that was ridiculous. Let me amend my offer. If I lose the bet, I will send you a picture of $100, plus a picture of a cookie.  If I win the bet, you send me an actual $100. I’m relying on the honor system here. The mysteries will be revealed after the jump — but don’t jump until you’ve listened.

MYSTERY NO. 1:

Mystery No 1

[audio:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3595267/Mystery%20No%201.mp3|titles=Mystery No 1]

MYSTERY NO. 2:

Mystery No 2

[audio:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3595267/Mystery%20No%202.mp3|titles=Mystery No 2]
Continue reading »

WAR MUSIC?

 Metal News  9 Responses »
Mar 222011
 

There is apparently a video game called Homefront. I know nothing about it, except this:

The creators of Homefront have produced a compilation album that they bill as a soundtrack for the game. It’s available for free download — IF you’re one of the first 25,000 people to hit their site and download it. You have to give an e-mail address with a mailbox you can actually then go check for a download code.

This thing just went up not long ago, so they can’t possibly have hit 25,000 yet, or anywhere close to it. At least they weren’t at the limit when I downloaded my copy before writing this post.  What? You think I should have written the post and then downloaded my copy? Hey, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, but a guy’s gotta have his priorities, amirite?

The comp includes war-oriented cover songs by a bunch of mostly good bands, including As I Lay Dying, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Acacia Strain, The Ghost Inside, Misery Signals, and Veil of Maya.  After the jump, check out the track list and get the link for the web page where you can do the download. Continue reading »

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