BURNING FLESH: “HUMAN FLESH FERTILIZER”

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Sep 202018
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the third album by the multinational group Burning Flesh, which was released in March of this year.)

I spent a recent Sunday afternoon, while recovering from an illness, catching up with some music I had missed earlier. I recalled that at the beginning of the year a friend of mine suggested the band Burning Flesh in a FB convo, and I turned to their third album Human Flesh Fertilizer. I went back and found the play-through video for an album track he had sent me and revisited it. Shame on me that I did not pay more attention back then.

This band has members from Switzerland and France and they have been an entity since 2005, releasing a demo in 2007, a debut called Unconscious Deformity in 2010, and a sophomore album in 2013, New Chaos Order. I decided to listen to those previous albums and then re-listened to the new one. Despite the constant change in members, it’s apparent that guitarists Diego and Anthony have been able to maintain a permanent vision of what the band should be, and therefore they obviously form the core of this project. Continue reading »

ESOCTRILIHUM: A REVIEW OF “INHÜMA” AND THE PREMIERE OF “EXHORTATHYON OD SATHS SCRIPTUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Sep 202018
 

 

(Our friend Conchobar has prepared the following guest review of the new album by the French project Esoctrilihum, which will be released by I, Voidhanger Records on October 19th with cover art by Jef Whitehead — and we are also presenting the premiere of a track from the album named “Exhortathyon Od Saths Scriptum“.)

There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects. A certainty protects it from the shameful—a certainty of which it is proud holds on to it. But simultaneously, just the same, that impetus, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned. Unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the one haunted by it literally beside himself.

– Kristeva, Powers of Horror

Abjection is an appropriate sign under which this reaction to Esoctrilihum’s album, Inhüma, should be convened. The work represents a threat — a breakdown of the apparently clear strapping and structures of a consensus reality. The violence of the occult-agrarian, the protohistory of sacrifice, of bloodied fields, serve as auspex: this is a harrowing; a threshing through which preconceived meaning is grist for the machinations of the ritualist — it is taken apart, buried in the soil, and grown into things that horrify and make reality itself alien and other. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: 1914, GLACIAL TOMB, THE INVICT, UNHOLD, TABLEAU MORT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 192018
 

 

Here’s a mid-week collection of new songs that have struck a chord in my listening over the last day or two, and have the added benefit of presenting a range of styles and moods, increasing the odds that you’ll find something to like as well.

1914

1914 are based in Lviv, Ukraine. Their debut album Eschatology of War was released at the end of 2015 by Archaic Sound. As the band’s name suggests, they have devoted themselves to exploring the horrors of World War I in their music. That’s rare subject matter in metal, and for that reason alone I decided to explore that first album, and came away mightily impressed by its blending of samples from period songs and punishing hellfire, and by its agile balancing of musical elements from black, death, doom, and even progressive metal. I wrote at the time: Continue reading »

BLODWAR: “DESIGN TO DESTROY”

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Sep 192018
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Minnesota’s Blodwar, released on September 7th and now available through Bandcamp.)

I’d like to begin this review by taking a little trip all the way back to the heady days of… the early 1990s.

It might seem odd to think about it now, but “back in the day” a hungry young band called Machine Head were hotly tipped to be the sound of the underground in the lead-up to the release of their debut album, Burn My Eyes.

Not only would this record prove to be one uncompromisingly aggressive (not to mention bastard-heavy) amalgam of Thrash, Hardcore, and Death Metal, quite unlike anything else being put out at the time, but it would also go on to become (arguably) the band’s crowning achievement and remains to this day their defining statement in the eyes of many of their fans (and even some of their detractors).

Of course we all know what happened next, with Flynn and co. jumping on the Nu-Metal bandwagon, only to fall off (and fall hard) come the turn of the new millennium, followed by an unexpected return to form in the shape of their “comeback” album, Through the Ashes of Empires… and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now whether you love or loathe the band’s increasingly barefaced attempts to court the mainstream and become “the next Metallica” in recent years, you can’t deny that it’s been a remarkably successful strategy, and paid off handsomely for them in terms of increased exposure and ever-increasing record and ticket sales.

But there will always be those left wondering what might have happened had they stuck to their guns (and their heavier roots) after the release of The More Things Change…, and it looks like Minnesota metallers Blodwar might just have the answer. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HYRGAL — “CÉSURE”

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Sep 192018
 

 

When I first encountered the music of the French black metal band Hyrgal through their 2017 album, Serpentine, I was left stunned by its union of stupefying violence and mystical sorcery, shaken by its immensely powerful and dense cyclones of sound, moved by its dark, tormented melodies, and chilled by its haunted moods and apocalyptically grand vistas. And now Hyrgal are returning with new music through a very special split release with two other French bands, Bâ’a and Verfallen, who have proven through this split that they are formidable forces in their own right.

This new album-length split (more than 53 minutes in length) will be released on October 12th by the respected Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions. It includes two tracks by each of the three bands, and we present the first of Hyrgal’s two tracks today, a composition called “Césure“. Continue reading »

PIG DESTROYER: “HEAD CAGE”

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Sep 192018
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Pig Destroyer, which was released on September 7th by Relapse Records.)

It’s been five years since it happened, but when it comes to Pig Destroyer, this article here is always going to elicit a small chuckle out of me. Not because of the lineup shift or anything of that magnitude, but the way the news posting plays out. It almost reads as if the addition of a bassist to the lineup was an absolutely massive thing for these noise-grind stalwarts. It may very well have been, but the idea that the addition of a low-end to the band — something we commonly take for granted as part of a traditional metal lineup — was so important that Pig Destroyer issued a press release to announce it (again, entirely inferred and not the purpose of the article) is so off-kilter that I can’t help but smile a bit.

But, if you had to pick anything to describe the chaotic-ping-ponging around the metal genre-sphere that Pig Destroyer‘s overall discography has represented, Off-Kilter may just work for what the band have made their bread and butter — flying right on the edge of grind, and pushing at its boundaries. In fact, it has often felt like every single Pig Destroyer release has been a soft re-launch of the band, as they’ve played with drone, doom, adding various electronic samples to the overall sound, all of it roughly translating to never quite knowing what you’ll get upon first picking up a new release, outside of the band’s trademark speed.

Which is why the group’s newest release Head Cage proves to be interesting, if not polarizing, in part because it represents the hardest right turn the band have made yet — like a car screeching against the outside railings of a highway off-ramp — taking on a groove-heavy sound in the midst of all that grind, resulting in an album that is overall far less chaotic than what they’ve put forth before, and also a hell of a lot of shameless “fun”. Continue reading »

AN NSC PREMIERE: NIGHT CROWNED — “NOCTURNAL PULSE”

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Sep 182018
 

 

The night holds unmistakable allure for this Swedish band, whose name is Night Crowned and whose song “Nocturnal Pulse” we’re premiering today. But while feelings of isolation and gloom, and of the chilling presence of hungering shapes shifting in the darkness, come through in this intense new song, the music is also vibrantly and viciously explosive, like the incandescence of meteors (or wraiths) rushing through cold midnight skies.

“Nocturnal Pulse” is one of three tracks on Night Crown‘s debut EP, Humanity Will Echo Out, which will be released on November 30 by Black Lion Records. But while Night Crowned may be a new formation, its line-up includes current and previous members of The Crown, Dark Funeral, Nightrage, and Cipher System, with a combined catalogue of more than 20 albums to their credit, and thus this new record is far from a fledgling flight — which will quickly become apparent as you listen. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SAMSKARAS — “ALIGNMENT”

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Sep 182018
 

 

We’ve been following, and helping spread the word about, the Montreal death metal band Samskaras since 2014, premiering both a track from their debut single Consecrate and a song from their 2017 EP, Asunder. Now this talented duo — vocalist/guitarist/bassist Eric Burnet (ex-Derelict, Unburnt) and drummer Alex Dupras (Unhuman, Teramobil) — have recorded a new EP, and once again it’s our pleasure to premiere a song from it.

The new EP, Lithification, is set for release on October 26th and includes four tracks recorded with Cryptopsy’s Chris Donaldson at The Grid Studio in Montreal. The music represents a further stylistic expansion of the sounds displayed on previous releases, adding doses of black metal, doom, and even deathcore into the band’s head-spinning framework of progressive tech-death. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VERMINLORD — “SOJOURN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 182018
 

 

I was afraid something unfortunate had happened to Verminlord — death, dismemberment, or even worse, a decision to stop writing and recording music. An entire year had passed since this usually prolific musician’s last release (a track recorded for a Crushing Intolerance compilation), a year of silence after a string of impressive recordings (all of which I’ve enjoyed and almost all of which I’ve reviewed) that left me sadly resigned to the likelihood that the project had ended.

Fortunately, none of my fears was true. Neither death nor dismemberment befell Verminlord, and the man behind the project (Teo Acosta) hasn’t put aside music in favor of more mundane pursuits. He just needed some time to try to clear his head, and now, following a move from the Pacific Northwest to southern California, he has given us a new three-song EP, which we’re now sharing with you on the day of its release. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT, TAMERLAN EMPIRE, SECOND TO SUN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 172018
 

 

With a bit of spare time left to me this morning before having to turn to more mundane tasks, I picked the following four new songs from three forthcoming albums to share with you. All of them are dramatic, all have a kind of larger-than-life scale of intensity, and the first two come with lyric videos that are based on history, and slaughter. From a larger group of new tracks I heard this morning, they stuck together in my head, and so I’m sticking them together here. Because I’m hurrying, I’ll keep the words brief.

THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT

These long-running Dutch favorites of our site have a new album entitled V2 – Vergelding (“Retaliation”) scheduled for release on November 30th. It’s described as the follow-up to the band’s 2017 album Versvs and the second instalment of the V-Trilogy, dealing “with the aftermath of the events that formed the theme of the first part”. It also includes two live performances from Graspop Metal Meeting 2017. Continue reading »

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