AN NCS PREMIERE: PARTY CANNON — “KEG CRUSHER”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 062017
 

 

You would be forgiven if you’ve already got the wrong idea in your head about this song we’re about to premiere. I’ve already forgiven myself after I got faked out. I mean, look at the evidence:

The band is named Party Cannon, sometimes spelled PaRtY-CaNnOn. Their logo looks like something you might find on a child’s lunch box. The name of the song we’re premiering is “Keg Crusher“. And it comes from an EP named Perverse Party Platter (which will be released on July 7th by Gore House Productions). Also, the band refer to their music as “Party Slam“. Plus, there’s this comment by the band’s bassist Chris Ryan:

“While some bands in our genre take a more ‘mature’ route in later releases, we have definitely not.”

On the strength of such evidence, one might deduce that these Scots are a big joke, even before seeing this photo: Continue reading »

ÆTHER REALM: “TAROT”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 062017
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by North Carolina’s Æther Realm., which will be released tomorrow.)

An almost four-year gap between albums isn’t too unheard of these days. Metal, when it wants to, moves at a glacial pace, and as much as we love to assume everyone runs on the two-year cycle, there are always going to be a bunch of outliers. Æther Realm are one such band, with the gap between their debut album One Chosen By The Gods and the group’s soon-to-be-released sophomore disc Tarot being close to four years — though the band themselves have alleviated that a bit with a very healthy bit of touring, show playing, and a slow drip of singles that has actually made the time seem to disappear faster than one would think.

A sophomore disc can represent a huge shift for a band, especially one like Æther Realm, who had a very succesful first disc — one that really did prove the concept behind the band in one go and contained a healthy grasp of really catchy songs. For a band that at one point jokingly had as part of their online bio “We are not from Finland”, it certainly wasn’t hard to draw conclusions as to which groups the Æther Realm crew really, really loved and drew a ton of inspiration from. A second album of the same style, though, no matter how good the band might do it, becomes a harder sell, and with Tarot it seems like even Æther Realm recognized that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: STATUE OF DEMUR — “TAMARACKS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 052017
 

 

On June 16th the technical metal band Statue of Demur will release a new album named Alien Pacific, which follows their previous releases Slaterville (2010) and Subhuman Ataxia (2015). Today we bring you the new album’s opening track, “Tamaracks“.

Though composed of only three members, Statue of Demur sound like an army, though not necessarily one you might encounter in a parade on the streets of Calgary (their home) or embedded in the surrounding prairies and foothills of Alberta. Think instead of an army arriving in our orbit from somewhere out beyond the Kuiper Belt. Continue reading »

ARPHAEL: “ANCIENT”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jun 052017
 

 

(We present TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by the Ukrainian one-man project Arphael.)

I’ve always agreed with Andy’s assertion that at the end of the day, Meshuggah is a death metal band. They created their own nebula of brutality, especially when Nothing came out, pushing the sonic limits and revolutionizing the very concept of groove in extreme metal as we knew it. Meshuggah, a top-10 band for me, have always been about a defiant, transcendent minimalism that hits you like an asteroid to the soul.

While we saw the djent movement come and go, mostly a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon that produced very little quality music with staying power, more extreme-minded death metal bands have tried to take what Meshuggah did to the next level. In-Quest and their phenomenal last record Chapter IIX – The Odyssey of Eternity was a great attempt at a Catch-33-style, super-long song that saw the band adding new elements of intensity and stylistic diversity around the Meshuggah framework. At that point, It was the best I think Meshuggah had ever been riffed on by someone else.

But then this guy came around, this fucking lunatic Ukranian who goes by the name Arphael. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CULT OF THE HORNS — “MASS DESTRUCTION SUPREMACY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 052017
 

 

June 26th is the date set by Symbol of Domination (Belarus) and Ira Militias Productions (France) for the release of the debut album by the French black/death band Cult of the Horns. Entitled Chapter I – Domination, it’s a 10-track, 41-minute manifesto of hatred for mankind, and today we have the premiere of the album’s first track following the introductory piece “March of the Tyrants”. The song we bring you is “Mass Destruction Supremacy“.

Chapter I – Domination is the work of Cult of the Horns‘ Bordeaux-based sole creator Mephisto, and it follows an initial 2014 demo named Hatred & Desecration and a 2015 split with the band Goatvermin. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SEER — “ACID SWEAT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 052017
 

 

In 2015, Seer from Vancouver, British Columbia, made their first mark on the musical landscape with an EP entitled Vol. 1 and followed that in 2016 with a second EP, Vol. 2. That same year, Art of Propaganda released a compilation (Vol. 1 & 2) that combined both EPs. And now Art of Propaganda is preparing to release Seer‘s first full-length album, a 45-minute monolith called Vol. III & IV: Cult of the Void.

Earlier this year we introduced a surreal music video for an album track named “They Used Dark Forces“, and today we bring you another track named “Acid Sweat” in advance of the album’s July 7th release date. Continue reading »

EIGHTEEN VISIONS: “XVIII”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  2 Responses »
Jun 052017
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the first new album by Eighteen Visions since 2006.)

So here’s the thing… although I count myself among that rare breed of people who has faithfully (if not always happily) followed OC ‘core crew Eighteen Visions through all the ups and downs of their career, even I’m willing to admit that the band’s dissolution in 2007 – at the height of their perceived commercial viability and creative bankruptcy – was probably for the best.

For a band who had, up until that point, been famous as much for their devil-may-care attitude as they were for delivering bone-crushing breakdowns, their increasingly desperate attempts to break into the mainstream (and steady decline towards toothless, alt-rock senility), were a clear sign of a group increasingly unsure of their direction or place in the world and undergoing a painful (and ultimately fatal) mid-life crisis.

But it seems as though the group – whose line-up has been reduced to a three-piece following the sad demise of bassist Mick Morris in 2013, and the inability of guitarist (and founding member) Ken Floyd to participate due to other commitments – must have felt they had unfinished business left to attend to, as now they’re back with a new album, XVIII, which many (quite possibly including the band themselves) must be hoping will retcon their previous, self-titled, album out of existence.

So what’s the verdict? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SUNDAY: SÓLSTAFIR, DEATH FORTRESS, MALEFIC LEVITATION, DEATH OF KINGS, CANVAS BLACK, BRIQUEVILLE, VLK, RECTAL HYGIENICS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 042017
 

 

More than a week has passed since the last time I compiled a round-up of new music for our site, the delay mainly caused by my MDF trip to Baltimore. As I look at the over-stuffed schedule of premieres lined up for the coming week, it may be another week before I can do another one.

Needless to say, I have a dramatically large list of new and newly discovered music from which to make selections. There’s not much rhyme or reason to my choices for this round-up, except of course that I like all of them — and hope you will too.

SÓLSTAFIR

I’ve been a devoted fan of Sólstafir for many years, staying with them as their music has evolved and their fame has grown. Yet we’ve written very little about the band’s new album Berdreyminn. I suspect one reason is that when most of us here decide what to write about, we tend to favor bands who could use a little extra support rather than those who are already getting voluminous amounts of attention from sites with a far broader reach than ours. And Sólstafir are certainly in that category now. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GLOOMY GRIM — “REIGN”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jun 042017
 

 

Almost exactly one year ago we premiered a song from The Age of Aquarius, the latest album by the Finnish horror-prone black metal band Gloomy Grim, and today we have yet another premiere from the band, but one uprooted from the distant past. It appears on a compilation entitled Fuck The World, War Is War!, which is a combining of the titles of the two early demos that it encompasses: The first five tracks on this new compilation come from the band’s first demo, Fuck The World, Kill The Jehova! (1996), and the next three tracks first appeared on the second demo, Friendship Is Friendship, War Is War! (1997).

When the first demo was recorded during the upheaval of black metal’s second wave, Gloomy Grim was the solo project of vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Agathon. By the time the second demo was recorded, he had drawn to his side the female vocalist Whisper Lilith as well as guitarist Mörgoth and bassist Torso. The song we’re premiering today — “Reign” — was the final track on that second demo. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST 2017 — A REVIEW (PART 2)

 Concert Reviews  3 Responses »
Jun 032017
 

 

I expected to get this second installment of Maryland Deathfest 2017 impressions finished before now, but have been caught up in other commitments since posting Part 1 (here), which is part of the price paid for being spirited away for five wonderful days in Baltimore.

In the first installment of these reminiscences I sort of cut to the chase, naming what I thought were the best sets of an event that (by my lights) was a rousing success overall. But those five days in Baltimore were filled with other memorable moments, both on-stage and off, and I’ve collected more of them in this concluding segment. I’ve also selected more of my not-professional photos to go along with the batch in Part 1. Continue reading »

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