Aborted Archives - Page 3 of 6

SEEN AND HEARD: SHADOW WOODS 2016, PLAGUE RIDER, VAINAJA, EINAR SELVIK AND FRIENDS, PHOBOCOSM, AND TEN VIDEOS

Apr 112016

As we begin the new week, I have some unfortunate news (at least it’s unfortunate for me). Beginning today and continuing through Thursday morning, I have to bury myself in my fucking day job for one of those day-and-night projects that periodically descends upon me. I’ll make time to post what other writers have sent me, as well as a few premieres I’ve agreed to do, but aside from this round-up and one “Short But Sweet” review I wrote over the weekend, I will be missing in action until sometime Thursday.

Before saying good-bye, I’ve collected a few items that I wanted to share — including, at the end of this post, streams of ten recent videos without commentary (because I’ve run out of time for commentary).

SHADOW WOODS METAL FESTIVAL

I’m late sharing this news, but the news is so exciting that I’m following the “better late than never” mantra. Last year’s Shadow Woods Metal Festival was a marvelous event by all accounts — including this account by our guest Captain Karbon. As I reported in February, organizer Mary Spiro and her team (who are joined by Baltimore’s Grimoire Records as co-producers this year) have been planning the second installment of this open-air camping metal party, which will run for three days in central Maryland: from Thursday, September 15th through Sunday, September 18th at Camp Hidden Valley, in White Hall, Maryland. They’ve been announcing performers since January, and now the complete line-up has been revealed — and it’s an eye-popper: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SKELETONWITCH, ABORTED, DARK FUNERAL, KVELERTAK

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Mar 082016

Over the last hour I spied four new items of interest that I thought I’d toss up here instead of waiting to include them in tomorrow’s planned round-up, which is already pretty over-stuffed as it is. The first three include new songs.

SKELETONWITCH

I think we can all agree that as the vocalist of Skeletonwitch, Chance Garnette was going to be a tough guy to replace following his ejection from the band in late 2014. Last month the band announced that Adam Clemans of Wolvhammer was the man they chose to try to fill those shoes. And now we have a chance to find out how well he is doing that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORACLES — “SCORN”

Premieres 4 Responses »

Feb 112016

What do you get when you put Athenian-born, classically trained soprano Sanna Salou together with current and former members of Aborted, System Divide, and Abigail Williams? You get Oracles, a band whose debut album Miserycorde will be released by the French label Deadlight Entertainment on July 1. To give you an advance taste of what’s coming in July we bring you the premiere of a video for an album track called “Scorn“.

In addition to Ms. Salou, the Oracles line-up includes names that will be familiar to fans of extreme metal:

Sven De Caluwé (Aborted) – vocals
Sanna Salou (ex-Dimlight) – vocals
Mendel Bij de Leij (Aborted) – guitar
Steve Miller (ex-System Divide, Loculus) – guitar
Andrei Aframov (ex-System Divide) – bass
Ken Bedene (Aborted, ex-Abigail Williams) – drums Continue reading »

BANDCAMP FAKERY

Metal News 24 Responses »

Jan 162016

THIS IS A FAKE

In recent days I’ve learned that fake band pages have been set up on Bandcamp by people whose aim is to defraud bands and labels of money that rightfully should go to them. As I looked into this a bit further, I realized this has happened before — and so some of you may already be aware of it. But for those who aren’t, here are a few examples of what’s happening.

Today one of our readers (thank you Sidney) alerted me to the fact that he was about to buy Aborted albums at https://aborted.bandcamp.com — but something about it looked fishy to him. He then contacted Aborted’s band management representative (as identified on the band’s Facebook page) and was told that the Bandcamp page was indeed a phony.

I’ve not found any links to a Bandcamp page on Aborted’s social media, and their current label Century Media does not put its releases on Bandcamp as far as I can tell. Aborted’s previous label (Listenable) does have a Bandcamp page that includes Aborted releases — but it’s a different URL (this one) than the one above.

Yesterday, the following announcement also appeared on Abbath’s official Facebook page: Continue reading »

IRRELEVANT LISTENING — VOLUME I

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 10 Responses »

Jan 082016

(TheMadIsraeli prepared this round-up of music from yesteryear that’s been keeping him company lately.)

The scarcity of my writing last year stemmed partially from a desire to go back and listen to shit I liked or loved from past years, whatever it was, and fuck being musically relevant. This is something I hadn’t done in a long time, and I have to admit that doing this just about saved me from burning out on music altogether. This music blogging thing, it can become genuinely tiresome in the race to try and keep up with what’s worth noting. Listening to albums that may or may not be worth the time you just spent listening to them, to find out whether they are or not, can take a lot out of you sometimes.

I decided it’d be cool to write a piece here and there where I give some commentary on those older albums I’ve listening to, hence the title “Irrelevant Listening”. Maybe this could be a monthly thing, but as much as I intend to get back on the horse in regards to everything else, I’d hate to try and schedule this in any way. However, I have been noticing a pattern where I tend to change my “irrelevant listening” playlist every month or so.

So here are the records that had my attention this past December. Continue reading »

ABORTED: “TERMINATION REDUX”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 8 Responses »

Jan 042016

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new 20th anniversary EP by Belgium’s Aborted.)

I fucking love Aborted, especially their last two albums. It’s no secret that here at NCS we were foaming at the mouth like a horde of ravenous hyenas and cackling as we ripped apart the carcasses of Global Flatline and The Necrotic Manifesto when they came our way. To my ears, The Necrotic Manifesto, compared to Global Flatline, signified a departure from the sound the band had always been semi-attached to. Until then, every Aborted record had included the more technical, more tempo-dynamic flare reflected on Global Flatline, although I think most would agree that Global Flatline was their sound taken about as far as you were going to get.

The Necrotic Manifesto was even more aggro than any Aborted release before it. It was streamlined, grindier, noisier, faster, and more belligerent, while largely ditching the more dynamic song-writing of previous Aborted albums. And in between those two albums, Aborted had acquired guitarist Mendel bij de Leij, whose solo project we have covered before (along with his and vocalist Sven’s side project, System Divide — which appears to have transformed into the band Oracles).

So where does that leave Termination Redux? When it comes to EPs, I see them as serving one or more of three specific purposes nowadays: You use them to introduce your craft; you use them to tide people over with some goodies before the next big release; or you use them to plant the flag — to sow the seeds of a new direction and sound in a digestible format, or sometimes to make a defiant statement of said new direction and sound.

I do believe that Termination Redux is the third of those types of EPs, signifying an interesting evolution in the band’s music, capped off by the gesture of re-recording the opening song of one of their most praised early records, Engineering the Dead. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ABORTED — “TERMINATION REDUX”

Premieres 6 Responses »

Dec 042015

Given the diversity of our tastes in metal, there aren’t many bands that all of the old-timers on our staff can unanimously unite behind with enthusiastic devotion, but Aborted is one of those. And so you can imagine, then, we’re almost beside ourselves with glee over what we’re about to deliver unto your unprepared eyes and ears — a brand new Aborted song and a brand new video to go with it.

The name of the song is “Termination Redux” and it will appear on a special 20th anniversary EP by the same name that will be released in January as a prelude to the band’s next full-length album

I said “unprepared” on purpose, because seriously, you’re not ready for what you’re about to see and hear — unless you’re a fan of horror and gore, in which case you’ll… eat this up. As a prelude to the slaughter banquet, let’s consider this statement by the band: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2014’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 13

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2014 3 Responses »

Jan 072015

Welcome to the lucky Part 13 in the continuing rollout of our list of 2014′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. For the other songs we’ve previously named to the list, go here.

I missed a day in the rollout yesterday because of my fucking day job. To make up for that, we’ll have an extra-strong, double-dose of ass-kicking to begin the day.

ABORTED

We posted not one but two reviews of Aborted’s 2014 album, The Necrotic Manifesto, one by BadWolf (here) that accompanied our premiere of a full-album stream and one (here) by TheMadIsraeli. We could have posted five reviews, because everyone among the longest tenured staffers around here (including me) agreed — and its rare for all of us to agree on anything — that the album was fantastic. Continue reading »

A SAMHAIN HARVEST (Part 3): CRYPTICUS, ABORTED, SAILLE, TWIST ENDING

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Nov 012014

Ideally I would have posted this collection yesterday, to accompany the first two “Samhain Harvest” posts, but I take comfort in the fact that Samhain lasts until sunset today (November 1), even though most of the costumes will have already been retired for another year and some of you are now suffering from apocalyptic hangovers.

CRYPTICUS

Yesterday, just in time for Halloween, Patrick Bruss and Brynjar Helgetun, also known as Crypticus, released Horror Grind Mixtape #2 “Chains For Devils”. I wrote about two songs from this album when they debuted in August, but now we have the entire monstrosity.

On Bandcamp it’s organized into two tracks — “Chains For Devils” and, as a bonus, a cover of one of my all-time favorite Asphyx songs, “Scorbutics”. But “Chains For Devils” actually consists of nine parts, two of which feature a special guest appearances — Rogga Johansson (Paganizer, and many, many more) providing growls on “Strike the Iron Stake” and Stevo do Caixão (Impetigo, Twist Ending) providing shrieks and lyrics on “Among the Absurb”. Continue reading »

BONUSES!

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 16 Responses »

May 112014

(DGR brings you this collection of bonuses, because he loves you. Well, maybe not you in particular, but the idea of you.)

Don’t worry, I know ninety percent of the time whenever my name pops up it’s because I’ve got another long review written up, and believe me, I’ve got three of those in the works. I’ve found myself stricken with a bit of writer’s block at the moment, though, so I began to distract myself by starting this article that you see here, and since then have found myself expanding upon it more and more. Now I am generally interested in potentially digging up rarer tracks and doing a series on them.

One of the things that has always aggravated the completionist side of my mind has been the release of limited editions and the inclusion of bonus tracks. I know I’m not the only one, but when it comes to content I tend to be one of those people who absolutely devours it and I need every single piece of it when it comes to albums that I have enjoyed and loved over the years. Of course, this often means there are always one or two songs that I discover later, recorded around the same time and included on some odd Japanese or rare edition, and oftentimes those songs are also great. But a lot of people may not even be aware that those tunes exist.

So what I found myself doing recently was starting to record my thoughts on bonus tracks in my regular reviews of albums here. However, there have been occasions when I really wish I had gotten the chance to go more in depth with those songs, or wound up neglecting them for many a reason — the review copy didn’t have them, general forgetfulness, or just no way to add another paragraph to the already ridiculously long tome of a review I had written. However, I still had those thoughts half-recorded or germinating, and I figured I’d finally take the time to expand upon them and let people know about some of the recent extra songs they may have missed and whether they’re worth hunting down. Continue reading »

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