Mar 142024
 

What I’ve assembled for visitors today is an even dozen songs and videos from bands spread across six countries and a variety of genres (and at least one that’s not really metal), including death metal, black metal, sludge, doom, post-metal, progressive metal, deathcore, folk-metal, and some things that are harder to pin down. If you don’t find something to like, it must be because you searched for “no spring cleaning”.

One thing you’ll figure out fairly soon is that a lot of today’s songs rock out, providing some very catchy head-movers. There’s also singing (or close to it) in some of them (gasp!). But of course I’ve sprinkled in some ravagers too, and because I’ve arranged these songs and videos in alphabetical order by band name, one of those comes first.

AL-NAMROOD (Saudi Arabia)

The first song is “Lisan Al Nar” (Tongue of Fire) from AlNamrood‘s new album Al Aqrab, to be released by Shaytan Productions on June 9th. Continue reading »

Mar 082022
 

 

I had a premiere scheduled for today that unexpectedly fell through, so I decided to scurry around and grab some new songs and videos for a round-up. The scurrying didn’t allow much time for writing, so you won’t find much of that here. I did try to create a genre-spread, because unlike me not everyone likes every formulation of metallic extremity. Have a listen, and pick your poison. (Some very good artwork in this collection too.)

COSMIC PUTREFACTION (Italy)

You’d know if someone slipped this poison into your drink, because it doesn’t go down easy. Prepare for churning, gut-punching, fret-leaping, brain-broiling death metal mayhem by a virtuoso practitioner (Gabriele Gramaglia, with help this time from drummer Giulio Galati). Continue reading »

Aug 232020
 

 

We’ve made it to another Sunday, and I had enough time over the last 36 hours to find new blackened music to recommend. I found more than you’ll discover in this post, but I’m staring down the barrel of a fully loaded gun (every chamber loaded with day-job work I need to tackle today), so the odds are against working up a Part 2. Let’s get to it:

VONLAUS

Even after the warm reception given to their 2018 self-titled demo (reviewed here), Iceland’s Vonlaus still prefer to remain anonymous, though I see that Metal-Archives has identified two of them as members of Above Aurora (whose new album we premiered and reviewed at great length here). They now have a debut album headed our way next month, and its first single is the song I’ve chosen to lead off today’s collection. Continue reading »

Apr 012020
 

 

I was gearing up to do another one of those gigantic Overflowing Streams posts for today, but then something unexpected and serendipitous happened. I had an enormous list of possibilities to check out, assembled  from an hour and a half spent crawling through our e-mail and other sources. And as I began checking out that stuff it happened that I listened to music from five bands right in a row that just seemed to fit together really well — mainly because all the music struck me as exotic, albeit in different ways (and some are justifiable exceptions to our rule about singing).

I thought the unusual effect of listening to them together would be lost if I scattered them among a dozen (or more) other music streams, and so I decided to just stop and put them together here, and leave a larger round-up for another day (hopefully tomorrow).

Al-NAMROOD

Al-Namrood is an anti-religious Saudi Arabian black metal band, which no doubt continues to be a dangerous way for its understandably anonymous members to spend their time in that Kingdom. Their music, insofar as I’m familiar with it (and I’m mainly familiar with their more recent releases), has always been remarkably distinctive, and remarkably good. In the past I have been moved, in fact, to call their music “pitch-black magnificence”. And therefore I felt a thrill when I saw that Shaytan Productions will be releasing their 8th album on June 22nd. Continue reading »

Jul 042018
 

 

Today is the Independence Day holiday here in the U.S. The first thing I saw upon scanning the local Seattle paper after waking up was a fascinating story that included the photo above, and this headline:

 

Puget Sound explorers partied so hard for July 4, 1841, a sailor blew up his hand with a howitzer

 

We’ve come so far since that event, marked by the monument above near Puget Sound, which was reportedly the first official Fourth of July celebration held west of the Mississippi: Now we can blow off our hands without using military armament; inexpensive fireworks will do the job just as well. And what better way to commemorate the birth of the nation than by an orgy of drunkenness and self-inflicted wounds? Continue reading »

Feb 252017
 

 

This completes a new-music round-up I started early yesterday with Part 1 and a big Part 2. This concluding installment is pretty big, too.

AL-NAMROOD

Al-Namrood is an anti-religious Saudi Arabian black metal band, which has to be a dangerous way for them to spend their time. The first and last time I wrote about them was in 2012 when their third album Kitab Al-Awthan was on the brink of release. Now their sixth album is due for release on CD and vinyl by Shaytan Production on May 16. Its name is Enkar. Continue reading »

Jan 092012
 

I’d like to pretend I have a good attitude about Monday’s, but the truth is I’d rather go through childbirth and then be forced to eat my own placenta than start another fucking work week. I have a feeling I’m not alone in that feeling. I’ve been cheering myself up by listening to new tunes, and therefore I would like to cheer you up with them, too, in case you’re having that feeling that I’m having, y’know, the one about childbirth and the placenta.

CANNIBAL CORPSE

Florida’s Cannibal Corpse are officially the best-selling death metal band of all time. Longevity accounts for some of that success — they released their Eaten Back To Life debut in 1990. More than 20 years later, they’ve completed work on a new album that will crawl forth from the grave this year. We don’t have an album title or artwork yet, but a new song called “Demented Aggression” has just surfaced on YouTube.

This isn’t an official release, so I’m not 100% sure this is real — though it sure as hell sounds like Cannibal Corpse — and because it’s not official, it may get yanked by the Tube at any moment. But until that happens, you can go get your earholes violated right after the jump. (And thanks to Aaron for the hot tip on this baby.) Continue reading »