NEW FREE AMON AMARTH SONG: “DECEIVER OF THE GODS”

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Apr 132013
 

Yesterday Amon Amarth unveiled the cover art, title, and release date for their new album Deceiver of the Gods, which I duly reported here. I seem to have stirred up some shit on our site with a less-than-enthusiastic reaction to the album art. I still maintain that it’s a mixed bag, but I try not to judge a book (or an album) by its cover. More important is what lies within.

With this band, here in 2013, you know with a high degree of certainty what will lie within. Both thematically and musically, the band have settled on a formula that has made them exceedingly popular. It’s a formula that happens to appeal to me, though I must admit that I would love it if the band broke their own mold every now and then and fired something different in the kiln.

Today brought us a stream — and a free download — of the new album’s title track. It’s a thrashier attack than much of what was to be found on 2011’s Surtur Rising, but no less catchy than what you would expect from this band, and with an appealing dual-guitar melody in the mid-part. As my NCS colleagues have pointed out, it also includes a key change!

Have Amon Amarth broken the mold with this song? Nope — it will not throw the Amon Amarth faithful for a loop, nor will it change the minds of those listeners who aren’t impressed with this brand of Viking-themed melodic death metal. But it’s only one song. We may still hear something we aren’t expecting. In the meantime, listen to this one after the jump. Continue reading »

AMON AMARTH REVEALS NEW ALBUM TITLE (“DECEIVER OF THE GODS”) AND QUESTIONABLE COVER ART

 Metal News  44 Responses »
Apr 122013
 

Well, as DGR wrote in a message I just saw, “In case you guys were worried, it appears that Amon Amarth’s new cd will in fact be about vikings.” Whew, that’s a relief.

Today, the band disclosed that Deceiver Of The Gods is the title of their new album, and that it will be released in June via Metal Blade Records. Andy Sneap, handled the production and there will apparently be a guest appearance by former Candlemass singer Messiah Marcolin, which is intriguing.

Metal Blade also unveiled the album’s cover art, which is supposed to depict “the last battle between the Gods and Loki who arrives at Vigridr field accompanied by the army of the dead during Ragnarok, the end of the world.” The event, of course, is a badass slice of legend. However, I must say that the cover art is not quite as badass as the event it is supposed to depict. Maybe it will grow on me. Continue reading »

HAPPY HANGOVER DAY (Part 1): ETERNAL TEARS OF SORROW, AMON AMARTH, KATAKLYSM, AND MUMAKIL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 012013
 

Your humble editor has been so busy over the last four days with year-end lists, Most Infectious Song posts, and non-blogging life events that I haven’t compiled a news/new-music round-up since last week. However, I was watching out for developments, and now I’m finally collecting those which seemed worthy of notice. I have enough items to vomit forth into your laps that I’ve divided them into two posts, this being the first.

ETERNAL TEARS OF SORROW

It would be poor form to start the new year at NCS without some Finnish metal. As it happens, this first day of 2013 has delivered something new from Finland, and what it delivered also gives us a chance to start the new year by again confusing people. Sowing confusion makes life worth living.

The news is that Finland’s Eternal Tears of Sorrow have a new album entitled Saivon Lapsi that’s scheduled for release on February 22. It features album art (above) by Travis Smith. In addition to that news, the band also premiered today a music video for one of the new songs, “Swan Saivo”. The video is a beautifully made allegory with a visually arresting finish (and includes some great footage of the band headbanging). And I enjoyed the song, too . . . though its appearance at this site will indeed confuse some people. Continue reading »

SUMMER BREEZE 2012 – THE REVIEW (Part 2)

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 072012
 

(Our UK-based writer Andy Synn made the trek to Germany for this year’s edition of the SUMMER BREEZE festival, and provided us with a review of the bands whose performances he witnessed.  We’ve divided the review into two parts. Part 1 was yesterday, covering performances on the first two days of the festival. In this post, Andy covers the festival’s third and final day, and at the end we’ve again collected videos of some of the performances discussed in the review.)

DAY 3

Day 3 saw a late start (which may have had something to do with the amount of alcohol consumed the night before) with Naglfar over on the main stage, kicking out some lethal melodic black metal despite the blazing sunshine and clear blue skies. It’s really only in the live setting you can fully appreciate both the anthemic quality of the group’s material, as well as the technical skill behind it.

Over on the second stage Unleashed wasted little time getting into the swing of things, their brutish, occasionally melodic, Viking-obsessed death metal garnering a surprisingly loud reaction (at least for this early in the day). The only niggling problem is that where Amon Amarth are more obviously self-aware, using these tales of Viking lore to inspire and uplift their fans, Unleashed seem to treat their subject matter as a manifesto, and their uncomfortable “we should all be Vikings!” schtick is both extremely geeky and embarrassingly ill-informed.

Over in the third-stage tent Incantation were unleashing their own brand of filthy, blood-spitting aural horror, dropping some gut-clenching death metal grooves and breakdowns into the whirlwind death metal stew, even throwing in a few Possessed covers for good measure. Slightly breaking the atmosphere though was John McEntee’s use of an uber-gravelly Batman voice for his between-song banter, unintentionally hilarious in its own special way. Continue reading »

AMON AMARTH AND DARK FUNERAL: LIVE AT WACKEN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 062012
 

Over the weekend just ended, the Wacken Open Air festival laid waste to a horde of lucky fans in Wacken, Germany. And now, pro-shot video of many of the performances has surfaced on YouTube.

After the jump, we’ve embedded film of Amon Amarth’s entire set, plus clips of the performances by Dark Funeral and Overkill.

I don’t think I really need to say anything more. Continue reading »

MY OLYMPICS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jul 272012
 

I watched some of the opening ceremonies from London. Some of it was cool, like the cascade of lights falling from those big gold rings in the sky. But I gave up not long after Mr. Bean accompanied the orchestra on the theme song from Chariots of Fire.

I decided if I was going to watch spectacle, with big throngs of people, lots of lights, and explosions of sound, I should at least watch something with good fuckin’ music going on. So I watched these instead:
 


Continue reading »

“VIKING METAL”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  113 Responses »
Jul 172012
 

In one of yesterday’s posts I compared a song from Sweden’s King of Asgard to Naglfar and Immortal, and I got questioned about that comparison in one of the comments, suggesting that King of Asgard is a Viking metal band. That caused me to consider, certainly not for the first time, what “Viking metal” really means and whether there really is such a thing as a “Viking metal” genre.

These are questions that have been argued in many other places at many other times. For example, our brother Trollfiend devoted a post to the subject at ALSO, WOLVES last fall, insisting that, yes, it’s a genre and it’s defined by the band’s lyrical themes (though he also implied that, musically, it’s a subset of black metal). Other people contend it isn’t a genre at all, or that if it is, it begins and ends with Bathory and early Enslaved and everyone else can go fuck off. And still other people say it’s a pointless question — you either dig the music or you don’t, and who gives a rat’s ass what you call it.

The fact that there seems to be no consensus about how to define “Viking metal” weighs in favor of the argument that it isn’t a genre. That conclusion is bolstered by the significant diversity in the music of bands who different people classify as “Viking metal” (see, e.g., the bands included in the “Viking metal” tag at Last.fm or the Viking metal genre group at Metal Archives). Genre classifications are usually (though not always) defined by widely accepted hallmarks of the musical style, and if no such consensus exists, or if the sound of the music isn’t really the defining characteristic, can we really say that “Viking metal” is a genre?

Is the lyrical content really enough, especially when much of the time you can’t make out the words in the songs when you hear them? Continue reading »

DEATH METAL SUNDAE: NECROVATION, MISERATION, AND AMON AMARTH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Jun 262012
 

As an interlude between our second and third Gojira reviews today, I have for you a big old death metal dessert: three big scoops of Swedish sweetness. You’ll have to find your own whipped cream and nuts (yeah, have fun with that line in the Comments), but I got you covered on the core of this three-flavored sundae.

NECROVATION

Of the three Swedish bands featured in this post, Necrovation is the least well known, and certainly a new find for me. I spied them because they have a new self-titled album that Agonia Records released today in Europe (it will be out in North America on August 14). This follows their album debut way back in 2008, which I haven’t heard, though it has the mouth-watering title of Breed Deadness Blood.

I’ve started listening to the new album, and so far it’s very impressive. Today, Agonia put up one of the new tracks for streaming on SoundCloud, and that’s the first big scoop of rich death metal in this dessert. The song is called “Sepulchreal”, and man, is it a trip. It begins with a deceiving instrumental, just a dreamy bit of ambience to get your guard down — and then it begins to rip hell with a blackened torrent of double bass and eviscerating guitar.

But there’s a lot more to come in the song, as it switches both tempo and style and lays out an attention-grabbing guitar solo before ramping up again for a blasting finish. Hope you like “Sepulchreal” as much as I did. It’s right after the jump. Continue reading »

THIS ENDING: “SYSTEMATIC WORSHIP”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 162012
 

(DemiGodRaven reviews the new EP by Sweden’s This Ending.)

Man, the artwork makes me uncomfortable. There’s just something about anything being done to the eye that really tends to get under my skin. I don’t know what it is. I can watch some of the goriest stuff ever made, but seeing things happen to either the eye or the fingernails really gives me the willies (penis!), even in artwork form. I shredded about four thousand different zombies to pieces in Dead Space 2, but that scene where you need to put a needle in the protagonist’s eye was the part that got to me. It is hard to tell whether the fact that the artwork for This Ending’s new EP Systematic Worship reminds me of this is a good thing, but the art is definitely evocative.

This Ending are a Sweden-based melo-death group who have been going for a while now, but recently seem to have been reactivated. You’re probably familiar with their name from seeing it on sites such as Blabbermouth alongside the headline “Amon Amarth Drummer’s Band, This Ending…” Fredrik Andersson is indeed the most famous member, but the band have been going strong without a lineup change since 2005, managing at least to release some form of new material about every three years.

They’ve actually had many names and an even longer history prior to that (which you can read about on their facebook page), but I’m  focusing on the group’s most recent slate of material: 2012 has brought this self-released three-song EP instead of a full blown album. Also, as a bonus, I have found that you can download two of three songs for free on both their Reverbnation and Soundcloud pages.

One of the luxuries of reviewing such a small EP is that it allows the writer to really drill down and discuss each song. I don’t feel that Systematic Worship necessarily demands or warrants that kind of detailed treatment, especially since two of the songs are available for free, but it might still be useful to give you at least a description of where you’re headed and thoughts about whether any of this is worth your time. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2011’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 2

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011  16 Responses »
Dec 272011
 

Today we have Part 2 of this year’s list of the most infectious extreme metal songs, as determined by me and myself, but not the other parts of my fractured personality. To understand what this list is all about and how it was compiled, you may read the Introduction via this link. To see the selections that preceded this one, click the Category link on the right side of the page called MOST INFECTIOUS-2011.

Today’s first song should come as no surprise to anyone around these environs. Although Surtur Rising has been neglected on most year-end lists I’ve seen, I thought the album was a solid addition to Amon Amarth’s discography, with variety in the mood and pacing of the songs plus a satisfying helping of what we’ve all come to expect from a new release by Amon Amarth: catchy, galloping, Scandinavian melodic death metal suitable as accompaniment for fighting frost giants, or a night of raping and pillaging among close friends — or simply getting tanked to your eyebrows on hornfulls of mead.

Some have criticized Amon Amarth for being too predictable in their sound, but I guarantee you, if they changed the formula too much their fans would start burning shit to the ground like those Vikings on the album cover. Besides, it’s a winning formula in my alchemy book.

Surtur Rising includes several strong candidates for this list, but my favorite, and the one I think most infectious, is “War of the Gods”. In fact, I think it will take a rightful place in the pantheon of Amon Amarth classics. Continue reading »

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