CAMERON ARGON – BURNING THE MASSES (UPDATE)

 Interviews, Metal News  10 Responses »
May 212010
 

Back in mid-February, we enthusiastically reported the blessed union of the remarkable Cameron (“Big Chocolate”) Argon and the also-remarkable San Diego death-metal band, Burning the Masses.

The exciting news back then was that Argon was joining BTM as its vocalist, adding his talents not only to the recording of BTM’s next album but also joining the band for an ass-kicking European tour with Suffocation, Annotations of An Autopsy, Nervecell, and Fleshgod Apocalypse. We called it “A Marriage Made in Hell,” because, you know, all involved are hella good.

You can read that extended report, which included an interview with Cam Argon, at this location.

Cam did indeed join BTM, he did indeed track the vocals on the band’s forthcoming release, Offspring of Time (which is scheduled for a July 20 release on Mediaskare Records), and he did indeed front the band on that European tour.

But on May 18, he put up a blog post stating that he would not be performing with BTM on the band’s 3-month, nationwide summer tour — which began the next day. We got in touch with Cam to get more details, and his answers to our questions appear after the jump.

If you’re a fan of Big Chocolate, Burning the Masses, Suicide Silence, Disfiguring the Goddess, or Abominable Putridity, you’ll want to read what he had to say because he touches on all those projects. And if you don’t know what we’re talking about, it’s time you found out!  Oh yeah, Cam also talks about a mysterious new musical collaboration he’s got going on with Mitch Lucker of Suicide Silence (continue after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

 Metal News  No Responses »
Mar 272010
 

Maybe there’s a band out in the world someplace that sounds like Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse — but if so, we haven’t heard it yet. Their 2009 debut album, Oracles, combined blowtorch death metal with (gulp!) classical music.

Guess we’d better define our terms here. By “blowtorch death metal,” we’re trying to convey the almost overpowering onslaught produced by rapid, atomizing, chainsaw guitar rhythms, blazingly fast drum noise (heavy on the blast beats), shred-tastic ax solos, and staccato, brutal-death-metal gutturals — all mixed together in a fuzz-heavy production. You know, like a blowtorch to the face. You could search high and low and not find more pulverizing sounds that could still be called music with a straight face.

If that’s all Fleshgod Apocalypse had given us in Oracles, it would have been enough –because the blowtorch metal was ass-kickingly over the top. But they didn’t stop there. They added to the mix some massive grooves and unexpected segments of majestic melody.

But they didn’t stop with that either. Sprinkled here and there (briefly) on Oracles were intros, outros, and interludes of classical or medieval music — pianos and strings, orchestral passages, monastic chants. Talk about a mind-bending concept — one moment the music is tearing along like the back end of a jet engine and in the next moment you’re hearing a Viennese waltz. We know that sounds kinda ridiculous, but believe us — it works.  (read on after the jump . . . and listen to a new track . . .) Continue reading »

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL: BIG CHOCOLATE AND BURNING THE MASSES

 Interviews, Metal News  2 Responses »
Feb 142010
 

If you’re a follower of Cameron Argon (a/k/a “Big Chocolate”), Disfiguring the Goddess, and/or Burning the Masses, we’ve got treats in store for you today: breaking news updates, a mini-interview with Big C that includes some info we haven’t seen anywhere else, some hot-shit music to stream, and a cool tour poster. If none of these names means anything to you, but you like innovative, brain-cleaving death metal, then stay the fuck with us and expand your musical horizons!

THE BACKSTORY: Back in 2008, we stumbled across a 6-song DIY EP (still available on iTunes) by a “band” called Disfiguring the Goddess. It immediately grabbed us by the throat and wouldn’t let go — a raw, distorted vortex of brutal, slamming death metal marked by some truly distinctive vocals. We hunted around for more info and discovered that DTG was pretty much the alter ego of a young dude named Cameron Argon.

Since the EP, Argon has generated a handful of additional DTG songs with ex-Misericordiam blaster Phil Cancilla on drums and Joe Broodle on guitar. (We wrote about DTG‘s most recent output back in early December in a post you can find here.) All the music is absolutely cool shit, and it has spawned a cult following based largely on the vocal work of Cam Argon, who the inimitable Sergeant D over at Metal Inquisition has called “quite arguably the best guttural death metal vocalist on the planet.”

Lots of DTG‘s devoted followers have wondered when the band would actually release an album, and others have wondered if Argon would hook up with some other, more established band in need of a vocalist. That speculation was fueled at one point by Argon’s decision to join the Russian brutal slam metal band Abominable Putridity for some live shows in Moscow last summer, and he appears to have recorded one-off vocals for some other bands, including this one for unsigned Indiana blasters Dissever the Tyrant. But Argon has been in no hurry and seems just as dedicated to finishing his education as expanding his death metal horizons. (continue reading after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SONG NAME FODDER

 Band Name Fodder  2 Responses »
Jan 192010
 

Every now and then we’ve told you about a word or phrase we’ve stumbled upon that has nothing to do with metal, but sounds exactly like it oughta be the name of an extreme metal band. We’ve stuck those posts under the category of “Band Name Fodder.” Now we’ve stumbled across something new: words and phrases that have nothing to do with metal but sound like they could be the names of brutal songs.

You know the kind of song titles we’re talking about — the kind that at first blush (and sometimes second and third blushes) make no sense, but just sound really evil, uncompromising, and vicious.  Songs like:

“Carrion Sculpted Entity” (Cannibal Corpse), “Megacosm of the Aquaphobics” (Cephalic Carnage), “Postmortal Coprophagia” (Devourment), “Prosthetic Erection” (Annotations of An Autopsy), “Diaboloical Submergence of Rebirth” (Goatwhore), “Intestinal Putrefaction” (Abominable Putridity), “Pestiferous Subterfuge” (Aborted), “Gestation of Malevolence” (Abysmal Torment), “Cyclopian Scape” (High On Fire), “Ceremonian Disembowelment” (Impetuous Ritual), “Gestated Human Slurry” (Infected Disarray), “Damnation Pentastrike” (Lightning Swords of Death), “Into the Qliphot of Golachab” (Malfeitor), “Fermented Offal Discharge” (Necrophagist), “Postmortem Dissection” (The Pathology), “Cataclysmic Purification” (Suffocation), “Contemporary Perception Narcotics” (Trigger the Bloodshed), “Cranial Media Parasite” (Magrudergrind). And so on.

Well, just in case the well runs dry for bands like these (or they lose their thesaurus), we’ve found a gold mine of source material. (see what we’ve discovered after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SUNDAY STREAMING

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Jan 172010
 

It’s Sunday. A perfect day to jack your headphones or earbuds into a computer somewhere and let the music stream into your synapses. Why would you want to do that instead of listen on your personal music player so you can move around and take care of other shit at the same time? Because we’ve got some recommendations that, for the moment, you can only stream.

LIVING SACRIFICE

Living Sacrifice has slowly been releasing new songs from its forthcoming album The Infinite Order for streaming on its MySpace page.  The band has now made the entire album available for streaming here. The album will be available for purchase on January 26. We’ll provide our review of the album in the near future, but for now we’ll just say that this mutha is a headbanging jewel. Here’s the track listing:

01. Overkill Exposure
02. Rules Of Engagement
03. Nietzche’s Madman
04. Unfit To Live
05. The Training
06. Organized Lie
07. The Reckoning
08. Love Forgives
09. They Were One
10. God Is My Home
11. Apostasy

We’ve got two more recommendations after the jump, so don’t stop here! Continue reading »