TOURISM: CRYPTOPSY, ALLEGAEON, MELVINS, MAID MYRIAD, THE FINE CONSTANT, FULL TERROR ASSAULT, AGALLOCH

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Mar 152015
 

 

(In this post Austin Weber updates us with news of forthcoming metal tours.)

Metal Injections Presents: Cryptopsy/Soreption/Erimha US Tour

It’s been several years since Cryptopsy have toured the United States, but now they’re coming back, and they’re bringing along some sick support acts to sweeten the deal. Soreption is definitely a favorite around here at NCS. Their sleek combination of mechanical grooves and technical death metal is incredible, and last year’s Engineering The Void was an amazing effort by the band. US Death metal act Disgorge and Montreal-based black/death group Erimha round out the tour bill. Continue reading »

A DEATH METAL SANDWICH: BLOOD MORTIZED, ERYN NON DAE., A SMILE FULL OF ALE, CRYPTOPSY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Sep 232013
 

Here are a four new (or new-ish) things I saw and heard since the weekend began that I’m really liking. I could keep them to myself, but I believe that goes against the first rule of blogging: Assume that everyone is fascinated by everything that interests you, and therefore keep nothing to yourself.

You can think of this as a death metal sandwich, two slices of rotting death metal bread on the outside and two unusual goodies in the middle.

BLOOD MORTIZED

We’ve been tracking the output of Sweden’s Blood Mortized since the beginning, and now they’re about to follow up their 2012 album The Key To A Black Heart (reviewed here) with a new full-length — The Demon, The Angel, The Disease. Today the band unveiled a music video for a track off the forthcoming album. To sum up:

The Music: Doing it the flesh-crawling bone-smashing old way, and doing it right. OOOF!

The Video: Gore, gore, gore, gore! And more gore! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ULCERATE, TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, CRAVEN IDOL, EVOKEN, CRYPTOPSY

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Jul 122013
 

Here’s a collection of items I saw and heard yesterday while surveilling the interhole. The featured bands are Ulcerate (New Zealand), Twilight of the Gods (multinational), Craven Idol (UK), Cryptopsy (Canada), and Evoken (US), .

ULCERATE

The new album from New Zealand’s Ulcerate has been high on our “most anticipated” list for this year, and yesterday finally brought a lot of fresh news. The title of the album is Vermis, it includes 9 tracks, it’s nearly 55 minutes long — and it will be released by Relapse on September 17 in North America (September 13 in Germany and the Benelux countries and September 16 in the rest of the world). Pre-orders for the album and related merch are being fielded at this location. You can see the newly unveiled album cover above.

Yesterday also brought a video teaser for Vermis. It includes just an itty-bitty, teenie-weensie snippet of music, but it was enough to rattle my teeth. I think, just to be safe, I’ll make a dental appointment for the day after I get my hands on this album. The teaser is next. Continue reading »

LORD WORM REJOINS CRYPTOPSY (BRIEFLY)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 242013
 

Okay, sorry about that somewhat misleading headline. I couldn’t resist (and I did put the word “briefly” in there).

Cryptopsy’s first two albums, Blasphemy Made Flesh (1994) and None So Vile (1996) are widely (and rightly) regarded as death metal classics, and the disgusting vocals of Lord Worm were a key part of the music’s violent impact. He left the band in 1997, returned long enough to record Once Was Not (2005), and then departed again.

However, at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Quebec, on June 15, 2013, Lord Worm joined Cryptopsy on stage, sharing vocal duties with the band’s current growler Matt McGachy. Today, a 9-minute video surfaced on YouTube showing Lord Worm performing a medley of tunes from Blasphemy Made Flesh. The audio quality is iffy (among other things, the volume randomly goes up and down), but it’s damned cool to watch . . . which you can do next. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 11

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  6 Responses »
Jan 092013
 

After taking an extra day to collect my thoughts about what should come next on this list, which is sort of like trying to collect hummingbirds, I’m prepared to resume.

This is Part 11 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. Each day (almost) until the list is finished, I’m posting at least two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the two I’m announcing today, click here.

2012 was a banner year for what could be broadly termed technical death metal. I do think that’s a broad term, which could encompass everything from Hate Eternal or the ephemeral Necrophagist to Atheist, from the brutal and largely atonal to the melodic and experimental. But across that range, 2012 was a great year.

I will say that as much as I enjoy “tech death”, “infectious” isn’t a word I would often apply to the music. It can be galvanizing and even intellectually involving without being memorable. But the songs I’m adding today were both. Continue reading »

CRYPTOPSY: SELF-TITLED

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

Fuck.

A review by: TheMadIsraeli

There is no other word.  I mean, I’ve tried to figure out other words to use concerning this album. It hasn’t gotten its proper due praise here at NCS since it came out.  “Cryptopsy’s best album since And Then You’ll Beg…” only begins to understate it.  For me, this might even be their best since fucking None So Vile.

I mean, I’m pretty sure we all thought this band was just done when The Unspoken King came out.  That album was made of so much shit and piss that it literally could’ve formed its own land mass from the concentration.  It might’ve even been a livable landmass of piss and shit, but still… when you listen to music, do you want piss and shit, or the sonic equivalent of thundering punishment from the metal gods that channels and focuses the most powerful and ferocious aspects of humanity? Phro might (with enthusiasm) beg for the former, but I’m pretty sure 99.99% of us want the latter.

Cryptopsy’s new self-titled is the first bout of new material since founding guitarist Jon Levasseur rejoined the band, and boy is this album a kick in the teeth, balls, solar plexus, whatever fucking else sounds brutal.

Every single moment of this album pretty much dictates that you listen to it with a permanently affixed Jens Kidman face as you butcher your entire city’s population.  You get back that alien, angular riffing that’s pure trademark Cryptopsy, combined with those interspersed moments of random lounge jazz and blast furnace melodeath.  Tempo changes abound, the slams are boulder-splitting, the technicality is fret-blazing, and the vocals of Matt McGachy this time are FUCKING DISGUSTING. Continue reading »

A FIRST TASTE OF CRYPTOPSY’S NEW ALBUM

 Metal News  14 Responses »
Aug 122012
 

I got an e-mail from Crypotopsy this morning. My pulse rate spiked, and so did my curiosity? Why, I wondered, was Cryptopsy writing me? And then I remembered.

I pre-ordered their forthcoming self-titled album — the album that I and every other Cryptopsy fan on the planet hopes will be a resurrection of the band who brought us None So Vile (1996) and other wonderful offerings over the following years — but who took a wrong turn with The Unspoken King (2008). And one of the perks that was to come with a pre-order was the chance to get a download of two tracks from the album in advance of its September 11 release date. And in that e-mail were codes for download of those two songs — which turn out to be the opening track, “Two-Pound Torch”, and the third one, “Red-Skinned Scapegoat”.

Well, of course, I dropped what I was doing and immediately downloaded the two tracks. I strapped on the patented NO CLEAN SINGING headphone-helmet with the built-in rawhide bit (to prevent biting through your tongue), the vacuum-seal goggles (to keep your eyeballs from popping out), and the forehead padding (to prevent skull fractures if you headbang your noggin’ straight into a wall or other inflexible surface). You see, I had my hopes up.

And I played those two songs. And then I played them again.  And then I listened to None So Vile.  And then I played the two new songs again.

And I’m here to report that Crytopsy are FUCKING BACK! Continue reading »

A WHOLE FUCKLOAD OF ALBUM RELEASE AND TOUR NEWS (AND A NEW GRAVE TRACK)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 112012
 

If you made your way through today’s earlier post about the first direct observation of Dark Matter, then you know we now have an official definition of “fuckload”: It’s a number that’s equal to the number of miles in 18 megaparsecs, which is (yes, I finally did the math) 1,126,656,000,000,000,000,000. Conveniently, that’s about 1.1 sextillion of whatever you’re counting, which is why it makes so much sense to just call it a fuckload.

And today there was a fuckload of news about forthcoming albums, with album art and release dates and such, plus a press release about a hellacious new tour. I don’t have time to write about the entire fuckload of news items, so I’m just going to pick the four that got the most “fuck yeah’s!” in a random survey I did of myself.

The bands in question are: Hooded Menace, Eyeconoclast, Cryptopsy, and Obituary.  And then at the end, I’ve got a new song from Grave’s next album, because we always have to have the musics.

HOODED MENACE

We’ll start this fucker off with Finland’s Hooded Menace. Today it was announced that their first album for Relapse Records, Effigies of Evil, will be released on September 11 (it can be pre-ordered in a variety of formats and bundles here). David D’Andrea did the album cover, which is cool. Relapse describes the album as “combining the grooving riffs of Black Sabbath and early Cathedral with the fire of classic Autopsy and Asphyx”. Fuck yeah. Continue reading »

CARNIVOROUS MUSIC

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 192012
 

This photo seemed appropriate for this post. (Thanks to Alfonso for sharing it on FB.) It’s a pic of what two fishermen pulled up in their net from Mexico’s Sea of Cortez on Sunday. Fortunately for them, it was already dead. This Great White shark measured almost 20 feet long and weighed an estimate 2,000 pounds. It took 50 people to help pull the carcass ashore. More details can be found here.

And that’s about all the introduction I can afford for this post, except to say that I’ve rounded up a bunch of new flesh-eating music and am throwing it at your head. Here’s what I caught in my net, in no particular order:

New videos from Cryptopsy (Canada), Fester (Norway), Mordbrand (Sweden), and In Mourning (Sweden), plus new songs from Carach Angren (The Netherlands) and Antigama (Poland). That ought to hold you . . . and eat you. (To learn more about each band, click on their names.) Continue reading »

CRYPTOPSY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Feb 062012
 

Most serious death metal addicts I know rank the early albums of Montreal’s Cryptopsy (recently inducted into DECIBEL’s Hall of Fame) among their personal favorites, especially None So Vile (1996), recorded at a time when the “classic” Cryptopsy line-up was in place — vocalist Lord Worm, Jon Levasseur on guitars, Flo Mounier behind the kit, and Éric Langlois on bass. But I doubt I’ll get much argument when I say that more recent albums — and especially 2008’s The Unspoken King — have greatly disappointed the band’s long-time fans.

The band’s musical decline (at least compared to their early glory days) can be traced to Levasseur’s departure in late 2004. He left, and we got Once Was Not (which was not all bad, in part because Lord Worm was back in the fold, briefly) and The Unspoken King (which just plain didn’t measure up to this band’s legacy).

Well, the great circle of life spins, or some shit like that, and Jon Levasseur is now a Cryptopsian again (since May 2011). My fairly simple mind fairly boggles at the contemplation of what he and co-guitarist Chris Donaldson are going to cook up for the band’s next album. Neuraxis bassist Olivier Pinard replaced Youri Raymond (who replaced Langlois last year), and he will be strong, and of course the paranormal Flo Mounier will continue to be his otherworldly self. And then there’s vocalist Matt McGachy, who will ne’er replace Lord Worm in the hearts of the Cryptopsy faithful, but he’s really not bad, and in any event he will be overshadowed by the instrumental extravagance of his bandmates.

And speaking of instrumental extravagance, after the jump, I have a few tastes of what we have in store for our greedy selves from the “new” Cryptopsy, plus a few more morsels of news about the next album. Continue reading »

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