DGR Archives - Page 55 of 58 - NO CLEAN SINGING

CATTLE DECAPITATION: “THE ANTHROPOCENE EXTINCTION”

Aug 062015

(DGR provides this typically in-depth review of the new album by Cattle Decapitation.)

We begin by stating the obvious, which has always been a strong suit of mine during my tenure here at NCS. I’ve brought you such hits as “Napalm Death are an important band” and “such and such disc is really good”, without any real qualifications as to why — so I figure why not continue with my trademark and just float this out there:

Monolith Of Inhumanity was a hell of a disc and it did a ton to elevate Cattle Decapitation’s stature. Cattle Decapitation were by no means a newcomer when Monolith Of Inhumanity hit, but it did seem like the disc where everyone finally took notice of them — which was hilarious, because it felt like a solid third of the reaction consisted of other people screaming, “You see? I fucking told you so! I’ve been saying this since Karma Bloody Karma came out!”.

They’re right too, but Monolith Of Inhumanity’s approach of basically being a hurricane of sound, with the band ramming everything and the kitchen sink genre-wise into its runtime and somehow managing to reign it all in so that it could be composed into songs, made the album an intense and incredible experience. It also made it an album that is nigh-impossible to replicate. Many bands didn’t even try to edge close to it, whereas others went chasing after the quickly homogenizing tech-death scene.

By being seemingly everything, Monolith Of Inhumanity became the Ur-Album, and damn near impossible to describe. It was one of those times where the old axe of ignorance being bliss truly applied, because if we had tried to make a thorough effort to capture the music in words, we’d still be stumbling over ourselves, going, “Well, it’s a death metal disc…kind of, it’s got grind elements…kind of”, as our unfortunate victims’ eyes quickly glazed over as they fell into a comatose state.

With essentially no one making a grab for Cattle Decapitation’s crown, they remain at the forefront of metal, but that also means that The Anthropocene Extinction — the group’s new album — has a lot to live up to. With essentially no competition, it means that Cattle Decapitation’s biggest competitor is, well, …themselves. In that context, The Anthropocene Extinction is especially interesting because it doesn’t feel like the band set out to compete with Monolith Of Inhumanity but have instead learned from it, adapted many of its sounds, figured out what parts they like, and experimented with their sound even further. Continue reading »

SIFTING: DROWNING: MORO MORO LAND, SERPENTSPIRE, HOLLOW WORLD, ZAN, IMMORTAL BIRD

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Jul 272015

(DGR has been pawing through great piles of new and forthcoming releases and has sifted out five of them especially deserving of praise.)

It has been a little bit since we’ve gotten a chance to do one of these — the chance to send me ping-ponging across the internet in a mad quest for new music, doing the equivelant of drunkenly stumbling into a band’s house after-hours, pulling up a chair, kicking my feet up on their table, and going, “So, tell me about yourself,” like I’m the leading authority on all things metal.

Sometimes, these Sifting articles tend to be built organically. At other times they’re built out of sheer desperation — a sense of “Oh god, I need to talk about this to some people now,” as we come across music. This one is a tad bit different, as it was brought on like most fun things in life, out of me opening my idiot mouth and promptly learning another lesson as to why, if I’m ever tempted to say anything, just to let it slide.

I’ve been part of the working world for ten years now, no longer a young’un by any means, but still stupid enough to occasionally slip up. You’d think by now I’d remember the #1 lesson of any workforce, which is to never, ever, EVER inform your boss of how much work you have left, especially when you’re getting to the downslope of your work pile. I made this mistake recently, gleefully informing my superiors that after I had done a certain number of reviews, I’d be in a holding pattern since most of the stuff that was coming out was spoken for — so really, that at the end of a certain week I’d be done for a bit. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ORPHEUS OMEGA — “PARTUM VITA MORTEM”

Album Reviews, Premieres 6 Responses »

Jul 202015

(Today we bring you the premiere of a full stream of the new third album by Orpheus Omega, scheduled for release later this month by Kolony Records — preceded by this typically detailed review from our man DGR.)

Orpheus Omega are a young melodeath band from Melbourne, Australia. They’ve been around for seven years now and have managed to produce two albums, an EP — and one new disc coming out very soon. That album is the one you’re about to hear in its entirety, Partum Vita Mortem.

Until 2013, they operated under just the name Orpheus, but wound up adding the Omega to their name that year. They hail from the school of melodeath that places a heavy emphasis on keyboard work and guitar melody, the school that became incredibly popular with the explosion of bands like Soilwork, In Flames, and Dark Tranquillity. However, the band really came into their own with 2013’s Resillusion and showed that they could modernize that sound. They also proved that they would be one of those bands who seemed to improve astronomically with every album.

Over the past couple of years we, here at NCS seem to have had good fortune in finding groups like this, bands who are clearly students of a genre yet play like masters, who recognize the boundaries of what they are playing with yet still put out fantastic material with the tools they have. Aether Realm, Words Of Farewell, and Crepuscle spring to mind as more recent discoveries who, alongside Orpheus Omega, are proving to be the new blood of this keyboard-heavy branch of the melodeath genre. In the case of Orpheus Omega, Partum Vita Mortem is their most mature and well-developed album to date. Continue reading »

ORGAN DEALER: “VISCERAL INFECTION”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Jul 102015

(DGR reviews the new album by Organ Dealer from New Jersey.)

This one may wind up a little shorter than my usual screeds…maybe. But I promise you, when you hear it you’ll understand why.

There is a moment in the movie The Raid 2 in which a man has his face held against a grill until it is completely seared off — no doubt one of the more butal fight scenes in a movie with an amazing second half. That man’s face is often how I have begun to picture myself after the end of a listening session with New Jersey-based hyperviolent grind band Organ Dealer’s upcoming release Visceral Infection.

Organ Dealer are a new face on the scene, having to their name only a demo from 2014 (both songs on said demo appear on this new release) and their new upcoming EP. Yet theirs is a name that you should get prepared to hear a lot really, really soon. Continue reading »

WRVTH: “WRVTH”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Jul 072015

(DGR reviews the new album by WRVTH [formerly known as Wrath of Vesuvius].)

It hasn’t been lost on me that over the years I’ve been lucky when it comes to seeing bands. While not in a preferred situation, my living in Sacramento has allowed me to see some really good shows, groups just starting out who have gone on to do some awesome things. By virtue of proximity to a couple of rather large cities and a populous region, I’ve been lucky enough to see some hyper-creative people roll through town multiple times. Even though I have often joked that Sacramento is some backwater cow-town pretending to be a city (you’d be forgiven, judging by all the highway billboards and signs in our airport for thinking that the most exciting thing to do in Sacramento is go elsewhere), there have been perks — such as being able to see WRVTH over the years as they’ve came visiting from their hometown of San Jose, California, on tour.

At the time, the band was going by the name Wrath Of Vesuvius and they were dealing in the sort of hyper-technical metalcore-and-deathcore hybrid that was gaining steam in the mid-to-late 2000’s. It had its moments for sure, as many talented musicians continually added different elements into a -core sound. In the case of Wrath Of Vesuivius the band neared a tech-death sphere multiple times. If you were to view a particular chunk of California in those days through a sort of prism, focused in on three corners — one being the Bay Area, one being Sacramento, and one being San Jose — you would’ve found quite the scene for that sort of hybrid, and eventually quite a few of those bands went full-blown technical death metal. Continue reading »

AUTHOR & PUNISHER: “MELK EN HONING”

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Jul 022015

(DGR reviews the new album by Author & Punisher.)

If you’ve been reading the site for a bit you’ll have noted the name Author & Punisher coming up from time to time, usually by way of my loud mouth. I’m a relatively recent convert to the Author & Punisher school, yet in that time the releases out of this project have quickly rocketed up the charts into ones that I look forward to the most — in large part buoyed by the fact that I find this project absolutely fascinating.

It’s been great seeing the Author & Punisher profile increase over the years, even in the limited time I’ve been following it since my review of Women And Children (having heard stuff before, but never fully exploring until that disc). More people seem to be discovering this odd bit of machination turned into music — but lo and behold, who would’ve predicted that the next Author & Punisher album was going to be produced by Phil Anselmo of Pantera, Down, and Superjoint Ritual fame?

For those who are still wondering what it is the hell I am rambling about, Author & Punisher is a San Diego-based musical project belonging to artist and engineer Tristan Shone. Over the past few years, he’s been making a sort of slow-moving, suffocating, industrial, and heavy form of doom that is already pretty left-field to begin with, likely to be much discussed in dark, smoky rooms by people who probably finish half their sentences with, “You might not have heard them”. Continue reading »

SIFTING FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE: IN DEFILADE, KARLAHAN, AERNUS, ORGAN DEALER

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Jun 292015

(DGR prepared this review of new songs and albums from four bands.)

These Sifting articles are ones that I like to hammer out from time to time, as I have a habit of discovering so much new music in an effort to feed the NCS readers’ gullets that I absolutely cannot cover it all, much less dedicate a huge review to each discovery. However, I also feel like I’m doing the bands wrong by simply going, “I’ll try to get around to it”, because a lot of these groups are quality musicians who deserve a chance to get out there. So, Sifting was born — a series of articles in which I dig through the various recent collections of music I’ve accumulated and try to get some shorter summaries up to share out with people.

Of course, as I am prone to do, I still get stupidly wordy, and some of these summaries are longer than the reviews we run on this site — but still, its all about the thought, right? So sit down with me, as we travel the world and I blather on with more long-winded phrases and stupid similes to share with you about quite a few different bands, bouncing across the US and then over to Europe and back again.

In-Defilade

Fun fact: I have never for a moment toyed with the idea of joining the military — but were I ever drafted or forced into it, the one thing that I could see myself doing would be trying to join a drum corps. Continue reading »

KRONOS: “ARISEN NEW ERA”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Jun 252015

(DGR reviews the new album by those French titans in Kronos.)

Since Unique Leader has come into prominence over the last few years, the label has been the overseer of a tech-death explosion, one that has seen them dredging up all kinds of different groups from the rubble and ash piles of local scenes while at the same time ensuring that in the wake of their roster of bands there would be absolutely no notes left for anyone else to play on guitar.

As something of a genre-label, Unique Leader have acquired a sound — the type of noise where you can see their logo on a group’s album and more often than not usually guess what they will sound like. Not to knock them, of course, as the label has been the savior of the Nor-Cal death metal scene up here, picking up some of the most highly technical and underrated bands and at least giving them a shot after they’ve been scrapping it out for years. Continue reading »

PARADISE LOST: “THE PLAGUE WITHIN”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Jun 102015

(DGR reviews the new album by Paradise Lost.)

I guess, when it comes to Paradise Lost, the old axe that everything is cyclical rears its ugly head once again. I’ve never been much of a believer in it, but lo and behold, Paradise Lost have released their darkest, doomiest, and arguably heaviest record in some time — a record we were told was never likely, as Nick Holmes was likely never to growl again and instead would forever sing through Paradise Lost’s goth-laden doom, and a record that would never be this heavy despite the fact that the band had gotten heavier since returning to their doom standard a few records ago.

Then again, things change. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE, AENIMUS, FLUB, JOURNAL, THE BROTHERHOOD OF ELLIPSIS (MAY 1, 2015)

Concert Reviews 1 Response »

Jun 022015

(DGR reviews a recent show from Sacramento, California, featuring Conducting From the Grave, Aenimus, Flub, Journal, and The Brotherhood of Ellipsis.)

It is rare these days for a show to line up perfectly with my schedule. It has also become rare these days that the guys in Conducting From The Grave, a group I’ve seen a whole bunch and reviewed for this site before, play live now, so the fact that the two lined up on a Friday felt like the planets aligning.

Conducting From The Grave just recently re-recorded their first EP Trials Of The Forsaken themselves and re-released it under the name Revival Of Forsaken Trials and were celebrating that fact. It was a ten-year anniversary show for that EP and one that also saw the reunion of some old band members to the fold for a limited run. Also on the docket for this show were The Brotherhood Of Ellipsis, Journal, Aenimus, and Flub — many groups I would be seeing for the first time, and that was exciting.

Unfortunately, Entheos had to drop off the bill as they had been a late addition to another tour and the routing made it impossible for them to make it. That was a bit of a bummer because they would’ve been exciting to see live — I get the sense they’re slated for big things. As it stood though, that night was still going to be an assault on the senses spread across five bands — with two of them being on very different ends of the instrumental spectrum. Continue reading »

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