EXTOL – AURA OF DECAY

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 292026
 

(Andy Synn, ahem, extols the virtues of the band’s new album, out next week)

Let’s address the elephant in the room immediately, shall we?

Yes, Extol‘s long-awaited sixth album – coming some thirteen years after their seminal (and almost equally long gestating) self-titled record – deserves much, much better artwork, as it’s become painfully clear that Hugh Syme (famous for his work with Rush, Dream Theatre, and even Extol themselves) has been phoning it in for quite some time now.

Thankfully, however, this is one of those times when it’s worth remembering that you can’t always judge a book (or an album) by its cover, as there’s nothing half-assed about the band’s own work on Aura of Decay.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: EXTOL, AETHERIAN, ARONIOUS, NIDARE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Oct 162026
 

(written by Islander)

On almost all weekdays for many years I have committed to make either two track premieres or an EP premiere or an album premiere. Sometimes there is a day off because of some late-stage mishap (never my own, of course), as there was on Tuesday of this week, and sometimes we either receive only one invitation for a track premiere or only one that we’re happy to accept (believe it or not, I do turn down invitations when I can’t enthusiastically recommend a song).

Today was one of those rare days when I only calendared a single song premiere. And so, as on Tuesday, I had a bit of time to use for catching up with new songs and picking a few to recommend in another rare weekday roundup. Barring some kind of unexpected interference I will have more to recommend, as usual, on Saturday and Sunday. Continue reading »

IRRELEVANT LISTENING (VOL. 3)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 082017
 

 

(Last year TheMadIsraeli posted the first two installments in this irregular series, and now brings us a third one.)

Another installment of irrelevant listening where I share albums in my rotation lately that aren’t current. Let’s get started.

Killswitch Engage – Alive Or Just Breathing: Top-Shelf Edition

Alive Or Just Breathing is the melodic metalcore album that in my mind has never been topped. Even the band themselves admitted in an interview, I think it was this year, that this is STILL their best album. I’ve written about this album before on the site and stumbled upon the so-called “Top Shelf” expanded edition (released in 2005) some time ago. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: IRONCLAD, MORTALICUM, CRAWL, EXTOL, CRYPTIC HYMN, OF SPIRE AND THRONE, WOWS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Dec 032015
 

ironcladalchemy

 

(Grant Skelton brings us this collection of new music and videos by seven bands.)

IRONCLAD

To form a band and then release a debut EP in the span of only three months seems a daunting task. But that’s exactly what happened for Ironclad from South Wales in the United Kingdom.

Their current line up includes Steve Taran (bass) and John Courage (guitar), also of folk/pagan metal outfit Siluria. Trak is the man behind the drumkit, while Dean Fletcher (Black Tamanous, Godkilla) handles vocal duties. Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE… BANDS I’VE NEVER SEEN LIVE

 Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  33 Responses »
Aug 062014
 

(Here’s another installment of Andy Synn’s irregular series devoted to his favorite things that come in fives. As always when he does these things, please feel free to share your own list in the Comments — in this case, your favorite bands you’ve never seen live.)

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these random little columns. I bet you were beginning to think I’d forgotten about them, hadn’t you?

Well, my strange predilection for numerical lists of my favourite things has reared its ugly head again, and this time we’re dealing with the mournful issue of bands I’ve never (for a variety of reasons) managed to see live!

EXTOL

Let’s start with a big one, shall we? I love Extol. They are one, if not the biggest, of my favourite bands. Their dissolution back in 2007 seemingly put paid to my chance of ever seeing them live, but now they’re back with an amazing new album and are playing a few select live shows… well, let’s just say that there are few things I wouldn’t do for a chance to see and hear them perform! Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: DAWN, ELUVEITIE, EXTOL, GHOULGOTHA, LOUDBLAST, MAVETH-EMBRACE OF THORNS, NEOCAESAR, TYRANT OF DEATH

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 122014
 

It was a rare Friday night for your humble editor, in that your humble editor didn’t get completely shit-faced. This means that I was able to listen to music on this Saturday morning without experiencing severe brain pain and heaving waves of nausea. I made my way through a long list of new songs and videos I had collected over the last few days, from which I’ve sifted a still pretty long list of things I commend to your ears and eyes, presented in alphabetical order with a minimum of words. But before getting to those, here’s a piece of somewhat older news I only discovered recently.

DAWN

Over the years since I began getting into metal I’ve done a lot of deep diving back into music that was released before I wised up, but I didn’t know about Dawn until just a few days ago. They were formed circa 1990 by guitarist Fredrik Söderberg (Cranium) and recorded a smattering of demos plus two albums (1994’s Nær Sólen Gar Niþer For Evogher and 1998’s Slaughtersun (Crown of the Triarchy)) before disbanding for nearly a decade. They’ve reactivated, and the line-up now includes, in addition to Söderberg, original vocalist Henke Forss (Retaliation) plus drummer Tomas Asklund (Gorgoroth, ex-Dissection, ex-Dark Funeral) and bass player Philip von Segebaden (ex-Afflicted, ex-Cranium). That’s a hell of a line-up.

Beginning in April, Century Media has reissued the band’s discography from the 1990s on vinyl, and Dawn have also been working on a new album. A “semi-official rehearsal track” has been up on YouTube for a while, though the song title apparently isn’t correct. Here it is, followed by a full stream of Slaughtersun: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 6

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013  9 Responses »
Jan 162014
 

Welcome to Part 6 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. 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 three I’m announcing today, click here.

You can think of this latest group of songs as the “comeback” edition of the series. All three songs come from bands who made incredibly exciting returns to the metal scene during 2013 after extended absences, ranging from to 8 years to 17 years. Their 2013 albums surely must rank among the strongest comebacks in metal history, and they have also been widely recognized as three of the best albums of last year. They’re presented here in alphabetical order.

CARCASS

Did any metal album of 2013 draw more attention than Surgical Steel (reviewed by us here)?  It was so highly anticipated that if it had been merely good, massive disappointment would have been the inevitable result. Yet Jeff Walker, Bill Steer, and Dan Wilding pulled off a tour de force that left all but the most hide-bound doubters smiling. Continue reading »

EXTOL’S “BETRAYAL”: A NEW VIDEO, A NEW SHIRT, AND A CHANCE TO HELP HOMELESS KIDS IN KENYA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Oct 172013
 

Most metalheads I know are good-hearted people (maybe because I steer clear of the assholes). Most metalheads I know also live from paycheck to paycheck — if they’ve got a paycheck. So when someone asks metalheads to spend money on a charitable cause, there needs to be an extra incentive; worthy causes are almost endless, but disposable income is in short supply. Offering something tangible that people are going to be tempted to buy anyway — and then donating all the proceeds to a good cause — that’s the kind of idea that should succeed. And that’s what Norway’s Extol and their record label have just done.

I assume you know who Extol are — but if not, they’re a progressive death metal band who’ve made one of this year’s standout albums (self-titled, and glorified in this NCS review). What they and their label Facedown Records have done is to make a special shirt available for sale, with all profits donated to New Life Mission Aid for use in helping homeless children in Kenya. As the band’s Peter Espevoll explains in a video for this project, New Life Mission Aid is a Norwegian charitable organization dedicated to providing food, shelter, and education to homeless kids in Kenya.

The shirt, as you can see, is badass. The design was created by Dave Quiggle. It’s dedicated to the new album’s opening song “Betrayal”, which in itself was inspired by the plight of those homeless children. Continue reading »

STRANGE DAYS

 Metal News  18 Responses »
Aug 072013
 

Metal has a weird streak a mile wide. If you’re honest with yourself, that’ s a big reason you like it so much. But yesterday I saw a new level of oddity. It was a premiere of a new song by Dream Theater. That’s a band I’ve never gotten into, so the news about the premiere of a new Dream Theater song wouldn’t have made me pause — except for where it premiered. If you didn’t already see the news, I could give you 100 guesses, and I’d bet a stack of money the height of your colon, if unraveled and nailed to a telephone pole, that you couldn’t pick the right answer.

Don’t waste your time. I’m telling you, you’d lose, even if you guessed the Kazakhstan Death Metal Observer and Livestock Market Journal. “The Enemy Inside” premiered at USA Today.

That’s right, that full-color organ of shallow American journalism made for people who don’t like to read much, found in printed form in motel rooms and airplane seat-backs across the length and breadth of Our Great Land. This is the same underground publication whose last story about metal was a report about a Black Sabbath concert in Bristow, Virginia, that began with this lively prose:

“The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees (Class of 2006) took the stage here to flashing red lights and the sound of sirens, thundering drums and a devilish laugh — “Ha, ha, ha!” — emitted unmistakably by frontman Ozzy Osbourne.”

Ha, ha, ha! Yes, the kind of sound that only Ozzy Osborne could make unmistakably, that’s the sound I made when I thought about what this means. Continue reading »

GOJIRALTERNATIVES REVISITED, BECAUSE DOUBLE PANDA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, Reviews  6 Responses »
Jul 232013
 

(Guest contributor Old Man Windbreaker finds a perhaps not-so-obvious connection among the latest albums by Gojira and a group of other bands, and includes some bonus items at the end.)

A little more than a year ago, we read a piece by Andy Synn titled ‘Gojiralternatives‘, describing music by half a dozen bands as an alternative of sorts for those who are not that into Gojira’s music. Old Man Windbreaker decided to catch up to the bands featured in that list, since most of them have released a new album since the date of that article. But, Old Man Windbreaker is lazy. Hence, you have a review of the albums a full 2 months after the release of the latest album on this playlist. By the way, here are the albums on this playlist, in chronological order:

  •  L’Enfant Sauvage by Gojira
  •  Meliora by Eryn Non Dae.
  •  Vertikal by Cult of Luna
  •  Possession by Benea Reach
  •  Back to Where You’ve Never Been by Hacride

You might notice that Burst and Oceans of Sadness are not in this playlist. That is because they both split up; before the publishing of the original ‘Gojiralternatives‘ article, I might add. So, they will not be revisited, despite having produced amazing music. You might also notice that Eryn Non Dae. is here on this list. That is because of Double Panda. One happened to be playing Double Panda while listening to the album the first time, and One thought they sounded somewhat like Gojira at the time. This eventually led to One revisiting the other Gojiralternatives as well. Continue reading »

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