SEEN AND HEARD: GORGUTS, KARTIKEYA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jul 052013
 

Happy 5th of July to one and all!  Though often overshadowed by yesterday’s holiday, July 5 is the anniversary of the date in 1775 when the Continental Congress adopted the so-called Olive Branch Petition attempting to convince King George III of the colonies’ affection and loyalty (while appealing for relief from various grievances). King George, of course, rejected the petition and declared the colonies to be in a “state of open and avowed rebellion”. I bet he later wished for a do-over on that decision.

Anyway, while indulging in solemn remembrance of the Olive Branch Petition this morning, as well as the 76th anniversary of the introduction of Spam to the market by Hormel Foods Corporation and the 67th anniversary of the first public sale of the bikini, I found time to observe a couple items of metal interest, which are discussed below.

GORGUTS

Little more than two weeks ago, we finally learned the album title (Colored Sands), track list, and release dates for the first studio album by Gorguts in 12 years — as well as hearing the album’s first single, “Forgotten Arrows”. I think it’s fair to say that the song was greeted by a boisterously enthusiastic reception. Gorguts’ Luc Lemay took notice, and yesterday he recorded a video thank-you to the band’s fans. Continue reading »

NEW GORGUTS MUSIC: “FORGOTTEN ARROWS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jun 202013
 

Well, that didn’t take long. Yesterday we got the album title (Colored Sands), album art, release dates, and track list for the first studio album by Gorguts in 12 years. And now we have the album’s first single — “Forgotten Arrows”.

I don’t know what’s more impressive, what Luc Lemay and Kevin Hufnagel do with their guitars, what John Longstreth does with the drum-kit, or what Colin Marston does with the bass. Oh hell, why choose? It’s all striking.

And the song itself uses the top-shelf expertise of all four to deliver music that’s tremendously heavy, dark, and doomed. It has the impact of buildings collapsing, but it provides a good scrambling of the neurons as the same time. Tremendous stuff. Listen to it next: Continue reading »

GORGUTS DELIVER ALBUM DETAILS

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jun 192013
 

As you may know, we don’t usually feature news items without music to hear, but this is Gorguts we’re talking about. When it comes to technical death metal, they occupy a place in rarified air, and I’ve been anxiously awaiting their new album since learning in February that they had signed with Season of Mist.

And today SoM released the album’s title — Colored Sands — and its release date: September 3rd in North America (and August 30 everywhere else), plus that very cool cover art you’re looking at.

It has been a long wait.  The band’s last album, From Wisdom To Hate, was released 12 years ago. But the new line-up holds tremendous promise: vocalist/guitarist Luc Lemay (of course), drummer John Longstreth (Dim Mak, Origin, The Red Chord, Skinless, etc., etc.), bassist Colin Marston (Dysrhythmia,  Indricothere, Behold… The Arctopus, Krallice), and guitarist Kevin Hufnagel (Dysrhythmia, While Heaven Wept). Continue reading »

A NEW GORGUTS VIDEO!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
May 202013
 

When it comes to technical death metal, Gorguts occupies a place in rarified air. It has gone through several iterations divided by long periods of inactivity, with legendary vocalist/guitarist Luc Lemay being the only constant.  The band’s last album, From Wisdom To Hate, was released 12 years ago, but word surfaced about four years ago that Lemay was reviving Gorguts yet again — this time with the line-up filled out by drummer John Longstreth (Dim Mak, Origin, The Red Chord, Skinless, etc., etc.); bassist Colin Marston (Dysrhythmia,  Indricothere, Behold… The Arctopus, Krallice); and guitarist Kevin Hufnagel (Dysrhythmia, While Heaven Wept).

And then in February of this year we learned (and reported) that Gorguts have signed with Season of Mist and will be releasing their extremely long-awaited fifth studio album later this year.

And then last night I found a video that had just been posted on YouTube. It’s a performance by the current Gorguts line-up at their only Canadian show in 2012 — the Trois–Rivières Metalfest at the Bâtisse Industrielle venue in Quebec on October 12. The song is “Stiff and Cold”, from the band’s 1991 debut album Considered Dead.

The video was filmed with 6 cameras, and it looks and sounds really good. If you want a taste of what this combined line-up of all-star talent is capable of doing, watch it next. You’ll be glad you did. Continue reading »

OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY: GORGUTS, SHINING, MALIGNANT MONSTER, AND TALANAS

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Feb 052013
 

Allow me to share with you a collection of findings that I happened upon over the last 24 hours, most of it breaking news, some of it new music I think is worth spreading around like life-giving manure, and some of it videographic in nature. News first:

GORGUTS

Thanks to a tip from Vonlughlio, I discovered that Gorguts have signed with Season of Mist and will be releasing their extremely long-awaited fifth studio album later this year. Guitarist/vocalist Luc Lemay is quoted in a press release we received as follows:

“Everything from writing these new songs, traveling to NYC for rehearsals, developing a new friendship with John, Kevin and Colin, three of the most talented people I ever jammed with…everything from this project was beyond stimulating artistically.

From this experience was born a new GORGUTS record, a concept record which is going to last over an hour. An hour of epic, ambient, dark music which doesn’t compromise its Death Metal roots. As a composer, by exploring different kind of music, it was always my goal to integrate the same writing tools in Death Metal as if I would be writing a piece of chamber music for instance.

Well, I’m really eager to share this new record with you!” Continue reading »

VAURA: “SELENELION”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  5 Responses »
Jul 062012
 

Here’s how this happened:

In a MISCELLANY post earlier this week I wrote about a NY band named Røsenkøpf (who, btw, I am still really digging). As I usually do, I messaged the band and their label (Wierd Records) about the post, y’know, in order to improve the chances that it would be read by at least two people. I got a nice note back from Pieter at Wierd Records. He suggested that I might also like another Wierd release by a band named Vaura, who he said included members of Dysrhythmia, Gorguts, Kayo Dot, Blacklist, and more, and he kindly shared a download link.

So, I’m a big fan of Dysrhythmia and Gorguts and have been intrigued by the few songs I’ve heard by Kayo Dot, so I downloaded Vaura’s February 2012 debut album, Selenelion, having no more idea about the music than the brief description Pieter provided — an “interesting collision of black metal and ultra dark post punk”.  (I later realized that Vaura had received quite a bit of attention when Selenelion was originally released, and I had overlooked it because . . . well, I’ll explain why later.)

Yesterday I went to the gym. For me, this is not a frequent or regular occurrence, but over the last six or nine months I seem to have acquired a jelly roll around my mid-section, like some alien spawn that burrowed into my navel while I was sleeping off last Thanksgiving’s feed and has been reproducing inside me ever since. Because that tire around my belly that makes me turn away from the mirror in disgust can’t really be me, can it? So I’ve resolved to try and beat that fucker into submission with some brutal iron-pumping.

I like to go to the gym at an hour when the only other gymnasts there are old people trying to loosen up their arthritic limbs in a futile effort to stave off the Grim Reaper, instead of hot chicks who would laugh at me, or worse still, ignore me. But, I still need music when I brutally pump iron, so I won’t hear myself gasping and whimpering like an abused dog. I decided to load up my iPod Shuffle with the Vaura, figuring that if the band included anyone connected with Dysrhythmia and Gorguts, it would give me a good injection of adrenaline, which I would need in order to achieve three repetitions instead of two on the bench press and bust out five sit-up’s instead of four.

Man, did I get a surprise. Continue reading »

GORGUTS ON THE MOVE

 Metal News  1 Response »
Mar 282012
 

Yesterday, I wrote about an exciting new band named Crator who have finally surfaced some new music after first being cryptically mentioned in an update written by John Longstreth for Sick Drummer magazine in 2010. In addition to being one of the members of Crator and the drummer for Origin, Longstreth is also the current drummer for Gorguts.

When it comes to technical death metal, Gorguts occupies a place in rarified air. It has gone through several iterations divided by long periods of inactivity, with legendary vocalist/guitarist Luc Lemay being the only constant.  The band’s last album, From Wisdom To Hate, was released 11 years ago, but word surfaced about three years ago that Lemay was reviving Gorguts yet again — this time with the line-up filled out by Longstreth and by Dysrhythmia bandmates Kevin Hufnagle and Colin Marston.

Since then, Gorguts die-hards have been waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting for new music. It appears we will finally get to hear some of what the new line-up have been creating, because it was announced yesterday that Gorguts have been added to the U.S. DEATH TO ALL TOUR 2012. Continue reading »

DYSRHYTHMIA: “TOWARDS THE END”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 052011
 

July 7, 2009. That’s how long it’s been since Brooklyn-based Dysrhythmia released their last album, Psychic Maps. However, the latest news is that they’ve finished recording a 4-song “pre-production” demo on their way toward completion of a new album for release sometime in 2012. Today, they made one of those songs available for free download on their Bandcamp page.

If Dysrhythmia is a new name for you, they’re a three-man instrumental project that currently consists of Kevin Hufnagel (Gorguts) on guitar, Colin Marston (Krallice, Behold . . . the Arctopus, Gorguts) on bass, and Jeff Eber on drums. These are not average musicians. Both in their conception of music and in their performance, they’re very much top-shelf. What they do is unpredictable, even avant-garde, and I’ve always found their music really intriguing.

The new song is very much in the Dysrhythmia vein. It’s a slow build, growing in complexity and speed, like a brain that becomes increasingly engaged and focused until all the synapses are firing with neural bursts — until the music collapses into a pool of quivering sludge near the end. It’s brainy music, but with a bit of brawn to it as well — like a big dog solving quadratic equations that periodically remembers it’s a dog and begins to bark and growl before returning to his work.

Go past the jump to hear the new song and get the link for the download if you like what you hear. Continue reading »

TECH YOURSELF TO DEATH: NEW MUSIC FROM OBSCURA, GORGUTS, AND BTBAM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Feb 262011
 

This will be quick, because I hadn’t planned on any posts today besides the earlier THAT’S METAL! nonsense, but what I’ve found this morning is just too much awesomeness not to share with you: brand new songs from Obscura, Gorguts, and Between the Buried and Me.

OBSCURA

This band have a new album called Omnivium due for a March 29 North American release on Relapse Records.  In mid-January, we featured the first song from the album, called “Septuagint”. Now, the band have released a second song, called “Vortex Omnivium”, which you can stream after the jump. As you listen, you can also gaze upon the wonderful album art above, executed by Orion Landau (who has also created art for the likes of Origin, Dying Fetus, and Disfear).

Obscura, if you don’t know, is a German progressive death metal band from Germany composed of guitarist/vocalist Steffen Kummerer (Thulcandra), guitarist Christian Müenzner (ex-Necrophagist), fretless bassist Jeroen Paul Thesseling (Pestilence), and drummer Hannes Grossmann (Blotted Science, ex-Necrophagist). All of these dudes are exceptional musicians — very fast, hyper-technical, jaw-droppingly good. As their last album (2009’s Cosmogenesis) abundantly demonstrated, they can also write songs that are as catchy as they are technically challenging.

For purposes of this post, it’s also fitting to note that the band took their name from a 1998 Gorguts album called Obscura. Listen to the new song right after the jump. Continue reading »

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