WEEKEND ROUND-UP (Part 1): INCANTATION, HATE, DEIVOS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jan 102015
 

 

Whenever I let a day or two go by without checking the web or my NCS e-mails to see what’s new, I always miss a lot, because the ocean of metal is always at high tide. Because of my day job, I couldn’t pay much attention to metal happenings over the last two days. But I had a 6-hour flight back to Seattle from the east coast last night and a decent internet connection, so I tried to catch up. And goddamn….

The great and powerful Engine of Metal has awakened after dormancy during the holiday season and it’s now running in the red zone. (Yeah, I just mixed my metaphors, so sue me.) I found more than 20 new songs and videos during that plane flight that I thought were worth exploring.

The net connection wasn’t good enough to stream anything on the flight, so I just made a list, and now I’m going through it. There’s sooo much worth writing about that I’m breaking this round-up into multiple parts that I’ll spit out in pieces today and tomorrow. (I missed an installment of the Most Infectious Song list yesterday, but I’ll get back on track with that today, too.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HATE, ISRATHOUM, SECRET CEREMONIES, CUREZUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 272014
 

To those of you who will be celebrating Thanksgiving today, Happy Thanksgiving and best wishes for a deep and restful tryptophan coma (though data show that dining on sea lion kidney would get you a bigger dose of tryptophan than turkey). For those who treat this as just another day, Happy Just Another Day.

We’re not planning a lot of posts today, just the premiere we launched a bit earlier and this round-up of new sightings and hearings from my interhole excursions over the last 24 hours. Here we go…

HATE

In mid-October we reported that Poland’s Hate will be releasing a new album named Crusade: Zero on January 15, 2015, via Napalm Records. I was excited about that news even before hearing a note of the music. Now that I have heard many notes, I’m even more eager for the album. You shall hear those same notes in this teaser reel, which excerpts parts of several new songs: Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: HATE, BEHEMOTH, ARCHGOAT

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  5 Responses »
Oct 172014
 

 

Here are a few items that caught my eye over the last 24 hours, partly because of the artwork, but in some cases also because of the accompanying news.

HATE

I’m going to put Hate in front of Behemoth for a change.

Thanks to a tip from Andy Synn I saw the announcement from earlier today by Poland’s Hate that they will be releasing a new album named Crusade: Zero on January 15, 2015, via Napalm Records. As usual, the album was recorded and mixed at Hertz Studio with the Wieslawski Brothers. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLOOD OF KINGU, HATE, CULT OF FIRE, TERROR OATH, CEMETERY FOG, YORBLIND

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Jun 182014
 

I never got around to posting a second round-up yesterday, as I had planned, so I’m loading up this one not only with what I had intended to feature yesterday but also with some other items I discovered last night. Yeah, that makes this a really long post, but what else have you got to do?

As you’ll see, I’m indulging my taste for blackness, death, and deathly blackness, though for those of you less interested in slaughter and depravity, you can skip to the more melodious song at the end. There’s actually a bit of clean singing in that last one.

BLOOD OF KINGU

Earlier this month I reported that Ukrainian black metal band Blood of Kingu (started by Roman Sayenko of Drudkh) would be releasing their third album via Season of Mist on September 2 in North America (and August 29 everywhere else). The title is Dark Star on the Right Horn of the Crescent Moon. Yesterday, thanks to my friend Vonlughlio, I learned that Terrorizer has now premiered the first advance track from the album, “Enshrined in the Nethermost Lairs Beneath the Oceans”.

The song wastes no time unleashing a torrent of blasting drums and rippling tremolo runs that carry a seductive melody behind gargantuan vocal proclamations. An aura of infernal darkness radiates from the music in waves, but man, it’s also highly infectious. You’ll need to go HERE to listen. Blood of Kingu have a Facebook page at this location. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 7

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013  14 Responses »
Jan 202014
 

We present Part 7 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 two I’m announcing today, click here.

BLOOD RED THRONE

Norway’s Blood Red Throne greeted 2013 with a new self-titled album featuring a new line-up of talent. Andy Synn summed it up as follows in his NCS review:

“Marrying the demented aggression of Cannibal Corpse to the teeth-grinding groove of Pantera at their most abrasive, shot through with touches of subtly complex guitar work a la Death at their most focussed and hostile, BRT’s seventh full-length album captures every aspect of their sound in microcosm, while also being their shortest, most refined, record since 2003’s Affiliated With The Suffering….

“…For all their extremity – and there are moments on this album where the mind-bending blast frenzy, the ravenous banshee howls, and the crushing meltdown riffage combine into an eruption of absolute face-melting extremity – Blood Red Throne are a band with real character. That, along with their monstrous, inhuman tightness (and unbelievable ability to consume alcohol) is their key strength.” Continue reading »

SUMMER BREEZE 2013 — DAY 3

 Concert Reviews  5 Responses »
Sep 062013
 

(Here’s the third and final part of Andy Synn’s review of 2013’s edition of the SUMMER BREEZE festival in Germany. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here. Once again, Andy provides video that he filmed at the performances.)

The third, and final, day of the festival was a funny one. It seemed (at the time) that this was going to be the day when I only saw a few bands – particularly as I had a long gap planned at one point to do some shopping and eating and such. But, now that I look back on it, I see that I actually watched a good seven full sets, most of them pretty long, five of them from bands I absolutely adore. So, all in all, actually a very, very good day.

 

Oddly enough the first band of the day was to be Portugese goth-metal masters Moonspell, a band I’m not really a fan of, per se, but whose stellar performance at Inferno earlier this year definitely made me want to check them out again.

Consummate showmen, with an enviable brace of infectious songs and killer riffs, the group managed to turn a brightly-lit early afternoon slot into something of a gothic mecca, their passionate performance crafting a clear and well-received connection with the crowd before them.

We were also treated to one of those wonderful “festival moments” when current Tristania singer singer Mariangela Demurtas came out to add her vocals to a fantastic run-through of “Raven Claws” (although her awkwardly sexy dancing and casual clothes felt oddly at odds with the song’s darkly seductive vibe). Continue reading »

INFERNO FESTIVAL – DAY ONE

 Concert Reviews  6 Responses »
Apr 032013
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn has returned from Oslo’s Inferno Festival, held on March 27-30, 2013, and brings us a multi-part report of what he saw and heard, along with photos. Check out his Opening Day report here.)

Kicking off the festival-proper at the early time of 17:30 Horned Almighty were like a veritable boot to the face of the assembled audience. Nasty, brutal, and brimming with feral punk aggression, the group come across as a bad-boy version of the Misfits, raised on black metal nihilism and death metal misanthropy, and kick up a hell of a racket, with a truly demolition-strength guitar tone. Material from across their four albums bulked out the set, with the strongest focus being on Contaminating The Divine and Necro Spirituals.

Frontman S. didn’t let the fact that the band were opening the festival proper intimidate him, spitting necrosadistic venom at the crowd with his spiteful, belligerent snarl, while the aptly-named Carnage on bass was a stalking, twisting revelation of spindly fingers and malevolent contortions. Give these guys a longer set and a bigger stage someone! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HACRIDE, DYNASTY OF DARKNESS, ZOMBIEFICATION, AND HATE

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Mar 152013
 

I caught a slight break from the daily work grind last night, long enough to find three items I think are worth your time, and then NCS writer DGR added a fourth.

HACRIDE

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Hacride’s new album is in my “highly anticipated” category for 2013. As in, I get high thinking about it. It’s not simply that the band have proven their worth with their past releases, it’s that they’ve proven they’re unlikely to stand still and simply deliver more of the same (though I would be happy enough with that). So, curiosity is one reason I’ve been eager to hear Back To Where You’ve Never Been.

The first taste came yesterday when Metal Sucks premiered a song from the album named “Overcome”, and man, it’s really strong. It’s loud, it’s brash, it’s packed with energy, it’s built around some killer grooves, and it’s interesting. I even dig the clean singing. Don’t waste time, go here to check this out. Continue reading »

HATE: “SOLARFLESH”

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Jan 312013
 

(In this post, NCS writer Andy Synn reviews the new album by Poland’s Hate, which is scheduled for release in North America on February 5.)

Ok, let’s start by acknowledging the elephant in the room, shall we? For years now (more than I’d care to count, in fact) it’s been de rigeur to punctuate any review or feature on Hate with references to… that other band. You know the one. The ‘other’ blackened death metal band from Poland. Begins with a ‘B’…

Anyway, I think that’s been done to death. We all know the similarities by now, just as we should all realise there’s more than enough room in the world for both acts to be taken and judged on their own merits. So I’m going to conduct this whole review without even once mentioning the ‘B’ word, or making reference to ‘they who shall not be named’. In fact, I’m going to pretend they don’t even exist.

Now Solarflesh is Hate’s eighth full-length album, and offers up a more refined – and perhaps even more crushing – take on a sound that the band have been developing since (at least) 2003’s Awakening Of The Liar, a hybrid of black atmospherics and brutal death metal aggression, which has slowly taken on more and more of a spiritual, metaphysical aspect as the years have gone by. Added to this is that, as opposed to… some other band… there’s always been something more intimate about Hate’s approach, something that works to set them apart, even as they give rapturous voice to their own inner demons. Continue reading »

FREE LISTENABLE SAMPLER IS LISTENABLE AND FREE

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Dec 072011
 

When I had my head in the clouds on vacation last month, the French label Listenable Records compiled a sampler of music for free download that I completely missed. Fortunately, it’s still available, and it’s quite a collection of music. There are some bands on the list whose names I don’t recognize and a few whose music doesn’t do anything for me, but on the other hand, it includes songs from some bands that are as strong as horseradish. Just to name a few:

GOJIRA

SVART CROWN

HATE

PANZERCHRIST

CAVUS

DARKANE

LIVARKAHIL

THE RED SHORE

There are 22 tracks in all. After the jump, you can check out the full track list and get the download link. Continue reading »

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