SEEN AND HEARD: KATATONIA, THE METAL ALLIANCE TOUR, HARAKIRI FROM THE SKY, MITHRAS, TELOCH, MIASMAL, HORRORS OF THE UNKNOWN, MISÞYRMING

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 082016
 

Katatonia 2016

 

If you recall yesterday’s “Seen and Heard” round-up, I explained that I had fallen so far behind that I had a list of 30 new tracks from over the last week that I thought were worth exploring. And sure enough, the list has only grown, because so many other good new things popped up in the last 24 hours. So I’m starting with the four newest items and concluding with four from last week.

KATATONIA

Yesterday brought details about the next Katatonia album, as well as a very brief teaser video. This will be their tenth studio full-length, with the title of The Fall of Hearts. It’s set for a May 20 release by Peaceville Records. Here’s the artwork (by Travis Smith, of course): Continue reading »

GODLESS ANGEL INTERVIEWS VICTORY RECORDS STAGE ARTISTS FROM THE ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK MAYHEM FESTIVAL

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Jul 072015
 

Mayhem victory records stage

 

(Our friend Derek “Godless Angel” Neibarger brings us this series of interviews with four bands who will be performing on the Victory Records Stage at this year’s edition of the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival.)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’re almost certainly aware that the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival has once again returned this summer. This year’s edition features thirteen bands and the knockout punch of dual headliners Slayer and King Diamond. The festival has twenty-six stops between June 26th and August 2nd, and if you’re lucky enough to score tickets to one of those shows I am insanely envious.

My son and I attended our first, and so far only, Mayhem festival several years ago when Slayer also headlined along with Slipknot. It was an amazing experience that included three stages for an all-day-long barrage of metal, a glorious overabundance of merch booths, food, and meet-and-greets. We got to meet Shawn Crahan of Slipknot, grabbed some killer t-shirts, and banged our heads to the point of exhaustion. It was also an amazing social experience, as we were met with friendly smiles and lively conversation from excited metalheads throughout the entire day. We left the festival swearing we would be regular attendees from that day forward, but sadly the tour has skipped the Kansas City area ever since.

That hasn’t stopped me from following the news of every Mayhem tour. I eagerly await the line-up announcement each year and I eat up every fan footage video to hit YouTube as the festival carves a path of destruction from coast to coast. For 2015 the second stage has been dubbed the Victory Records Stage and features nine artists from the Victory roster. I was offered the opportunity to send a few questions to a handful of Victory artists as they prepared to hit the road. Continue reading »

GODLESS ANGEL INTERVIEWS… DAVE MATRISE OF JUNGLE ROT

 Interviews  7 Responses »
May 152015
 

 

(Our Kansas-based friend Derek Neibarger — the man behind the Godless Angel death metal project and the inventor of the Cat Hand Rest©, brings us his interview of Dave Matrise, vocalist of Jungle Rot.)

I have to extend a very heartfelt thank you to Kenosha, Wisconsin. The fourth largest city in the state has given us Mark Ruffalo, the best Bruce Banner aka The Hulk. And more importantly it is the home of the death metal monstrosity, Jungle Rot.

Formed in 1994, Jungle Rot has delivered seven crushing full-length albums. With their eighth album on the way and a coveted slot on this year’s Rockstar Mayhem Festival, it was the perfect time to catch up with vocalist, Dave Matrise, to talk about what looks to be a very exciting year for these death metal legends!

******

Derek: Hi Dave! Thank you for taking time to do this interview for me! Jungle Rot entered the studio last month to begin working on your eighth album. How are the recording sessions going, so far? Do you have any idea when the album will be released, or when we’ll get to hear some new music?

Dave: Hi, yes we went into Bell City Recordings on April 17th. I could not be happier with how everything is coming out. Again, we went into the studio ready for war. We all had a job to do and everyone did it well. Knowing just what we had and what needed to be done to make this another J-Rot release. The album will be available on June 30th and I’m sure a video will be released at the same time to let everyone get a taste of it. Continue reading »

TOURISM: CARNIVAL OF DEATH 2014 AND ELUVEITIE IN NORTH AMERICA (WITH A NEW ALBUM COMING)

 Uncategorized  16 Responses »
May 162014
 

Here are a couple of North American tours announced this morning that I thought were worth spreading around. The music in the two tours lies on divergent ends of the metal spectrum, but both shows should be excellent.

CARNIVAL OF DEATH 2014

This death metal blockbuster is co-headlined by Suffocation and Kataklysm, with Suffocation closing the shows on the US dates and Kataklysm playing the final sets in the Canadian shows. Accompanying those two heavyweight acts on this tour will be Jungle Rot, Pyrexia, and Internal Bleeding.

As the poster up there indicates, the tour schedule hasn’t been announced yet.

Now, changing gears… Continue reading »

WATCH SUFFOCATION, EXHUMED, JUNGLE ROT, RINGS OF SATURN, AND ADIMIRON LIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 112013
 

I’m really slow in spreading the word about this event — my man Vonlughlio tipped me to it the day it happened. In a nutshell, Suffocation, Exhumed, Jungle Rot, Rings of Saturn, and Adimiron performed live at the Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, NY, on the night of April 5. That was the second night of the Despise the World 2013 North American Tour, which is still in progress. The Saint Vitus show was webcast live, as it happened, on Gander.tv.

But the show was also recorded as it was happening, and the entire thing can still be streamed.

Even better, the stream of the live performance is embeddable, which means I can stick it right here at NCS for as long as the stream lasts — all 5 hours of it.

I don’t know how many people would choose to watch the entire show — I skipped around, myself — but it’s pretty damned cool just to have it available. Also, Exhumed played a new song called “The Rotting” from their next album, which should be out in the summer. Check out the show right after the jump. 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 »