KATALEPSY: “GRAVENOUS HOUR”

 Reviews  1 Response »
May 102016
 

Katalepsy-Gravenous Hour

 

(Here’s Allen Griffin’s review of the new second album by the Russian band Katalepsy.)

Modern Brutal Death Metal has long been the red-headed stepchild of the Extreme Metal scene, and one could easily argue it was for a good reason. The world never needed generic breakdowns and ridiculously misogynistic artwork and lyrics, or at least not this late in the game (Cannibal Corpse will always get a pass).

In recent times, however, and perhaps missed by all but the most ardent fans, leaps of progression have been rolling through the sub-genre. And while groups such as Wormed and Fallujah have certainly been spearheading the charge, even mid-listers such as Moscow’s Katalepsy have considerably upped the ante. While they may not blast off into space like their aforementioned compatriots, they certainly know how to construct a powerful Death Metal record. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KATALEPSY — “CRITICAL BLACK MASS”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Apr 222016
 

Katalepsy-Gravenous Hour

 

That album cover up there (created by W. Smerdulak) is a hell of a thing — burning skies, lava flows, worlds cracked open like rotten eggs, a freshly unearthed corpse about to be reanimated by the sorcery of a clawed, disembodied hand… and wait ’til everything starts to move, brought to life in the video by Scott Hull that you’re about to see.

That artwork appears on the cover of Gravenous Hour, the second album by the Russian death machine Katalepsy, which will be released by Unique Leader Records on May 27. The animated lyric video we’re premiering today is for the album’s fourth track, “Critical Black Mass“, and it’s a monster. Continue reading »

KATALEPSY: “AUTOPSYCHOSIS”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jan 082013
 

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Russia’s Katalepsy, which is being released today by Unique Leader Records.)

I immensely liked the advance song from Autopsychosis that this band debuted in November (“Evidence of Near Death (E.N.D.)”), which we shared with you all previously, and I was rather intrigued as well. It was excellent slam with brutal girth that crushed bodies and turned them into toothpaste tubes being run under a tank tread.  However, the fact that the single was an excellent song of stalwart brutal death doesn’t mean the whole album is simply a high quality salute to the tried and true.

It turns out that on Autospsychosis Katalepsy prove to be quite an interesting band, whether through their downright whacky and unorthodox ideas such as the harmonic scrapes in the verse riff of the opener “Lurking in the Depth” that give it an odd, yet appealing taste, or just some of the strange riffs these guys whip out even in a death metal setting. There are clean sections, straight-up melodic sections that can be downright neo-classical in nature, and more. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: WEAPON, UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION, ANTROPOFAGUS, KATALEPSY, DORDEDUH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Nov 022012
 

I was all set to go with this post, all set to call it “BRUTALITY!”, because that was the unifying theme of the new music videos I found from Weapon (Canada), Unfathomable Ruination (UK), Antropofagus (Italy), and Katalepsy (Russia). And then I saw a new official live video from Dordeduh (Romania) — not really brutal, but it still grabbed me. So I’m including it at the end and dropping the “BRUTALITY!” post title.

There are so many videos I want to share in this post that I’m doing my goddamned best to pare down my own verbiage. Here we go . . .

WEAPON

Weapon’s new album Embers and Revelations is out now on the Relapse label. We haven’t reviewed it yet, but it’s well worth your time — a fusing of first wave black and death metal with melodic touches that recall the Bangladeshi origins of the band’s leader, Vetis Monarch.

Yesterday Relapse premiered a lyric video for a brutal Weapon track named “Crepuscular Swamp”. Here it is: Continue reading »