Sep 062012
 

The subjects of this post are two official videos released today by two California bands, World Under Blood and Murder Construct. The musical styles are of course quite different, but the music (and the videos) have this much in common: They’re intense experiences to hear and to see.

WORLD UNDER BLOOD

Despite the fact that we failed to review this band’s 2011 Nuclear Blast debut album Tactical, we sort of made up for that by naming one of the album’s tracks (“Dead and Still In Pain”) to our list of 2011’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

We could have just as easily picked another song from that album, “Into the Arms of Cruelty”. It really showcases the talents of this band’s top-flight members: vocalist/guitarist Deron Miller (CKY), drummer Tim Yeung (Divine Heresy, Morbid Angel), guitrist Luke Jaeger (Sleep Terror), and bassist Risha Eryavec (ex-Decrepit Birth). It’s a plenty extreme song, but it has an undeniable groove and melodic hooks that really set themselves firmly in the mind.

Today, Nuclear Blast debuted an official video for the song, and it’s very well made (by director Shan Dan Horan). It matches the intensity of the music with a mix of animation and live action storytelling that focuses on violence directed against children. Definitely worth seeing and hearing . . . right now. Continue reading »

Aug 282012
 

 

The fucking brutals are everywhere again.

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli provides a pithy review of the second album by Murder Construct, which is officially out today.)

We’ve talked about this band and this album quite a bit at NCS (e.g., here).  Why?  Because the line-up of this band is pretty stellar.  Among other luminaries, it has Travis the-fucking-man Ryan on the vocal spot, and the music is sludgy, crusty, filthy, fucking foam at the mouth deathgrind of intestine vaporizing proportions.  Murder Construct’s sophomore album Results will decimate you into a fine bloody mist. the kind of which is usually radiated only from the most putrid of freshly undead skin-eaters.

I MEAN FUCKING LISTEN TO THAT:


 
Continue reading »

Jun 292012
 

Yes, I’m still trying out titles for these posts in which I collect metal news, new videos, and new music that I’ve seen recently. I mean no disrespect to any of the bands featured in this post. In my lexicon, “riff-raff” is a compliment, plus I really wanted some alliteration; otherwise I probably would have called this “Rounding Up the Motherfuckers”.

Yesterday I saw and heard a lot of things worth passing on, so I’m dividing this collection into two parts, with the second part to follow a little later this morning. In this Part 1 are observations involving new albums from two excellent bands —Results by Murder Construct and Cold of Ages by Ash Borer — plus a recent live performance by In Mourning caught on film, plus a from-the-horse’s-mouth report on a potential Mastodon collaboration with Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt and In Flames’ Björn Gelotte.

MURDER CONSTRUCT

This band is a super-group of sorts, featuring Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan on vocals, Exhumed/Phobia/Impaled’s Leon del Muerte on guitar and vocals, Intronaut/Uphill Battle’s Danny Walker on drums, Bad Acid Trip’s Caleb Schneider on bass, and Fetus Eaters/Watch Me Burn’s Kevin Fetus also on guitar. The name of their game is death-grind, and I fuckin’ loved their 2010 self-titled debut (described here). Continue reading »

Jan 062012
 

December and 2011 are both over, and with the end of the last month, it’s time to round up what we saw over the last 30 days about forthcoming albums.

We usually try to post these updates on the first of the month, but the first of this month was New year’s Day, and I was moving kinda slowly that day. Plus, I’ve been focusing on year-end lists from a variety of sources, and, well, I’m late with this. I have more excuses, if you’d like to hear them.  No?  Okay, I understand.  I’ll just shut up and get going with this list.

So, here’s the deal:  In these METAL IN THE FORGE posts, I collect news blurbs and press releases I’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like at NCS (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — THIS ISN’T A CUMULATIVE LIST. If we found out about a new forthcoming album before December, we wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier.

This month’s list begins right after the jump. It includes some real eye-openers. In fact, it’s not too soon to say that 2012 is already looking like yet another royally skull-fucking year for metal. But as usual, this list is half-assed rather than comprehensive. I confess that in December I was even more half-assed than usual in keeping my eyes open for news about new albums. So, feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us what I missed when I put this list together. Let us know about albums on the way that  you’re stoked about, even if you don’t see them here! Continue reading »

Nov 252010
 

Yes, still catching up on developments in the world of metal that happened while I was on vacation. Yes, there’s probably a better-than-even chance that you already saw some of this while I was fucking off, but maybe you didn’t, or maybe you didn’t pay close attention the first time around. So, here are a handful of additional items I thought were interesting as I slogged through the mountains of posts on a few metal blogs and/or Facebook and/or MySpace that appeared while I was away.

Today, we have for you a hot new video by Bloodshedd (The Philippines) and new music from Murder Construct (California), and Exist (Washington, DC).

BLOODSHEDD

In February of this year, we reviewed an album called Spare No One, released in 2009 on the Tower of Doom label by a band from The Philippines called Bloodshedd. We summed up our review with these words: “Trust us on this: If Bloodshedd were in the U.S. instead of the Phillipines, they’d be turning heads far and wide. They’ve sure spun our heads all the way around! This is blazingly creative music played with passion and top-shelf skill.”

Well, while I was off on vacation, the band released their second official music video in support of Spare No One. It’s for a song called “Beast 696”. The video is another one of those band-playing-in-a-warehouse-or-alley concoctions, with fast cut-aways in the editing to keep pace with the blazing music. And oh hell, does it blaze — a buzzsaw of blackened thrash played with top-shelf instrumental skill and a knack for triggering neck-snap’s.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »