NAPALM DEATH: “APEX PREDATOR (EASY MEAT)”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 122015
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Napalm Death.)

Our crops had been weak for decades, our village was starving, and we found ourselves on the near brink of ruin. Famine had torn through the whole country, but my village was hit especially hard. We knew that there wasn’t much time left, and despite this being the modern age we had few solutions going for us. We had tried so many on the path to getting ourselves back up on our feet but nothing had worked. We were desperate and starving and we all knew it. Ideas once thought stupid were now grand gestures of genius and we were embracing them all wholeheartedly. If we had honestly thought that painting ourselves blue and pretending to be cat people would’ve worked, we would’ve done it.

Now, we found ourselves turning to a person that we honestly hadn’t thought about or given a second notion to for years. He was a relic of the past, kept alive mostly by fool traditionalists and relatives. Nobody cared to learn his art and so he was to be the last of his kind, yet here we were, three days running now in a smoke-filled tent with a man now in his upper eighties with body paint on, deep in thought and apparently asleep. We had turned to our shaman and were using him in the way that my grandparents would’ve sought knowledge with his father. We were hoping to hear something wise, anything, really, to get ourselves out of the mess of starvation that we were currently in.

Finally, after three days of being so still as to appear petrified were it not for the glistening beads of sweat on his forehead, he began to convulse. My friend jumped forward to help but my father held him back, informing him that this was how it had always gone and were anyone to interrupt him the whole process would have to start anew. And so, we sat and watched a man convulse until finally he opened his eyes and one our own ran out of the tent hollering to the village that he had awoken and was going to speak. Finally, he opened his mouth and uttered a few words of wisdom before closing his eyes and nodding off.

“Napalm Death are an important band” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KATAVASIA, NAPALM DEATH, ABSTRACTER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jan 262015
 

 

I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to round up new music for today. My fucking day job has again carried me across the continent to the east coast where I’ll be working days and nights from now through February 8. As a result, there will be many days between now and then when there will be less content on the site than usual.

I would also like to mention that as I write this it is 13°F where I am, with a winter storm warning in effect and blizzard conditions predicted beginning this afternoon. I know this will not impress many of our readers who are used to this kind of thing, but for me I would like to say FUCK THIS SHIT.

KATAVASIA

Although I’ve had little time to myself this past weekend, I did listen to a couple of new things, beginning with a fantastic discovery named Katavasia. Continue reading »

WEEKEND ROUND-UP (Part 2): NAPALM DEATH, SEA OF BONES, SYLOSIS, ANGELUS APATRIDA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 102015
 

 

Here’s Part 2 of a weekend effort to catch up on what I missed over the last couple of days. Part 1 is here. I’ll have at least one more installment tomorrow.

NAPALM DEATH

Would you believe that by the end of this month Napalm Death will have released their 15th studio album?!? It’s true. January 26 is the European release date and January 27 is the date for North America, and the album’s name is Apex Predator – Easy Meat. It will be released in NorthAm by Century Media.

A couple days ago the second advance track from the album appeared at selected sites on either side of the Atlantic. Its name is “How The Years Condemn”. Lyrically, it reflects bassist Shane Embury’s realization after being hospitalized a few years ago that he had “to make a choice which was either to carry on down the same path of selfish destruction as I had seen some of my friends embark on or stay around for the people I loved and who loved me.” Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ASCENSION, AT THE GATES, BLACK SHEEP WALL, CENTINEX, CRETIN, FAITH NO MORE, NAPALM DEATH, RAMMING SPEED, SATANIC WARMASTER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Nov 202014
 


Photo credit: Dustin Rabin

 

I need to whine for a couple of minutes. Yes, even I, with my usually sunny disposition, need to whine every now and then.

First, I’ve been getting so little sleep lately that my eyes are as red as a baboon’s ass. Second, I inflamed a muscle in my arm from curling massive amounts of weight at the gym, the kind of crushing weight that’s comparable to a grocery bag loaded with a single loaf of bread. Third, and most egregious of all, my fucking day job has been making me run the gauntlet the last two days, with no end in sight, leaving me no time for my usual self-appointed NCS duty of scouring the web for news and new music.

I do know about a bunch of song and album premieres that appeared over the last 24 hours, but only because of messages received from my co-writers and some sharp-eyed readers. I’ve collected streams or links to them in this post, but don’t have time to write about them or even provide album art or helpful links. Shit, I haven’t even listened to all of them. How embarrassing. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NAPALM DEATH AND VOIVOID ON TOUR, DECIBEL NAMES THE TOP 100 DOOM ALBUMS, AND NEW MUSIC FROM ARCHGOAT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 052014
 

In today’s posts we’ve thrown quite a lot of new music your way, but we’re still not quite done. There are a couple more songs I want to recommend that I discovered over the last 24 hours, plus some news items that perked my interest. We’ll start with those and then move to the songs.

THROUGH SPACE AND GRIND TOUR 2015

Through Space and Grind is the name of a 2015 North American tour whose roster is full of eye-catching names: Napalm Death, Voivod, Exhumed, Iron Reagan, and Black Crown Initiate. The tour begins on January 27 in Miami and runs through February 28 in Houston.

The following bands will also join the tour on selected dates:  Ringworm, Dayglo Abortions, Theories, and Phobia. Here’s the full schedule: Continue reading »

A SAMHAIN HARVEST (Part 1): NAPALM DEATH, DARK TRANQUILLITY, ASCENSION, PSEUDOGOD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 312014
 

The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us that Samhain “is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the ‘darker half’ of the year” and is celebrated from sunset on October 31 to sunset on 1 November, about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. It is a liminal time when spirits more easily enter our world, a time of divination rituals and the revisiting of souls of the dead.

In celebration of blessed Samhain I’ve harvested a collection of news and new music, a bounty large enough to warrant two posts, this being the first.

NAPALM DEATH

Yesterday  brought the announcement that Napalm Death will release their 15th studio album entitled Apex Predator – Easy Meat on January 26th in Europe and January 27th in North America. Frontman Barney Greenway provided this explanation of the album’s title and concept: Continue reading »

BIG ASS ROUNDUP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(Leperkahn continues to pitch in during my round-up hiatus.  Between what I sent him and what he found himself (of which there was quite an overlap), this is a monstrously large collection of recent, recommended goodies.)

Hey all! So a bloody lot of things got put up between when I sent in my last roundup and now, so this is gonna be a long one, since I’m not in the mood to separate them out. Strap in for a wild ride across the metalsphere.

BLUT AUS NORD

A few hours ago a new song named “Clarissima Mundi Lumina” from the new Blut Aus Nord album Memoria Vetusta III — Saturnian Poetry was made available for listening. This follows our own premiere of “Paien” right here. Islander says his review of the album will be posted on Monday, but he says there’s no point in waiting — just go pre-order the album in a special digipack CD edition here or on vinyl here. You can listen to “Clarissima Mundi Lumina” while you’re doing that:

https://www.facebook.com/blutausnord.official
https://www.facebook.com/debemurmorti Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: A STREAM DUMP (PART 1)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Apr 122014
 

This has been one of those weeks where my blog time was severely constricted by both personal and job-related demands. You might have guessed that, based on the complete absence of any “seen and heard” posts since Monday. I didn’t have time to do much more than quickly scan through the interhole each day looking for new song and video premieres and make lists of what I’d like to hear and see when time would permit. This morning, I finally crawled through that list, and found a shitload of new things I really liked.

Because I’m behind, and because I don’t want to fall further behind, I’m taking the wimp’s way out in this post. I’m just going to stitch together a bunch of recommended song and video streams (11 of them) with almost no commentary. It’s a stream dump, and I will bet money you’ll find something to like, almost regardless of your tastes. It’s spring, and metal is in bloom.

Salted within this list are a couple of news items that perked my interest, even though there’s nothing available to hear… yet.

I present this box of chocolates in alphabetical order. There will be another similar collection either later today or tomorrow. Tell me what you like. Leave comments! Continue reading »

FEST-IVE NEWS FROM ALL OVER: PUNK IS DEAD AND OBSCENE EXTREME

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 012013
 

Summer is here, and that means the long string of European metal fests has begun un-spooling, sadistically torturing those of us who live light years from those venues. But even those of us in the U.S. can be consoled in our longing by the knowledge that, here and there, our own summer will be dotted with some outstanding convocations of metal. I’m spotlighting one of those in this post, but I also want to spread the word about a noteworthy come-on for one of those European festivals.

PUNK IS DEAD

The sharp-eyed among you will remember that I’ve already given passing mention to the Punk Is Dead Fest (at the end of this review), but it’s just so damned hot shit that I wanted to give it more complete attention. First, gave upon the final  flier for this festival, which was designed by Ethan Lee McCarthy of Clinging To The Trees Of A Forest Fire and Primitive Man. Feel free to click on it for a bigger version upon which to gaze: Continue reading »

NAPALM DEATH THREATEN DESTRUCTION OF FAMED BRITISH MUSEUM; GIG CANCELED

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Mar 222013
 

I suppose it’s the innate perversity of being an extreme metal fan, but I fuckin’ loved reading the following story, even though it involves the cancellation of a Napalm Death show in London.

As reported by the BBC News (and elsewhere), Napalm Death were scheduled to play a concert on March 22 at the the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was to be a “one-off experimental collaboration” called “Bustleholme” between the band and artist Keith Harrison.

Harrison, it seems, is a “resident ceramic artist” at the museum. Having no fuckin’ idea what that meant, I did a little research and discovered (here) that Harrison specializes in transforming clay into ceramic in a live setting through the use of industrial and electric electrical power sources.

For the Napalm Death collaboration, Harrison created three “ceramic sound systems” based on the tiles used on buildings in the Bustleholm Mill estate in West Bromwich, where he grew up. As described in press reports, Napalm Death were going to jack into these sound systems and likely destroy them through the output of their music. I would love to have seen that.

Yesterday, however, the V&A Museum canceled the performance, as explained in the following priceless announcement: Continue reading »

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