NEW VIDEOS FROM WILDERNESSKING, PRAY FOR LOCUST, AND MOTH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 152012
 

We were a bit light on content yesterday, but we’ll be making up for that today — and this post wasn’t even part of the planned line-up. In one of those happy confluences of events, the morning brought three new videos that I’m really digging. Two of them are from young bands who’ve already become favorites, and the third is a bright new discovery: Wildernessking (South Africa), Pray For Locust (Sweden), and Moth (U.S.).

WILDERNESSKING

I suppose there might be a few things I haven’t yet done to promote this band’s music. I haven’t tried sky-writing or a flashing billboard in Times Square. I suppose I could put their faces on milk cartons, except they’re far from lost. To the contrary, in a relatively short time they’ve turned out some amazingly mature, completely enthralling music. First came their 2012 debut album, The Writing of Gods In the Sand (featuring the killer album art you see above by Reuben Sawyer). To steal words from my review, it lashed together styles from a variety of genres (including black metal, post-metal, and Enslaved-style prog) to create “a uniquely effective expression of power and emotion, a blending of light and dark, soft and hard, beauty and voraciousness.”

Then came a follow-on EP, …And the Night Swept Us Away (reviewed here), which I perceived as one long, panoramic song divided into three parts, not because it was written that way but because it worked that way as a musical journey.

Today the band provided me with yet another excuse to pimp them by releasing an official music video for “Rubicon”, one of the tracks from the album, which marks a turning point in the conceptual journey that the album portrays. It’s a live performance (interspersed with related clips) filmed at their record release show at the Kimberly Hotel on April 20. Have a look and a listen right after the jump . . . after which I’ve got some more news about the band’s activities. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: PRAY FOR LOCUST — “INTO THE OCEAN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 212012
 

Those with sharp memories may recall that we included Stockholm’s Pray For Locust in a feature about a month ago, spotlighting their excellent new video for a song called “Hang A Traitor”. The video may be new, but the song was taken from an album called SWARM that’s now more than 18 months old. But a few days ago Pray For Locust updated their discography with the release of a new EP — Into the Ocean — which is available for free download.

The music is part thrash, part hardcore, part groove metal. I imagined it as a gene-splicing of Lamb of God, DevilDriver, and Shadows Fall, with a few building blocks of latter-day Soilwork thrown into the chromosomes.

“Memories” kicks off the EP with pneumatic, grooving riffs, tight rhythms, and a squalling guitar solo. The song also introduces the listener to the two-part vocal tag-team of hoarse roars and screamo highs. “The Serpent v1” mixes things up a bit with Gothenburg-style melodeath riffing and and extended breakdown that puts the back end of the song on a slow burner. Continue reading »

MOVING PICTURES! (from ABIOTIC, PRAY FOR LOCUST, and THE KOREA)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Jan 162012
 

I just returned home last night from 4 days on the road that cut into my web-surfing, music-listening, and NCS-blogging time. So now I’m playing catch-up. Last night I saw new music videos from three bands that I thought were worth sharing — as much for the videos as for the music. I’m guessing all of these bands probably get slapped with the deathcore label, but although the songs include some of the musical tropes from that genre, other trippy things are in the mix, too.

Here are the videos, in the order in which I saw them: from Abiotic (Miami), Pray For Locust (Stockholm), and The Korea (Moscow).

ABIOTIC

I first heard about this South Florida band a couple weeks ago from NCS co-founder IntoTheDarkness. They self-released a seven-song EP last year called A Universal Plague, which is selling on iTunes and Amazon mp3. When ITD recommended them to me, I picked up the EP and listened to two songs, which is all I had time to do at that moment. I liked what I heard, and then by coincidence one of those two songs (“Vermosapien”) turned out to be the one featured in the official video that Abiotic released last night. Continue reading »