Aug 192022
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of the formidable Lovecraft-inspired Swedish death metal band Puteraeon, who pride themselves on creepiness, catchiness, and aggression.)

The titles of the first demos recorded by Puteraeon in a short period (2008 – 2009) clearly shows the band’s ideology. The demos Fascination for Mutilation (2008), The Requiem (2008), and The Extraordinary Work of Herbert West (2009) formed the foundation of the first full-length, The Esoteric Order (2011)…

And since then Jonas Lindblood (vocals, guitars), Daniel Vandija (bass), Anders Malmström (drums), and Rune Foss (guitars) have kept on providing us their morbid Swedish death metal with a clear and sharp message of inevitable death, unavoidable legions of zombies, and inescapable cosmic horrors.

The Esoteric Order was only a start for a series of a few more EPs and full-lengths, but there was not much news from the band since the release of their fourth album The Cthulhian Pulse: Call from the Dead City in 2020. To allay our concerns about the band’s fate, we contacted Jonas Lindblood. Continue reading »

Sep 222020
 

 

Like almost all the posts I wrote this past weekend, I put this one together in my head during a long listening session on Saturday. Since then more new songs have popped up, but I decided to stick with my original mental plan rather than have this thing turn into something even more intimidating to people who are already drowning in music.

I’ve already put the first four songs in this collection onto the list of candidates for my year-end series on Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. In different ways they rock, and they’re all very catchy. And then I decided to turn in other more ugly and unhinged directions.

PUTERAEON (Sweden)

I use the word “majestic” way too much in describing music, because I don’t spend enough time with a thesaurus. Usually it comes to mind when a band use soaring and sweeping melodies (other over-used words in my vocabulary) or create sensations of towering obsidian immensity, as often found in funeral death-doom. Neither of those qualities is present in Puteraeon’s new song (and video) “The Curse“, but the word “majestic” still came to mind. Continue reading »

Mar 252017
 

 

I decided to devote a couple of this Saturday’s posts to new or newly discovered short releases. I’ve also started work on a SEEN AND HEARD round-up of advance tracks from forthcoming releases, though I’m not sure when I’ll finish that one. Maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday. There will be a SHADES OF BLACK feature tomorrow as well. Hope you enjoy these first three EPs.

PUTERAEON

When last we heard from Sweden’s Puteraeon back in 2014 they had inflicted The Crawling Chaos upon us, which was their third album. They have returned this month with a new three-song EP, The Empires of Death. They’ve launched videos for two of those songs so far, “Providence” and “At the Altars” (which was just released today), and there will be one for the third track, “Epitaph“, as well. Continue reading »

Apr 012014
 

Here we have another round-up of new music to recommend for your aural pleasure. I’m splitting this quintet with one of our other writers, Austin Weber. I’m introducing the first three items, and he’s got the other two after that. Here we go:

PUTERAEON

I’ve massively enjoyed this Swedish death metal band’s last two albums, The Esoteric Order (2011) (reviewed here) and Cult Cthulhu (2012) (which I miserably failed to review). They’ve now completed another Lovecraftian-inspired album entitled The Crawling Chaos, which will be released by Cyclone Empire on April 25 and features chilling cover art by Christoffer Fredriksson. The band recently released an official video for the album’s third track, “Path To Oblivion”, and I caught up with that today. You should catch up with it, too.

The music is like a hard-charging phalanx of ghouls and golems, a ghastly and galvanizing gallop of gore-strewn gruesomeness. The crypt door has been flung wide open, and all manner of unholy, undead things are coming for your teeth. Continue reading »

Feb 042012
 

January ended four days ago, so it’s past time for our usual monthly round-up of news about forthcoming albums. I have to confess that this list is even more spotty and sporadically assembled than usual — which is saying something. Various distractions prevented me from keeping a sharp eye out for news about new releases, so I have no doubt this list is incomplete.

Here’s how this round-up usually works: 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, I 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 earlier than the last 30 days, we probably 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. For example, on this list you won’t see such notable releases as the forthcoming albums from Meshuggah, Enthroned, Unleashed, Psycroptic, Goatwhore, Asphyx, Naglfar, or Autopsy, because we’ve mentioned them elsewhere. Or at least I think we did.

Having said all that, please 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 »

Jun 132011
 


I love many things. I will not name all of them today, because I don’t want to get too personal. I will just name a few of them, so you will feel like you know me better. That way, we can become closer friends, and perhaps do some internet bonding. If I told you all the things I love, this would take a long time, and we might not be friends after I was finished, because maybe some of the things I love would repulse you. Probably not, but I feel it’s better to stick with the things that you’re likely to love as much as I do.

Like zombies. Everyone loves zombies, right? Or at least, everyone loves the idea of zombies. I don’t know anyone who has actually met a zombie. It’s possible that if I met an actual zombie, I would not love it. I would instead be trying to stop it from eating my brain. I think it would be difficult to love something that was trying to eat my brain. I do like certain intoxicants, and from what I understand, many of them are slowly eating my brain, a few cells at a time. But a zombie would want to eat the whole thing, in a hurry. So, I think you can only love a zombie that you don’t personally know, like love in a very abstract way.

I love death metal, too. I basically love all flavors of death metal. I just wanna hug all of death metal — I know it’s crazy, I can’t hug all of death metal, but I just want to! I have a particular weakness for really ill, old-school, super-downtuned, spinning-chainsaw death metal — the kind that goes well with zombies. Actually, to be precise, the kind played by, for, and about zombies. Everyone likes that kind of music, right? So, confessing this kind of love should make me more popular. And since I have a new video from Puteraeon for you that pretty much epitomizes this kind of music, I’ll be, like, the most popular person in your life!

I love cats, too, and cats love me, so you should, too. Many people like cats. Some people like them with a very intense feeling. I have video evidence of that. Watching this video makes me feel like a more normally balanced person. I think it will make you feel that way, too. I think this is why people sometimes enjoy watching unbalanced people, because it makes you feel more balanced, even when you secretly think you’re as unbalanced as your checkbook. The video also inspired me to write this post.

Did I mention that I love death metal? I love it when it has a blackened crust, because I am loving black metal more all the time, too. I have found a new song by Thromdarr that I love. I think you will love it, too. If you don’t, then you probably aren’t someone I would love, except in a very abstract way. (more sharing and bonding after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

Feb 182011
 

From its origins in the U.S. and Sweden in the late 80s and early 90s, death metal has remained a vibrant genre of extreme music. It has branched off in countless directions, and its signal characteristics have been spliced into other genres of music to good effect, giving rise to multiple sub-genres — and there’s no reason to think that evolutionary process will end.

But many of us still find ourselves periodically drawn back to the classic records of the old gods, which in the case of the Swedish school of death metal means those lethal technicians who stuck the word “chainsaw” into the parlance of death metal — the music of bands like Carnage, Nihilist, Unleashed, Entombed, Dismember, Grave, and Interment. For us, there’s something about that thick, downtuned, distorted riffing chained together with horror-show vocals that hits the old aural g-spot like almost nothing else.

Puteraeon is a Swedish death metal band whose members grew up listening to that music in the late 80s and early 90s and have completely embraced not only the sound, but also the ghoulish, corpse-littered lyrical focus. Their debut album, The Esoteric Order, doesn’t push the genre envelope, but their execution of old-school Swedish death is so damned well done that devotees of the genre (like us) will care little about that — because they’ll be too busy rocking’ the fuck out with this titanic dose of industrial grade skull-coring. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

Feb 052011
 

Just in case you didn’t get enough of a beat-down from that new Deicide track we debuted yesterday, this post ought to finish off the job of putting you in the hospital (or an asylum).

Early yesterday morning we received three e-mails in a row from a most excellent German label called Cyclone Empire. This label has got a kick-ass roster of artists and provides distribution for many more, and those three e-mails were about bands that have really peaked our interest.

This isn’t really a typical MISCELLANY post, because we knew something about the music of two of these bands before we started, but at least we hadn’t heard the precise songs we’re featuring here today. So, it’s kind of a hybrid MISCELLANY post.

Here’s what we’ve got: Another hell-on-wheels song off the debut album by Sweden’s Puteraeon, which was just released in Europe late last month; two new songs from Finland’s Before the Dawn that appear on Cyclone Empire’s European release of a special CD/DVD combo called Decade of Darkness; and a track from a brain-scrambling French band called Sideblast off their just-released second album, Cocoon.

Get a good daily fix of mayhem and melody to start your weekend off right . . . after the jump.  And tomorrow, we’ll have a proper MISCELLANY post with music from an international line-up of bands we really had never heard before. Continue reading »

Feb 042011
 

All death metal, all the time — at least for today. We started with Deicide, and now we’ve just seen two new death-metal videos from the other side of the Atlantic. We can take the hint: The metal gods have commanded that we give equal time to the Swedish school of cranial carving.

Our first offering is from The Crown — a band whose 2010 Century Media release, Doomsday King, made a big impression on us and found a place on lots of the Best of 2010 lists we published at this site. The new video is for a song called “Falling ‘Neath the Heaven’s Sea”, which appeared on a 4-song bonus CD that came with the digipack version of Doomsday King. It’s a surprise compared to the songs on the album proper — but a nice one — and the video is an engaging montage of tour photos.

Our second offering is from another Swedish band called Puteraeon, whose debut album The Esoteric Order was released in Europe not long ago on German label Cyclone Empire. We have Johan Huldtgren (Obitus) to thank for turning us on to this band in one of his comments to an earlier post. We’re still waiting for our copy of the CD to arrive, but this new official video for the song “Coma” is proof that the wait will be worth it.  (We were saving this video for a special edition of MISCELLANY tomorrow, but we’ll find something else juicy from Puteraeon for that post.)

Both these bands carry the banner of Swedish death metal proudly, and the songs featured in these videos are excellent. Watch ’em after the jump. Continue reading »