Jun 112014
 

 

(In this post Austin Weber reviews the forthcoming album by Serdce on the Blood Music label.)

The vast riches lying within the reach of Google have included a lot of bands I’ve discovered by typing long strings of words bookended by “metal” in an effort to root out underground music of varying sub-genres that I might enjoy. Forum posts often proved most fruitful, those splendid user-generated gifts of musical knowledge. One particular band I heard mentioned glowingly a few years back via a forum post was Serdce.

They are a Minsk-based group and one whose 2004 album, Cyberly, was being billed as an unknown classic. I take comments like that with a pound of fucking salt. Yet it turned out to be true. So it gave me much pleasure that Blood Music worked with Islander here at NCS to premiere music from Serdce’s soon-to-be-released record, Timelessness. It was doubly nice that Heavy Blog Is Heavy began to post about them as well with yet another song premierel, because Serdce are a quirky progressive death metal band worth checking out — and worthy of that tag.

I admit to feeling jarred when I first heard this album. It’s a big shift from their last record, 2009’s The Alchemy Of Harmony, a record I worship and regard as a masterpiece, although the changes make sense because they’ve been expanding toward a more prog-metal-focused sound with each release. As this was always a big part of their style, the shift away from calculating, mid-paced death metal into lighter Cynic-focused realms works phenomenally well. And it’s not as confined or as prog-by-numbers as you might think. Continue reading »

May 132014
 

This is turning into a monster of a day for new song and album streams. Not long ago we posted about the full-album stream from Misery Index, and just since then I spotted four more song and album streams that are worth your attention. Here we go:

ORIGIN

Origin have now premiered a new song entitled “Manifest Desolate”, the first advance track from their forthcoming sixth album, Omnipresent. The album is due for release on July 4 in Europe by Agonia Records and June 8 in North America via Nuclear Blast. Pre-order here.

“Manifest Desolate” comes in the form of a video that displays the many formats in which the album will be released. The song itself is a blistering explosion of tech-death fireworks, kind of like jamming your face into a fistful of Roman candles. But my favorite part of the song actually comes when the band down-shift the tempo. Listen next… Continue reading »

Apr 162014
 

As anyone who has spent any time at our site well knows, I get enthusiastic about new musical discoveries on almost a daily basis, but rarely am I left pop-eyed and gape-mouthed in genuine wonder at a band’s achievements. But that’s what happened when I heard the two songs that we have the privilege of premiering today. And it didn’t happen just once — it has happened every time I’ve heard this music (I’ve heard one more song from the same album — and the same thing happened when I heard that one).

The band are from Belarus and their name is Serdce (a word that means “heart” in English). They released three albums between 2003 and 2009, and their fourth — entitled Timelessness — will be released for the first time by the cult Finnish label Blood Music this June. The album includes 10 songs, and what we have for you today are the 8th and 9th tracks — “Quasar” and “Newborn” — joined together as a single stream. Continue reading »