SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): AZAVATAR, SEER, SLUGDGE, BEITHÍOCH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 242015
 

 

I kind of went crazy with the round-ups yesterday — three posts featuring newly discovered music by ten bands in one day — but I’m continuing to come across metal that gets me excited, so yes… here’s another round-up!  In fact, there are two of them today. After that I’ll probably have to make myself stop, at least briefly, so I can do something else. Maybe write a review of an entire EP or album? Eat something or go to the bathroom? Get a life?

AZAVATAR

I seem to be on an Art of Propaganda kick. Within the last week I’ve written about songs by two bands whose new releases are on that German label — Whiskey Ritual and Thornesbreed — and that’s on top of praise we showered on releases earlier this year by Infesting Swarm and Gloson. Now I have two more AoP bands to recommend, beginning with AZAVATAR. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: GRUESOME, SHINING, SKINLESS, UNLEASHED, SLUGDGE, VARGNATT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 152015
 

 

Yes, it’s true, we shove about 100 new songs in your face on a daily basis, but we know your face holds a lot of songs, so we need to keep shoving. Be sure to chew them well and don’t try to talk while you’re doing it, ’cause you could choke to death.

GRUESOME

Surely you know about Gruesome by now, because we’ve certainly written about them enough, and we even premiered a song from their debut album Savage Land. They give new meaning to the phrase Total Death Worship.

As of yesterday, the whole album became available for streaming. I don’t know why you wouldn’t go listen to it, unless you’re in a coma, in which case we wish you a speedy recovery and a pain-free removal of the catheter. Don’t forget to share photos of that for our collection. We’re thinking about turning them into a large-format NCS coffee-table book, The Art of Catheter Removal.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, there’s a stream of Savage Land at Decibel. It’s an exclusive, so you and your catheter will need to go here to listen, and you’ll both be glad you did: Continue reading »

SLUGDGE: “GASTRONOMICON”

 Album Reviews  17 Responses »
Oct 052014
 

 

The story of my blogging life: As I neared completion of this review, which I’ve been meaning to write since early summer, a friend of mine tossed off the following words on Facebook that put all my tediously crafted prose to shame: “Intergalactic riffing slugs! For the curious, imagine Akercocke, Carcass, and Morbid Angel having a love baby. And it’s a slug. From outer space. And it wants you dead.”

Sigh.

Slugdge is a two-man outfit from Preston, England, consisting of Matt Moss and Kev Pearson. What might first appear to be a typo in the band’s name is simply one of many manifestations of the band’s fixation with slugs: Their 2013 debut album was named Born of Slime, and their 2014 follow-up, Gastronomicon, includes song titles such as “Lettuce Prey”, “The Sound of Mucus”, “Invertehate”, and “Salters of Madness”. The band’s name is pronounced “Slug-j”. They seem to worship an entity named Mollusca.

Wait!  Don’t leave!  I can’t stand slugs either (they grow to the size of bananas around Puget Sound), and I tend to have a predisposed skepticism about the music of bands who prefer pun-filled song titles and generate a surface aura of goofiness. But trust me, you need this album in your life. It’s one of the year’s biggest and best surprises. Continue reading »

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