Feb 112013
 

We continue with our close death watch on the The Monolith Deathcult, monitoring every emission from the backward slope of their dreaded metal spires, holding our breathes against the noxious fumes in wait for that awful day (May 10 in Europe) when their new album Tetragrammaton will be unleashed upon an unsuspecting public and the wailing and gnashing of teeth shall begin in earnest.

Just minutes ago our vigilant surveillance was rewarded by discovery of the first official Tetragrammaton video teaser, its introduction voiced by none other than Orion Pax and its imagery inscribed with excerpts from advance reviews by the likes of Lance Armstrong in the Pro Cycling Musical Niche Review Magazine.

Those with weak knees or delicate digestive tracts may wish to skip this video. Everyone else should watch it, and then double-check to make sure your armageddon bunkers are fully stocked with essentials such as smelling salts, anti-emetics, and spine-stiffeners. Continue reading »

Feb 042013
 

One of our number has heard The Monolith Deathcult’s new album, Tetragrammaton. Not wanting to say too much at this early stage of the ramp-up to its release, we present only this brief diagnostic analysis:

As food for the brain, The Monolith Deathcult’s new album Tetragrammaton is a well-balanced diet.

Most immediately noticeable, it includes a super-sized helping of nutrition for the cerebellum and the brain stem, those parts of the organ responsible for motor control and involuntary physical activity such as headbanging and fist-pumping. It’s loaded with industrial strength pneumatic grooves. It also includes breakdowns. We think they threw in the kitchen sink, too.

Tetragrammaton also feeds the deep limbic system, which plays a vital role in setting a person’s emotional state. The album contains moments of high drama and even darkness. It also provokes impulses of aggression, as in the desire to tear shit up. And it also tickles the funny bone.  That’s in the brain, isn’t it?  Two words: Optimus Prime. Continue reading »

Dec 052012
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn pauses after the 30th installment of THE SYNN REPORT to take a look back at the first two years of the series.)

Ok, so we’ve now had 30 ‘official’ entries in The Synn Report. I hope that a good number of you have discovered new bands and gone out and shown your support for them, buying music, merch, gig tickets, etc.

I thought, since the year (and the world!!!) is coming to an end, it might be a good time to provide a quick one-stop summation of all the previous entries, for those of you who maybe missed a couple, or for new devotees of the site who have yet to encounter the earlier editions and the bands contained therein.

Did you know that the genesis for The Synn Report was not entirely down to me? There’s a post that I consider ‘The Synn Report: Year Zero” which was written by Islander himself, in response to my recommendation of a particular band. That post is included here, as I think it’s an important foundation stone in the genesis of The Synn Report, and because I think the band in question are utterly phenomenal.

So there we go, after the jump there’s a tiny entry on each band from each edition of The Synn Report, with a short genre description and a re-iteration of the “Recommended for fans of:” section. Which ones did you miss? Which ones should you give another shot to? Click each one to be linked to the appropriate article, where you’ll find the full write-ups and sample songs from each release! Continue reading »

Nov 252012
 

The John Wilkes Vocal Booth, a/k/a The Monolith Deathcubicle

We can hear it all the way over in Seattle: Sonic booms are emanating from The Netherlands. And no, the Dutch Air Force is not on a training exercise (do the Dutch have an Air Force?). The explanation is more interesting than Dutch jets doing barrel rolls at Mach I: The Monolith Deathcult are continuing to record their new album, TETRAGRAMMATON, at Mach II.

Okay, they’re not exactly recording their album at the speed of sound. That process is proceeding more deliberately, closer to the speed of a loris sprint. But it’s as LOUD as breaking the sound barrier.

If that deep thrumming sound in the atmosphere weren’t proof enough, we now have video evidence that TMDC are at work creating their new supreme avant garde death metal masterpiece, instead of merely pretending to work. Specifically, we have:

Video of Carsten Altena explaining how he one-upped Richard Wagner and Hans Zimmer on the synths, with helpful English subtitles that seem totally legit to me despite the fact that my Dutch is limited to “Heineken”, “Grolsch”, and “stroopwafel”.

Video of Ivo Hilgenkamp nailing the guitar solo on “Human Wave Attack” through the magic of his Ibanez White Zombie “J” model guitar. Reportedly, this is the first TUNED guitar solo on a TMDC album, ever, since the beginning of time.

Video of all the vocals on TETRAGRAMMATON being recorded in The John Wilkes Vocal Booth. I think the lyrics consist entirely of “Asliiiiiiimuuuu!!”

Continue reading »

Oct 122012
 

Michiel Dekker and Ivo Hilgenkamp, on the verge of redefining civilization.  Again.

The Monolith Deathcult’s new album TETRAGRAMMATON has been brewing slowly, like a fine Dutch lager, except with more radiation. Their last album, Trivmvirate, erupted from the womb in 2008, and the gestation period for the new release has been so protracted that we expect the new offspring to be a real monster (yeah, I mixed my metaphors, so sue me).

TMDC have periodically been streaming pre-production teasers of the new music, and we’ve been dutifully posting those streams as they’ve emerged, but they haven’t stayed up on the net for long, and it’s never been entirely clear whether the songs would actually find a place on the new album. But the final shape of the music is now being formed.

Yesterday we received word that TMDC entered the studio in September to record TETRAGRAMMATON. The band’s statement deserves to be quoted in full, so masterful is its understated eloquence:

“Since 2008 – when we redefined art, music and human civilisation – we’ve been milking Trivmvirate until it’s cheese,” said bassist/vocalist Robin Kok, “so we decided to make a new album and see if we can milk that even further.” Continue reading »

Apr 132012
 

(If this stuff weren’t so much fun to read, I’d be murderously jealous. Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the last day at Oslo’s Inferno Festival last weekend. His review of Day 1 is here and the Day 2 review is here. Okay, to be brutally honest, I’m still murderously jealous.)

So here we are at the final entry of my Oslo odyssey.  We spent the last day of our time in Norway exploring Oslo a little more, sampling its fine foods, visiting the art museum, tracking down the infamous Neseblod Record Store (grabbing myself an Antestor EP and two hard to find Urgehal albums in the process) and generally enjoying the fine weather and the experience of being in a foreign city (albeit one which I’ve now visited numerous times). But all good things must come to an end, and thankfully the festival had another stunning night of music left to send us off in good cheer (and with aching necks to boot!).

The rebirth of Decapitated has been one of metal’s most stirring tales of perseverance, returning from the depths of tragedy with a revamped line-up and a sound that builds even further on the group’s base template. Like an armoured tank, they roll unstoppably onwards, stoically bearing the brunt of what life throws at them.

Vogg’s riff-writing and playing style remains utterly unique, his squealing leads careening like a freight train up and down the fretboard, while angular mechanical chugging rhythms pound a cybernetic war drum into your brain. Songs like “404” see the man almost literally torturing his guitar, bleeding bone-scraping noises from his instrument like some demented guitar-wielding surgeon, while a track like “Homo Sum” allows him to flex his more melodically-inclined muscles, eking out eerie lead parts and swirling dis-harmonies amongst the pneumatic, drum-driven carnage.

Talking of drums, there are times tonight when Krimh’s inhuman technique and stamina seem right on the verge of spontaneous combustion, so unnerving is it to hear a single human being produce such an industrial cacophony of noise – people might speak mostly of his impressive ability to handle older material like “Day 69” (including its now infamous mid-song drum-solo) at a standard to match his predecessor, but it’s his work on the newer material that shows just how his style differs, and just what new avenues that will open up for the group in the future. Continue reading »

Mar 262012
 

Earlier this month, Andy Synn passed his 18-month anniversary as a writer for NCS. His first post was a review of Dimmu Borgir’s Abrahadabra album. In all that time, Andy has rarely mentioned that in addition to writing about metal, he is also the vocalist for a UK metal band called Bloodguard. Maybe it’s that famous British reserve, or perhaps it’s because Andy is a gentleman and a scholar in addition to being a writer and a howler. I, however, am not limited by good manners or any sense of humility, and I have some news about Bloodguard that needs to be spread like the plague.

First, the band have now set the official track-listing for their debut album, Patterns In The Infinite, and this is it:

1. Eye Of The Paradox
2. Vanguard
3. Footsteps (Of The Dead)
4. Our Lady Of The Flood
5. Black Math Ritual
6. Panopticon
7. Final Prayer
8. Bridgeburner

After the jump, you’ll find an album preview video that will give you a taste of what the songs sound like in their unmixed form, although the order of the samples in the video doesn’t match the track-listing. But first, there’s even bigger news, because I’ve discovered from Andy the identities of five guests whose talents will be enhancing Bloodguard’s new album — and it’s quite an exciting list: Arthur von Nagle (Cormorant), Michiel Dekker and Ivo Hilgenkamp (The Monolith Deathcult), Seth Hecox (Becoming the Archetype), and Demonstealer (Demonic Resurrection). Continue reading »

Mar 072012
 

Only four days ago we decided to snoop around and see what we could find out about the nefarious machinations of one of our favorite death metal bands — the mysterious, often brutal, often comedic Dutch maniacs in The Monolith Deathcult. You can read what we learned through our sleuthing in this post, which includes demo tracks that may or may not become part of the band’s new album, TETRAGRAMMATON (like I said . . . mysterious).

Today we learned about developments that will be of riveting interest to TMDC fans. Some of what we have to report is officially confirmed, and some of it is . . . of mysterious origin. The first bit of news seems to be official, since it appeared moments ago on the TMDC Facebook page. It concerns the band’s signing by Dutch-based TMR Productions. I’m pretty sure the wording of the announcement will also give you some chuckles.

The second piece of news . . . not yet officially confirmed, arrived by way of a scrap of paper that drifted through the window of the NCS editorial offices from the opened claws of a member of the NCS carrier pigeon aeronaut squadron, who serve our needs for the timely delivery of important news, as well as pigeon droppings. If this is to be believed, TMDC have been signed to a global deal by Season of Mist for the release of TETRAGRAMMATON.

An image of that scrap of paper, which appears to be a draft announcement of some kind, appears at the top of this post. A larger, more legible version can be viewed after the jump. Continue reading »

Mar 032012
 


A blast from the past.

Pardon my harsh language, but if you don’t like The Monolith Deathcult, you’re a ninny and a poop-head.  You’re a nincompoop, even. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

The band have been working on a new album, Tetragrammaton — excuse me, TETRAGRAMMATON. Advance pieces of music, which may or may not appear on the album (and likely will sound quite different if they do appear) have surfaced over the last year, and they sound just fucking fine. Some of what we’ve heard has disappeared from public view, but some pieces remain — the evidence of works in progress. We’ll get to that in a moment.

But in addition to dribbling out songs in various stages of completion, TMDC are starting to give us up-close-and-personal insights into the recording process, fleeting glimpses of genius at work. Yes, we will now have a series of all-important video studio reports from TMDC as TETRAGRAMMATON continues to take shape.

Yesterday, we got Part 1 of a planned 342.4 video reports on the recording of the album. In Part 1, we see “offline” member of TMDC, Carsten Altena, laying down a keyboard track with the kind of verve and virtuosity that shames the classical masters. People who like a bit of orchestral grandeur in their blast-furnace death metal are going to eat this up like a plate of fresh road kill.

As for other evidence of the band’s creative progress, we have four clips of music retrieved from the TMDC SoundCloud page (some quite recent). The first one is “Aslimu!!! — All Slain Those Who Brought Down Our Highly Respected Symbols To The Lower Status Of The Barren Earth”, which the band released about a year ago, as kind of a gap-filler between albums. It’s still available for free download via the SoundCloud player. Continue reading »

Jan 022012
 

We’re big fans of The Monolith Deathcult, and we’ve written about them repeatedly over the last two years. Most recently, Andy Synn included them in a post called “The King Is Dead, Long Live the King”, contrasting “the electrifying, eclectic, and downright esoteric bludgeoning of” their album Trivmverate with the puzzling Ilud Divinum Insanus: “Unlike Morbid Angel’s most recent offering, this actually fuses a brilliant variety of techno-industrial elements and symphonic excess onto a chassis of pulverising death metal utterly seamlessly, making a whole that is far, far greater than the sum of its parts.”

Andy also wrote a SYNN REPORT about their discography, and last March I had the pleasure of interviewing the band’s guitarist/lyricist/backing vocalist Michiel Dekker (published here), who is also a high school history teacher. TMDC have been painstakingly writing and recording a new album called Tetragrammaton — almost two years have passed since the band’s last release, The White Crematorium 2.0 — and the interview provided a few insights into the typically fascinating lyrical subjects of the new album.

So far, the only lasting taste of the music from the new album is a track called “Aslimu!!! — All Slain Those Who Brought Down Our Highly Respected Symbols To The Lower Status Of The Barren Earth”, which was released last February, and can still be heard HERE. I’ve also had the privilege of listening to unfinished demo versions of a few more songs, which has only made me eager for more. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Tetragrammaton will be released in 2012 — it’s certainly one of my most anticipated albums for this new year.

All of this is by way of introduction to the real point of this post. As part of our year-end Listmania series, I asked Michiel Dekker if he would give us a list of the best albums he heard in 2011. Instead of that, I got something perhaps more interesting. Continue reading »