SEEN AND HEARD: INFESTUM, WITCHRIST, HELLFEST, JEFF LOOMIS AND ARCH ENEMY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Nov 172014
 

 

I’ve seen and heard a lot of metal things on this Monday. I thought I’d try to collect all of them for tomorrow’s first post, because that way I could do some other things with what’s left of my Monday, such as doing some work for my fucking day job, because there are some people who actually think I should do something I’m actually paid to do. But fuck that. I decided to make a start right now and finish everything up in tomorrow’s first post.

INFESTUM

Last week the European Space Agency landed a small spacecraft named Philae on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a 2.5-mile-wide ball of rock, ice, and dust that was moving faster than 40,000 miles an hour and was 317 million miles from Earth at the time of the landing. Not a bad piece of work. I have trouble landing my car in my driveway.

Unfortunately, the spacecraft shut down on Saturday after its batteries were drained. Apparently it landed against a cliff or crater wall where it couldn’t get enough sunlight to recharge those batteries. Before that happened, Philae did send back some photos. As you can see above, one of them looks suspiciously like the cover of Monuments of Exalted, the new album by Infestum from Belarus that was released by Lacerated Enemy Records just a couple of days earlier. If you’ve heard anything from the album, you may be less convinced this was a coincidence. Continue reading »

NECROSADIST, NECROSADIST, MONOMANIAC, AND WITCHRIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jul 202013
 

Your humble editor’s ass is dragging this morning, because this is a Saturday morning and Saturday mornings always seem to bring ass impairment here on my metallic island. Saturday mornings, they follow Friday nights, and on Friday nights I seem drawn to the demon alcohol like a fly to shit. It’s all fun until the new day dawns. The sun rises above the clouds, and the sun in my head goes supernova and then collapses into a black hole from which no light or sentient thought can escape.

Ah, what to do on mornings such as this? Lying curled in the fetal position and moaning can only be indulged for so long. Crawling into a chair, slumped over a computer screen, looking for something new to hear — that seemed like a viable alternative to suicide, so that’s what I did. On some Saturday mornings I just want to be surrounded by the silence of the void, but today it seemed like a better idea to find something that would overwhelm the destruction in my head with superior destructive force. I succeeded.

You might think that given my current state of mental impairment I made a redundancy-related typo in the title of this post, but you would be wrong. I will explain.

NECROSADIST

One of the things I found this morning was a debut album released on 11-11-11 under the name Abstract Satan. I can tell you from immediate personal experience that there is nothing abstract about Satan, and that I must have done something terrible to offend Him last night, given the magnitude of the punishment I am currently suffering. But listening to Abstract Satan does not produce suffering, although it is indeed punishing. Abstract Satan makes me glad to be alive, despite all the self-inflicted pain. Continue reading »

THE AXIS OF BLACK DEATH: WEAPON AND WITCHRIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
Aug 192012
 

As a genre term, “blackened death metal” is imprecise, which of course doesn’t distinguish it from all other genre terms. For example, I’ve seen it used to describe the two subjects of this post, despite differences in their sound. I happen to be thinking about these two bands because of new things I’ve seen from both of them in the last 24 hours. I’ve also been thinking about the fact that Western Canada and New Zealand seem to be breeding grounds for many of the best “blackened death metal” bands on the planet — hence, my use of the word “axis” in the post title. More thoughts below . . .

WEAPON

As previously reported, this excellent band from Edmonton, Alberta, have a new album entitled Embers and Revelations due for release by Relapse Records on October 9 (pre-orders are already being fielded here). I first discovered them in December 2010 (and wrote about them here) through a tip from NCS patron SurgicalBrute. The band was started by frontman Vetis Monarch in Bangladesh before his eventual migration to Canada, and since then Weapon have become consistently stronger with each new release.

Obviously, the backing from Relapse is going to help spread this band’s name around at an accelerated pace, and I have a feeling that fans are going to eat up this new album like famished wolves at a fresh kill. What I’ve heard from it so far are a teaser clip that we featured in a post earlier this month and now the title track from the album that got its premiere at Pitchfork. Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON: WHAT’S NEW FOR 2012

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 302012
 

 

(NCS guest contributor SurgicalBrute keeping it real with a collection of alerts about forthcoming releases from four underground bands — Maveth (Finland), Ketzer (Germany), Witchrist (NZ), and Anhedonist (Seattle) — plus examples of music from the featured bands.)

Another year is done, and everyone’s “best of” opinion has been given. So what’s a metalhead to do? Well, you forget about everything you got in 2011 and start looking forward to 2012.

A few big names are already being thrown around, some of whom are personal favorites (Desaster, Evoken, fucking Asphyx) and some of whom are enjoyed by the wider community (Meshuggah, Testament, Neurosis). So, with another potentially strong year ahead of us, here’s a few more bands to keep your eye on

MAVETH

Unholy blackened death, Maveth is composed of 3/5 of Finnish death metal band Cryptborn (one of my personal Best of 2011 picks). Mixing killer blast beats with some surprisingly melodic riffs, they never really let one style dominate, equally taking the best from both genres. Maveth’s first full length has yet to receive a release date.  (Maveth music right after the jump . . .) Continue reading »