SEEN AND HEARD: SEPREVATION, WOODS OF YPRES, SUMMER SLAUGHTER 2014, HORSEBACK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Apr 252014
 

Happy goddamned Friday to one and all. I have a few randomly selected items to share with you, as a way of greasing the skids for your slide into the weekend. Because I wouldn’t want anyone to get ass burn before the fun starts.

SEPREVATION

Let’s begin with a jet-fueled death/thrash romp.

Late last month I included some release info about the debut album (Consumed) by the UK’s Seprevation in one of these round-ups, despite the fact that I had no music from the album to share with you at that point. I mainly just liked the album cover. But today the band released an official video for a song named “Slave To the Grave”, and guess what? The music is as good as that album cover. Continue reading »

NOW AVAILABLE: “HEART OF GOLD: A TRIBUTE TO WOODS OF YPRES” (AND A NEW CANOPY RECORDING)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
May 182013
 

On December 22, 2011, David Gold died in an automobile collision near Barrie, Ontario, at the age of 31. With his death, so died Woods of Ypres — the doom/black metal band that he co-founded and of which he was the sole consistent member over the course of five albums and assorted other releases. But of course the music of Woods lives on in the lives of the band’s passionate fanbase.

As we reported last July, a woman named Steph LeDrew organized a musical tribute to Gold and Woods, recruiting a large number of bands to record covers of Woods songs. Yesterday, the tribute album — Heart of Gold: A Tribute To Woods of Ypres — was finally released and is now available for purchase on Bandcamp as a digital download for $10. At one point the project was soliciting PayPal donations to that gave donors the option of receiving a 2-CD physical version of the album, though the option to buy a physical format doesn’t currently appear on the Bandcamp page.

The album was mastered by Dan Swanö in Sweden and includes cover songs by 19 different bands or band members, including Novembers Doom, Panzerfaust, Amaranth, and members of Woods, Thrawsunblat, and Into Eternity. The full track list and album stream appear later in this post. But I first want to highlight one song in particular, because it was recorded by a long-time favorite of this site — Sweden’s Canopy. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 20

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  8 Responses »
Jan 292013
 

Welcome to Part 20 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. In each installment, I’ve been posting at least two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the three I’m announcing today, click here.

We’re down to the final week of this list. In almost all the installments that preceded this one, there was some kind of discernible theme or shared trait in the songs that I grouped together. There really isn’t one in this post, or at least not one that may conscious mind is able to identify. These are just three songs that grabbed hold of me pretty hard in 2012.

WOODS OF YPRES

Most people I know who are fans of Woods of Ypres have been fans for a long time, and they’re devoted to a point of rare intensity. When they listen to the band’s final album, Woods 5: Grey Skies and Electric Light, they can’t separate the album from the eerie coincidence of David Gold’s death just a handful of months after its recording. The album’s reflections on death are inseparable from, and magnified by, Gold’s own tragic passing. For them, the knowledge that this album was Woods’ last lends the music a special poignancy.

I am not one of those people. Until Woods 5, I had never listened to any of the band’s albums all the way through, and even my sampling of widely heralded songs was limited. Given my tastes, the band’s music just never clicked with me. I can’t even honestly say that Woods 5 seduced me all the way through; some of the songs included more goth rock vibes than suited my appetites. Continue reading »

“HEART OF GOLD”: THE WOODS OF YPRES TRIBUTE ALBUM HITS OUR FRACTURED RADAR SCREEN

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 252012
 

On December 22, 2011, David Gold died in an automobile collision near Barrie, Ontario, at the age of 31. With his death, so died Woods of Ypres — the doom/black metal band that he co-founded and of which he was the sole consistent member over the course of five albums and assorted other releases. But of course the music of Woods lives on in the lives of the band’s passionate fanbase.

Given my own tastes in metal, I was never a die-hard follower of Woods, though I did appreciate the music, I was really high on certain songs, and I certainly understand why the band had such a powerful effect on many listeners. And I wasn’t surprised to learn earlier this year that a musical tribute to David Gold and to Woods was being planned under the title Heart of Gold. I’ve been casually (and irregularly) monitoring the project’s progress, and so, for example, I saw today that the project’s organizer, Steph LeDrew, had unveiled the very cool album cover that you can see above, created by artist Jason Hicks.

But what really put this album on my personal radar screen was the recent discovery that Sweden’s Canopy has contributed a cover of “Falling Apart”, which was one of two tracks that appeared on the Home 7″ single released in 2011. Long-time readers of NCS know that we’re huge fans of Canopy, and we’ve been starved for new music from the band since the release of Menhir (their third album) in 2010. Now we’ll have something to tide us over until the band finish work on their next album (which is in progress). Continue reading »