Here’s another daily round-up of news and new music that I noticed today. All of these items perked me right up, so I thought I’d share them.
THY CATAFALQUE
Compared to other metal blogs, we’re late to the Thy Catafalque party, but we’re making up for lost time because the unique music of this Hungarian band has been a cool discovery (you can see our first post about them here). We knew that the band had recently signed with the dependable Season of Mist label, but this morning we got a message from Tamás Kátai with further details.
Specifically, the band seems to have finished 60 minutes worth of new music (10 songs) that will be released on November 11 in Europe and on January 10, 2012 in North America. It will be entitled Rengeteg, and you can see the cover art up above, which is the result of a collaboration between Tamás and Portuguese photographer Ruy Luz. The art seems connected to the meaning of the album’s title, which is an obsolete Hungarian word referring to a vast, trackless forest. We’ll be all ears when this album becomes available for listening. (more after the jump . . .)
HYPOCRISY
I don’t suppose I need to tell readers of this site who Hypocrisy are, so I won’t. What I will say is that on October 14 in Europe and October 18 in North America, Nuclear Blast will release a combination DVD and two-CD set celebrating the band’s 20-year history.
The DVD will include a full concert from the “Long Time, No Death” 2010 tour in Sofia, Bulgaria. It will also include a 1.5 hour documentary that looks back at the band’s history. It appears the two CDs will include the entire live performance shown on the DVD. Hypocrisy slaves (like me) will likely be interested in the track list, so here it is:
CD 1: Hell Over Sofia01. Valley Of The Damned02. Hang Him High03. Fractured Millenium04. Adjusting The Sun05. Eraser06. Pleaser Of Molestation07. Osculum Obcenum08. Penetralia09. Apocalypse10. Fourth Dimension11. Killing ArtCD 2: Hell Over Sofia01. A Coming Race02. Let The Knife Do The Talking03. Weed Out The Weak04. Fire In The Sky05. The Final Chapter06. Warpath07. Roswell 47
AGALLOCH
There’s a metal blog (or maybe it’s an actual print magazine, with a web site) based in Tel Aviv, Israel, called Metalist. Oregon’s Agalloch is going to be playing their first-ever show in Tel Aviv on November 25, and so Metalist decided to ask the band to list 10 of their favorite albums. I’m a huge Agalloch fan, and so I was very curious to see that list.
I did see the list. However, I gave up studying Hebrew, along with ancient Sumerian and the Norwegian runic alphabet, when it became apparent to me that English would be enough of a challenge. So, I have no idea what the band wrote about the album choices. Here are the albums Agalloch named:
Ulver – Bergtatt
Fields of the Nephilim – The Nephilim
Neil Young – “Dead Man” Soundtrack
Carcass – Symphonies of Sickness
Bathory – Hammerheart
Swans – White Light from the Mouth of Infinity
In the Woods – Heart of the Ages
Rush –Presto
Xysma –First & Magical
Sand – The Dynamic Curve.
What do you think of this list? I have at least a passing familiarity with half of these — the ones by Ulver, Neil Young, Carcass, Bathory, and Rush — but no idea about the rest. But since it’s Agalloch who’s doing the recommending, I’m tempted to check them out. For those of you who read hebrew, HERE is the link to the article.
RYE WOLVES
Finally, we come to the “in your ears” part of this post, i.e., we have some music for you.
I first heard about the Eugene, Oregon-based doomsters in Rye Wolves during the summer of 2010 when I wrote the first of several posts about another talented Oregon band called Arkhum. What originally drew me to Arkhum was the eye-catching cover art for their album Anno Universum (go here to see what I mean). I found out that the artist was a dude named Abe Hurd, and I found out that he was in that Rye Wolves band. I checked out what they had on their MySpace player and liked what I heard.
Today I found out from DECIBEL online that Rye Wolves have recently self-released their second album, Species Battle in the Branches. It consists of three songs, ranging in length from 8:10 to 22:56. The band is selling the two shorter songs at their Bandcamp page for $1 a piece and the really long one for $2.
I’ve listened to one of the shorter tracks, called “Tearing at the Shapes”. To borrow what the DECIBEL writer wrote about the album as a whole, it’s “gorged with possessed vocals, bridge-collapsing chords and bloodshot melodies.” It’s an extravagantly down-tuned, grotesquely distorted wall of black catastrophe pierced by cauterizing shrieks. Though doom isn’t one of my metal mainstays personally, I do find this stuff so “bridge-collapsing” and so intense as to be worth a download of all 3 songs. Check out the one song I’ve heard so far, and if I’m not around tomorrow, you’ll know I didn’t survive the other two.
UPDATE: Looks like Rye Wolves are now selling the entire 3-song album for $5, and I can now embed a player that includes all 3 tracks:
7 Responses to “IN THE NEWS AND IN YOUR EARS: THY CATAFALQUE, HYPOCRISY, AGALLOCH, AND RYE WOLVES”
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“The Nephilim” is a great album. I’m not usually much of a gothic rock fan but I greatly enjoy it, and FOTN in general. You should definitely give it/them a shot.
Thanks for that recommendation. I just listened to this, from “The Nephilim” album. Just between you and me, because no one else will see this, I liked it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYYy862KFyE
I second Nephilim.
Islander, I think you would also really like Swans (they, along with Neurosis, started post-metal a decade early) and In The Woods, who are a great but relatively unknown avant-garde blackened folk group.
Well, I’ve become a fan of Thy Catafalque recently as well, thanks to you, and I’m not sure if I can stand the wait to hear the next one. Not fond of the one month wait between territorial releases – a day or two, I can understand, but a month is too much, especially considering digital storefronts.
Season of Mist is a great label, but this practice and those of a few other Euro labels mystifies me. When there’s this much lag, there’s a huge temptation to download the music, because it will go up on multiple download sites quickly after the European release date.
Well, there’s that. But one can simply make a purchase from a European site and have the album early, at least when dealing with only digital products (for example, I bought Man-Eating Tree’s Vine before its American release). Sure, not all storefronts let you do this, but one can still buy many albums before the second release.
Considering that not all digital storefronts will lock you out based on location and that there may very well be torrents available on release day – if there isn’t already a leak somewhere along the way from this source or that one – there’s no good reason to NOT release in all planned locations at the same time. A day’s difference doesn’t really matter when you remember that North America actually comes in last as far as the time zones go and the matter of a few hours or so (because a lot of the world operates under a day/night schedule) isn’t enough to really make much of an impact.
A month? Meh.
Meh indeed. I see labels who will remain nameless starting a day-by-day marketing blitz for the US release of something that came out in Europe 30-60 days previously, and everyone who cares about the band has already heard everything.