INTO THE PIT: NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

(DemiGodRaven helps catch us up on metal news.)

Hey folks, I’ve planted my ass in the underworld for a brief period of time in order to round up all the smaller (and maybe not so small) news stories that may have fallen through the cracks in one way or another. Some of them are simple things like album streams, others are album teasers, there’s some tour news, and hey, occasionally you’ll even get a free song or two, ya hear? Also, if you aren’t reading this in a 50’s news reporters voice after seeing the picture of the hat above YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. First up is a pretty simple album stream, and then we’ll go on from there.

Lamb of God’s latest album Resolution saw release recently, and so they decided to run a full album stream over at AOL Music to give people a chance to get in a good listen before they decide whether to buy or not. I’ve enjoyed this release much more than Wrath, but it is still largely iterative on the sound that they started building in Sacrament.

It’s a good listen all the way through, but I can imagine it would be pretty dull if you picked a random song instead of the five or six really great ones. In other words, this is not an album built for Ipod shuffle like Amon Amarth’s stuff usually is (for example), so you’ll have to be in a really Lamb of God mood in order to really get into this one.

Also, they used the shotgun blast sample again. The same one they used on Sacrament. I was just waiting for the GOD-DAMN before it. Full review incoming soon. In the meantime, while you wait for me to validate your opinion and tell you how awesome of a metal listener you are, you can stream that fucker over here.

 

Trail Of Tears have shown some signs of life after a couple of years of relentless touring in support of 2009’s Bloodstained Endurance release that saw them hitting various places worldwide such as China, a humongous chunk of Europe, and even a Female Metal Voices Festival that has been a gold mine for live footage. Because of this, it’s been a long wait for Trail of Tears fans who’ve been wanting the latest lineup of the group (going strong since Existenia!) to put out anything resembling new material.

This teaser video was released late Sunday night and features a whole bunch of royalty-free astronomy artwork that is usually used to portray things like Dark Matter, Supernovae, String Theory, and even Black Holes at work. As a sidenote: Having the Science channel available to me at all times is very destructive for my writing because I will happily listen to the guy from How It’s Made and Morgan Freeman tell me about the universe until the end of time.

Both Existenia and Bloodstained Endurance were great releases that I intend to explore more fully when the time comes. The band have made it clear that these aren’t final masters, and even the instrumentation will still likely be worked on, but at least they were nice enough to throw us a bone. Give it a quick listen. Your news reporter is at half mast here.

Finally, Electronica-rock musician and Fixt label staple Blue Stahli has released a free song for everyone to download over at his Facebook page. It certainly isn’t metal, but the man is a great producer and can create some serious head-nodders. He even named it after himself in a peak of artistic laziness that I fully commend. Very few people name songs and then full albums after themselves, and personally, it is a trend I hope to see continue.

There is some very minor vocal work, but the song itself sounds like something that would’ve fallen off of his very recent instrumental/soundtrack/movie trailer archive release Antisleep Vol.2. It’s free music and very inoffensive. I’ll throw it onto my ipod mix of electronica stuff that I usually put on shuffle at work if I’m not in the mood for metal. Does it count as clean singing if the vocals are distorted like a robot or just plain spoken? Let the debate rage on after you’ve given it a quick listen and download here.

All Shall Perish are set to hit the road for the better part of March/April and are dragging along some of the up-and-coming bands that have had the -core suffix permanently attached to their name. On top of all that, they’ve also seen fit to bring Fleshgod Apocalypse to the States once again, which pretty much guarantees that everyone will have some sort of indentation on their skull after having it bashed in by the time this show is done.

The full tour group contains Deathcore Stalwarts/Great-band-to-go-grab-a-beer-during Carnifex, Sacramento’s own Technical/Progressive Deathcore/Metalcore/It’s-hard-to-pigeonhole-these-guys band Conducting From The Grave, the aforementioned Symphonic Brutal Death masters Fleshgod Apocalypse, Meatheaded headliners All Shall Perish, and Progressive/Core/Planet-Album-Art-Lovers The Contortionist.

Locally the show is going to be hitting Sacramento’s own Ace Of Spades alongside hometown bands I Wish We Were Robots and Awaiting The Apocalypse. The whole thing is bound to be full of dudes standing around with their arms crossed and giant pits. Just be sure to wear something with extra padding lest you catch an errant fist. A full tour summary can be found here.

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That’s it for today’s quick sweep of the news gutters to pick up stuff that may have fallen through the cracks.

One of these days I may come across some gold and get rich enough to move out of this hell hole. Who knows? Maybe the folks at Time or Rolling Stone are hiring. My resume could just say, “I promise, this time when you write about metal it won’t be a complete disaster that sounds like you’re talking out of your ass”. Did you notice that Time’s year end album list was actually titled Top 10 Pop Albums of 2011? Nice dodge guys, nice dodge. We’ll see how that goes.

As a parting gift here’s something you don’t see very often. Family Guy actually had a funny joke in a recent season. I see by that look on your face that you think I’m lying. Trust me, I found myself stunned when I actually guffawed once. Strange, I know right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9R-FCRDt0U&feature=related

~DGR