MISCELLANEOUS EAR AND EYE WRECKAGE: ALLEGAEON, FESTER, AUTOPSY, DARK TRANQUILLITY, AND HEXEN

With only the briefest of introductions, this is a round-up of new videos, music, and artwork I saw yesterday that I thought were worth sharing. There’s a lot here, and I could have broken this up into multiple posts, but . . . I didn’t. So there. Here’s the herd I rounded up:

New songs from: Allegaeon (Colorado), Fester (Norway), and Autopsy (Florida)

New official video from: Dark Tranquillity (Sweden)

New album cover from: Necrolord and HeXeN (L.A.)

ALLEGAEON

Last time we checked in with Allegaeon, guitarist Greg Burgess was playing some mean tango (bitches). Before that, TheMadIsraeli reviewed their debut album, Fragments of Form and Function, as part of his Melodeath Week series last August. At long last, Metal Blade has scheduled the release of their second album, Formshifter, for May 8, and yesterday we got the song “Tartessos: The Hidden Xenocryst”. It’s smokin’ hot.

You can pre-order Formshifter and related merch from Metal Blade here.

FESTER

Most revivals make me groan instinctively, because most are failures when it comes to the quality of the music. Not so with Norway’s Fester.

Their first two albums date back to 1992 and 1994 — and then silence swallowed them whole for more than 17 years. But now their third album, A Celebration of Death, is done. It’s scheduled for a mid-March release date through Abyss Records. I paid attention to this news (a) because the band’s name is Fester, (b) because I liked the album art; and (c) because they’re from Norway. Are these not good reasons to be attentive?

Of course paying attention and sharing with you what I found are two very different things. To share, I need to believe the music is worth your time (unless it’s in the context of one of our MISCELLANY posts, which is just pot luck). I do believe that, based on a song from the album that debuted yesterday. Black/death done well.

AUTOPSY

I’m going to assume that Autopsy need no introduction. Peaceville Records plans to release their new album, All Tomorrow’s Funerals, on February 28. It’s a 22-track collection of re-mastered songs from all of their previous EPs, plus four new songs. We’ve already featured (here) the video for one of those new ones (the title track).  Yesterday, the band started streaming a second new song — “Maggot Holes”. If that’s not an instantly classic Autopsy song title, I don’t know what is.

Let yourself be feasted upon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiUAqPif2-c&feature=youtu.be

DARK TRANQUILLITY

Courtesy of Hails and Horns, I saw the news that yesterday Dark Tranquillity debuted their latest music video for a song called “In My Absence” from their latest release, We Are The Void (2010). What’s particularly cool about the video is that it’s an assembly of performance footage from the band’s most recent tour of Europe and Russia that they filmed themselves with a GoPro HD camera, which was mounted on various objects (guitar necks, vocal microphone, members’ bodies etc.) in most of the shows.

Perhaps equally cool, the editing and post-production work on the film was done by the band’s guitarist Niklas Sundin. I thought it was extremely well done, down to the sparse but neat little video effects. As for the song, I think it’s one of the best on an uneven album.

One more item to go before we wrap up this round-up . . .

 

HEXEN

I’m not familiar with the music of this Los Angeles band, whose second album, Being And Nothingness, will be released later this year by Pulverised Records. However, I’m familiar with Pulverised, and they make very few mis-steps. I’m also familiar with the artist who hand-painted the album cover: Kristian Wåhlin, also known as Necrolord. His roots in the metal scene reach back to the early days of Entombed, Dissection, Emperor, and many other legendary bands. His work is so distinctive that if you’ve seen a selection of his past covers, you could look at that HeXeN cover and guess almost immediately that he did it. He’s also the guitarist for a band called The Great Deceiver, who were the subject of our own Andy Synn’s second-ever SYNN REPORT (here).

Well, a fine album cover doesn’t necessarily mean that fine music lies within. No music from within this album is yet available, so I went after some tunes from HeXen’s 2008 debut, State of Insurgency. Here you go: