THINGS SEEN AND HEARD TODAY: WINTERSUN, EVOCATION, AND TOMBS

Man oh man, I encountered a flood-tide of post-worthy shit in my morning ramblings through the interhole. So, I’m breaking it up into two posts, this one being the first.

WINTERSUN

Uh huh, the massive PR ramp-up to this Finnish band’s loooooooong-awaited duo of new albums is beginning. As previously reported, the first of those albms — Time I — is due for release by Nuclear Blast on October 19. Today brought us the unveiling of the cover art for that album, which you can see above. It was created by Cameron Gray, who also created the cover for the Born of Osiris album The Discovery, among others.

EVOCATION

I saw that Century Media started streaming the first new track from the next album by Sweden’s Evocation, Illusions of Grandeur. About a week ago, I created a feature about the band that was occasioned by the unveiling of the awesome Xaay cover art for the album (here). I didn’t have any new music to share at that time, so I loaded up the post with videos for previous Evocation songs. But now we’ve got the new album’s title track. It makes me very happy.

The song is a fist-pumping, head-nodding, melodic death/thrash romp with a bit of morbid doominess rearing its head before the song ends. Loving it . . .

TOMBS

Thanks to MetalSucks, I heard the new song by Tombs that DECIBEL magazine is including as the latest in its series of Flexi discs with its next issue. The song is called “Ashes”, and it caught me a little by surprise. Tombs’ musical style has (for me at least) always been difficult to pin down, though I’m a huge fan of what they’re created. “Ashes” is maybe more black metal in its sound than other Tombs songs that stand out in my head — and I really like the song.

This is kind of a way-point in between albums for the band, a marker of where they are in their progression, if you will. Check it out:

[soundcloud]http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/56401611″[/soundcloud]