COMING UP FOR AIR: DAMNATION PLAN, KHORS, ONE INCH GIANT

Hi. This is Day 12 of me being away from home and working like an indentured servant on my fucking day-and-night job. I know there’s been tremendous curiosity about what I am doing. I’m not at liberty to disclose where I am, but I thought I’d share a few details about the nature of the project.

As some of you have guessed, it does indeed involve super-science. My colleagues and I are testing methods for grafting additional penises onto parts of the male anatomy where penises are not usually found. There’s a gamers convention in town, so we’ve had no trouble finding willing test subjects.

We’ve had more trouble finding willing penis donors, so we’ve just been taking them without consent. Because there’s a gamers convention in town, we’ve had no trouble finding people who aren’t actually using their penises, so no harm done. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.

As you know, the demands of the project have almost entirely prevented me from listening to metal or writing about it for almost two weeks. However, the work schedule for today and tomorrow isn’t quite as awful as it has been, so I have a brief window of opportunity to come up for air and see what I’ve been missing. Here’s a small selection of items I found this morning.

 

DAMNATION PLAN

Damnation Plan are a Finnish melodic death metal band I learned about from our pen pal and expert on all Finnish metallic things, fireangel (of the Night Elves blog). They produced a 2007 EP named Darker World, and following a revision in the line-up the band are now set to release their debut album The Wakening on March 12 via Coroner Records.

Again thanks to a tip from fireangel, this morning I checked out an official video for a song from the album named “Blindsighted”. It showcases the talents of the band’s new vocal tandem, growler Tommy Tuovinen of MyGrain and clean-singer Asim Searah (ex-The Nibiruan and briefly a live vocalist for Kiuas). They both turn in fine performances, and the rest of the song is pretty damned fine, too.

It’s a fast-paced combination of anvil-hammering verse riffs and a sing-along chorus melody, enhanced by a brief but effective guitar solo.

The band have a second track streaming on SoundCloud. It’s the title track and it’s a more throttled-back, atmospheric piece with keyboard additions, though the song still packs plenty of punch and a healthy serving of headbang nutrition. Both songs are below:

http://www.facebook.com/damnationplan

KHORS

As most of you know, I’m a big, big fan of Ukrainian black/pagan metal band Khors. This morning I found a newly released performance video of the band performing “Sacrament of Buyan” at the Oskorei festival in Kiev on December  15, 2012. The song originally appeared on the 2010 album Return To Abandoned.

The video was professionally filmed, and it looks and sounds really good. The song itself is a mid-paced melodic jam that’s very easy to get lost in. I found myself drifting into a blissful head-nodding state that was almost peaceful (despite the harshness of the Khors vocal tandem). Very, very nice video.

http://www.facebook.com/Khorsband/

 

ONE INCH GIANT

One Inch Giant are a Swedish band we’ve featured more than once in these pages (eg, check out my review of their last album, Malva, at this place). They’re an Exception to the Rule around here, because the singing is all clean yet the music is all good.

As previously reported in these pages, the band signed with Soulseller Records for the release of their next album (The Great White Beyond), and I now know that it will hit the streets on April 19. This morning I listened to a song from the album named “Mountains Will Erode”, and man, I’m loving it.

There’s a lot of meat on the riffs, a lot of narcotic addictiveness in the melody, lead guitar lines that put a smile on my face, and vocals that are very damned strong. If you have a taste for doomy stoner concoctions, you really ought to make time for this new One Inch Giant song.

http://oneinchgiant.bandcamp.com/