SEEN AND HEARD: HACRIDE, DYNASTY OF DARKNESS, ZOMBIEFICATION, AND HATE

I caught a slight break from the daily work grind last night, long enough to find three items I think are worth your time, and then NCS writer DGR added a fourth.

HACRIDE

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Hacride’s new album is in my “highly anticipated” category for 2013. As in, I get high thinking about it. It’s not simply that the band have proven their worth with their past releases, it’s that they’ve proven they’re unlikely to stand still and simply deliver more of the same (though I would be happy enough with that). So, curiosity is one reason I’ve been eager to hear Back To Where You’ve Never Been.

The first taste came yesterday when Metal Sucks premiered a song from the album named “Overcome”, and man, it’s really strong. It’s loud, it’s brash, it’s packed with energy, it’s built around some killer grooves, and it’s interesting. I even dig the clean singing. Don’t waste time, go here to check this out.

Back to Where You’ve Never Been comes out April 22 on Indie Recordings.

 

DYNASTY OF DARKNESS

I’ve also been curious about this band (formerly known as Death of Desire) since I discovered their existence about a month ago. Why? Mainly because their debut album includes Hellhammer (Mayhem, Arcturus) on session drums, Amund Svensson aka Pzy-Clone (The Kovenant) in charge of orchestration, and Attila Csihar (Mayhem) as a guest vocalist. (Nicholas Cage’s son Weston Coppola Cage, who used to be the frontman for Eyes of Noctum, is also a guest vocalist).

But although some eye-catching names have contributed to the album, Dynasty’s true mastermind is a vocalist/guitarist who goes by the name Morbid XIII, and about him I knew nothing.

At last, there is music to hear, because the band has started streaming a track called “Diuum Deus”. It dumps all sorts of goodies into the blender and then purees the shit out of it — a slug of symphonic black metal, a dash of industrial rhythmics, some blazing guitar work, and a huge helping of out-and-out bombast. And there’s a ton of vocal variety in the mix, too. Also, Hellhammer. Nice.

http://www.facebook.com/DynastyOfDarkness/
http://dynastyofdarkness.com/

ZOMBIEFICATION

Although I haven’t heard this two-man Mexican band’s debut album Midnight Stench (2010), I quite enjoyed the disgusting sounds that burst like an overripe pustule from their 2012 EP Reaper’s Consecration. They now have a second album bearing the name At the Caves of Eternal slated for release by the dependable Pulverised Records on April 8 in Europe and May 14 in North America.

A couple days ago Pulverised started streaming a track from the album called “Slaves Whisper Your Name”, and it’s a sweet, festering mass of death metal that’s part rocking/thrashing aggression and part calamitous, crawling doom. Reaper’s Consecration hewed fairly closely to the Swedeath template, but this new track sounds like Zombiefication are stepping out into new, more varied territories, while continuing to drag one foot across the old-school cemetery.

I’m really digging what this band are doing on the new track and hope you like it too.

http://www.facebook.com/zombiefication666

 

HATE (written by DGR)

Our own Senior Correspondent Anthony McSynn reviewed the album Solarflesh by Poland’s own Hate at the end of January, just prior to the albums release (here). In that review he described the song “Alchemy Of Blood” with a pretty thick paragraph like this

Barbed and bristling with razor-sharp hooks, “Alchemy Of Blood” develops from a neck-snapping, stuttering opening into a more demonic, haunting piece of tense melody and sudden, stabbing heaviness, whose torrent of rabid, guttural vocals is offset by the machine-like precision of the slicing guitar riffs and hammering drum work. Multiple searing solos break up the song’s almost unrelenting assault, adding colour and vibrancy to this tar-thick, blackened slab of desecration.

Does that sound pretty good? Now what if I told you that you could get that very same song but in video form as well – because Hate have come through with that promise and released the music video for “Alchemy Of Blood” late yesterday.

It’s a performance clip with the occasional deviation to a pretty cool looking clock thing that slowly clicks over as the song churns on. The video itself focuses heavily on Guitar/Vocalist Adam while giving the rest of the 2006-on lineup a little bit of time each. It’s odd to say, but it looks like an odd band hierarchy is present in this video, and sadly the rest of the dudes drew the short straw on the shirts vs skins debate.

If you haven’t heard Solarflesh yet and the video doesn’t quite provide a good enough sample, we have the review I linked to above and it does a pretty good job letting you know about the blackened death smelting that happens throughout much of the disc – and we have done our due diligence by including in that review the songs that had been put out prior to the disc’s release for you folks to check out.