VIDEO ROUND-UP: BLOOD RED THRONE, REPTILIAN DEATH, INTERNAL BLEEDING, AND WREKMEISTER HARMONIES

I already posted one kind of round-up this morning, one that involved sending you away to other sites to hear new songs that are exclusively streaming elsewhere. But the last 24 hours were so chock full of new musical discoveries that I need to add a second round-up. In this one, however, I can give you the music to hear and the videos to watch at our very own humble site.

BLOOD RED THRONE

And the first offering comes your way from the icy fastness of southern Norway where Blood Red Throne sit on their blood red throne. As previously reported, this band are celebrating the 15th year of their existence with a new, self-titled album in a special edition LP box set that’s been up for pre-sale on Blood Red Throne’s Bandcamp page (here) since March. It will be released by Sevared Records on May 21. It features that sweet cover art by Rafael Tavares that’s staring at you above.

Today, the band premiered a music video for one of the new songs, which bears the wonderfully descriptive title of “Primitive Killing Machine”. It’s a merciless meat-grinder of a song, but as your head is pulled down into the teeth of the machine, it will be ringing with an exotic melody and banging happily away as it’s being pulverised and pulped. Nasty video, too.

https://www.facebook.com/BloodRedThroneOfficial

 

REPTILIAN DEATH

Holy mother of fuck, would you look at that album art? It was created by the talented Michal ‘Xaay’ Loranc, who has previously worked with bands such as Behemoth, Demonic Resurrection, Nile, and Vader — but this time his artwork graces the cover of the new album by India’s Reptilian Death — The Dawn Of Consummation And Emergence.

This is the side project of Demonic Resurrection’s main man Demonstealer, but it’s now a full-fledged band. We previously featured a live video filmed at the band’s surprise appearance at “Domination: The Deathfest 2013″ in Mumbai on March 10, but now we’ve got an official lyric video to share with you.

The song is named “O”. It’s a cutting piece of up-tempo, old-school death metal, spiced with tasty lead and solo guitar work and some compelling riffs and rhythms. It’s another tempting teaser for this album, which is scheduled to be released in India on 19th May 2013 via Universal Music India. Reptilian Death are hunting for label and distribution partners to assist with the album’s release outside of India, but have announced that if all else fails they will self-release it by around June 25.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ReptilianDeath
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/reptiliandeath

 

INTERNAL BLEEDING

I learned about this next song and video via a Facebook post by the almighty Devourment, who referred to Long Island’s Internal Bleeding as “the Inventors and masters of Slam”. Their debut album Voracious Contempt came out all the way back in 1995, and their last one (Onward to Mecca) was released in 2004. So yes, “dormancy” is the word that springs to mind.

But Internal Bleeding have returned with a new recording, one that features three founding members of the band back in action for the first time in close to 15 years. The song is called “Castigo Corpus Meum” and it will appear on a forthcoming album named Imperium. It’s a brutal piece of business, anchored in spine-crushing riffs — but with an unexpected transition to groaning death/doom in the second half, featuring an equally unexpectedly forlorn guitar solo. Very nice.

https://www.facebook.com/InternalBleeding

 

WREKMEISTER HARMONIES

Here’s how I came to recommend this next video. First, while visiting CVLT Nation I saw the artwork that you now see above. I thought it was quite cool. I learned that it’s the cover to a forthcoming single-song album entitled You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me by Chicago’s Wrekmeister Harmonies. And then I learned that a time-lapse video has been streaming for about a week which shows the London-based artist, Simon Fowler (Cataract Press), creating artwork for the album, with music from You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me as the soundtrack.

Well, this appealed mightily to my inner metal art nerd, so I decided to begin watching the video. I stress the word “begin”, because the video appeared to be 11 minutes long. Whether I would finish was an open question.

The music starts in a very subdued way — ambient and atmospheric. I was tempted to stop it, and then I remembered that long pieces often build, and that the music was being featured at CVLT Nation, so it would likely grow heavier. Plus, I was getting into what I was seeing in the video as Fowler worked his magic. Eventually, it became evident that Fowler was creating something different from the piece that first caught my eye — perhaps the second half of a gatefold cover?

The music does indeed grow heavier — in fact, it becomes massive, with that subdued introductory segment transforming into the roar of guitars and the crush of drums, with corrosive vocals howling deep in the distance. I was completely mesmerized by what I heard. Maybe you will be, too.

The album is due on June 11th via Thrill Jockey; it’s LP-only, but the vinyl will come with a download code. Wrekmeister Harmonies is the project of one JR Robinson, but it turns out that the album also features contributions by such prominent Chicago metal personages as Sanford Parker (Corrections House, Twilight, Nachmystium), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), Jef Whitehead (Leviathan), and Mark Solotroff (Anatomy of Habit), among others.

It further turns out that the 38-minute composition was originally created as a soundtrack to a film that Robinson made and was first performed in 2012 by Robinson and many of the recording’s contributors at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.  Check out the video clip below.

http://www.wrekmeisterharmonies.com/

Wrekmeister Harmonies – You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.