NEW SOUNDS: CARCASS, MERCENARY, MISERY SIGNALS, BEYOND, ENTRAILS

I mentioned in today’s first post that I was cut off from the interhole most of yesterday and missed lots of stuff that should have been the subject of yesterday’s posts. So I’m catching up. I’ve found so many interesting developments from both yesterday and this morning that I’m going to hold my verbiage to a rare minimum and let the music speak for itself.

CARCASS

The band’s first single (“Captive Bolt Pistol”) from their new album (Surgical Steel) proved controversial. (The song appeared on a CD exclusively sold with the 85th issue of the German “Legacy” Magazine in order to promote the Party.San Metal Open Air festival, and someone uploaded it to YouTube from there). The haters (I’m not one) seemed primarily to be those fans who think Carcass jumped the shark after Necroticism, and therefore they’re disappointed in the Heartwork-style stylings of the new song.

Yesterday brought us another taste, an official video teaser that appears to be a playthrough of an instrumental part of another song. Haters will still hate. I am still not one of them; I still like what I hear. You can listen to the teaser after the jump. But today also brought us the very cool album cover for Surgical Steel, which you can see above. It was created by British photographer Ian Tilton, who also did the cover for Necroticism. Now, here’s the teaser:

 

MERCENARY

Yesterday also brought us another new song — “Generation Hate” — from the upcoming album Through Our Darkest Days by Denmark’s Mercenary (due July 30 via Prosthetic Records in North America). I’ll be curious to see people’s reactions to this one, too. The song is reminiscent of Soilwork-style metalcore, more so than melodic death metal. I’m generally liking it on a first listen, but kind of held back from complete enthusiasm by the chorus, and not just because of the clean singing in it. It doesn’t seem to fit with the lyrics. What do you think?

 

MISERY SIGNALS

While I’m on the subject of metalcore, this morning brought us another new song from the next album (Absent Light) by Misery Signals. “Lost Relics” premiered on Metal Hammer (De), and I’m feeling more enthusiastic about it than the Mercenary track. A nice mix of bruising vocals, writhing guitar lines, spine-jarring rhythms, and ultimately a sweet melody as the song nears its end.

 

BEYOND

Let’s have some new death metal, shall we? Last May I wrote a feature about a German band named Beyond. At that time, Iron Bonehead had uploaded two songs from the band’s forthcoming album Fatal Power of Death, along with the fantastic cover art by Comaworx. I was blown away by those songs, and as of today the entire album is now streaming at DECIBEL.

This album is pure sonic destruction, with tremendous style. It’s kind of a cross between corrosive blackened death metal and old-school Swedish death.  As DECIBEL’s Jeff Treppel wrote in the feature and interview that accompanies the album stream, “This is evil, filthy stuff, but with an unbelievable groove the way your Swedish grandmother used to make it. It’ll kick your ass and then rub your face in some blackened chaos.” If you’re into death metal, you really ought to check this out HERE.

 

ENTRAILS

Let’s stay with death metal, and have some rampaging old-school music. This morning Sweden’s Entrails uploaded to YouTube a bonus track that had previously appeared only on the vinyl and digipak versions of their excellent 2013 album Raging Death. I had only heard the promo we received, and it omitted the bonus. The song is a cover of Marduk’s “Dark Endless”, from the 1992 album of the same name, and it’s fuckin’ grisly. Here: