SEEN AND HEARD: MASTODON, CULT OF LUNA, IMPUREZA, UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION, YEAR OF NO LIGHT

Oh joy! Rapture! Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ’t!

Okay, I’m just trying to put a good face on another goddamn Monday that blows, like a noxious wind coming off a tire fire. At least we still have beauteous metal, flights of fallen angels to sing us to our rest at nightfall. Here’s a collection of things, in no particular order, seen and heard over the last 24 hours.

MASTODON

I saw that on December 10 Warner Bros. Records will be releasing Mastodon Live At Brixton, a digital-only recording of the band’s live performance at London’s O2 Academy in Brixton on February 11, 2012. That show was part of the band’s world tour in support of their last album The Hunter. I caught another stop on that tour in Seattle, and it was a powerhouse performance.

Interestingly, the digital-only release (which will be sold through Amazon and iTunes) will come in two versions, one that’s audio-only and one that’s a live video version of the 97-minute show. Here’s the set list:

Dry Bone Valley
Black Tongue
Crystal Skull
I Am Ahab
Capillarian Crest
Colony of Birchmen
Megalodon
Thickening
Blasteroid
Sleeping Giant
Ghost of Karelia
All The Heavy Lifting
Spectrelight
Curl of the Burl
Bedazzled Fingernails
Circle of Cysquatch
Aqua Dementia
Crack The Skye
Where Strides The Behemoth
Iron Tusk
March of the Fireants
Blood and Thunder
Creature Lives

(via Lambgoat)

And here’s the trailer:

 

CULT OF LUNA

This morning my NCS comrade Andy Synn linked me to a professionally filmed video of Sweden’s Cult of Luna performing their entire set at Hellfest 2013. Impressions: Beautifully filmed, aurally arresting, heavy as an NFL front four, clawing and rapturous.

CULT OF LUNA live at Hellfest 2013 from Hellfest on Vimeo.

 

IMPUREZA

I saw the joyous news that Impureza have a new album on the way — at long last. If you don’t know about Impureza, I’ll quote myself (always a thrilling experience): “They seamlessly and beautifully combine technically oriented death metal that brings to mind bands such as Nile, Krisiun, Decapitated, and Fleshgod Apocalypse with flamenco music. They combine old and new ways of kicking out the fuckin’ jams.” And their most recent album, 2010’s La Iglesia Del Odio (“the church of hate”), was fantastic (and reviewed here).

Yesterday, without much fanfare, Impureza uploaded a teaser for the new album to YouTube. Based on that, it appears the album will be entitled Leyenda Negra (“Black Legend”) and will be released in November. Impressions: Titillating, but where da flamenco at?

 

UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION

I counted, and this makes our fourth post over the last year about London-based Unfathomable Ruination (which happens to feature the same vocalist — the horrifying Daniel Neagoe — as Eye of Solitude). Their debut album (which is available on Bandcamp), Misshapen Congenital Entropy, was released last year by Sevared Records. Over the weekend, they released their first official music video, produced by Visceral Video. It’s for a song from that album named “Carved Inherent Delusion”.

Impressions: very well-produced video, highly destructive music, more holes in my head than before I watched this, I would like my spleen back where it belongs.

 

YEAR OF NO LIGHT

Finally, we come to yet another track debut from the third studio album by Year of No Light, a six-man instrumental band from Bordeaux, France. The album is Tocsin and it’s due for release by Debemur Morti at the end of November. I wrote about the first track premiere from the album here. It was 13+ minutes long, and the new one that premiered this morning — “Stella Rectix” — weighs in at 12:51.

Impressions: the music of the spheres, the music of a magma flow, the conjunction of the cosmic and the subterranean, glimmer and gloom, hypnosis and hypoxia.

Below you can listen to both songs that are now streaming from Tocsin; the album can be pre-ordered at Bandcamp.

https://www.facebook.com/yearofnolight