VIDEOGRAPHY: EXMORTUS, BEASTWARS, SMOHALLA

Wouldn’t you know it. I embarked on a trip for my job before the sun came up yesterday, only to find by nightfall that some infernal bastard had dynamited the levy and loosed a flood of good metal while I was otherwise occupied. Too much stuff surged through the hole yesterday for just one post. Too much for two posts, but that’s probably all I can manage today.

In this one I have new videos that I think you might like. In the next one will be new songs. Prepare your anus. (I know that’s not really my style, but I see bands say that on Facebook and I thought I would be more cool if I said it. Honestly, I have no interest in your anus. But you sure got a perty mouth.)

EXMORTUS

California’s Exmortus have an album coming next year on the Prosthetic label, but in advance of that Prosthetic has released a 7″ single called Immortality Made Flesh. The title song is one that will appear on the album and the b-side is a cover of Judas Priest’s “Freewheel Burning”. Yesterday, Metal Injection premiered a video of the band executing the title track in a jam room (with the studio recording as the soundtrack). Hot damn, is it invigorating!

Oh, yes, this song will twang your nerve endings really quickly and really hard. It’s like slobbering all over your fingers and then jamming them into a big electrical outlet. As your head starts smoking and your eyes roll back in their sockets, you’ll start slobbering again. It’s got the bombastic grooves, it’s got the catchy melodic infiltration, it’s got the super-heated soloing, it’s like something Rimsky-Korsakov would have written instead of “Fight of the Bumblebee” if he’d been born 140 years later and decided to compose for a thrashing melodic tech-death band. Listen up:

https://www.facebook.com/exmortusofficial
http://www.indiemerch.com/prostheticrecords/item/23123

 

 

P.S. These lucky maniacs will be touring NorthAm with Dark Tranquillity and Omnium Gatherum early next year (and they’re rampaging around with Hatchet this fall). Here are the dates:

11/6 Lubbock, TX – The O Bar *
11/7 Midland, TX – The Pinebox *
11/8 Austin, TX – The Lost Well *
11/9 San Antonio, TX – The Limelight *
11/10 Houston, TX – The White Swan *
11/11 Dallas, TX – Wits End Bar *
11/12 Oklahoma City, OK – The Conservatory *
11/13 Kansas City, MO – The Riot Room *
11/15 Denver, CO – Bar Bar *
11/16 Salt Lake City, UT – Burt’s Tiki Lounge *
11/17 Boise, ID – The Shredder *
11/18 Portland, OR – Rotture *
11/19 Springfield, OR – Goodfella’s *
11/20 Medford, OR – Musichead *
11/21 Sacramento, CA – The Colony *
11/22 San Francisco, CA – Thee Parkside *
11/23 Las Vegas, NV – Cheyenne Saloon
11/29 Los Angeles, CA – Loaded
2/1/14 Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade #
2/2/14 Baltimore, MD – Soundstage #
2/3/14 New York, NY – Stage 48 #
2/4/14 Worcester, MA – The Palladium #
2/5/14 Montreal, QC – Foufounes Electriques #
2/6/14 Quebec City, QC – Dagobert #
2/7/14 Ottawa, ON – Mavericks #
2/8/14 Toronto, ON – The Opera House #
2/9/14 London, ON – London Concert Theatre #
2/10/14 Cleveland, OH – Peabody’s #
2/11/14 Columbus, OH – The Shrunken Head #
2/12/14 Joliet, IL – Mojoes 22 #
2/13/14 Lawrence, KS – Granada Theater #
2/14/14 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater #
2/15/14 Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue #
2/17/14 Vancouver, BC – Rickshaw Theater #
2/18/14 Seattle, WA – El Corazon #
2/19/14 Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theater #
2/21/14 San Francisco, CA – DNA Lounge #
2/22/14 West Hollywood,CA – House of Blues #
2/23/14 Tempe, AZ – Club Red #
2/25/14 Dallas, TX – Trees #
2/26/14 Houston, TX – Scout Bar #
2/28/14 Louisville, KY – Diamond Pub & Billiards #
3/1/14 Pittsburgh, PA – Altar Bar #
3/2/14 Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero #
* with Hatchet
# with Dark Tranquility & Omnium Gatherum

 

BEASTWARS

Did you really think I was going to let a Beastwars video come out without brandishing it here like a bloody sword? Of course you didn’t. This video is for the song “Realms” from 2013’s Blood Becomes Fire (reviewed here). Surely you have heard that album by now. If you haven’t, you should do that on Bandcamp.

Beastwars have a talent for creating smoldering wreckage, and “Realms” is a prime example. And if you know anything about the videos that have previously been created for their music, you know this one isn’t going to be a bunch of dudes in a warehouse or a field. I don’t fully comprehend what I see, but something about the visuals meshes with the intensity of the music.

Congrats to director Hamish Waterhouse and cinematographer Marty Williams for a fine, fine job. I’m putting the lyrics after the video; they may help bring you to your own interpretation.

https://www.facebook.com/beastwars666

 

This is the earth
The soil, its dirt
Through work and toil
The harvest of light

Give me a song
Something to sing
Something to say
Give me the words
The way
Look in the eyes of the child we have made
Awoke my soul
Awoke my time
Awoke my place

This is the earth
The soil, it’s dirt
Through work and toil
The harvest of light

Build us a temple
A temple for the gods
Build us a temple
Deep in the seer’s mind

Build us a temple
A temple for the gods
Build us a temple
Deep in the seer’s mind
Build us a temple
A temple of light
Build us a song
A star, a sign

Build us a temple
A temple for the gods
Build us a temple
A temple for the light to understand it

 

SMOHALLA

You look down at the flow of the stream, polishing the rocks as it has always done. You look at the motion of the tide on the beach, pushing and pulling the sand, depositing and removing what it will. You look at the billowing clouds, you feel the wind, they move you from light to shadow. It all seems eternal, but you are not. There may be blood in the water. There may be lightening in the clouds. You could be gone in an instant. You will be swept away in the deluge of life.

And those are one person’s thoughts in listening to the song “O Deluge” by the French band Smohalla and watching the video accompaniment to the music. The song appears on the Tellur – Epitome split CD with Omega Centauri, released by Duplicate Records.

http://smohalla.bandcamp.com/album/tellur
http://smohalla.free.fr/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Smohalla/267240098282.