SEEN AND HEARD: RED FANG, CARCASS, CHROME DIVISION, COLISEUM, AWAKENING SUN, ACHERON

For various reasons, including a long vacation, a buttload of work and work-related travel that confronted me in my day job upon returning from said vacation, and the dedication of space to our ongoing year-end LISTMANIA series, I’ve not been doing a very good job of spreading the word about new music and videos. Much new music and videos of interest have been accumulating. I’m collecting five of the recent videos and one new song in this post. Many of them lean more toward hard rocking that the kind of extreme metaling I usually feature in these round-ups, but it’s all good stuff.

RED FANG

Red Fang have consistently produced videos that are sure-fire chuckle fests. Their new one is no exception. Directed by Whitey McConnaughy, it’s for “Blood Like Cream”, one of the songs on the band’s latest album Whales and Leeches. It’s a twist on the zombie theme. These undead monsters want PBR instead of brains — but it is fuckin’ Portland, so that’s not a total shock.

Yeah, there’s clean singing in the song, but it’s crunchy, it rocks out, and it gets its hooks in your brain meat. Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug.

https://www.facebook.com/redfangband

 

CARCASS

Over the weekend, Carcass also came out with a new video. The song is “Unfit for Human Consumption”, a track off their comeback album Surgical Steel, which seems to be a mandatory placement on almost everyone’s Best of 2013 lists. With that album, Carcass have already proven that you can’t kill this band, despite appearances to the contrary over the last 17 year. The video also shows that even amputation can’t stop them from performing.

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialCarcass

 

CHROME DIVISION

Norway’s Chrome Division, which features Dimmu Borgir’s Shagrath and vocalist Shady Blue from Susperia, have got a new album coming in January via Nuclear Blast. Its name is Infernal Rock Eternal and it can be pre-ordered here. Last week, the band premiered an official video for one of the new songs, “Endless Nights”. It’s a big tasty serving of beefy riff salad, with heavy, stomping grooves, a squalling solo, and gritty vox. Good old dirty rock ‘n’ roll.

https://www.facebook.com/chromedivision

 

COLISEUM

The latest album from Louisville, Kentucky’s Coliseum is 2013’s Sister Faith (available on Bandcamp here). We failed to review it, but it’s ridiculously good, even if it’s not exactly metal. Last May, the band recorded a live performance of “Late Night Trains” from the album at Bround Sound in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and they’ve just released a video of that live performance. It’s a rumbling, rolling, highly infectious piece of punk-infused music, with a chiming melody that has a tendency to reverberate in your skull long after the song ends. Watch and listen below.

https://www.facebook.com/coliseumsoundsystem

 

AWAKENING SUN

My NCS comrade Andy Synn turned me on to this Lithuanian band (with a British drummer) by providing a link to a video for the song “Edgewalking”, which was released last week and will appear on the band’s forthcoming album Imbalance. Man, it grabbed me by the throat almost immediately. Loaded with thundering grooves and thrashy riffs, it’s a head-thumping, heart-pumping headbang trigger. The video consists of clips from the band’s three-month European tour completed earlier this year. Very promising.

https://www.facebook.com/awakeningsun

 

ACHERON

And finally, I end this collection with a new song by Acheron. The band’s roots go back to the early 90s, and their last album was 2009’s The Final Conflict: Last Days of God. The band split up after its release, but have now re-formed and have recorded a new full-length entitled Kult Des Hasses that will be release on the Listenable label. It was mixed and mastered by Dan Swanö at Unisound, it includes guest vocals by the likes of Kam Lee and John and Jill McEntee, and it features guest lead guitar work by Ricktor Ravensbruck (Wolfpack 44, Electric Hellfire Club).

Last week the band premiered a new song named “Raptured To Divine Perversion”, and it’s really strong. It blends delicious, melodic dual-guitar leads and solos with hard-charging, gut-punching rhythms. It certainly includes plenty of grim and grisly morbid death metal elements, but it also includes aspects of old school thrash and even Motörhead-style swaggering rock (at least as I hear it). Have a listen below:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Acheron/128581467223407

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U21oBIGeMHU