SEEN AND HEARD: HOLOCAUSTO CANIBAL, MARTY FRIEDMAN, POTERGEIST

For the second day in a row, I was disconnected from the internet for almost the entirety of Wednesday, with very little time to listen to music or write about it — and the same thing is going to happen today. But I did manage to find a few new things last night and this morning that I wanted to recommend. And here they are…

HOLOCAUSTO CANIBAL

This Portuguese band have been around for 17 years, but this is their first appearance at NCS. They have a new EP entitled Larvas coming our way in May via The Czech Republic’s Bizarre Leprous Productions. It includes 13 tracks and more than 30 minutes of destruction. Four of the songs are new, six of them are live recordings from the band’s performance at the Obscene Extreme Festival in 2013, and the remainder are remixes by other artists of tracks from the band’s last album Gorefilia.

In the main, the music is a death/grind rampage — an assault of slaughtering (and blazing fast) percussion, big moaning chords and screaming solo explosions, and vocals that channel the roars of an enraged grisly bear. But in addition to all that obliterating goodness, the band infiltrate their music with small touches that keep the listener slightly off balance — and lots of big touches, like the feel of someone smacking the back of your neck with a ball-peen hammer.

The music is gore-splattered, vicious, and highly compulsive — and the remixes are themselves very cool bonuses. I believe this is the first time I’ve heard an electro-dance version of a death grind tune (Track 11). The Track 12 remix is creepy as hell — before it turns into something resembling hip-hop — and the EP’s closer puts a wobbling dubstep spin on the original.

Terrorizer premiered a full stream of the EP this morning. Go here to listen. Really good stuff.

https://www.facebook.com/hcgore
http://holocaustocanibal.bandcamp.com

 

 

 

MARTY FRIEDMAN

In Japan there is apparently a popular TV show named “Zenryokusaka” (“Full Power Hill”). According to a description I read, “Each week, the five-minute program features a girl running up a hill — each week a different girl, each week a different hill.” And that’s part of the explanation for part of what you’ll see in this next video. The rest of the explanation is that Marty Friedman lives in Japan now.

But the video could just show water dropping from a leaky faucet and the music would still be riveting. The song is called “Inferno” for a reason. It’s taken from the album of the same name, which is due for release by Prosthetic Records on May 27 in North America. This is shred of a very high order.

https://www.facebook.com/martyfriedman.official

 

 

 

 

 

POTERGEIST

Man, time does fly. It has been almost exactly one entire year since I last wrote about Potergeist from Athens, Greece. The last time I was attracted to the music by some awfully cool photos of the band’s Alex S Wamp and his hairless cat Sethi, taken by Seth Siro Anton (Septicflesh). Here we are a year later, and this time I was attracted to their music not by a cat but by the video you’re about to see.

The song is “Southern Crown” and it comes from the band’s third full-length Swampires (2013). These people may be from Greece, but they have mastered the big, thick, deep-fried, highly humid stomp of heavy Southern rock. The powerful riffs of “Southern Crown” will get your head (and the rest of your body) moving, and Alex S Wamp’s gritty, soulful vocals are really, really good (and so is the guitar solo).

The video should also put a big smile on your face. The band recruited an assortment of friends/fellow musicians to share the camera with them, and the results are a lot of good-hearted, good-natured fun (with fangs).

https://www.facebook.com/potergeist