SEEN AND HEARD: DEATH GRIPS DROPS A NEW ALBUM, ZETRO SOUZA RETURNS TO EXODUS, HAMISH GLENCROSS LEAVES MY DYING BRIDE, AND HOUR OF PENANCE FALLS OFF THE CONQUERORS OF THE WORLD TOUR

Here are four startling new events that happened over the weekend.

DEATH GRIPS

Death Grips released the first half of a new album last night. As is their want, there was no advance notice, or at least none that I saw. The name is niggas on the moon. It’s 8 tracks long, it’s streaming in full on Soundcloud and YouTube, and it’s free to download. And all 8 songs feature Björk. Seriously.

The band’s announcement says this 8-song release is the first half of a double album, the name of which is the powers that b. They say it will be released later this year on Harvest/Third Worlds Records.

I haven’t started listening to the music as I write this on a Sunday night, so I’ll save any thoughts about it for a later update. Or maybe someone else around here will provide some thoughts. I’m expecting weirdness.

To download the music, click this link:

http://thirdworlds.net/files/niggas-on-the-moon.zip

Stream it below.

https://www.facebook.com/deathgripz

 

 

 

 

 

EXODUS

Over the weekend guitarist Gary Holt of the Bay Area’s Exodus released this statement:

“As a band, we all had to make a very difficult choice to part ways with [singer] Rob Dukes. We have nothing but love and admiration for him and the deepest gratitude for the hard work he has put in and the great work on some killer records. But at this time, Tom [Hunting, drums], Lee [Altus, guitar], Jack [Gibson, bass] and myself thought a change was necessary and the unanimous choice going forward was to welcome back Steve Souza [above] to the fold!”

And so things come full circle. Dukes has been with the band since early 2005 following Zetro Souza’s departure and he appeared on four Exodus albums — not counting the band’s tenth studio album which was recorded this past March. Wouldn’t surprise me if the band re-recorded the vocals for that album, because otherwise it’s going to be kind of strange when it comes out.

I’ve never been a huge Exodus fan (or a huge fan of thrash in general), so I’m not all that hot and bothered or jumping for joy about this news, but I know that Dukes was a bit of a polarizing presence in the band and I’m guessing this development will just rekindle the debate.

More gory details can be found here.

 

 

 

 

MY DYING BRIDE

Speaking of coming full circle, NCS supporter and contributor KevinP alerted me to the following announcement that appeared on the Facebook page of UK doom progenitors My Dying Bride a few hours ago. In a nutshell, the band have parted ways with guitarist Hamish Glencross, who had been a fixture in MDB for the last 14 years, over “irreconcilable differences”. He will be replaced by the man he replaced — Calvin Robertshaw, who was one of the band’s original guitarists from 1990 until 1999. Robertshaw will participate in the recording of a new MDB album, which is projected for release before the end of this year.  Glencross, as you may know, has also been a member of one of my favorite death metal bands, Vallenfyre, whose excellent new album Splinters was released earlier this year. Here’s the full announcement:

My Dying Bride would like to make it known that we have parted ways with guitarist Hamish Glencross. The reasons being can only be described as “irreconcilable differences”. However we would still like to genuinely wish Hamish all the luck with his future endeavours.

My Dying Bride would like to make it clear that this has absolutely no impact on the bands forthcoming 3 final shows of 2014.

Copenhell Friday the 13th June
Metaldays Friday 25th July
Brutal Assault Saturday 9th August

All go ahead as planned.

Our longstanding guitar technician Robb Philpotts has already been drafted in and will fill in for these 3 shows.

Ok, enough of that, now for some great news.

Calvin Robertshaw rejoins!!

What more can we say to that. Calvin is one of the original guitarists that helped make My Dying Bride what it is today. His departure after the now infamous 34.788% Complete album left us all stunned but now we have convinced him to rejoin and are sure this is going to be a success.

We feel that My Dying Bride has now stabilised again and we are really, really excited at the prospect of going forward as a band united again by doom metal music. We will be working together with Calvin on finishing the new lp which we plan to record later this year.

The writing of the new lp has been progressing somewhat slower than usual due to our internal problems but despite that we now have around 7 new songs in a very complete fashion, obviously we are now all wondering what Calvin can bring and now can’t wait to get back into the studio to find out.

The studio we have chosen to use for the majority of the recording is our old haunt Academy Studios. Then we will be back at Futureworks for some finishing off and possibly vocals. Time will tell.

We would like to thank from the very bottom of all our hearts, all of our supporters old and new for their patience and love, we promise you a continued and very much stronger My Dying Bride in the future.

 

 

 

 

CONQUERORS OF THE WORLD

And now for a bit of tourism news.

One month ago we announced with considerable excitement that Septicflesh, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Hour of Penance, and Necronomicon would be touring the U.S. and Canada beginning this month and continuing into July. Unfortunately, Hour of Penance encountered unspecified visa problems and have had to drop off the tour. Their replacement is Black Crown Initiate from Reading, PA. They’re recording their first album beginning today, and then four days after that, they begin this tour. Talk about short notice.

This may strike some people as a surprising replacement. It was a surprise when Black Crown Initiate popped up on the Metal Alliance Tour headlined by Behemoth earlier this year, too. Musically, they were the odd man out on that line-up, just as they are on this one. But I caught them on that earlier tour, and they killed it. I would definitely see them again, despite the fact that I’m very disappointed I’ll miss out on Hour of Penance. How they’re managing to land themselves on these killer tours is another question, the answer to which I haven’t explored. They are clearly leading charmed lives.

I haven’t double-checked the dates on the revised tour poster to see if there have been any schedule changes since the original announcement, but it’s worth a close look.