SHARING IS CARING: WINDFAERER, DEW-SCENTED, LOCRIAN, ROBOTS PULLING LEVERS, AND ACOUSTIC CATTLE DECAP

In this post I’m collecting things I saw and heard yesterday that I thought were worth passing on. As you can see, I’m still trying out titles for these posts. Do you like “Sharing Is Caring”? I think it conveys the kind of love we feel for all of you, and it captures the reason why we do these posts — because we care. In fact, in the immortal words of Faith No More, we care A LOT.

Yeah, you’re right, that title is pretty vomitous. I’ll keep thinking about it. Maybe  I’d be better off lifting the immortal words of Bruce Willis: YIPPI KI YAY, MOTHERFUCKERS! Anyway, in this post I’ve got new songs from Windfaerer (US), Dew-Scented (Germany), Locrian (US), and Robots Pulling Levers (US), plus what has to be a worldwide first: an acoustic version of Cattle Decapitation’s “A Living Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat”.

WINDFAERER

Yesterday I listened to a song from this three-man New Jersey band (guitarist/bassist/vocalist Michael Gonçalves, violinist Benjamin Karas, and drummer JP Andrade) called “A Glimpse of Light”. It’s the second track from the band’s Solar EP, which will be self-released on July 10. It grabbed me right off the bat.

The bolting rhythm took hold of my head quickly and began slamming it up and down, and never did let go. But my head was happy, too, and not just because I got a good headband going. The swirling tremolo guitar melodies and soulful solo’s were as entrancing as the hammering drums and thrumming bass were galvanizing. The caustic vocals added an extra layer of bleeding passion to the mix. And the song has a brutal, bang-up, bass-heavy finish, too.

The music is a kind of melodic black metal that’s heavy and etched with groove, and I really am liking it. I discovered that the rest of the EP was waiting for me, and you better believe I’ll be exploring it.

Windfaerer has a Facebook page here and a Bandcamp page here, where you can also check out Windfaerer’s debut album Tribus. To get information about how to obtain Solar, check the Facebook and Bandcamp pages later this week. Now here’s “A Glimpse of Light”:
 

 

DEW-SCENTED

After listening to that Windfaerer song, I got an e-mail alerting me to the fact that Dew-Scented had released a new song for streaming at Stereokiller. It’s called “Thrown To the Lions” and it’s the second one to debut from the band’s ninth studio album Icarus, which Metal Blade will be releasing in Europe on July 30 and Prosthetic will be releasing in NorthAm on July 31.

This year marks Dew-Scented’s 20th anniversary as a band. Their music is thrash-heavy, which means I’m not genetically predisposed to love them. However, I had a good time with their ferocious last album, Invocation (2010) — which happened to be the first of their albums I bought and to which gave serious attention. So I decided to check out the gladiatorially themed song that debuted yesterday.

The song goes into attack mood in a big damned hurry, with a jolting, vibrating slamfest of catchy, meaty riffs and some really pissed-off hardcore howling. The song embodies some death metal elements as well as thrash, and the riffs don’t progress as predictably as I was expecting, and maybe that’s why I’m digging’ it despite my usual thrash allergies.

Go HERE to listen to “Thrown To the Lions” at Stereokiller.

You can pre-order the album at the Prosthetic Indie Merch store HERE. Here are Dew-Scented links:

http://www.facebook.com/dewscented

http://www.dew-scented.net/

And while I’m at it, here’s the first song to be released from Icarus, “Sworn To Obey”:
 

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/48632379″ iframe=”true” /]
 

LOCRIAN

Here’s the background on Locrian, in the words of Relapse Records (which announced their signing of Locrian in March). Pay particular attention to the description of each band member’s instrumental role:

“LOCRIAN formed in late 2005 and consist of André Foisy (Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Arp Avatar, Electronics), Terence Hannum (Vocals, Synthesizers, Piano, Organ, Mellotron and Tapes) and Steven Hess (Drums, Electronics).  The group, located in Chicago, IL and Baltimore, MD has released over 20 recordings on an eclectic array of labels in their relatively short but prolific career.”

I confess I was intrigued by this at the same time as it made me grow wary. But the feeling of intrigue won out, especially since I missed the collaboration between Locrian and Mammifer (Bless Them That Curse You) that Profound Lore released earlier this year. And what caused me to take the plunge yesterday was the premiere of a music video for a song called “Chalk Point”.

This song comes from a two-CD release that Relapse has scheduled for August 14. The first disc is a re-release of an album called The Clearing that was previously available only on vinyl. The second disc is a compilation of previously unreleased material.

Not much happens in the video. Not much happens in the song either, at least by the standards of most metal I listen to, and I suspect it won’t appeal to many of our readers. So why, you may ask, am I taking  up space talking about it? Well, because I liked the song.

Its beginning is a slow ramp-up, simple piano chords accompanied by skittering protons and electrons. That simple melody becomes the foundation for everything that follows — an intense shroud of samples and discomfiting electronic noise swirling around massive, pounding percussion, droning wordless vocals, a noodling bass line, and the howling stagger of an electric guitar in the hands of a psychotic who has finally found his release.

It’s a phantasm built of sludge, noise, black metal, and psychedelics. Yippie ki yay motherfuckers.
 

 

Locrian’s web pages are as follows:

Locrian on Facebook

Locrian on Bandcamp

Locrian on Myspace

Locrian plan to record their debut album for Relapse later this year.

ROBOTS PULLING LEVERS

This is a late addition to the post. In fact, I had the whole thing done and put to bed, ready to appear automatically early today while I was/am still sleeping. And then I saw that Oculus Infernus had premiered a new song by Robots Pulling Levers. So, as my last act before falling into the sleep of the just, I listened to “March of Nazi Robots”. Now I don’t think I’ll be able to go to sleep for a while.

This is fitting: The last time I wrote about RPL (here), I was ripping off the idea based on music that groverXIII had posted at The Number of the Blog. Well, here we go again, except now groverXIII has become a Professor and his platform is Oculus Infernus. One thing hasn’t changed: RPL is still creating some truly head-exploding instrumental metal.

I remember when they used to call their music “shredjent”. There’s still some djent boogie in the new song, some fat guitar tone and some pneumatic rhythms, along with some freaky keyboard work and highly explosive programmed percussion. But Shred Is King. Little wonder, because there are three guitar phenoms who let loose on this track: Vishal J. Singh (Amogh Symphony), Mark Hawkins (Soul Cycle/Global Warming Extravaganza), and their guest Sacha Laskow (Enditol/Walk As Chaos).

Seriously, this song is full-on freak-out. Woke me way the fuck up. And I was trying to get through one night without drinking. Fuck that. Go over to Oculus Infernus (here) and check out “March of Nazi Robots”. (By the way, a new logo will be gracing the pages there very soon; the good Professor gave me a sneak preview, and it’s badass.)

RPL’s Facebook page is at this location.

A LIVING BREATHING PIECE OF DEFECATING MEAT

This is a year in which Cattle Decapitation can do no wrong, so great is their 2012 album, Monolith of Inhumanity. But surely, great wrong can be done to the band’s music in the hands of Amy and Karl doing an acoustic cover — or so I thought.

Yesterday I watched  this video, because how could I not? It’s a cover of the third track from Monolith, “A Living Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat”. According to the YouTube description, Amy and Karl did this for the birthday of a good friend, whose favorite current song is that Cattle Decap track. It’s not as funny as I thought it would be — don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty damned funny, but the arrangement is clever and Amy can sing, and maybe Monolith of Inhumanity has real cross-over appeal after all. Who knew?