VIDEO ROUND-UP: CHILDREN OF BODOM AND VALE OF PNATH

(DGR brings us a couple of new video releases that hit our radar screens since the end of our posts on Friday.)

This weekend brought us a lyric video of the new Children Of Bodom song “Transference”, from their due to be released early next month disc Halo Of Blood. I know, NCS isn’t exactly the biggest bastion of CoB news – nor are we planning to become one; but I felt that because I had spent a news post a little while back musing on whether or not the disc would be any good, then at the very least we needed to do some sort of follow-up so folks could judge for themselves.

As far as I know, this is the first song released from the disc other than the samples of songs that have been covered in their video breakdowns. A good rule of thumb on my end for whether or not I am going to find a disc amazing is whether or not I enjoy the lead-off single, and most of the time I never enjoy the first song released; don’t know if I have some sort of old man knee jerk, “I don’t like change!” reaction, but I have very few albums where I have liked the lead-off single. I knew I was really going to enjoy Omnium Gatherum’s and Soilwork’s latest because I loved everything that came off the pre-release PR wagon. This new song? Not so much.

It’s not a bad song and it has way more bass than Children Of Bodom have had before, but I think I’m really going to need to hear the whole disc before I pass any sort of judgement. Right now, we’re about a month out from the June 11th release date, so I figure we’ll probably start hearing more within the next two weeks and I’ll be ending this odd arc of CoB news on NCS.

https://www.facebook.com/childrenofbodom

 

VALE OF PNATH

This one popped up on Friday and kind of fell through our dragnet of news, but I caught the little bastard for you folks to enjoy. Vale Of Pnath hail from the mountain state of Colorado, home to stuff and things that might be located in Colorado. They play the type of amorphous technical melo-death/tech death/light elements of occasional black metal music that groups like Wretched  play, and just like those groups, they seem not to have grabbed the amount of respect they deserve.

They, like their compatriots, seem to have become something of a band’s band. Other groups always talk about Vale of Pnath, how great they are, and how hard they work, but it seems like actually converting people over is taking some time, and that sucks because these guys put out a great disc in 2011’s The Prodigal Empire – which came out on Willowtip Records. Now, a year and half later, we finally get a music video in the form of the song “Sightless”, and surprisingly, the video plays it pretty straight. You have a pretty good performance video that includes every chance humanly possible to film their bassist Alan as he plays that dissonant bass guitar chug where he just rails on all the strings right before each verse.

The band also has a couple of surprising characters in its drummer and vocalist as well. Their drummer is Eric Brown – who you’ll recall we just paid for a limerick about our site about a half dozen posts down from this one. He’s drummed for a bunch of bands, but I think we’ve covered him more for the Rainbowdragoneyes hilarity, or his appearance on the Aether Realm disc that just hit. Their vocalist is artist Ken Sarafin – who joined the band as they were signed to Willowtip (according to their Facebook bio). Interesting to see the man in motion, considering we tend to post his artwork from time to time on the NCS Facebook (which you should like), as well as here on the web site (eg, this post).

The song is a five-minute blast of death that goes through a bunch of different movements, so it’s worth giving it a shot. Like I said, they’ll win people over every time, but man – this is one of those bands where it seems like if you’re not shoving them down people’s throats every chance you get, they just don’t get looked at enough, and that sucks.

https://www.facebook.com/ValeOfPnathCO
http://willowtip.bandcamp.com/album/the-prodigal-empire