SEEN AND HEARD: ULCERATE AND CARCASS STREAMS, SLAYER-GOJIRA-4ARM TOUR UPDATE, A NEW VEIL OF MAYA TOUR WITH VILDHJARTA, A NEW SONG BY HAIL OF BULLETS, AND ALBUM NEWS FOR GIFT OF GODS AND SARKE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Sep 102013
 

Painstakingly selected from among the detritus that litters the interhole and the NCS in-box, here are items of interest that appeared over the last 24 hours.

ULCERATE

If you need more darkness in your life — and who doesn’t? — then you should listen to Vermis, the new death metal monstrosity by New Zealand’s Ulcerate. The album won’t be released in North America until September 17 (a day earlier in the UK and September 13 in certain European countries), but yesterday Metal Sucks began hosting an exclusive stream of the album. Ulcerate are one of those rare death metal bands who are pushing (or dragging) the genre in new directions. The music of Vermis is harrowing and inhuman, but it exerts a powerful attraction. You should hear it.

THIS is the link for the stream.

CARCASS

The new Carcass album, which we reviewed here, is due for release on September 16. I have a feeling that anyone interested in hearing the new Carcass album has already heard it, but just in case, it’s now streaming in full, too. Nuclear Blast has uploaded the entire album to YouTube. Obviously, it’s one of the biggest releases of 2013, and it also happens to be a fine album. You can hear it next.  (thanks Daniel for the tip) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: TOO DAMNED MANY THINGS TO PUT IN THE TITLE OF THIS POST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Sep 042013
 

Yesterday I posted our final article of the day at about 1:30 pm EDT and then turned my attention for the rest of the day to what I actually get paid to do. While I wasn’t looking, someone re-opened Pandora’s box and a horde of red-eyed bat-winged things flew out in a blizzard of leathery wings and ammoniac guano. Yeah, baby, a veritable flood of nasty shit — so many noteworthy news items and new songs that to fit all of them in this post will require that I wire my jaws shut and mumble only a few words per item. Here . . . we . . . GO!

SLAYER-GOJIRA-4ARM TOUR

It started with dates in Hollywood and NYC and predictably has now mushroomed into a full U.S. tour. Well, at least 16 cities in the fullness of the U.S., which do not include all the wonderful cities in the Pacific Northwest or 36 other states. But fear not, others may yet get to see Gojira (!!!), the aging remnants of Slayer, and Melbourne’s 4ARM, because more dates will be announced later. Here are the ones announced yesterday:

OCTOBER
25 The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, NV
28 Hollywood Palladium, Hollywood, CA
30 Events Center @ San Jose State, San Jose, CA Continue reading »

TESTAMENT, 4ARM, SOLANUM, AND BLESSED CURSE: LIVE IN SACRAMENTO, FEB 28, 2013

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 212013
 

(DGR caught Testament’s tour in Sacramento at the end of February and turns in this report.)

It’s funny to think that every show review I’ve done for Testament has popped up on this site, so I guess it goes without saying that I really enjoy the band – especially since their last two albums have really helped to revitalize their sound and make them seem current instead of another thrash band just spinning their wheels. They have a huge amount of history attached to them, and I’ve always felt that they were a little overlooked whenever you heard stuff about the Big Four tours that were all the rage a year or two back.

You may also sense that I’m echoing sentiments from my last two show reviews for these guys, and those feelings line up with the fact that I have seen this band three times within the span of a year and will pretty much fork over cash any time they roll through town. I’ve gotten three different setlists and enjoyed myself every time, so that is why I found myself standing outside in downtown Sacramento at the end of February to witness one of the last dates of the hobbled yet still alive Dark Roots Of Thrash tour.

There were two local openers – both of whom opened for Kreator and Swallow The Sun when I saw them late last year, so the names should be a tad familiar – followed by the two bands left on the Dark Roots Of Thrash tour, so it was a relatively quick four band show. It was also the start to one of those lucky times when the stars aligned and I could do a two-shows-in-two-days-style weekend, with March 1st being the occasion for another show review that appeared here previously. Continue reading »

GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 312012
 

Nope, this post has nothing to do with Vietnam. I just crawled out of bed not long ago, somewhat worse for wear after a little end-of-the-work-week blowout last night, and for some reason the bellowed words of Robin Williams from that movie of the same name blared into my damaged head. Maybe it’s because I felt like I’d awakened in a war zone.

This post has nothing much to do with Carach Angren either. I just happened to see this cover for their new album, Where the Corpses Sink Forever (due on May 18 from Season of Mist), and was reminded how much I like it. So what the fuck. Also, the creative facepaint connects to the first video I watched while chugging my morning joe. You’ll see what I mean.

And that’s what this post is really about — new music videos. I watched four of them in a row on this slightly hungover Saturday morning and liked all four, and therefore . . . here they are! I could have sub-titled this post “Bang Ur Fuckin Head and Then Melt It Down”, because that pretty much sums up the sequence of the following music.

AVATAR

I’ve developed a real weakness for this Swedish band since watching their can’t-look-away video for “Black Waltz”, which is the title track from their current album on eOne Music (we featured that video here, right after the start of this year). Yesterday, they released another video for a song from Black Waltz, which was premiered by Loudwire. This one’s called “Let It Burn”.

The video is a live performance of the song. Stylistically, the music is quite different from “Black Waltz”. It’s a straight-ahead, massively infectious headbanger, and if you’re like me you’ll be fist-pumping and yelling “LET IT BURN!” by the time you get to the end. It comes right after the jump. Continue reading »

BANG THAT HEAD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Mar 092012
 

As you may have surmised from the relatively small number of posts the last few days (and perhaps the content of the last one), work and work-related things have interfered with your humble editor’s dedication to metalness. Unfortunately, it’s likely that I will continue to be fucked with by such interferences over the next few days. However, I did manage to squeeze in a quick listening expedition earlier today and I found some items that got my head rockin’.

That’s really about the only common theme running through the music in this post. The styles are divergent, but they all trigger that natural, in-born urge to bang the head. Or at least that’s what happened to me, and that’s really all that matters, right? So even if the music doesn’t make you bang your head, you can rejoice in the knowledge that I got the shit cranked up loud and got myself a good head banging, and that ought to make you blissfully happy.

The bands are these: 4ARM (Australia), Tukkanuotta (Finland), Iblis (Poland), and Cancer Bats (Canada).

4ARM

4ARM is a thrash band from Australia who released their third album (and their first for Rising Records) in February. It’s called Submission For Liberty. Also last month, the band released an official video for the title track, which I happened to come across today for the first time. Continue reading »