SEEN AND HEARD: ATHANATHEOS, DESERT STORM, BROUILLARD, AMPUTATION SPREE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 032023
 

It’s another Bandcamp Friday today. From my perspective, that’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s good for bands and labels because Bandcamp doesn’t take their usual cut from sales. On the other hand, my e-mail in-box (which is also the main address for NCS) gets deluged with Bandcamp-related messages and notifications, and that’s on top of the usual traffic of 200-300 e-mails to NCS per day. Trying to thoroughly crawl through all that takes more time than I have.

Still, because it’s a Bandcamp Friday I thought I ought to make at least a feeble head-start on the usual Saturday round-up. So here’s what I picked. Mind you, the songs definitely are not feeble.

ATHANATHEOS (France)

This French band is returning with a concept album named Cross. Deny. Glorify. It’s described as one “that follows the paths of three generations of Roman soldiers as they watch their empire decay from within in the wake of Emperor Constantine’s adoption of Christanity as its official religion”. All the songs are described as distinct and different in character, befitting this generation-spanning narrative. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THANTIFAXATH, AMPUTATION SPREE, SARGEIST, MECHINA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Mar 052014
 

I’m headed for the airport again this morning, and then winging my way back to sunny Southern California for my day job, returning to sodden Seattle on Sunday. This will again restrict my blog time. Before leaving, I wanted to share a few recent discoveries.

THANTIFAXATH

This Toronto band, whose three members prefer to remain anonymous, released a self-titled EP in 2011, and now they have a debut full-length on the way. Entitled Sacred White Noise, it’s coming out on April 15th via Dark Descent. Not long ago the band premiered an advance track named “The Bright White Nothing At the End of the Tunnel”.  I’ve been meaning to check it out, and finally did so last night — and I’m in love.

There’s a writhing, dissonant guitar lead that begins almost immediately and then intermittently continues to whip and squirm its way throughout the rest of the song, and once heard it’s hard to forget. But that’s only part of the music’s attraction. The song also includes hammering percussion, scalding riffs, bestial black metal vocals, and a load of other strange but magnetic repeating motifs. Continue reading »

LONE GUNMEN: LIBERTEER, AMPUTATION SPREE, and MORGH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Nov 272011
 

Here we have three one-man projects, one recently signed to a major label and the others unsigned, and all of them worth a listen: Liberteer (California), Amputation Spree (North Carolina), and Morgh (Pennsylvania).

LIBERTEER

Liberteer is the creation of SoCal resident Matt Widener, a former Marine, a former member of Exhumed, and the bass player for Cretin. Widener’s previous solo project was called Citizen. Earlier this month, Relapse Records announced that it had signed Liberteer and will be releasing the band’s debut album, Better To Die On Your Feet Than Live On Your Knees, on January 31, 2012. Widener had these comments about the Liberteer project:

“My thoughts on politics slowly changed over the past six years. In Citizen I had a sense of outrage about our government, but because it still supported the idea of state, it doesn’t make much sense to me now. I’ve come to embrace the ideas of anarchy. The old band name, Citizen, represents a system of exclusion and nationalism, things I can’t stand now, so I had to rename the band and change a lot of things. I think the good things about the music are still there—the thematic, major-key riffs, the d-beats and blasts—but the message is now pure.

“The album is one long song, with a handful of the coolest riffs reappearing as leitmotifs, like a pissed off opera made of blasts and d-beats. It’s utterly relentless. Plus, there’s a training montage at the halfway point.”

Seeing this in a press release was enough to pique my interest. I’m particularly curious about the “training montage”. But what sealed the deal was listening to the title track. Continue reading »