NO RHYME OR REASON: ANAAL NATHRAKH, DEVOLVED, AND CYANIDE SERENITY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Apr 172011
 

Surgical Brute’s first post of our NCS Saturday included songs from five bands, and Misha served up another one today, all of which are well worth hearing. So I’m probably pushing my luck by adding this post with still more songs. I do realize there’s a limited amount of time you’re going to spend listening to new music in a given day, and I also realize we’re not the only metal site most of you visit. But I just can’t resist. There’s probably some psychiatric name for inability to resist impulse, but whatever it is, I’ve got it.

Usually, there’s some organizing principle behind the music collections we feature in a post, even if it’s nothing more than “these songs will flambé your brain.” But today there’s really no rhyme or reason to what I picked, except I came across all three of these offerings in the last 48 hours and just felt compelled to share what I found.

Two of these bands I know well and I’m a big fan of both. The third is a new discovery. What I have for you, then, is a high-quality video of Anaal Nathrakh laying waste in a live club performance; a video for a brand new (and somewhat surprising) song by Australian/California tech-death band Devolved; and a new, crushing re-recording of a song by another tech-death band, UK’S Cyanide Serenity, which features their new lead singer Travis Neal (Divine Heresy). And to top it off, we’ve got the schedule for a just-announced Anaal Nathrakh European tour . . . after the jump. Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 4)

 Forthcoming Albums  15 Responses »
Apr 022011
 


Technically, we should have posted this yesterday, but yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and people might have thought we were making up some of this shit. But it’s all true, and nothing happens on April 2 to plant doubt about truth. Except for what causes doubt to be planted about truth on any other day of the year.

Here we are at the beginning of the second quarter of 2011 — the time when for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is supposed to spring.  Where I live, spring has apparently been victimized by a brutal street mugging and is hospitalized at the moment.  A few plants have been deluded into thinking it’s spring, but for the rest of our local world, it’s still fucking winter.

Fortunately, the change of the seasons have fuck all to do with the release of metal. What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days (or in this case, the last 31 days) about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming New Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. There’s some awesome shit on the way. Dive in after the jump. Continue reading »

ANAAL NATHRAKH: THE PROPAGATION OF DISCOMFORT

 Album Reviews  19 Responses »
Mar 302011
 

No band I’ve yet heard is currently pushing the limits of extreme metal more extravagantly and more successfully than Anaal Nathrakh. However, I won’t say they’re blazing a trail into the territory where the future of metal will take root. Metal will have many futures, but I suspect few of those futures will unfold along the tortured path Anaal Nathrakh is blazing; there’s too much risk of injury. More reason to live in the present – this present.

Some metal bands specialize in hair-on-fire, grindcore mayhem, played at the speed of bullets. Some specialize in the delivery of compulsively headbang-able riffage, heavy on the chainsaw guitar cutting through the bone. Some bands use keyboard-driven anthems to propel their music to emotional heights of struggle, or defiance, or loss.

Some plant their flag in the territory of industrial metal, with blasts of cold rhythm and waves of chaotic electronic noise. And some bands leaven their metallic catharsis with bursts of melody, voiced by soaring clean vocals, head thrown back and all of body and mind concentrated in the delivery.

Anaal Nathrakh does all of this within almost every song on their new album Passion, and more besides. They dissect and segment and re-combine the elements of extreme metal in blazingly creative ways — but without fail, what they achieve is profoundly unsettling. It’s wondrous, but it’s almost unrelentingly disturbing. Passion is an expression of the “otherness” of extreme metal in one of its purest forms. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

ANAAL NATHRAKH: PASSION

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 302011
 

(Our UK contributor Andy Synn provides the following review of Anaal Nathrakh’s forthcoming album, Passion. This is our first of two reviews of the album — the second, by your humble editor, is in the post above Andy’s. Some albums just demand extra attention.)

Passion is one thing that Anaal Nathrakh have never lacked, as their instrumental work is as frenzied and violent as one would expect and the terrifying vocals of Dave Hunt remain as overwhelmingly powerful as ever. But the word has other meanings as well, invoking images of suffering and martyrdom which seem appropriate given the harrowing atmospheres and inhuman cacophony the band conjure, as well as the lyrical bent of certain songs, whose themes of anarchy, dedication and personal desolation are perfectly captured by such a simple, yet complex, term.

The sheer, unadulterated misanthropy and seething hate which spews from the music of Anaal Nathrakh has always spoken to me in a particular way; the bile and fury they vomit forth clearly comes from a deep-seated, internal sense of existential angst and frustration. Yet the true strength of the band has always been their ability to take this incoherent rage and shape it consciously into a weapon directed outward at specific targets, turning an internal fury into an external fire. Thus, their urban-warfare approach to blackened grind and the cold, calculated lethality of their grinding black metal remains balanced by a very human element, making the band’s sound both natural and inorganic in equal measure.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SET THE VOLUME TO “KILL”: ANAAL NATHRAKH STRIKES AGAIN

 Metal News  20 Responses »
Mar 212011
 

Four days ago we featured a new Anaal Nathrakh song called “Volenti Non Fit Iniuria” from their next album, Passion, which will drop on May 23. To use a phrase that only highly trained metal journalists such as those employed by NCS are sophisticated enough to use, it’s a fuckin’ destroyer.

We’re not even finished reeling from that first song, and lo and behold there’s another one out today. This one’s called “Paragon Pariah”. It’s streaming at the DECIBEL magazine web site. It comes with these instructions from vocalist Dave Hunt: “Set volume to ‘kill’ and press ‘blast’.”

Those instructions are just barely simple enough for me to follow, so I did that — and I’m still picking up my teeth off the floor. Fuck . . . . I didn’t even mind the clean singing.

I’m such a selfish asshole that I’d really like to embed the song right here for you, but I can’t do it yet. So I will grudgingly give you this link.

MOUTH WATERING: ANAAL NATHRAKH, ALTAR OF PLAGUES, AND CRUACHAN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 172011
 

Seeing as how this is St. Patrick’s Day (in addition to being the anniversary of the patent for the rubber band), we thought you might like to hear a bit more Irish metal. To be precise, a bit more new Irish metal. A couple of new songs from bands you might have heard of, as teasers for albums they have on the way: Altar of Plagues and Cruachan.

But first, we want to make sure you’re aware that Candlelight Records has made available a new song from yet another forthcoming album — this one by Anaal Nathrakh. They’re not Irish. They’re British. But they’re fecking awesome, and we just discovered this new song, and it’s fecking awesome, so even though it seems to have been drifting around the webz for a few weeks, we’re still leading off this post with it.

ANAAL NATHRAKH

The band’s new album, called Passion, will be released in Europe on the May 23. On some other day, the rest of the world will presumably get their official shot at it. The new song now available from the album is called “Volenti Non Fit Iniuria”. That Latin phrase literally means something like “no injury is done to a person who consents”, but it’s also the name of a legal doctrine.  (more after the jump, including these three songs . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 3)

 Forthcoming Albums  14 Responses »
Feb 272011
 


We’re jumping the gun on this post, since the month doesn’t end until tomorrow. Why? Uh, because this post is ready to go and we don’t have anything else finished for today yet. Work and other shit interfered with our grand plans for a Sunday post.  We might still get another one up later today, but for now, feast your eyes on the barrage of metal headed our direction.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days (or in this case, the last 27 days) about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming New Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. There’s some awesome shit on the way. Continue reading »

SKULL-CORING THURSDAY: A BRITISH PHOENIX RISES AGAIN AND TERRIBLE DEATH IS UNLEASHED FROM INDIA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Oct 212010
 

The last 24 hours has brought us good news from two bands we’ve written about in the past — the UK’s Detrimentum and India’s Bhayanak Maut. We like good news. We like to share good news. And this good news involves new music that will blast away all the cares cluttering your brains (and perhaps your brains, too) and leave you feeling energized and ready to spit in the eye of anyone who tries to fuck with you today. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

DETRIMENTUM

Last January we ran a multi-part feature called UK DEATH METAL IN REVIEW, in which we looked back at 2009 and some of the extreme UK metal bands that we listened to a lot in the old year. One of the bands whose praises we sang was Detrimentum (see our post about them here), based on their album Embracing the Deformity. We called the music “complex, ultra-fast, technical, brutal death metal that periodically gives way to sweeping black-metal influenced melodic guitar passages and blistering solos.” We noted that the “overall tone is dark, ominous, and overpoweringly intense.”

Unfortunately, we learned not long after writing that post, via a message from one of the band’s founders, guitarist Jon Butlin, that only he and guitarist Paul Wilkinson still remained from the line-up that recorded Embracing the Deformity. On the other hand, he explained that the jaw-dropping Steve Powell of Anaal Nathrakh fame would be joining the band as its drummer, and that the group intended to finish recording an album of new songs as soon as the line-up could be sorted out. (That post is here.)  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2010 SICKNESS (Part 3)

 Forthcoming Albums, Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Mar 312010
 

We’re now a full three months into 2010, and it’s time for our third update to the list of forthcoming new albums we posted on January 1.  (See the original list here, the first update here, and the second update here.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases that we didn’t know about on January 1 or at the time of our last two updates — and the new sickness is still spreading in epidemic proportions.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs from various sources since our last update about forthcoming new releases. Look for the bands you like and put reminders on your calendar. Or if you’re old school like us, just get em tattooed someplace you can see without a mirror (because reading stuff backwards is hard).

ANAAL NATHRAKH: “U.K. extreme metallers ANAAL NATHRAKH have commenced work on material for a new album, tentatively due before the end of the year.”

ANNIHILATOR: “Canadian thrash metal veterans ANNIHILATOR will release their 13th, self-titled album in Europe on May 17 via Earache Records, in Japan through Marquee and in Australia via Riot Entertainment.”

ARISE: “A two-minute video trailer for The Reckoning, the fourth album from Swedish death/thrashers ARISE, can be viewed below. Due on March 22 through Regain Records, the CD features guest appearances by Jonas Kjellgren (SCAR SYMMETRY, ex-CARNAL FORGE), Mikael Stanne (DARK TRANQUILLITY) and Jake Fredém (NOSTRADAMEUS).” [NOTE: the album is now scheduled for release on April 6.]

(more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

DETRIMENTUM UPDATE

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jan 232010
 

Earlier this week we added a second installment of our irregular feature on UK Death Metal in Review, and one of the brutal bands we raved about was Detrimentum and their 2008 debut album, Embracing This Deformity. In response to that piece, we got the following message from one of the band’s founding members, guitarist Jon Butlin:

“Hey – thanks a lot for the great write-up! We really appreciate it! Since the album, we’ve undergone a few lineup changes, it’s only [guitarist] Paul [Wilkinson] and myself left from the ‘Embracing‘ lineup – the stresses and strains of the UK underground have taken their toll! Anyway – once we get the lineup sorted out we’re hellbent on recording a new album, hopefully this one won’t take 5 years like the previous one!

The new tracks are more diverse than previous efforts, we’ve thrown more of everything in the mix – hopefully it will be clearer-sounding than the last album, but just as heavy. Our current drummer is Steve [Powell] from Anaal Nathrakh, a man more than capable of insane dynamics, ear-shredding blasts and crushing double-bass – so watch this space! Thanks again for the support – I’ll get round to updating all the friend requests this evening hopefully!

cheers
Jon Butlin
DETRIMENTUM”
There’s no doubt that Steve Powell is one more-than-capable drummer — in addition to playing with the awesome Anaal Nathrakh, he also handled the drum duties on another fantastic UK death metal album produced in 2008 by the band Theoktony (which we wrote about here). Butlin and Wilkinson are also extremely talented, and that threesome forms an essential foundation for what we hope will be a bright future for Detrimentum. We’re definitely looking forward to new music — with any luck, sooner rather than later!
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