SEEN AND HEARD: AOSOTH, SVARTIDAUÐI, KRODA, CHAOS ECHOES, DARK DIVINITY, GENEVIEVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Nov 172017
 

 

I didn’t do a very good job keeping up with e-mails or occurrences in the interhole the last few days, so I crawled through those fetid swamps last night and came up with a big list of intriguing new songs and videos to add to my previous big list. And then I began exploring what I found. I have a little time this morning to round-up a few of the good things I discovered in my listening, with more to come soon.

I have to fly to Texas this morning (for a high school reunion rather than my fucking day job), but I do plan to finish a further SEEN AND HEARD for Saturday. And unless the reunion crushes too many brain cells (or my soul), there will be a SHADES OF BLACK feature on Sunday before I fly home.

AOSOTH

This first item will be regrettably brief — regrettable only in the sense that I have failed to write a review of the new Aosoth album prior to its full streaming debut, which happened yesterday. And so all I can do now (and maybe ever) is to give you a strong push to listen to V: The Inside Scriptures as soon as you can. You won’t regret that decision. The stream is below; the album is being released today (November 17). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CODE, AOSOTH, DEGIAL, PILLARS, BOUND TO PREVAIL, GRITTER, CHALK HANDS, UNTIL THE SKY DIES

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 182017
 


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It occurred to me that the tag I came up with for these round-ups of new tracks — “Random Fucking Music” — could be misconstrued. The idea wasn’t that this would be random music you could actually fuck to, although I guess you could fuck to some of it if you were like certain members of the non-human animal kingdom who pound away in a frenzy for a few minutes (or less) and then go off to find more food or take a shit, leaving the female of the species looking either confused or bored and wondering, “Is it in yet?”

Yeah, don’t remind me, I know human males do that too. I guess maybe an album-length funeral doom track could provide some reciprocal coital benefits, but I assume most people like to shift into a higher gear at some point, except for those who pass out somewhere along the way. I’ve never seen a sloth have sex. Might be worth investigating. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AOSOTH, ANTARKTIS, APOLOGOETHIA, ARROGANZ, ATAVISMA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Sep 222017
 


Cover art for Aosoth by Benjamin A. Vierling

 

Greetings and Happy Fall Equinox, one of two days in the year when every place on earth gets the exact same amount of daylight (almost exactly 12 hours today) and four days since my last round-up. I’m awash in good new music again (always). The fact that I chose songs from five bands whose names all begin with “A” should tell you something: Just imagine how many other new songs fill out the rest of the alphabet.

It may be the end of the working week for many of you (and I hope that’s so), but for us this isn’t really work, though it requires effort, and so we’ll just ramble on through the weekend as usual. For today, until you get to the last band in this post, you’ll hear nothing but new stuff from forthcoming releases. The last one I’ve been meaning to say something about for a while, and the time now seems right… since Atavisma begins with “A”.

AOSOTH

Like many others, I’ve had great expectations for the new album by Aosoth, which has been named V: The Inside Scriptures. The first single from that album validates all the eagerness with which it has been anticipated. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ARSIS, AOSOTH, MECHINA, AGONIA RECORDS, AND FINNTROLL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 142013
 

I thought I’d let you know that despite my inability to contribute much to the site the last few days, I’m still alive. I’m beginning Day 18 away from Seattle, mired in a seemingly endless project for my fucking day job, and largely unable to listen to music, pay much attention to metal news, or write much. However, the end is in sight: it appears I’ll be able to go home next Tuesday or Wednesday.

While my blog life has been fucked up, other folks have been stepping up to fill the hole (if only they could fill the holes in my head), and one of them is DGR. In this post are some items he discovered recently, along with a few I came across this morning that we’d like to share with you — Islander

ARSIS (written by DGR)

The glorious Arsis info dump of 2013 happened yesterday, with the guys announcing pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted to know about their upcoming album Unwelcome, which will see release April 30th of this year. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (Part 2): WITHIN THE RUINS, AOSOTH, AND NEAERA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Feb 272013
 

This is Part 2 of a round-up of new things I saw and heard last night that I thought were worth sharing. Part 1 can be found here.

WITHIN RUINS

As the years have rolled on my interest in deathcore has waned, but I haven’t completely lost the taste for it. Within the Ruins (from Westfield, Mass.) is one of the bands in this genre who have maintained my interest, and from what I’ve heard of their new album Elite (released on Feb 26 by eOne Music), I’m still interested.

Yesterday the band premiered a music video for one of the new album’s tracks, “Feeding Frenzy”. The song brings high-caliber pneumatic thrusting, bestial hardcore vox, and a bunch of instrumental flourishes that remind me of a carnival atmosphere.

And the video (directed by Kevin J. Custer) is a complete hoot to watch. I’ve never been to a dinner party like this one, and I honestly can’t say that I worked up an appetite watching it. But I do pronounce it egggzelent. Here ya go: Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 31: SHADES OF BLACK (PROGENIE TERRESTRE PURA, AOSOTH, FALLOCH, AND TOWERING FILTH)

 MISCELLANY  5 Responses »
Aug 022011
 

More than six weeks have passed since my last MISCELLANY post, and I’ve been kicking myself black-and-blue for not writing them more regularly. In case you’ve forgotten, I use this MISCELLANY series as a vehicle for checking out bands whose music I’ve not heard before. We keep a list of MISCELLANY candidates, based on messages we get from bands or things we’ve read, and then when I’ve got the time, I pick a few bands from the list, listen to one or two songs, not knowing whether I’ll like the music or not, and then write about what I’ve heard. I also stream for you the same tracks so you can decide for yourselves whether it’s your kind of thing.

This installment of MISCELLANY diverges from the usual form in a couple of respects.  First, the selection process wasn’t quite as random as usual — this time, I decided to pick bands who I knew were all within the genre of black metal. Second, I already knew and liked the previous releases from one of the bands I picked — Aosoth — though I hadn’t yet heard anything from their newest release, so that’s a bit of a cheat on the usual rules.

So, with that preamble, here we go. The music I sampled for this post came my way from Progenie Terrestre Pura (Italy), Aosoth (France), Falloch (Scotland), and Towering Filth (U.S.). It’s all black metal, but the styles of music turn out to be quite different. Black may be the absence of light, but these bands prove (and prove well) that there are shades of black after all. Continue reading »

AOSOTH

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 292010
 

We have a pile of new, unheard releases stacked so high on the “Incoming!” table at the NCS Island that it’s in serious danger of collapsing into a heap of digitized rubble. So what are we listening to?

Well, of course, in our usual ass-backwards fashion, we’re listening to, and writing today about, an album by a French black-metal band called Aosoth that came out in December of last year. Why? Because Ashes of Angels is just so fucking raw and nasty that we can’t help but dig the shit out of it.

Of course, cats in heat are also raw and nasty, but that doesn’t mean we like listening to the noise they make. But Aosoth brings more to the cat fight than sharp claws and hair-raising howls.

Every song features a vehement blend of barn-burner blast beats and rapidly whumping double-bass (like a helicopter’s rotors whirling up to speed), high-energy tremolo-picked guitars that sound like a plague of mutant locusts, and serrated shrieking vocals. Those are the primary tools in the tool box. But what Aosoth does with those tools from song to song is unpredictable, and addictive as hell.  (more after the jump, including a song to stream . . .) Continue reading »