OVERFLOWING STREAMS ON A SATURDAY: ARCHSPIRE, DREAMWELL, HUMANITY’S LAST BREATH, KUNSTZONE, SLEEPWALKER, CHOSHECH, SWARRRM, SYLOSIS, TRIVAX, WORMHOLE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 222023
 


Archspire

Someone wrote they get by with a little help from their friends… don’t tell me… it will come to me….

I got by with some help from my friends this morning. It was one of those especially distracting weeks when I had almost no chance to claw my way through the hundreds of e-mails we get every day, so I didn’t have much new music bookmarked to check out over the last 24 hours and really wasn’t eager to do the catch-up chore. However, DGR and Andy Synn pitched five new songs and videos at me, and I also noticed a few recommendations from some other valued influencers.

Collectively, those became my main targets… and like the blind squirrel who found an acorn, I did stumble across a few nuggets of musical nourishment myself. The result is the very big collection I’ve assembled below, organized alphabetically by band name and with fewer words than usual for Saturday round-ups. Surely you will find something to enjoy….

The Beatles! Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 3): 1914, ARCHSPIRE, BEASTLOR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  4 Responses »
Jan 072022
 

 

Way back in Part 1 of this series (two whole days ago) I explained that before I began winnowing down the list of candidates it had 630 entries on it — a combination of my own ideas, suggestions from readers, and nominees from NCS writers DGR and Andy Synn. I also noted that among that enormous number of songs only 11 bands had four or more entries. Two of those bands — 1914 and Archspire — are responsible for two of the picks I’m announcing today. And it happens that both of those bands did very well for themselves in the 2021 YE list sweepstakes as well, not just here but in other lists I’ve seen around the web.

The third selection in today’s installment flew much lower on the radar (or beneath it), despite the record being the work of a very well-known musician. Hopefully, mentioning it today will help spread the word a bit more, because it’s great. Continue reading »

ARCHSPIRE – BLEED THE FUTURE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 182021
 

(Andy Synn takes up the challenge of reviewing the new album from Archspire, out 29 October )

I don’t know about you, but it seems more and more evident to me with each passing year that the current Tech Death scene has gotten itself caught up in a perpetual arms race of velocity and virtuosity.

And, sure, it can be a real thrill to witness bands continually pushing themselves, and pushing the envelope, in terms of how many notes per second and beats per minute they can crank out, but you know what happens when an arms race reaches its inevitable conclusion, right?

Mutually assured destruction.

Thankfully, this particular scenario may not be quite as inevitable as it appears, as several of the genre’s leading lights seem to have realised that this constant competition over who can be the fastest, techiest, or shreddiest isn’t necessarily the healthiest way to live, and have already begun taking steps to ensure that when the bubble finally bursts – and it will – there will at least be a few bands left standing.

And I’d put money on Archspire being one of them.

Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): AQUILUS, ARCHSPIRE, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, ENSLAVED, HYPERDONTIA, HYPOCRISY, IN MOURNING

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 032021
 

 

I’m playing catch-up, as usual. I had hoped to get this humongous round-up of new songs and videos (and one news item) posted yesterday, but the day didn’t work out as planned. Should you choose to go through everything (and you damned well should), it will take a while, because there are 15 items here, divided into two parts. And on top of that I still hope to pull together a SHADES OF BLACK post.

I’ve again alphabetized the selections by band name. There is singing to be found, especially in Part 2, as well as many candidates for my year-end list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. To get this done I’ve again limited my own verbiage to just brief scattered comments, without artwork and missing some of the usual pre-order links.

AQUILUS (Australia)

I don’t have any music to share for this first band, merely the long-awaited news (and yes, a 10-year gap between albums qualifies as “long-awaited”) that Horace Rosenqvist has a new Aquilus album named Bellum I set for release in early December by Blood Music. That’s so exciting that I thought it was worth including the news, which I usually never do when there’s no music yet. Also, the cover art by Julius von Klever is great. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 042021
 

 

Can’t you read plain English? It says “Labor Day”. It doesn’t say “Holi-Day”. So I’m just following the prescribed agenda, and laboring.

Because I unexpectedly agreed to write a whopping four premieres yesterday, I had no time to begin rounding up a selection of songs and videos that surfaced this past week. Leaving that until today has resulted in another massive collection, again featuring too many bands to name in the post title.

As it happens, the majority of the new music you’ll find below is accompanied by videos. It also happens that almost all of the new songs are high-speed devastators. This isn’t entirely by accident, because many of them were recommended in our NCS group by DGR, who tends to prefer musical riots over other forms of audio entertainment. And once I’d gotten into that kind of groove, I tended to stick with it in choosing from among other possibilities I checked out.

ARCHSPIRE (Canada)

We’ll start with a new lyric video for a frantic new song by Archspire, in which vocalist Oliver Rae Aleron goes faster than a cattle auctioneer and the rest of the band spits a variety of bullets even faster — but then abruptly the song gets dreamy. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BANDCAMP FRIDAY (TOO MANY NAMES TO PUT IN A POST TITLE)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 062021
 

 

Over the last few days my NCS comrades (well, mainly DGR) have been shoveling links at me for new songs and videos, in anticipation that I would put together a round-up by today — which is a Bandcamp Friday. Most of those links were for music by bigger-name bands. The thought was that I could also add more obscure names, and that the allure of the bigger names might help introduce the lesser-knowns to more fans.

The problem is that the pile of links has grown to gargantuan proportions, which has made it tougher for me to insert as many other discoveries as I might want and still write up some thoughts about everything. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow. Here’s the A-to-Z deluge I have for today, in alphabetical order.

ARCHSPIRE (Canada)

Prepare for relentless high-speed bludgeoning and crazed fretwork mania as a big rabid mastiff barks in your face at equally high speed. Exhilarating! Continue reading »

REVOCATION / ARCHSPIRE / SOREPTION / RIVERS OF NIHIL: LIVE IN BIRMINGHAM 17/12/18

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Dec 192018
 

 

(Andy Synn continues his campaign to make many of us jealous over the shows he’s getting to see in the UK, this time witnessing a duo of American tech stalwarts, a Canadian one, and a Swedish one, and documenting the event with video.)

Looking back over the last twelve months I can see that I’ve been lucky enough to attend a number of awesome shows, festivals, etc, this year, with the last couple of months in particular being an incredibly busy (not to mention fun) period, especially where frantic, fret-melting technicality is concerned.

Just in the last few weeks I’ve got the chance to catch Beyond Creation/Gorod prog out and Aborted/Cryptopsy blast faces, and two nights ago saw things get kicked up yet another notch with the fatal four-way of Revocation, Archspire, Soreption, and Rivers of Nihil at Mama Roux’s in Birmingham. Continue reading »

TOURISM: BEHEMOTH AND OBSCURA ANNOUNCE HEADLINING NORTH AMERICAN TOURS (WITH SOME VERY IMPRESSIVE SUPPORT)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 162018
 

 

I’ll make this quick:

First, within the last hour or so, Behemoth announced a North American tour (Ecclesia Diabolica America 2018) with support from At the Gates and Wolves in the Throne Room. It begins on October 20th in Phoenix and ends on November 24th in Los Angeles, and includes stops in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Edmonton, as well as 18 U.S. States. Here’s the current schedule: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 5): ANTIGAMA, ARCHSPIRE, BENIGHTED

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  7 Responses »
Jan 162018
 

 

We’ve arrived at the fifth installment of this rapidly expanding list of Most Infectious Songs released last year. As I did with yesterday’s edition, I had a kind of organizing theme in deciding to group the following three songs together. And the theme is perhaps better expressed through this famous visual than in words.

ANTIGAMA

We had the good fortune to premiere an eye-popping video created by Chariot of Black Moth for a head-wrecking, bombing-run of a track called “Now” off Antigama’s latest EP, Depressant, along with a review of the EP. Although “Now” isn’t the song I’ve added to the list, I did want to excerpt DGR’s review by way of introducing the track I did choose. Continue reading »

ARCHSPIRE: “RELENTLESS MUTATION”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Sep 182017
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Vancouver’s Archspire.)

If you’re even vaguely aware of the comings and goings of the modern Tech Death scene, then chances are you’ll have heard the names Archspire and The Lucid Collective (the band’s 2014 album) before now.

Famous (or perhaps infamous) for their shameless dedication to ludicrous speed, as well as their ability to change direction faster than a TRON light-cycle (ask your parents…), the band are (rightly) held up as an example of Technical Death Metal at its most outrageously and enjoyably OTT, with everything (and I do mean everything) turned up well past 11.

There are those, however, who believe that the Canadian quintet’s addiction to excessive velocity is a flagrant example of style over substance, and that the spitfire vocals of motormouth mic-slinger Oli Peters, impressive though they might be, are little more than a gimmick designed to disguise the group’s lack of finesse in the songwriting department.

Well, it appears that the band must have taken some of these criticisms under advisement when putting together their new album, as this is one area in particular where Relentless Mutation improves upon its predecessor in leaps and bounds. Continue reading »

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