SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): ANIMA NOSTRA, ASHCLOUD, COLD INSIGHT, KAFIRUN, SADIST, WEREGOAT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 282017
 

 

As I mentioned earlier today, I returned to Seattle very late last night after a 4-day road trip for my day job. While away, I didn’t have time to pull together round-ups of new music that I was noticing, so I have some catching up to do. This is the first installment of that catching-up exercise, which will continue with at least one more part either later today or tomorrow. The music here is organized in alphabetical order by band name, and I’ve tried to provide variety in each of these installments.

ANIMA NOSTRA

I wasn’t familiar with Anima Nostra before hearing this first song, but I’ve learned that it’s a collaboration between Henrik Nordvargr Björkk (Sweden) and Margaux Renaudin (France). The two of them released an album named Anima Nostra last year, and now they’ve taken that as their band name.

Their second album, Atraments, will be released by Malignant Records (digitally and on digipak CD) on June 2nd. I gather from press announcements that the sound now differs from their first collaborative effort, “taking the more intimate ritual ambient aspects of the debut, and incorporating them as part of towering constructs that blur the line between death industrial, doom metal, and neo-classical”. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JONNY PETTERSSON (WOMBBATH, HENRY KANE, ASHCLOUD, JUST BEFORE DAWN)

 LISTMANIA 2016  7 Responses »
Dec 142016
 

 

(Jonny Pettersson is a busy man, with leading roles in such groups as Wombbath, Ashcloud, Just Before Dawn, and Ursinne, as well as his excellent new solo project Henry Kane. Fortunately, he found time to graciously accept our invitation to share a year-end list of favorite releases.)

 

brutally-deceased-satanic-corpse

1. Brutally Deceased – Satanic Corpse (Death metal)

This album had me blown away. It’s the perfect mix of buzzsaw death metal and blasting brutality.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ASHCLOUD, BABYMETAL, BAT, THE BODY AND FULL OF HELL, DARKEND, DEVILDRIVER, ENTROPIA, FALLUJAH, GLORIA MORTI, HAIL OF BULLETS, MANTAR, MODOK, MOONSORROW, OCTOBER TIDE, PURGATORY, VICTIMS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 192016
 

Ashcloud-Children of the Chainsaw

 

Last week was another one in which I noticed lots of new songs and videos but didn’t have time to round them up, in part because I was writing about a flood of new songs that we were premiering ourselves. So now I’m doing what I failed to do earlier — but because I waited, the round-up has become jumbo-sized. Consequently, I’ve kept my introductions to the music brief and haven’t taken the time to consistently add album art or links as I usually do. When I did something like this last weekend (except with even fewer words), I said I didn’t intend to make a habit of it. I still don’t.

For those who pay attention to such things, I also failed to post Part 3 of the Shades of Black series I began at the start of the week. But I will do that tomorrow. Now, presented in alphabetical order, here are new songs and videos from 17 bands.

ASHCLOUD

On May 1, Xtreem Music will release the new album by Sweden’s Ashcloud. The album’s title tells you a lot of what you need to know about the music: Children of the Chainsaw. Here’s the title track — smoking, tree-felling, crusty Swedish death metal that’s awfully damned sweet. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2015: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JONNY PETTERSSON (WOMBBATH, ASHCLOUD, JUST BEFORE DAWN, and more)

 LISTMANIA 2015  12 Responses »
Dec 152015
 

Jonny Pettersson

(We invited Jonny Pettersson — vocalist and riff-maker at Wombbath, Lieutenant General at Just before Dawn, and vocalist/guitarist at Ashcloud (among many other projects) — to let us share with our readers his year-end list for 2015, and we are grateful that he agreed!)

I started this list thinking that this year it would be easy to pick the top 10. Halfway through I realized that, as always, there are too many good releases to make easy choices. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ASHCLOUD, AHAMKARA, AND PERDITOR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 062014
 

 

If you’ve been regularly visiting our site over the last week then you’ve seen me bitching and whining about having to work day and night on a project for my fucking day job on the other side of the continent from Seattle. I’ll finally be able to head home tomorrow, where other projects lie in wait like a school of piranha.

Today, after finally getting to sleep like a hibernating bear overnight, I’m not working (much) and I got the chance to check out some songs I’ve been meaning to hear. I’ve packaged some of them together in this post and hope you’ll like them as much as I have.

ASHCLOUD

Ashcloud is the new name of a band once known as Skinbag, whose members are Sweden’s Jonny Pettersson (Wombbath, Syn:drom, Skineater) and UK-based Gareth Nash (Body Harvest). They’ve recently signed with Spain’s Xtreem Music, and spring of 2015 will see the release of their debut album Abandon All Light, which will include remastered versions of songs from an unreleased Skinbag EP plus new Ashcloud tracks. The temporary cover art you see above will be replaced by artwork by Daniel Devilish. Continue reading »