SEEN AND HEARD: HELLISH OUTCAST, BLASPHEMOPHAGHER, RWAKE, MOMENTUM

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 242012
 

Here’s another round-up of things I saw and heard over the last 24 hours that I didn’t have room to include in yesterday afternoon’s post (the one that included new offerings from Aeon, Tardive Dyskinesia, and Zubrowska): New videos from Hellish Outcast (Norway) and Rwake (U.S.), new Paolo Girardi artwork and bittersweet news about Blasphemophagher (Italy), and a new song from Momentum (Iceland).

HELLISH OUTCAST

Please tell me you already know about this band.  If you can’t tell me that, then please read Andy Synn’s review of their 2012 album, Your God Will Bleed. It included such gems as this:

“Not only do Hellish Outcast not do black metal, they also don’t do nice. Or comfortable. Or anything less aggressive than a rabid pit-bull that’s been force-fed a diet of sand and barbed wire. In fact, this album is so damned aggressive, so utterly hate-filled, that it should come with a warning label along the lines of:

Danger – the levels of testosterone and aggression on this album could cause permanent damage to your underlying genetic structure.”

Or maybe you read Andy’s review and skipped the music because you wished to preserve your current genetic structure. If so, then you’ll probably want to skip Hellish Outcast’s brand new official video for “Djinn”. Since I already have a mutated genetic structure, I dived right in.

Fuckin’ love this song, from the skin-flaying death/thrash start straight through to the infernal melodic slow-down at the end. Video accompaniment is live performance footage from the Inferno Fest, edited by the band’s vocalist Thebon (Keep of Kalessin).  Prepare to be mutated. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: PAOLO GIRARDI (plus TYRANTS BLOOD, WARPSTONE, and STAV)

 Eye-Catchers  19 Responses »
Apr 092012
 

I first came across Paolo Girardi’s name when writing about the Italian nuclear incinerator known as Blasphemophagher (here). Girardi painted the cover art for Blasphemophagher’s latest album, The III Command of the Absolute Chaos, which you can see above. He has painted many more album covers for metal bands, though it took a link from Rev. Will to one of Girardi’s most recent creations to remind me that I intended to explore his work in depth.

Girardi, who is also from Italy, doesn’t limit himself to album art for metal bands. He also paints landscapes, for example, such as these:

Girardi-Finnish landscape Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 42: BLASPHEMOPHAGHER, TEITANBLOOD, AND DIOCLETIAN

 MISCELLANY  10 Responses »
Mar 112012
 

 

Almost a month ago I paid homage to the often disturbing but intensely magnetic “war metal” of Canada’s Mitochondrion. That led to a discussion in the Comments about what to call this kind of music. “Atmospheric death metal”? “Apocalyptic prog”? “Post-death metal?” Maybe “war metal” is as good a name as any.

The Comments also filled up with suggestions for other bands who have created similar kinds of soundtracks for Armageddon — not necessarily the exact same kind of music, but similar in the violent, apocalyptic atmospheres they conjure up. I picked three of those bands to feature in this post. This is a MISCELLANY post because I was unfamiliar with the music of each band (with one slight exception that I’ll mention later).

As per the self-imposed rules of MISCELLANY, I’ve randomly picked a song or two from each band, recorded my impressions, and then included the same songs for you to hear. The bands are: Blasphemophagher (Italy), Teitanblood (Spain), and Diocletian (New Zealand).

BLASPHEMOPHAGHER

This first band is the slight exception I mentioned. Blasphemophagher’s October 2011 album The III Command of the Absolute Chaos made Tr00 Nate’s list of his 30 favorite albums of 2011 that we published here, and I listened at that time to the sample song he picked, “Beyond Absolute Chaos”. So this time I decided to pick two different songs from the album. I chose “Chaostorm of Atomization” and “Abominable Nuclear Penetration”, because the names sounded so pleasant. Continue reading »