SHOW REVIEW: CHAOS AND CARNAGE – MAY 6, 2024 – THE ORPHEUM, TAMPA, FL

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
May 222024
 

(Daniel Barkasi provided us the following extensive report on the Tampa stop of the ongoing Chaos & Carnage Tour. All photos by: Brittany Barkasi @Turn off the Thunder)

The tour package dubbed Chaos & Carnage admittedly hasn’t always been a can’t miss for this scribe. Early adoptions didn’t completely appeal to my tastes, though there always have been a band or two that were very much in my wheelhouse. Variety is the spice of life, after all. Some have been outright dismissive of this tour package due to deathcore being a “dirty word,” but I’d argue that it’s way more logical to take each act on their own merits and go from there versus casting a wide net of negativity due to a label. You do you, though!

This year’s edition boasts the most varied and intriguing lineup to date. The mighty Cattle Decapitation are an all-timer, and were announced to be co-headlining with Carnifex. Support comes from Humanity’s Last Breath, Rivers of Nihil, The Zenith Passage, Vitriol, and Face Yourself. That’s a lot of bands that will get the blood pumping, and more importantly for yours truly, a diverse smattering of sound variances which could offer something for even the most discerning. 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 »

VIDEOGRAPHY: ABORTED, BLEEDING MALICE, BORIS, CARNIFEX, EX DEO, EYES OF PERDITION, FERAL LORD, INFERI, LOTUS THRONES, SARS, SCHIZOGOAT, SOMNURI, WORM SHEPHERD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 242021
 

 

Those of us in the metal trade know that Friday’s have become a dumping ground, or a deluge from above, or a flood tide… pick your metaphor for a day when a ton of new songs and videos drop. Yesterday was in that vein. With help from some other NCS slaves I made a giant list, and did a freestyle kick through it. Found a lot to like, and decided to grab a baker’s dozen of tracks for your entertainment, all of which happened to arrive with videos.

In terms of verbiage, I’m just going to ejaculate my immediate visceral reactions without fully formed sentences or consistent punctuation. Unless I just keep quiet I don’t know how else to manage commentary on so many songs and films, and of course keeping quiet would be sheer torture for moi.

ABORTED (Belgium)

A creepy, horror-drenched intro opens the book on a jolting and blazing calamity that soon goes berserk… despite its title, the song doesn’t really drag you to hell, it fires you into hell with a howitzer… and all the devils are there, ready to rip and ruin… but also to reveal the sweeping, bombastic glory of their awful domain…. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: BEYOND GRACE, CARCASS, AT THE GATES, VOICES, CARNIFEX, WHITE STONES

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 192021
 

 

As America’s reopening progresses, yesterday my work place re-started the in-office, in-person Friday afternoon happy hour event that had been a weekly mainstay for decades… even though our workplace is still officially closed to the public and employees are not required to be there, but permitted to be there if they’re fully vaccinated. Some people have taken advantage of that permission, for various reasons. But even people who haven’t chosen to do that showed up for the happy hour party late yesterday. We miss each other, and we have missed this alcohol-fueled tradition.

I wasted no time in getting hammered, and didn’t make it back home until close to 11 p.m. I don’t feel terrible this morning, just a bit groggier than usual, but I did sleep in. So I’m late in getting to this roundup, with almost no time to do the usual searching around for new music to recommend. Fortunately, my NCS co-conspirator DGR did that for me. He recommended everything I’ve collected here, except for the first item, which I knew I wanted to feature anyway, and he knew I was already aware of it.

Because I’m so late getting this thing together, I’m again (mostly) dispensing with my usual commentary, links, and artwork. In a couple of instances I’ve included what DGR wrote in recommending the thing, and I did identify for you the record that’s the source of each song, plus the release info. As it happens, all of these selections arrived with videos. Continue reading »

CARNIFEX: “WORLD WAR X”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 312019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new seventh studio album by Carnifex, which will be released by Nuclear Blast on August 2nd.)

As a wise (albeit fictional) man once said, “with great power, comes great responsibility.”

And, as one of the biggest and most famous bands in all of Deathcore, it could be argued that Carnifex have a real responsibility to act as leaders and shepherds for the genre which they once helped pioneer.

The question, of course, is… do they want to? Continue reading »

CARNIFEX: “SLOW DEATH”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 082016
 

Carnifex-Slow Death

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the new album by San Diego’s Carnifex.)

Who’d have thought it, but the modern Deathcore scene is now around 15 years old. And although the dreaded “D-word” is still used as a pejorative in certain circles I find it interesting to observe just how many of the genre’s early scions have gone on to change and (d)evolve over time.

Of course there are still those (both Despised Icon and The Acacia Strain immediately spring to mind) who have stayed relatively “true” to the style’s roots despite the passing of the years, but you don’t have to look far to see that many of the scene’s A-listers have long-since strayed into other arenas (sometimes quite literally).

Heck, Job For A Cowboy pretty much abandoned Deathcore with their very first (and still very Death Metal) album, while Suicide Silence transitioned towards a much more mainstream-friendly Nu-Metal influenced sound almost as rapidly. And I suppose the less said about Whitechapel’s recent decision to jump on the $lipknot train the better…

So with all this chopping and changing going on, where does this leave stalwart misanthropes Carnifex and their sixth album Slow Death? Continue reading »

TOURISM (AND NEW MUSIC): KATAKLYSM, BELPHEGOR, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, CARNIFEX

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 232015
 

Kataklysm-Belphegor tour

 

Just a few quick notes in here about three new North American tours that were announced within the last week. Two of the headlining bands — Kataklysm and The Black Dahlia Murder — also premiered new songs yesterday, so I’ve included a stream of them below as well.

KATAKLYSM / BELPHEGOR

This is an interesting mix of co-headliners — Canada’s Kataklysm (whose new album Of Ghosts and Gods was given an initial assessment by Andy Synn for us here) and Austria’s Belphegor (whose most recent album was 2014’s Conjuring the Dead). The complete schedule is below, but first, a video… Continue reading »

THE BEAUTY REPRESENTING THE BEAST (PART 1)

 Eye-Catchers  26 Responses »
Aug 112014
 

 

(Guest writer Ty Lowery has assembled a personal list of favorite metal album covers for 2014 to date, divided into two parts. Please feel free to add your own favorites in the Comments.)

Sometime last year, I had planned to showcase some of my favorite album covers. However, as you might imagine, that didn’t happen. So, a bit over halfway through 2014 already, I’ve decided to give it a go again so I don’t have to worry with trying to find everything last minute and become overwhelmed at year-end. I’ve been looking back at some of my favorite album covers, as well as looking at random covers here and there, and I must say, I’ve found a lot more than I expected- so many that I think it’s be best to break this up into a couple of posts.

I’ve actually happened upon some really cool bands this way, too, which isn’t out of the ordinary but worth noting nonetheless. Had it not been for their album art, I might never have found some of the following bands, one of which I simply can’t get enough of. However, to be clear, I’ve done this exercise for the sole purpose of rounding up the nicest looking album art, according to my own tastes. There are a couple of bands in here whose music I can’t stand, and a couple more I’d never heard of before. So to avoid any confusion, I am not necessarily recommending all of the albums featured below. They all just chose wisely for their album art.

Since I began working on this article, I noticed something peculiar: A good number of the album covers correlated in one sense or another with the music on the album. To make sure that I wasn’t just imagining this, I asked my wife (who’s not very big on metal music as a whole) and a friend of mine (who is) to look at the album art and give me their impressions. Some of them were spot-on, others not so much. Here’s what we came up with for the first nine. (Another note, these are in no particular order. They are just listed as I came upon them.)

Belphegor – Conjuring the Dead

This might be one of the best “photo realistic” album covers I’ve seen so far this year. It’s got the dark, gritty feel washing over it in shoals. The symbolism on the cover speaks of blasphemy, a great deal of death, and more than a smidge of Satanic interplay. When my wife Heather saw it, she immediately guessed that it was death metal, which is a good part of the album, so I’ll give it to her. My friend Adam said the same thing: “This had better be death metal.” Heather also hit the nail on the head about the dark/demonic themes that run throughout many of the songs. That’s a point for the correlation theory, although an easy one. Continue reading »

CARNIFEX: “DIE WITHOUT HOPE”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 062014
 

(Andy Synn reviews the forthcoming album by California’s Carnifex, with sample songs at the end.)

Deathcore is still a dirty word to a lot of folks. Despite the major strides made in proving it as a “legitimate” form of Death Metal, it’s still associated by some with nothing more than frat-boy misogyny, painfully blunt lyricisms, and a preference for dumbed-down-tuning and artificial bass drops.

Many of these big strides in salvaging the scene’s image can be attributed to three of its biggest and brightest stars. After the release of their first, more ‘core-inclined EP, Job For A Cowboy shifted almost immediately toward an increasingly devastating (and increasingly technical) Death Metal sound – dragging the genre’s expectations and potential along with them. The boys in Whitechapel have steadily worked to perfect the genre’s specific brand of murderous, misanthropic groove, while Carnifex – a prime specimen of Deathcore’s fundamental components and an example of its expanding boundaries – simultaneously worked to bring in new strains of influence from the outside.

After a year of self-imposed exile, the band have returned with their fifth album Die Without Hope, a merciless slab of Death Metal aggression and ‘core-ish misanthropy which, at its very best, brims with terrible potential and predatory promise. Continue reading »

CARNIFEX: A SONG PREMIERE + ALBUM DETAILS + TOUR NEWS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 162014
 

Once upon a time, long ago, when deathcore was a new thing, I was a fan. One of the bands I particularly enjoyed was Carnifex. As has been true of other early deathcore progenitors, their music has slowly evolved more in the direction of straight death metal. But their latest song, which premiered today in a lyric video, is a bit of a return to their roots. Its name is “Dragged Into the Grave” and it comes from their new album Die Without Hope, which will be released on March 4 in North Am and March 7 in Europe by Nuclear Blast. The cover art was created by Godmachine.

The new song will please Carnifex fans, and it will not change the minds of anyone who has written off the band based on previous experience. I’m featuring it here as much for nostalgic reasons as anything else (you can hear it after the jump).

In related news, it was announced yesterday that Carnifex will begin a U.S. Tour next month with support from Betraying the Martyrs, I Declare War, Here Comes the Kraken, and Assassins. Here’s the schedule: Continue reading »

 Older Entries