I’m still grateful to my friend Andy, whose Waxing Lyrical series continues to relieve my compulsion to come up with something new to post here on Saturdays. And as you can see, I’m still not completely free of the compulsion. I’ve also now abandoned the goal of this week-long series of Quick Hits as a vehicle for catching up on new music from the last two weeks. For the third day in a row, I’ve again been diverted by late-breaking releases: Everything collected here appeared yesterday or the day before.

THE SPIRIT

Last fall Germany’s The Spirit self-released an enormously impressive debut album entitled Sounds From the Vortex. In April, Nuclear Blast announced that they had signed the band, and yesterday revealed that they would be re-issuing Sounds From the Vortex on August 10th in CD, LP, and digital editions (with new cover art). To celebrate the occasion, Nuclear Blast released a lyric video for an album track named “The Clouds of Damnation“, which happens to be my favorite track from that record. And so, although many of you are no doubt familiar with the music through that previous self-release, I wanted to start today’s round-up with that new video. Continue reading »