MISCELLANY (NO. 3)

 MISCELLANY  16 Responses »
Jul 252010
 

Time for another installment of this Twitter-ish log in which I presume you’re interested in how I spent my morning, skipping over such vital details as what I ate for breakfast, what I’m wearing, and where my cat is licking himself right now.

Have no fear, this is just a log of the metal I listened to and watched in my latest internet browsing session — following up on press releases, MySpace add requests, and e-mail recommendations, and just some general fucking around. In all cases (with one exception), I had no previous exposure to the bands, and so no real clue whether what I found would be good, bad, or indifferent.

So, here’s what I did, in order of doing it, with no filtering and no guarantees that any of this will be worth your time — though I’m guessing most of what I found will be as new to you as it was to me. The bands I checked out are: Hellish Outcast (Norway); Citi (California); Episode 13 (Turkey); Darkness Dynamite (France); The Forrest Gump Mile High Marathon (Mars); and the one exception mentioned above, Bloodbath (Sweden).

HELLISH OUTCAST

I started off by exploring the music of Hellish Outcast, which is from that historical hot-bed of black metal, Bergen, Norway. We’d received a press release announcing the news that Thebon, frontman for the awesome Keep of Kalessin, would be joining Hellish Outcast as its new vocalist. (Have no fear KOK fans, Thebon hasn’t left that band, he’s just pulling double-duty). And then I found out that one of Hellish Outcast’s founders and its current drummer is Mads Lillevedt, who’s a member of the also-awesome Bergen band Byfrost. (We reviewed the latest albums by KOK and Byfrost here and here.)

That was more than enough incentive to visit the band’s MySpace page (here) and listen to some tunes from their 2008 EP, with the inviting title, Raping – Killing – Murder. And I’ll tell you what I thought — after the jump. Continue reading »

CITI

 Album Reviews  32 Responses »
Jul 242010
 

I first came across the band Citi via a MySpace “add” request we received from them — and from the first listen they spun my head around so hard, I felt like that possessed, bile-spewing chick in The Exorcist.

Initially, I was going to mention them briefly in the next episode of our “Miscellany” series, but I got so intrigued by the first few songs on their MySpace page that I downloaded and listened to their entire debut album (self-released last December), which they make available for free via a link on MySpace.

By devoting that much time, I took them out of the “Miscellany” category — and by getting completely skull-fucked by the music, I became convinced that I owed them a post.

From Bakersfield and Gonzales, California, Citi describe themselves (maybe with tongue in cheek) as “a melodic thrash death black progressive metal band.” There are a few genre labels that didn’t make it into that description, but not many.

But hey, I’m not going to argue with how Citi describes their music. It’s actually pretty accurate. Besides, since the inside of my cranium now feels like it’s been carpet-bombed by this music, I’m not prepared to argue about much of anything at the moment. I’m simply floored by this album. (more after the jump, including some tracks to stream . . .) Continue reading »