INDRICOTHERE: “II”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
May 122013
 

Indricotheriinae are an extinct subfamily of giant, long-limbed, hornless rhinoceroses. They are the largest land mammals that have ever lived. Indricothere is also the name that Colin Marston gave a solo project that he used to record some songs he wrote before forming Behold… the Arctopus.

Indricothere’s first album (self-titled) came out in 2007. This morning I discovered to my surprise that Marston has just today released a second Indricothere album entitled II, which is available for purchase on Bandcamp.

I’ve been listening to the album, which is entirely instrumental, and it’s blowing my fuckin’ mind. There is no pithy way of describing it. Stylistically, its principal kinship is with technical death metal, but it’s part black metal, part prog, part post-metal, and part avant-garde, too. The music is dense, intricate, constantly changing, intensely interesting. Of course, it’s also a high-wire acrobatic performance that will drop jaws. Also, heads will bang. Continue reading »

GORGUTS ON THE MOVE

 Metal News  1 Response »
Mar 282012
 

Yesterday, I wrote about an exciting new band named Crator who have finally surfaced some new music after first being cryptically mentioned in an update written by John Longstreth for Sick Drummer magazine in 2010. In addition to being one of the members of Crator and the drummer for Origin, Longstreth is also the current drummer for Gorguts.

When it comes to technical death metal, Gorguts occupies a place in rarified air. It has gone through several iterations divided by long periods of inactivity, with legendary vocalist/guitarist Luc Lemay being the only constant.  The band’s last album, From Wisdom To Hate, was released 11 years ago, but word surfaced about three years ago that Lemay was reviving Gorguts yet again — this time with the line-up filled out by Longstreth and by Dysrhythmia bandmates Kevin Hufnagle and Colin Marston.

Since then, Gorguts die-hards have been waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting for new music. It appears we will finally get to hear some of what the new line-up have been creating, because it was announced yesterday that Gorguts have been added to the U.S. DEATH TO ALL TOUR 2012. Continue reading »

DYSRHYTHMIA: “TOWARDS THE END”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 052011
 

July 7, 2009. That’s how long it’s been since Brooklyn-based Dysrhythmia released their last album, Psychic Maps. However, the latest news is that they’ve finished recording a 4-song “pre-production” demo on their way toward completion of a new album for release sometime in 2012. Today, they made one of those songs available for free download on their Bandcamp page.

If Dysrhythmia is a new name for you, they’re a three-man instrumental project that currently consists of Kevin Hufnagel (Gorguts) on guitar, Colin Marston (Krallice, Behold . . . the Arctopus, Gorguts) on bass, and Jeff Eber on drums. These are not average musicians. Both in their conception of music and in their performance, they’re very much top-shelf. What they do is unpredictable, even avant-garde, and I’ve always found their music really intriguing.

The new song is very much in the Dysrhythmia vein. It’s a slow build, growing in complexity and speed, like a brain that becomes increasingly engaged and focused until all the synapses are firing with neural bursts — until the music collapses into a pool of quivering sludge near the end. It’s brainy music, but with a bit of brawn to it as well — like a big dog solving quadratic equations that periodically remembers it’s a dog and begins to bark and growl before returning to his work.

Go past the jump to hear the new song and get the link for the download if you like what you hear. Continue reading »

KRALLICE’S “DIOTIMA”: A CRITIQUE

 Album Reviews  17 Responses »
Apr 112011
 

(Regular NCS contributor BadWolf continues to explore an alternative to traditional album reviews in this, his latest “critique”. The subject is the new offering from New York’s Krallice, scheduled for release by Profound Lore on April 26.)

Krallice’s Diotima record reminds me most of the scene in David Fincher’s Fight Club where the narrator and Tyler Durden are speeding in a car along a bridge and release the steering wheel. Speed increases, their trajectory veers, and tension increases because the logical conclusion is not foregone, but seems pretty inevitable. The anxiety, the dark sound in that scene comes from a desire to see the characters crash and by proxy for the audience to feel the impact of a death, or near-death, experience. Sartre was obsessed with looking off the edges of cliffs because he felt (and believed all people felt) a sublime desire to jump.

Krallice in 2011 feels like that razor’s edge between stillness and leaping when the band fires on all cylinders. There is a constant sense of swerving momentum which is in the most focus. The feeling is not unique to Krallice—Iron Maiden’s Aces High is about harnessing the freefall effect, and at their best Metallica and Gojira can evoke the same reaction. Diotima is the first record I’ve heard to emphasize it to this degree.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »