SEEN AND HEARD: WOLFHEART, ENSLAVED, DEVATHORN, COLISEUM, MINSK, BINARY CODE, CRETIN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Feb 272015
 

Tuomas Saukkonen (Wolfheart)

It’s the same old story. Metal is such an over-boiling cauldron of creativity that if you have to wait a few days to go exploring for new things, you find yourself up to your neck in hot water. Or at least that’s what happened to me yesterday.

Having failed to compile a round-up of new music since last Sunday, I felt overwhelmed when confronting how much I wanted to write about today. I had to make some hard choices about what to recommend, and even then I had to stifle my usual verbosity — time is a harsh mistress, and not in a good way. So, with a regrettable (to me) minimum of introductory comments, here’s a selection of what lit me up over the last 24 hours, presented in the order in which I saw and heard them. I’ll have a few more new items to share with you on Saturday.

WOLFHEART

Earlier this month Spinefarm Records re-released Winterborn, the fantastic album by Wolfheart that we praised to the skies (repeatedly) when it was first self-released by the band in 2013. The re-issue comes with two bonus tracks (“Isolation” and “Into the Wild”). Two days ago Wolfheart premiered a music video for the album’s first track, “The Hunt”, which shows scenes from the recording of the track. It’s a wonderful song (it was on our list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs), and any excuse to hear it again is welcome. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CRETIN’S “STRANGER”

 Premieres  11 Responses »
Dec 012014
 

 

Eight years ago Cretin made a big splash with the release of their debut album Freakery, but eight years in the world of metal seems like an ice age, and it’s a long time in the lives of human beings, too. As good as Freakery was, trying to predict what this band would accomplish with their new album Stranger would have been a fool’s errand. But there’s no more need for guessing games — Stranger is on the verge of being released, and you’re about to get the chance to hear it from start to finish.

Spoiler alert: it’s really, really good. It might be the best grind album of the year. It’s certainly one of the best metal albums of 2014. Now augmented by the addition of guitarist Elizabeth Schall (Dreaming Dead), Cretin are once again a force to be reckoned with. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ASCENSION, AT THE GATES, BLACK SHEEP WALL, CENTINEX, CRETIN, FAITH NO MORE, NAPALM DEATH, RAMMING SPEED, SATANIC WARMASTER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Nov 202014
 


Photo credit: Dustin Rabin

 

I need to whine for a couple of minutes. Yes, even I, with my usually sunny disposition, need to whine every now and then.

First, I’ve been getting so little sleep lately that my eyes are as red as a baboon’s ass. Second, I inflamed a muscle in my arm from curling massive amounts of weight at the gym, the kind of crushing weight that’s comparable to a grocery bag loaded with a single loaf of bread. Third, and most egregious of all, my fucking day job has been making me run the gauntlet the last two days, with no end in sight, leaving me no time for my usual self-appointed NCS duty of scouring the web for news and new music.

I do know about a bunch of song and album premieres that appeared over the last 24 hours, but only because of messages received from my co-writers and some sharp-eyed readers. I’ve collected streams or links to them in this post, but don’t have time to write about them or even provide album art or helpful links. Shit, I haven’t even listened to all of them. How embarrassing. Continue reading »

DEATH RITUALS: NECROMUTILATOR, CRETIN, NO MORE ROOM IN HELL, DEMONIC MANIFESTATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Oct 202014
 

As mentioned earlier today, I spent a chunk of time yesterday listening to new songs and found many to recommend. By happenstance, most of them were various flavors of death metal, so I altered the usual “Seen and Heard” title of these round-ups. And because I found so much new music I wanted to commend to your earholes, I divided it into two parts. Part One is here.

NECROMUTILATOR

Necromutilator are a three-man band from Mantua, Italy, whose existence I discovered by browsing the Facebook page of Elektroplasma Musik, who will be distributing the band’s debut album on Terror From Hell Records. The debut album is entitled Eucharistic Mutilations, and the one song from it I’ve found so far on the web is “Fuck With Darkness”. Continue reading »

TOURISM: CANNIBAL CORPSE, NAPALM DEATH, AND IMMOLATION

 Metal News  15 Responses »
Jan 232013
 

I think this qualifies as a HOLY FUCKING SHIT moment, and if you disagree then your mouth must be much better behaved than mine.

Word leaked last week about this tour, but yesterday it was confirmed, and dates were disclosed. The second annual DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR will include Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death, and Immolation. In other words, genuine death metal and grind royalty from both sides of the Atlantic.

Other face-ripping bands will join the sonic evisceration party on selected dates: Beyond Creation, Cretin, and Magrudergrind.

I have to say that DECIBEL is not fucking around, any more than they did last year for the Euro-centric inaugural edition of this tour (which featured Behemoth, Watain, The Devil’s Blood, and In Solitude). It’s refreshing to see a tour packaged without any effort to pander in any way to the tastes of people who don’t want to get their fuckin’ teeth kicked in. Continue reading »