SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MASSACRE, FLESHROT, ENTRAILS, AMON AMARTH, ANTIGAMA, ANCIENT DEATH, NEGATIVE 13, SUFFER IN SILENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 042022
 

 

This has been a discombobulating week for me, which began with a long trip back to Seattle on Monday from a crazy time at Maryland Deathfast and stumbling into my house at 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Apart from being worn out, I had the thrill over the next few days of learning that about half the people I traveled and hung out with at MDF, all of whom were vaxxed-up, were testing positive for covid. (If you were at MDF you need to get tested even if you feel fine, because MDF is showing strong signs of being a super-spreader event.)

I also had a ton of shit to catch up with at my day job, and things to do in the planning for Northwest Terror Fest, which is fast approaching. On top of that, my spouse and I had a house guest for one of those days. And on top of that, I paid almost no attention to new releases while I was in Baltimore.

Long story short, I’m way behind on what’s been happening with new songs and videos. That makes today’s selections even more random than usual.

MASSACRE (U.S./Sweden)

I decided to begin with a heaping helping of rotten red meat for lovers of old school death metal, beginning with a track off a forthcoming EP by the venerable Massacre. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ENTRAILS, AU-DESSUS, KOLLAPSE, QRIXKUOR, SATANARCHIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
May 042017
 

 

Things are going to slow down here at NCS until early next week. As of this morning I’ve left Seattle with Ms. Islander for a short vacation, and blogging isn’t part of any planned activities. Any attempts by me to do any NCS stuff besides hurriedly post whatever I might receive from other contributors would be met with severe punishment, or at least a cold shoulder.

I thought I’d pull together a round-up of new music before we left, but found myself with too little time to write impressions of the songs I chose. So this will be more bare-bones than usual.

ENTRAILS

The last time I wrote about this band, almost exactly two years ago, I began by saying that, “By my lights, Sweden’s Entrails can pretty much do no wrong”. Back then the context was their new album Obliteration. Now they have a new one named World Inferno, which will be released by Metal Blade on June 16th. Continue reading »

ESSENTIAL ENTRIES: MAY 2015

 Listmania, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jun 162015
 

 

(In this post Dan Barkasi continues his monthly series recommending music from the previous month.)

Here we go again! With May long behind us, there was a lot of material to sift through, along with a hell of a time at Maryland Deathfest to remember. All good things!

Overall, May wasn’t the best month this year, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some gems to uncover. Quite a good amount, actually, with the selections coming from a broad spectrum. Hey, that’s why I’m here – to give you the goods from all over! I try to deliver. Maybe not as exciting as the pizza delivery guy bringing carb-loaded goodies, but I do what I can!

Onward! Continue reading »

WEEKEND ROUND-UP (PART 3): ENTRAILS, CUT UP, MAZE OF TERROR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
May 102015
 

 

I’m forging ahead with my weekend goal of collecting a dozen of the excellent new songs I discovered since the middle of last week. The first two installments of this extended round-up can be found here and here. There will be a fourth installment coming later today, and maybe a fifth one, because I’ve found even more exciting stuff since starting this project on Saturday morning. Also, Happy Mother’s Day. To celebrate, I thought we’d have some music that wants to tear your head off.

Those of you who regularly hang around here know that I’ve got a serious weakness for old school Swedish-style death metal. The first two songs in this collection are orbiting that particular star.

ENTRAILS

By my lights, Sweden’s Entrails can pretty much do no wrong. I already frothed at the mouth over the first advance track from their new album Obliteration (here), and last Thursday we got another new one courtesy of CVLT Nation. Continue reading »

MONDAY MASSACRES: ENTRAILS, FOEHAMMER, GENOCIDE SHRINES

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 302015
 

 

With a weekend of listening behind me, I’ve got a stack of new songs I want to recommend that rivals the height of a mighty redwood. Unfortunately, my brain is only the size of a mighty walnut, and I didn’t get enough of a head-start to pull them all together for a round-up today. So, here are three, and more will come tomorrow.

ENTRAILS

As regular readers know, I have a debilitating weakness for old-school Swedish death metal. If I don’t get my fix on a regular basis, I start to get the shakes and have even more trouble formulating complete sentences. Fortunately, one of the best of the current purveyors of obliterating Swe-death has a new album coming our way via Metal Blade, and this past weekend I caught up with the first single. The band is Entrails, the album is Obliteration (of course it is), and the song is “Beyond the Flesh”.

The roots of Entrails in this style of music go deep, the band having achieved their first incarnation in 1990. And despite moldering in the grave for a full decade, they’ve turned in one winner after another following their reanimation with 2010’s Tales From the Morgue. If “Beyond the Flesh” is a good indicator, the new album will be another one. Continue reading »

NEW SOUNDS: CARCASS, MERCENARY, MISERY SIGNALS, BEYOND, ENTRAILS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jul 102013
 

I mentioned in today’s first post that I was cut off from the interhole most of yesterday and missed lots of stuff that should have been the subject of yesterday’s posts. So I’m catching up. I’ve found so many interesting developments from both yesterday and this morning that I’m going to hold my verbiage to a rare minimum and let the music speak for itself.

CARCASS

The band’s first single (“Captive Bolt Pistol”) from their new album (Surgical Steel) proved controversial. (The song appeared on a CD exclusively sold with the 85th issue of the German “Legacy” Magazine in order to promote the Party.San Metal Open Air festival, and someone uploaded it to YouTube from there). The haters (I’m not one) seemed primarily to be those fans who think Carcass jumped the shark after Necroticism, and therefore they’re disappointed in the Heartwork-style stylings of the new song.

Yesterday brought us another taste, an official video teaser that appears to be a playthrough of an instrumental part of another song. Haters will still hate. I am still not one of them; I still like what I hear. You can listen to the teaser after the jump. But today also brought us the very cool album cover for Surgical Steel, which you can see above. It was created by British photographer Ian Tilton, who also did the cover for Necroticism. Now, here’s the teaser: Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: TARDIVE DYSKINESIA, PENTAGRAM (CHILE), ASG, AND ENTRAILS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 262013
 

Here’s another installment of things I saw and heard over the last 24 hours while merrily rambling along the by-ways of the interhole. The theme of this installment is METAL ART RULES!

TARDIVE DYSKINESIA

This Greek band’s debut release The Sea of See Through Skins was one of my favorite albums of 2009. One version of the album apparently included a bonus track named “Crawling Through the Mud”, though I don’t think it was on the copy of the CD I bought; at least I don’t see it on my iPod, which is where I transferred the music from the disc before eventually storing the CD away with a gazillion others that my spouse made me remove from our cluttered house.

And that’s all I can say about the wonderful artwork above that mysteriously appeared on Tardive Dyskinesia’s Facebook page yesterday. I don’t know who created it, and I don’t know what music it will eventually accompany. Maybe the band is about to release that bonus track as a single?

Anyway, the band’s 2012 album Static Apathy In Fast Forward ain’t too shabby either. Here’s TD’s cool official video, released earlier this month, for “Time Turns Planets” from that album. Prepare for a spine-jolting, head-scrambling experience. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2011’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 4

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011  1 Response »
Dec 292011
 

This is Part 4 of our list of the most infectious extreme metal songs released this year. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the Introduction via this link. To see the selections that preceded this one, click the Category link on the right side of the page called MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011.

For fans like me who are addicted to old-school, Swedish-style death metal, 2011 was a very good year. We’re in the midst of a revival, and it doesn’t show any signs of abating. One of the best releases of the year in this grisly genre was the second album by Sweden’s Entrails, The Tomb Awaits. Entrails originally came into existence in 1991, became moribund by 1998, but revived beginning in 2009. Their latest, Dan Swanö-produced offering reflects Entrails’ authentically deep roots in the scene.

As we wrote in our review of the album, “The music is a gargantuan beast, dripping with the remains of its last grisly meal of suppurating human flesh — and it’s a headbanger’s delight, too. . . . Dynamic vocals that are deliciously horrible, perfectly toned guitar-and-bass combos that sound like giant earth-moving equipment scooping up disease-infested masses of corpse meat, the booming assault of heartless drums, a surrounding aura of voracious evil — what’s not to like? The answer: Nothing. It’s all good.”

Entrails and their labels Dark Descent Records and FDA Rekotz gave us the chance to premiere a song from the album called “Remains In Red” along with the review, but “End of All Existence” is the most infectious of many catchy beasts on The Tomb Awaits. It’s also one of the most infectious extreme metal songs of the year, in my most humble opinion, so it’s our next addition to this list: Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 9)

 Forthcoming Albums  20 Responses »
Sep 032011
 


It’s Labor Day Weekend, August is a thing of the past, and as some people count it, summer is over. School is on the verge of resuming for people still attempting to educate themselves, and a ton of new metal tours are looming on the horizon for the fall. And of course, the fall will be filled with new album releases, too. Which brings us to the latest monthly edition of METAL IN THE FORGE.

You know the drill:  In these posts, we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — this isn’t a cumulative list. If we found out about a new album before August, we wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. And feel free to tell us about how we fucked up by omitting releases that you’re stoked about. Continue reading »

ENTRAILS’ “THE TOMB AWAITS”: A REVIEW AND A SONG PREMIERE

 Album Reviews  16 Responses »
Aug 232011
 

Just when I thought no one was going to give Disma a run for their money this year in the sweepstakes of monstrous, old-school death metal, Entrails has arrived with The Tomb Awaits. But the tomb is not awaiting. Entrails has already sealed us inside, and decaying undead things are starting to crawl hungrily in our direction.

The appeal of old-school, Swedish-style death metal never seems to wane, and you don’t have to look hard to find newer bands embracing the music as their own. But it takes more than retro affinity, old HM-2 distortion pedals, and guitars tuned to drop-Z to summon up the black spirits of old Dismember and Grave, Unleashed and Entombed. Authenticity is what we want, and Entrails brings it, while adding a special flair that also keeps the sound fresh (or freshly desiccated) without sacrificing the essential aura of festering putrescence.

Originally taking shape in 1991 in a small converted woodshed outside of Växjö, Sweden, Entrails have roots that sink deep into the morbid scene. The band died out by 1998 without ever releasing a demo of their material, but circa 2009, guitarist Jimmy Lundqvist resurrected some of the band’s old tapes and began to re-record the songs in a home studio, eventually recruiting Jocke Svensson (Birdflesh, Litania, Devilry) to provide the ghoulish vocals.

After producing a pair of demos and adding members to the band, Entrails finally released their debut album, Tales From the Morgue, in 2010, after mixing and mastering by the almighty Dan Swanö. As it happens, Mr. Swanö did the mix and master on the new album, too, in addition to contributing guest vocals. (more after the jump, including a song premiere from The Tomb Awaits . . .) Continue reading »