MISCELLANY NO. 16

 MISCELLANY  23 Responses »
Oct 232010
 

Time again to brachiate out into the arboreal ether of metalness, swinging randomly from limb to limb in search of new music we’ve not heard before, and hoping we don’t face-plant into the edged bark of an ugly tree.

Yes, it’s another edition of MISCELLANY, in which we randomly check out music from bands we’ve not heard before. We go, we listen, we record our thoughts, we lay it out for you as we heard it, regardless of the outcome. It’s a tour into the unknown, a somewhat reckless exploration, swinging from vine to vine, venturing deeper into the metallic jungle, sometimes throwing our feces at unsuspecting ground-dwellers below.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, MISCELLANY. So, we keep our running list of bands that look interesting, and then we see if the music pans out. Yesterday, I checked out three diverse bands from distant shores: Evocation (Sweden), Amberian Dawn (Finland), and Metal Safari (Japan). And here’s what I found:

EVOCATION

We recorded the name of this Gothenburg band (pictured above) on our list based on a Blabbermouth report about the impending release of their third album, Apocalyptic, on Cyclone Empire Records (it will issue in Europe on October 29 and in North America on November 9).

To be brutally honest, we put them on our MISCELLANY list mainly because of the album cover, by an artist named Xaay, who has created covers for Behemoth, Nile, and Vader. If you know those bands, you’ll recognize the style of the art . . . which you can see after the jump. Continue reading »

MORE 2010 SICKNESS (Part 9)

 Forthcoming Albums  9 Responses »
Sep 302010
 

Another month has passed. The fall season is approaching — unless you live in Los Angeles, which is pretending that it’s Phoenix in August. Fuck is up with that? It’s like that town has been placed in a cosmic microwave and the user likes his burritos very well done.

On the other hand, we’ve had way too many grey, chilly days in Seattle this September, which is traditionally one of the best months of the year. The weather gods have clearly dropped acid over the last 30 days and forgotten which end is up. But eventually they will get themselves straight, remember which season is approaching, and get ready to just blast the fuck out of our whole country with a vicious winter. Won’t that be fun?

No, it won’t be fun. It will suck like a new-born piglet at dinner time. But one pleasant constant will remain true — there will be new metal, regardless of how foul the weather becomes. And that brings us to another monthly installment of  METAL IN THE FORGE, a forge being the old name for a place where a blacksmith heats metal and works it into the shape of something useful.

And that’s what we’re interested in — new metal that will be useful in scrambling our brains, or uplifting us to a place where it really doesn’t matter what the fucking weather is doing.

What we do in this series of posts is update the list of forthcoming new albums we first posted on January 1. (All the other updates can be found via the “Forthcoming Albums” category link on the right side of our pages.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases we didn’t know about at the time of our previous updates, or updated info about some of the previously noted releases.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs from other sites, or from press releases, about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Perhaps needless to say, these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site — the kind that would like to tear your head off.

So, after the jump, in alphabetical order, you’ll find our list of cut-and-pasted items from various sources since our last update about forthcoming new releases. Continue reading »

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