AN NCS INTERVIEW: FATHER BEFOULED

 Interviews  No Responses »
Sep 252024
 

(French NCS contributor Zoltar returns today with an interview he recently conducted with Justin Stubbs, the focus being on Father Befouled and their newest release via Everlasting Spew, but also touching on the status of Stubbs‘ other projects.)

While their early years were plagued by various, and a tad reductive, accusations of simply trying to be more Incantation than Incantation themselves, from their 2012 album Morbid Destitution Of Covenant onwards, Father Befouled have been carefully crafting their own brand of dark death metal, one release at a time, with 2022’s Crowned In Veneficium proving to be another highlight.

By the time you’ll be reading this, the band will be in the middle of a two-week European tour with label mates Fossilization. As they have a new EP out named Immaculate Pain, whose video for the title-track was premiered on NCS on July 30th, we took that opportunity to talk with their main man Justin Stubbs about this new slab of brutality, their latest line-up shift. and why he will always have something blasphemous to say. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FATHER BEFOULED — “IMMACULATE PAIN”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 302024
 

Any year that witnesses a new release from Father Befouled is a year doomed to experience new terrors, as if all the other terrors of human existence weren’t sufficiently severe. In the context of their jaw-dropping last album, 2022’s Crowned in Veneficum (for which we were privileged to host two premieres), we wrote:

Father Befouled revel in sounds of unholy terror in this new album. They display frightening mastery in their ability to combine visceral rhythmic power with music and vocals that radiate unearthly eeriness, blood-congealing horror, and ravaging madness — and the songs’ macabre melodic hooks get stuck in the head too.

That was then, this is now, and now we have a new Father Befouled EP to blot out light on the horizon. Its perfectly descriptive title is Immaculate Pain, and Everlasting Spew Records will inflict it upon us on Friday the 13th of September. Once again, we have a premiere, presented with a lyric video, to help usher in this malignant new beast. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FATHER BEFOULED — “SALIVATING FAITHLESSNESS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 152022
 

At the end of last month we premiered “Katabatic Deliverance“, a song off the forthcoming fifth album by the harrowing Georgia-based death metal band Father Befouled, and now it’s our diabolical pleasure to bring you another track off this jaw-dropping new record.

The name of the album is Crowned in Veneficum. In case your Latin is rusty, veneficum is connected to the word veneficus, which connotes both poison and sorcery. And this new song you’re about to hear, “Salivating Faithlessness“, is indeed a dose of poisonous aural sorcery. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FATHER BEFOULED — “KATABATIC DELIVERANCE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 282022
 

At one time or another every human being will become personally acquainted with horror. The horror of disease (mental and physical), the horror of violence, the horror of dying and death, the horror spawned by our own imaginations — one or more or all, they wait for us, as unavoidable as the sunset.

Tremendous amounts of human energy are devoted to keeping them at bay (fruitlessly), but once encountered they’re not easily forgotten. People try to whitewash them away with philosophies and prayer, but those are like thin coats of paint on a picket fence long gone to rot. Other people stare at them with clear eyes, refuse to look away, and even embrace them.

Which brings us to the unholy Georgia-based death metal band Father Befouled and the song we’re premiering from their new album Crowned in Veneficum. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MAJESTIC DOWNFALL, FORLET SIRES, HYPERDONTIA, FATHER BEFOULED, GOD SYNDROME, NECKBEARD DEATHCAMP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 202019
 


Majestic Downfall – great photo by Luis Roa

 

I decided to begin this Saturday round-up with a rare news item (because it involves a band that’s a personal favorite) and then get into a bunch of new music. It’s not nearly enough new music to make up for the fact that I only managed one other round-up over the last three weeks, but it’s the best I can do for today. I siphoned off most of the black metal from my selections, and those will appear in the usual Sunday column, which is already shaping up to be a two-parter. Instead of Shades of Black, today’s picks could be called Shades of Death.

MAJESTIC DOWNFALL

Here’s the news item, which is a rarity because we’re really not set up to share the word about new tour announcements, since that would become a full-time job, and I’d rather spend the time writing about new music. But in this instance I made an exception, because it concerns Majestic Downfall, and in particular an excursion by that fine Mexican band into the provinces of The Great White North. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FATHER BEFOULED — “UNGODLY REST”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Jun 092017
 

 

Five years on from the release of Revulsion of Seraphic Grace, the Georgia death metal monstrosity known as Father Befouled returns with its fourth album, Desolate Gods. It will be released by Dark Descent Records on the 23rd of June, and it includes the terrifying new track we’re about to premiere — “Ungodly Rest“.

Prepare yourselves for a deep descent into a nightmarish crypt filled with still-festering corpses and hungering ancient evil, for what you’re about to hear is the kind of staggering doom and seething death that spawns such visions. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (SATURDAY): VALLENFYRE, DECREPIT BIRTH, FATHER BEFOULED, IMPETUOUS RITUAL, DYING FETUS, WRECHE, THE FATHER OF SERPENTS, RED FANG

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
May 202017
 


Vallenfyre

 

I’m in Austin, Texas, this weekend. I didn’t think I would have time to do any NCS stuff, but did find myself with some time this morning — though not enough time to do much writing. What I’ve done instead is just collect a bunch of new song streams and videos and some basic info about each one.

I might be able to do the same thing tomorrow, but probably not more than that. Hope you find some things to like in the following eclectic collection. Continue reading »

RITUAAL

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
May 212013
 

What drew my attention to Rituaal were the band’s members: They consist of guitarist/vocalist Justin Stubbs from Father Befouled and Encoffination, drummer Jake Rothlisberger from Nashville’s Mourner, and vocalist/guitarist Mike Meacham from Loss — killer bands, all of them. That trio formed Rituaal a little over a year ago and recorded two songs in September 2012 that will be released as a 7″ vinyl EP by Portland’s Parasitic Records this summer. Recently, Rituaal put up both songs for streaming on Bandcamp — “Ordo Walpurga” and “Datura at the Astral Sabbat”.

Imagine a musical black hole deep in a gravity well that’s inexorably sucking all light and matter down into its powerful vortex, and that will give you some sense of “Ordo Walpurga”. It’s a massive, groaning dirge of distorted chords and ponderous drum and cymbal hits, emanating a morbid melody and echoing with the cavernous roars and disemboweling shrieks of the vocalists.

“Datura at the Astral Sabbat” vibrates with unholy blackened energy. What begins as a ritualized chant of abraded vocals and thumping percussion accelerates into a buzz of tremolo-picked guitars and then slows to a crawl, still shrouded in distortion and breathing with the life of shimmering occult melody. This trade-off between ghastly doom/death and blackened misery continues until this beast gasps its last horrific sound. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: WATAIN, FATHER BEFOULED, NOTHNEGAL, AND I KILLED EVERYONE

 Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
May 152013
 

I came across some news today involving three bands I like.  Unfortunately, the news involves releases that we can’t yet hear, but at least the news brings album art that’s pleasing to mine eyes. And then I came across one other piece of eye-catching new artwork that introduced me to a new band and a new song that I’m pretty sure fractured my skull . . . as if I needed any more skull fractures. Here’s what I found:

WATAIN

As we previously reported, this Swedish black metal band have a new album named The Wild Hunt coming on August 19 in Europe and August 20 in the US via Century Media Records. Today I learned that they will first be releasing a two-song single, both digitally and in a variety of physical formats, in late June. One song will be an original album track named “All That May Bleed”, and the B-side will be a cover of “Play With the Devil”, originally recorded by the Swedish black/heavy metal band Taiwaz in 1988; Gottfrid Åhman from In Solitude has contributed a guitar solo to that cover track.

Above, you can see the just-disclosed artwork for the single, which is quite cool and was created by the amazing Zbigniew Bielak II, whose work for Ghost we featured at length here. As for the original song, here’s what Watain had to say about “All That May Bleed”:

“‘All that May Bleed’ shows but one facet of a quite diverse album, but we chose this song as a first glimpse into ‘The Wild Hunt’ because of its bombastic lunacy and white-eyed malevolence which could be said to constitute a main foundation for the album. The lyric is an invitation to sacrificial blood letting, ecstatic zealotry and human sacrifice. The salt of Satan in the wounds of Christ!”

Well then, if this is an invitation to sacrificial blood letting, ecstatic zealotry, and human sacrifice, I accept! Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 5)

 Forthcoming Albums  6 Responses »
May 022011
 


What the hell is that big yellow thing up in the sky? It looks vaguely familiar, but it’s appeared so rarely here in The Emerald City over the last six months that we’re having trouble placing the name. Well, maybe the name will come to us. The great wheel of the seasons surely must continue to turn someplace, but in Seattle it seems to have been stuck on Winter since, like, forever. In some parts of the world, April showers bring May flowers, but here, April showers will probably bring . . . May showers.

Okay, enough whining. At least we don’t get tornados dropping from the sky like atom bombs and wiping whole towns off the map. And even though the weather hasn’t been our friend, we have metal to make up for the cold shoulder — and there’s a bunch of new metal headed our way.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. Continue reading »

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