SEEN AND HEARD: DARKENED, GRAVEYARD, ZURIAAKE, GEIST, KARST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 062019
 

 

I had time last night to check out a bunch of new songs that surfaced in recent days, and from that listening excursion I decided to pick the ones below for a Tuesday playlist. Serendipitously, all the bands have one-word names. However, both their locations and musical styles are diverse. You’ll encounter varieties of old school death metal, black metal, metallic hardcore, and death/crust — and I hope you’ll like all of it, because I sure as hell did.

DARKENED

Metal-Archives lists two long-defunct bands named Darkened, one from Sweden and one from the UK. The Darkened whose music I’ve chosen to begin today’s round-up is obviously neither of those, though the line-up of this new band does include members from Sweden and the UK — as well as the U.S. The band may be new, but those members will be known to many of you through their numerous other projects: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (PART 2): THY CATAFALQUE, GRAVEYARD, SKELETAL REMAINS, BLACK ROYAL, OUTER HEAVEN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 172018
 

 

Still playing catch-up after a week devoted mainly to premieres, I picked the following five tracks to conclude this two-part Saturday round-up. I’m definitely not caught up yet, but this will have to do for now. More catching up will happen tomorrow, with the usual Sunday focus on black metal.

THY CATAFALQUE

Tamás Kátai has recorded a new Thy Catafalque album, and I could hardly be more excited to hear it. If perchance you haven’t discovered Thy Catafalque, carve out some time this weekend and go explore the Bandcamp page, which I’ve linked below. I think you’ll find the music distinctive and enthralling.

The new album (the eighth one) is Geometria, and Season of Mist plans to release it on May 4. Tamás explains that this one includes violins, electronica, occasional saxophone, trumpet, and fretless bass, plus the voices of Martina Veronika Horváth (Nulah, Niburta) and Gyula Vasvári (Perihelion), in addition to his own. Viktoria Varga also provides narration. Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 13)

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 162016
 

collage

 

(Our Norwegian comrade Gorger returns with yet another collection of releases we haven’t previously reviewed.  To find more of his discoveries, visit Gorger’s Metal.)

The 13th chapter in the infamous “bellow radar” series is fittingly compiled on Friday 13th [but posted on the 6th because the editor was asleep at the switch — Islander]. If it will air on the same date is too early to tell, and no religion has any “gods of the internet” to turn to.

Still, I hope the date rubs off, and that you have just a little bit of bad luck today. Not much, though. We wouldn’t want that. Continue reading »

DISCOVERIES: PYRRHON AND GRAVEYARD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Feb 062014
 

This is just another one of those “Seen and Heard” posts, collecting new and noteworthy things I came upon over the last 24 hours. I was just getting tired of that title.

PYRRHON

Last September we reported that New York’s Pyrrhon had signed a deal with Relapse Records for the release of their second album, The Mother of Virtues, which was tracked and mixed by Ryan Jones (Today is the Day, Mutilation Rites) and mastered by Colin Marston (Gorguts, Dysrhythmia, Krallice). Yesterday the band disclosed the cover art for the new album, created by Caroline Harrison, and it hooked my eyes hard — really excellent.

In addition, the band premiered one of the album tracks, “Balkanized”. It’s a substantially re-worked version of a song that originally appeared on Pyrrhon’s 2012 demo. It will scramble heads, with horror-blasting roars over the top of squalling, shrieking, fret-burning guitars and a bounding rhythm section that justifies a listen all by themselves. It’s both technically impressive and thoroughly unhinged, both complex and carnivorous. And voracious, violently voracious. Continue reading »

GRAVEYARD RETURNS

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 172013
 

About a year ago I came across a Spanish death metal band named Graveyard via their just-released EP, The Altar of Sculpted Skulls. One of the initial attractions was the eye-catching, dread-inspiring, black-and-white artwork by Matt ‘Putrid’ Carr (Autopsy, Impetigo, Coffins, Hooded Menace, etc). The EP turned out to be just as spine-cracking, skull-bleaching, and deliciously morbid as the artwork (the review is here).

I am so happy to report that Matt Carr and Graveyard are back. Today the band announced that their new full-length album (their second) will be released on March 8 via War-Anthem Records. Its title is The Sea Grave, and Matt Carr has again created a great cover, with a Lovecraftian theme. Cthulhu! Tentacles!

Graveyard also released an edited version of a brand new track for streaming. The song is “The Visitations of the Great Old Ones”, and I’m really digging it. It alternately romps, stomps, and crawls, and it’s thoroughly saturated with the black ichor of occult horror. Have a listen after the jump. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GRAVEYARD

 Interviews  1 Response »
Feb 232012
 

Graveyard is a band from Barcelona, Spain, who I came across through their superb new EP released by Pulverised Records, The Altar of Sculpted Skulls (reviewed here). It caused me to ponder the question how a band can distinguish itself playing “old school” death metal without tinkering with the fundamental elements of the music in a way that destroys its authenticity. Graveyard pull off that trick; they succeed where other bands fail. They are also one of the few bands from Spain I’ve heard who devote themselves successfully to traditional death metal.

I had the chance to do an e-mail interview with Graveyard’s lead guitarist, Javi Bastard, who also runs his own recording studio. His answers are smart, funny, honest, insightful, and very interesting. Topics include Graveyard’s philosophy about music, observations about why Spain lagged much of Europe in the development of metal and about the current scene, the band’s approach to recording that old-school sound, recommendations about other Spanish bands, and future Graveyard releases. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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I should confess up front that I’m a newcomer to Graveyard, with “The Altar of Sculpted Skulls” being my first exposure to your music.  How would you say it compares to the band’s previous releases?

Javi Bastard: I think “The Altar of Sculpted Skulls” sounds more spontaneous than our previous works, at least more than “One with the Dead”, in my opinion. The 4 new songs on “Altar…” were written and rehearsed in just 1 month or so while the songs on “One with the Dead” took us much longer… When we wrote/rehearsed “One with the Dead”, the band had existed for just 1 year and a half or so, now we’re getting closer to our 5th anniversary as a band so I think that explains a few things. In my opinion, “Altar…” is the first GRAVEYARD release where you can actually find a band with its “own style” (considering the small room left for “own style” when you play this kind of classic Death Metal). “Into the Mausoleum” is a whole different thing; it was written, rehearsed and recorded in 2 alcoholic days back in 2007. It was released as an MCD, but of course I see it as a demo released on CD. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: GRAVEYARD – “THE ALTAR OF SCULPTED SKULLS”

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers  2 Responses »
Feb 162012
 

This is a SHORT BUT SWEET feature, but it could just as easily have been an EYE-CATCHERS feature, because . . . that album cover! Be honest: It caught your eyes, just as it did mine.

It’s in the only acceptable kvlt colors — black and white. It has countless skulls. I know this because I tried to count them and I couldn’t do it before I ran out of fingers and toes to count on. That makes the number of skulls countless. Plus, everything is dripping, even the words. And you don’t need color to know what they’re dripping with, and it’s not honey. Then you have the evil-looking candelabras and the ominous hooded figure standing behind the ALTAR OF SCULPTED SKULLS! 

Kudos to the artist, Matt ‘Putrid’ Carr (Autopsy, Impetigo, Coffins, Hooded Menace, etc), for this dread-inspiring achievement. It’s everything you want as a visual introduction to your spine-extracting, skull-bleaching, morbid death metal — which happens to be the musical content of Altars of Sculpted Skulls.

That’s right, this is most definitely not the Graveyard that produced all that retro-stoner-doom rock on Hisingen Blues last year. That was the Swedish Graveyard. This is the Graveyard from Spain, the band who released a 2009 debut album called One With the Dead plus an early demo, a previous EP, and an assortment of splits — and the band who, in Altars, have created what is rapidly becoming my favorite old-school death metal release of the new year. Every song is a gem — black diamonds in the rough. Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 4)

 Forthcoming Albums  15 Responses »
Apr 022011
 


Technically, we should have posted this yesterday, but yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and people might have thought we were making up some of this shit. But it’s all true, and nothing happens on April 2 to plant doubt about truth. Except for what causes doubt to be planted about truth on any other day of the year.

Here we are at the beginning of the second quarter of 2011 — the time when for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is supposed to spring.  Where I live, spring has apparently been victimized by a brutal street mugging and is hospitalized at the moment.  A few plants have been deluded into thinking it’s spring, but for the rest of our local world, it’s still fucking winter.

Fortunately, the change of the seasons have fuck all to do with the release of metal. What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days (or in this case, the last 31 days) 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 New 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. There’s some awesome shit on the way. Dive in after the jump. Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 3)

 Forthcoming Albums  14 Responses »
Feb 272011
 


We’re jumping the gun on this post, since the month doesn’t end until tomorrow. Why? Uh, because this post is ready to go and we don’t have anything else finished for today yet. Work and other shit interfered with our grand plans for a Sunday post.  We might still get another one up later today, but for now, feast your eyes on the barrage of metal headed our direction.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days (or in this case, the last 27 days) 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 New 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. There’s some awesome shit on the way. Continue reading »