MECHINA: “XENON”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Jan 152014
 

(DGR reviews the latest album by Chicago’s Mechina.)

My story with Mechina is one that is somewhat strange. If you’re in a band and people tell you that services like Last.fm are fucking useless, they’re lying to you. I am an old technology grognard and believe me, I have found tons of bands through Last.fm, and Mechina was one of the best surprises to ever come out of that service.

My discovery dates all the way back to when Andromeda came out at the end of 2011, and my review would prove to be one of the last things I wrote for my former site, an article that I titled, “I keep getting lost in Mechina’s Andromeda”. The song was a revelation. I am a complete sucker for symphonic elements in metal bands. Fleshgod Apocalypse, Dimmu Borgir, and Septic Flesh, for example, have been frequent go-to’s, yet they’ve all been in the black metal and more intense side of death metal realm. Mechina were different because they were more groove-oriented, with the industrial flair that made the band seem futuristic, not to mention that the concept behind each of the albums was slowly morphing into a science fiction epic. Continue reading »

MECHINA: “CEPHEUS”

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 042013
 

(DGR shares some thoughts about the new single from Chicago’s Mechina.)

Let me just take a quick breath and describe this song for you, as my reaction upon listening to it for the first time.

Holy shit.

It’s not often that you’re justified in describing a song this way, but my first run through the new Mechina song after having Empyrean in my hands for the better part of eight months was a great feeling. There’s something to Mechina’s hybrid of symphonic elements with industrial death that provides constant moments of absolute excitement. When I first heard the band with Andromeda I felt the need to post about that song almost immediately, and since then I’ve found one or two songs that I can’t help but be incredibly excited by on each release.

I thought they had almost peaked with “Anathema” and “Elephtheria” off of this year’s Empyrean, but then the violence of “Cepheus” hit, and my excitement for anything new by these guys reached a fever peach once again. Continue reading »

A DGR ROUND-UP: MECHINA, THE AMENTA, TYRANT OF DEATH, CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE, STEVEN WILSON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 162013
 

(DGR provides this round-up of artwork, new music, and new videos.)

Apparently nobody else got the memo that last week was E3 week and, goddamnit, that I was going to be away from the computer, because holy crap did the news updates come fast and furious throughout the week of June 10th. A lot of these bands are going to look very familiar to readers of the site because a lot of them are in fact the same groups featured in my last round-up. However, here at NCS we try to stick with really substantial stuff since a tracklisting usually means dick to the reader unless it has something attached to it.

This week, these bands delivered in spades – some with cover art, most with new songs or videos, one with a whole new release. Regardless, it was a smattering all across the board if you love music and love shit just being heavy as hell. I’ll attach my thoughts along the way, of course…otherwise this article is going to look all sorts of wacky.

MECHINA

That picture you see above is artwork for Mechina’s upcoming Xenon release, which the group stated in this here post would be hitting on 1/1/14. Continue reading »

DGR FAMILIARS: THE GRAVESTARTER COMMENCES, RAINBOWDRAGONEYES, MECHINA, AND TYRANT OF DEATH RELEASE DATES

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Jun 062013
 

(Here’s a newsy round-up by DGR.)

You may recognize a lot of these names because I have personally written about each group a ton of times here at NCS. Instead of infecting other news posts with my bullshit, though, I figured I’d do you guys a favor and lock them all up in one news post that I’d reserve for myself. That way if you have musical tastes similar to mine, then you can jump on this post and enjoy its spoils (with the exception of the Conducting Kickstarter, that’s almost charitable), and if anything in this post interests you but you haven’t heard the rest, maybe do yourself a favor and check out the other bands!

Now I know that some of you may be wondering why these groups have been popping up so much lately, and it’s because they’ve been releasing substantial updates at a pretty consistent clip and they’ve all been very busy. I’ve tried to archive a bunch of the news that may have been drip-fed into this big post as well, to really bring people up to speed.

CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE

You’ll remember that late last week we posted news about the plans of Sacramento, California’s Conducting From The Grave to launch a Kickstarter to help cover the physical/merchandising aspect of their new disc, with a goal set of $15,000 – which has been the common goal for bands that have been doing these as of late. The group had posted a video – the same one they would be using as an intro to the project – in order to get the word out as well as share a new song entitled, ‘Honor Guide Me!’. Consider this an additional update, as the group’s Kickstarter has finally launched and we can now see whether they were on the right track with this idea and what some of the rewards for ponying up “that cheddar” may be. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MECHINA AND GOTHMINSTER

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 302013
 

(This little round-up is provided to you courtesy of NCS writer DGR.)

MECHINA

Chicago’s Mechina are now close to five months in from their unleashing their excellent release Empyrean. However, they’re not a band to just sit on their laurels and instead have been hard at work on quite a bit of new music. They’ve already discussed a follow-on trilogy of musical releases — which in itself is ambitious as hell — but the group have also been putting out the occasional oddball single/cover and have recently made a couple of them available for free download.

It’s done through a website called WeTransfer, which I’ve never heard of before, but it seems legit and it checked out on the two webrep style programs I use, and neither song has given me any crazy-ass computer sickness as of the thirty minutes ago that I downloaded these things. Plus; if anything does happen we know the band are based in the Chicago area and, really, how hard is it to find four or five guys within a mass of millions, right? Now, let’s discuss the songs.

First up is “Anicetus” – which is an electronica-augmented song that the band proclaims is a “dubstep/whatthehellyoucallit” track made for the hell of it. As someone who has been exposed to an oddly heavy amount of the genre I can say that yes, there are definite elements of it throughout the whole song, so there’s no denying its presence. However, the amount of noise, guitars, electronics, and orchestral elements combine to make something that is oddly compelling. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ARSIS, AOSOTH, MECHINA, AGONIA RECORDS, AND FINNTROLL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 142013
 

I thought I’d let you know that despite my inability to contribute much to the site the last few days, I’m still alive. I’m beginning Day 18 away from Seattle, mired in a seemingly endless project for my fucking day job, and largely unable to listen to music, pay much attention to metal news, or write much. However, the end is in sight: it appears I’ll be able to go home next Tuesday or Wednesday.

While my blog life has been fucked up, other folks have been stepping up to fill the hole (if only they could fill the holes in my head), and one of them is DGR. In this post are some items he discovered recently, along with a few I came across this morning that we’d like to share with you — Islander

ARSIS (written by DGR)

The glorious Arsis info dump of 2013 happened yesterday, with the guys announcing pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted to know about their upcoming album Unwelcome, which will see release April 30th of this year. Continue reading »

ROUND-UP: DEVOURMENT, PYRITHION, AND MECHINA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Mar 072013
 

(DGR pitches in with this round-up of recent news and music while I’m still drowning in day-job bullshit.)

Since Islander has once again found himself incredibly busy I figured that I would do my best to get the word out there about a few things that caught my eye earlier on in the week. I had meant to get this up yesterday but unfortunately found myself dealing with jury duty summons – which isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things – so this one is going up today.

Enough excuses though; this week found a couple of death metal videos hitting the web and one electronics fused industrial death bit of music popping up as well. Since they’ve unfortunately flown under our radar, your lovely knight in shining armor gets to ride in upon his pale horse and capture what he can.

DEVOURMENT: “Parasitic Eruption” Video

We’ve been hotly anticipating stuff by Devourment for some time now and the group finally got to release their album Conceived In Sewage via Relapse earlier this year. Now the band have a music video for the song “Parasitic Eruption” which – music-wise – is an excellent example of exactly what this band is about. Continue reading »

MECHINA: “EMPYREAN”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jan 122013
 

(In this post, NCS guest contributor Booker reviews the new album by Chicago’s Mechina.)

Well, after a bit of a wait, Mechina’s Empyrean finally dropped on the 1st Jan – after being originally slated for release a year earlier on 1st Jan 2012 – which they announced was also their 9th anniversary as a band (9 year wedding anniversary = pottery, 9 year band anniversary = new album! Yes!!).

I admit the first I ever heard from Mechina was a note on a blog (probably The Number of the Blog, since I can’t find it again and that site’s now down) alerting all followers to the release of their single Andromeda, which the band released free on their mechinamusic.com website.  So intrigued was I, I found myself immediately sourcing a copy of their previous album Conqueror, and boy was my inner Demanufacture/Obsolete-era Fear Factory fan in for a surprise.  Machine gun riffage and double bass drumming, but with intricate orchestration and sound effect backing, all tied together in an album-length sci-fi concept album.

Andromeda continued the storyline, and Empyrean, their third full-length by my count, forms its finale…. Continue reading »

EPIC MUSIC AND MOVIN’ PICTURE SHOWS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 132012
 


 

(DemiGodRaven checks in with some quick music updates . . .)

Let us all reap the rewards that a little extra time given to a disc can provide. Mechina have uploaded the titular single of their new disc Empyrean, and it is fucking excellent. The band have been one of my favorite recent discoveries as their hybridization (holy shit, spellcheck says that is a word! I was going nuts while typing it. Just constantly repeating, “You’re a fucking idiot for thinking this is real”) of death metal, industrial, one part Fear Factory (mostly in the vocal work, their lead vocalist sounds similar to Burton Bell’s old singing voice), and sci-fi philosophy have bought me hook, line, and sinker.

“Empyrean” is a shorter song but is one of the first chances we’ve gotten to hear anything solid from the new disc since they delayed it in January back to May. It still has amazing orchestral work, driving drum beats, and those vocals just seem to be getting better and better. (after the jump, a new video . . .)

Continue reading »

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