TOURISM: CARNIVAL OF DEATH 2014 AND ELUVEITIE IN NORTH AMERICA (WITH A NEW ALBUM COMING)

 Uncategorized  16 Responses »
May 162014
 

Here are a couple of North American tours announced this morning that I thought were worth spreading around. The music in the two tours lies on divergent ends of the metal spectrum, but both shows should be excellent.

CARNIVAL OF DEATH 2014

This death metal blockbuster is co-headlined by Suffocation and Kataklysm, with Suffocation closing the shows on the US dates and Kataklysm playing the final sets in the Canadian shows. Accompanying those two heavyweight acts on this tour will be Jungle Rot, Pyrexia, and Internal Bleeding.

As the poster up there indicates, the tour schedule hasn’t been announced yet.

Now, changing gears… Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: EYEHATEGOD, KHONSU, SOCKWEB, METSATÖLL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 112014
 

So many excellent new songs have begun streaming in recent days that I’ve shoehorned two of these round-ups into our schedule today, and I’m still not covering everything I want you to hear. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re bored with the state of metal in 2014, you’re not really listening.

EYEHATEGOD

Fourteen years after Confederacy of Ruined Lives, New Orleans’ Eyehategod will finally be releasing a new, self-titled full-length album on May 27 in North America (May 26 in Europe) in North America via Housecore Records. It was mixed by the ubiquitous Sanford Parker and includes some of the final recordings from late Eyehategod drummer Joey LaCaze.

Today the band premiered a squalling track from the album entitled “Agitation! Propaganda!” which can be streamed below. It will get your blood pumping with a meaty punked-out fist in the face and then kick you tumbling down into a sludgy pit of tar.  Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AGELESS OBLIVION, METSATÖLL, DOMAINS, LIE IN RUINS, CORPSESSED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Jan 242014
 

The creative juices are REALLY flowing out there in metaldom . . . SO much juice . . . So sticky, so pungent . . . You just want to smear it ALL over and massage it into your scalp and make fluffy merengue with it . . . and

Ooops, sorry about that.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, a lot of creative juicing going on. LOTS of new metal songs to be spread around, like. . . well, you know. Here’s just a small smear of what I found this morning (more of what I found over the last 24 hours can be seen and heard here).

AGELESS OBLIVION

In July 2012 our own Andy Synn reviewed the debut album by a band from Hampshire, UK, named Ageless Oblivion. Here’s a relevant excerpt:

“You may not have heard of this band, but doubtless you will be doing so more in the future. With a fresh take on the death metal dynamic, this, their debut album, provides a master class in modern death metal, shot through with unusual progressive impulses. . . . The playing throughout is deft and highly skilled, without veering into territory one could describe (often dismissively) as “tech”. While there is no doubt some complex fretwork going on here, it’s always done in service to the song and as part of an overall pattern of interlocking riffs, woven together seamlessly. Drums clatter and pound with impressive force, eschewing the simple blast-blast-blast approach in favour of punchy, jarring kick patterns and sharp, hammer-blow snare-beats, while the vocals favour a tormented, guttural howl that successfully captures an all-too-human sense of rage and despair, making a rare emotional connection with the listener.” Continue reading »

LIVE IN SEATTLE: KORPIKLAANI, MOONSORROW, TYR, AND METSATÖLL

 Concert Reviews  11 Responses »
Sep 132012
 

On September 8, 2012, the current North American tour featuring Korpiklaani (Finland), Moonsorrow (Finland), Týr (Faroe Islands), and Metsatöll (Estonia) hit Seattle’s Studio Seven, with local support from Funeral Age and Blood and Thunder, and yours truly was there to bear witness. I again brought my camera, which both thinks for me and defeats my thinking because it speaks a language I don’t understand. I took pics, did the best I could to pretty them up on iPhoto, and have included the most tolerable ones in this post.

We got to the venue in broad daylight, at door-opening time because the guys from Blood and Thunder were starting off the night and we didn’t want to miss them. We headed for the venue’s balcony bar, hoping to grab a couple of the stools up against the balcony’s front railing so I could get an unobstructed view of the stage for pics and so I would have a place to park my lazy ass instead of standing for the next 5-6 hours.

No problem getting to the rail . . . but the stools were nowhere to be seen! I could already feel my ancient back beginning to stiffen up. But I put the anticipation of pain out of my head as soon as Blood and Thunder started to crank it up.

This was the first time I’d seen these dudes since a line-up change that brought on board a new bass player (not sure who he is) and new second guitarist and backing vocalist (Vance Bratcher). I had some question marks about what would happen, particularly because the band’s blackened form of melodic death metal gets intricate and relies in part on dual guitar solo’s and leads. But all was well. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: METSATÖLL

 Exceptions to the Rule, Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 272011
 

Metsatöll is a band from Estonia who released their first demo in 1999. Four albums plus assorted splits, EPs, and singles have followed that first effort, and the fifth album — Ulg — is due for release via Spinefarm Records on November 1. Until today, I had never heard their music. I’m not even positive I had heard their name. Just to display my ignorance even further, I wasn’t even sure where Estonia was, other than having a vague recollection of a Central European location (which turns out to be wrong)..

And then today I saw the album cover for Ulg, which is above, in conjunction with a notice that the album is streaming in full on yet another Finnish web site, Imperiumi (that Lantlôs album we discussed earlier today is streaming on Finland-based Inferno). There’s something about that cover that really hooked me, even though it’s not as “metal” as most cover art for the albums we feature around here. So, I decided this would be a fitting test subject for our continuing investigation of the hypothesis that cool album art correlates with cool music.

So, I cranked up that full album stream and started listening. Now, I warn you that because of interference from my fucking day job, I haven’t yet finished listening, which of course hasn’t stopped me from posting about this anyway. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NOTHNEGAL

 Album Reviews, Metal News  7 Responses »
Jul 042010
 

Fair warning: This will be one extended session of spittle-flecked frothing at the mouth, because we haven’t been this blown away since stumbling into a full-fledged Seattle windstorm last winter. So get the safety glasses on and strap on sanitary masks if you got ’em.

The subject of our enthusiasm is Nothnegal. They’re a band from The Republic of the Maldives that now includes two non-Maldivian heavyweights — drummer Kevin Talley from Dååth and keyboardist Marco Sneck from those Finnish swamplords Kalmah. They’ve got a four-song EP to their credit called Antidote of Realism and they’ve just signed with Season of Mist for the release of their debut album early next year.

Oh yeah, they’re also playing with Arch Enemy this month and touring Europe in the fall with the likes of Rotting Christ, Samael, and Finntroll.

And we’d wager that most of you have never heard of them. Until earlier this week, we hadn’t either. But this band shows all the seismic signs of an impending Vesuvius-sized eruption onto the scene — and based on the band’s output to date, it would be well-deserved.

If you like technically immaculate, headbangingly compulsive, Scandinavian-style melodic death metal played at autobahn speed, stay with us after the jump. Among other things, we’ll stream all four tracks from that EP and we’ll show you how to download a cut from Nothnegal’s forthcoming debut album. Continue reading »