CARNIVOROUS MUSIC

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 192012
 

This photo seemed appropriate for this post. (Thanks to Alfonso for sharing it on FB.) It’s a pic of what two fishermen pulled up in their net from Mexico’s Sea of Cortez on Sunday. Fortunately for them, it was already dead. This Great White shark measured almost 20 feet long and weighed an estimate 2,000 pounds. It took 50 people to help pull the carcass ashore. More details can be found here.

And that’s about all the introduction I can afford for this post, except to say that I’ve rounded up a bunch of new flesh-eating music and am throwing it at your head. Here’s what I caught in my net, in no particular order:

New videos from Cryptopsy (Canada), Fester (Norway), Mordbrand (Sweden), and In Mourning (Sweden), plus new songs from Carach Angren (The Netherlands) and Antigama (Poland). That ought to hold you . . . and eat you. (To learn more about each band, click on their names.) Continue reading »

DOES LENGTH MATTER?

 Mosh Pit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  50 Responses »
Feb 112012
 

No, no, no.  This post isn’t about dicks.

Wait!  Where are you going?  Hang on for a minute and let me explain.  This may be interesting even if it’s not about penises, difficult as that may be to believe.

The subject of this post is one I’ve thought about before and discussed with others outside these pages. Here’s what finally prompted me to throw it open for NCS discussion — this Facebook status by Sweden’s Mordbrand, whose killer 2011 EP Necropsychotic we reviewed here and whose November 2011 split with their fellow Swedes in Bombs of Hades we featured here:

“It looks like MORDBRAND’s discography will mostly consist of EP’s and splits at the moment. We’re excited about all suggestions, proposals and offers we have in front of us. But here’s a question to YOU: If a band produces enough material on small releases – is a full-length then necessary? The way we see it: If we record a handful of songs, we can really focus on them and make them turn great. If we record full-lengths, we’ll have less time working on each track. This calls for an interesting discussion!”

Yes, it does call for discussion. As a fan, what would you rather see from the bands you like — shorter but more frequent releases or full-length albums that are more spaced out, e.g., a new one every couple of years? Do you tend to take a band more seriously, particularly a new band, if they release album-length material instead of EPs? Is it the meat or the motion? Continue reading »

HIT AND RUN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Nov 152011
 

My blogging time still being restricted, I’m just gonna hit you quickly with the following three items and then run away back to cloudland. What I have are new songs from Coldworker (Sweden), Mordbrand (Sweden again), and Zillah (Scotland).

COLDWORKER

I’ve been a fan of Coldworker since their early days. Both albums they’ve released to date — The Contaminated Void (2006) and Rotting Paradise (2008) — are worth your time if you like extreme trauma in your music. Featuring former members of Nasum, Relentless, Ruin, and Phobos, they play a violent amalgamation of grind and death metal.

In August, they signed with Listenable Records, which will be releasing their third album, The Doomsayer’s Call, on February 13, 2012. The cover art, which you can see above, is by the masterful Pär Olofsson (not his usual style, but still quite cool). Yesterday, they released the first song from the album. It’s called “Violent Society”. It will tear you a new one but leave you smiling as you bleed out. Give it a listen after the jump. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: MORDBRAND, INFERNAL WAR, AND KRIEGSMASCHINE

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  20 Responses »
Sep 302011
 

In these SHORT BUT SWEET posts, we focus mainly on releases that are shorter than full-length albums. Today, I’ve got two gems for you, the kind of sparkling indigo jewels that wide-eyed, doomed innocents find in fairy tales shortly before something horrific happens to them. For us, of course, it’s just pure, evil pleasure.

The first gem is an EP from a three-man Swedish band called Morbrand, which is already the subject of giant, infernal, wasp-like buzz. The second is a split by two Polish bands whose hands are dripping with the black slick of blood on a moonless night — Infernal War and Kriesgsmaschine.

MORDBRAND: NECROPSYCHOTIC

Mordbrand has been drawing attention, like honey draws flies, based in part on the presence of Per Boder — who fronted an early and well-regarded Swedish death metal band called God Macabre (their debut album, The Winterlong, appeared in 1993). After a 20-year hiatus from recorded music, Boder has returned, and the six-song EP he and bandmates Björn Larsson (guitars, bass) and Johan Rudberg (drums) is a powerful return indeed. Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 2)

 Forthcoming Albums  No Responses »
Feb 012011
 


The first month of the year has come and gone. January brought those of us in Seattle some typically ass-sucking winter weather, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as the brutality dished out by the weather gods on our metal brothers and sisters in the Midwest and Northeast of the U.S. And of course, our readers ins places like Russia, and Finland, and Sweden are probably laughing their asses off reading our complaints about our winter weather. So, we’ll just shut up about that.

Besides, January brought all sorts of great new metal to our tender ears, so who gives a shit about the weather anyway? And you know what else January brought? It brought news of still more metal goodness on the way — great bursts of audio sunshine in our collective futures that will part these winter clouds and leave them whimpering in cloudy tatters.

Okay, maybe we should leave poetry to the poets and just get on with this next monthly installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, where we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like, or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we’ve cut and pasted the announcements and compiled them in alphabetical order. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones:

AJATARRA: “AJATTARA — the Finnish band featuring former AMORPHIS frontman Pasi Koskinen (a.k.a. Itse Ruoja Suruntuoj) — will release its seventh album, Murhat (“Murders”) on February 2 via Osasto-A Records. Murhat is available for streaming in its entirety on the AJATTARA Facebook page.”  (much more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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