WITNESSED: OMNIUM GATHERUM’S “NEW DYNAMIC”, PLUS NEW MUSIC FROM WORMED AND CRYSTALIC

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jan 092013
 

I’ve again gotten tired of “Seen and Heard” as the title for these round-up posts. I thought about using “Scene and Herd”, but decided that would give the wrong impression about the news and new music included in these posts, since the subjects are items that get me interested and often excited. So, for now at least, “Witnessed”. This round-up includes not only some things I’d like to share but also a blurb from DGR. Here we go:

OMNIUM GATHERUM

Sadistic bastards that we are, in December we published three different glowing reviews of Beyond, the forthcoming album by Finland’s Omnium Gatherum, despite the fact that the album won’t be released until late February in Europe and March 5 in the U.S. and we had no music we were authorized to stream from the album. Well, now we have music.

This morning Omnium Gatherum put up the song “New Dynamic” on YouTube.  Good choice: along with “The Sonic Sign”, it’s my favorite track on Beyond. Give it a listen and then let us know if you think we were being overly enthusiastic about what Omnium Gatherum has accomplished or if you agree that this shit is fantastic. Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM: “BEYOND” (Three Thumbs Up)

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 312012
 

(Our sadistic streak continues with the third early review of Omnium Gatherum’s new album.  This one comes from TheMadIsraeli.  The first two can be found here and here.)

It isn’t even 2013 yet and already we at NCS are getting pimp-slapped by the hand of Zeus himself in the form of Omnium Gatherum’s new album Beyond.  As Islander said in his review, melodic death metal of the darker sort had an absolutely fucking killer year in 2012, and to get hit with something of the same ilk already for 2013 gives me have very high hopes for the new year.

I will admit, this is one of those bands who I loved whenever I ran across them but never dove into out of sheer laziness or occupation with other things.  I can say, however, that I’ve dived into this album, drowned, been brought back to life, and have repeated this cycle over ten times in the last twenty-four hours.  Beyond is a dense, layered, passionate, and macabre work that could very well already seal my first favorite for 2013.

Like all melodic death metal that’s been killing it lately, Omnium prefer to immerse you in layers of interwoven melody lines as opposed to hard-hitting riffs, arming themselves with depressing yet infectious-as-plague melodies, ever-driven drum work, and a keyboard with a very Blade Runner-esque feel to it. Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM: “BEYOND” (Two Thumbs Up)

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Dec 302012
 

If there were a Hell, a special room would be reserved in it for the kind of sadists like us who publish enthusiastic reviews of new albums months before their release. But in our defense, Omnium Gatherum’s new album is one of those that, once heard, must be trumpeted to the skies without delay. Keeping quiet about it is simply too much to ask.

We’ve already posted Andy Synn’s detailed review, and we have at least one more coming in the near future, so I will be brief, especially because I’m still trying to finish compiling our list of 2012’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Speaking of which, with 2013 just around the corner, it’s time to start making a list of  candidates for the most infectious songs of next year. I have no trouble deciding which songs from Beyond belong on that list:  all of them.

Good lord, there ought to be some kind of law against stuffing a single album with so many undeniable melodic hooks and neck-snapping rhythms, or at least some requirement that they be shared with bands who slave away for years and never come up with anything as good as any song picked randomly from this album. Hell, the ballad “Who Could Say” would be a radio hit even in our metal-challenged nation if the vocals were exclusively clean instead of being mixed with Jukka Pelkonen’s monstrous roars.

But don’t get the wrong idea: despite the tremendous melodies, this is still very heavy, very powerful music, as often doom-shrouded and melancholy as it is furiously hard-charging. And despite the alluring simplicity of all the viral riffs, the music is multi-layered, with depths left to plumb after the first listen. Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM: “BEYOND”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Dec 282012
 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews the forthcoming sixth album by Finland’s Omnium Gatherum.) 

Now this… this is a special little something.

While superficially it might seem that the album is simply a continuation of the (pretty phenomenal) direction established by the previous two albums, it’s actually far more than that. Beneath the sheen of stainless melodic steel and furious Finnish thunder lies an electric current of progressive dynamism, all fused together into one state-of-the art musical package.

Looking at the previous two albums, if The Redshift was where the band discovered and started to stretch their new-found musical muscles, surprising even themselves with their growing potential, then New World Shadows was where the band put those muscles to a real test… and STILL found themselves surprised by what they were capable of. Which makes Beyond the moment where they realised that maybe there’s nothing they can’t do…

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CARCASS, OMNIUM GATHERUM, GOD SEED, AND GOAT BAGPIPES

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Nov 302012
 

I didn’t get a chance to pull together at the end of yesterday what I found in my daily web crawl and e-mail excavation, so I’m doing that this morning. And because I waited so long to patch together this round-up, there are quite a few items of interest in here:

CARCASS

This item comes first because it’s the kind of news that shakes the earth. Late yesterday Blabbermouth reported: “Reactivated British extreme metal legends CARCASS are rumored to be putting the finishing touches on their first studio album in 17 years with acclaimed producer Colin Richardson (FEAR FACTORY, MACHINE HEAD, NAPALM DEATH, SLIPKNOT, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE). The band has yet to secure a label home for the effort, which is expected in early 2013.”

As previously disclosed in assorted interviews, guitarist Michael Amott and drummer Daniel Erlandsson, who toured with Carcass following the announcement of their reunion in 2007, are no longer involved with the group due to scheduling conflicts with their main band, Arch Enemy. Blabbermouth reports that original guitarist Bill Steer and bassist/vocalist Jeff Walker are actively involved in the studio for the new CD recording sessions, along with drummer Matthias Voigt of Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn.

According to the report, Carcass is also in the process of booking a number of live shows for 2013, including the previously announced appearance at next year’s Maryland Deathfest and Chile’s Metal Fest. Continue reading »

HIT AND RUN: DARKTHRONE, OMNIUM GATHERUM, TESTAMENT, AND INDESINENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 142012
 

Yesterday I started putting up short posts during brief windows of time permitted by my fucking day job, just trying to spread the word, for your entertainment and edification, about new videos, new music, and news that I’d seen yesterday. I got two of those posts up on the site and ran out of time before I could finish the third one. So here it is, a day late but no dollars short.

DARKTHRONE

I saw on the Terrorizer web site that this Norwegian duo have finished recording their next album, the first one since 2010’s Circle the Wagons, and that it’s scheduled for release later this year. You can bet that it will make waves and draw lots of attention, because it’s Darkthrone. What I wouldn’t venture to predict is what it will sound like, except it won’t be black metal, because Fenriz has kind of a “been there, done that” attitude about the band’s musical roots. The Terrorizer report did quote guitarist/vocalist Nocturno Culto, as follows:

“The album will be called The Underground Resistance. I can’t speak for Fenriz, but I think he’s going for more epic lyrics. I can only speak for myself and this time around they are very personal lyrics. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried this and it’s difficult to do it nicely and put it into good words. There was a lot of hate and people trying to ruin your day and I had stuff to say for my sake.”

Of the album, he adds: “Our music now is basically just metal, it will be a step away from the last album as usual.” Yup.

While I’m on the subject of Darkthrone, I’ll mention that the Peaceville label has re-issued the band’s 2001 album Plaguewielder as a special 2-CD set, with the second CD consisting of lengthy track-by-track commentary from Fenriz. It also includes new cover artwork by the amazing Zbigniew M. Bielak, which is right after the jump, big as life. Continue reading »

NEW GOATWHORE — AND OMNIUM GATHERUM LIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jan 092012
 

Man, what a morning this has been so far. First, we had a brief glimpse of a new Cannibal Corpse song before YouTube yanked it at Metal Blade’s request — and now we have a new Goatwhore official lyric video provided by Metal Blade. The Goatwhore track is called “Collapse In Eternal Worth”, and it’s from the new Goatwhore album Blood For the Master, which will be released on February 14 in North America and is one of my “most anticipated” records of 2012. The song is a slash of black thrash ‘n’ roll that will get your blood pumping. (Thanks to byrd36 for the tip on this one.)

But we’re still not finished with what has made this a sweet morning (for a fucking Monday). When I added “New World Shadows” to our ongoing list of 2011’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, it was a tough choice, because I was also powerfully drawn to another Omnium Gatherum song — “Soul Journeys”. This morning I was reminded why the choice was so difficult, why “Soul Journeys” is such a great song, and why Omnium Gatherum is such a great band.

What reminded me was a cool video of the band playing the song live at their last show of 2011 — on December 16 at Kerubi in Joensuu, Finland. And for Omnium Gatherum geeks, here’s a bit of trivia: When Jukka Pelkonen steps back and pulls the bass-player forward to take the lead during an instrumental section of the song, the guy who steps up Eerik Purdon, who was with the band when they recorded their last album before New World Shadows, The Redshift (2008).

There’s something about this song and about the positive energy that comes through this performance that just makes me feel (briefly) that all’s right with the world, even when all is very much not right. Watch and listen after the jump — to both the Goatwhore and the Omnium Gatherum. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2011’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 5

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011  15 Responses »
Dec 302011
 

This is Part 5 of our list of the most infectious extreme metal songs released this year. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the Introduction via this link. To see the selections that preceded this one, click the Category link on the right side of the page called MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011.

It’s no secret that we have a special aFINNity for Finnish metal at NCS, and the two songs that are the subject of today’s feature are from Finnish bands who’ve made their own distinctive marks in the genre of melodic death metal. Both Insomnium and Omnium Gatherum released wonderful albums this year, both of which were loaded with powerful, memorable songs. The hard part was not deciding whether to include these two bands on this list. The hard part was deciding which of many appealing songs on those albums should be included.

Insomnium’s album One For Sorrow made many of the “Best of 2011” lists we’ve published over the last few weeks, and Andy Synn hit the nail on the head when he summed up the album this way in his NCS review: “A poignant reminder of love and loss, and the pain of those left behind. An emblem of grief that cannot, yet somehow must, be borne, and of the strength we find within ourselves to carry on. Through all the tears shed in silence, for all the rage and sadness, One For Sorrow is at its heart an album of meditative melancholy and strength not yet subdued. Grace under pressure. Happiness and heartache in equal measure. One for sorrow, two for joy.”

Insomnium have a gift for writing songs that intricately combine power, immersive atmospherics, and irresistibly infectious melodies. Particularly because of Niilo Sevänen’s incredible harsh roars (among the best in the business), Insomnium continue to create that pairing of beauty and the beast that make their melancholy take on melodic death metal so enticing. Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN’S CRITICAL TOP 10 OF 2011

 Listmania  18 Responses »
Dec 152011
 

(This is the fourth in Andy Synn’s week-long series of posts looking back at albums released this year. Andy previously provided his lists of the year’s Great albums, the Good ones, and the most Disappointing ones, and tomorrow we’ll have his Personal Top 10. Today, we have his list of “The Critical Top 10”. For more explanation of what all this means, plus Andy’s picks for the year’s best EPs, visit this location.)

So here’s the penultimate list of the week, the first of two ranked top-tens. This list will include the albums that I think are the very best of the best, the ones that best combine creativity, artistic ambition, song-writing, and performance. Regardless of my personal feelings and preferences, these are the albums that I think are critically superior to others. Though the ranking of them was difficult (as it always is when trying to compare artists and albums across metallic sub-genres), I’ve tried my best to give a sense about the critical and objective factors that led to each record earning its respective position on this list.

Although the potential candidates for the list were unavoidably influenced by my own listening tastes — I do, after all, only really tend to select the albums that I feel best qualified and most inspired to review – I have done my best to keep personal preference as far away from these judgements as possible, something that I hope will become clear when you see tomorrow how different the list of my top ten “favourite” albums of the year is from today’s list.

So here are the ten releases I think best represent the year critically. The ten that, ultimately, would be my choices to represent the year in metal music for posterity. Some of them have appeared quite commonly on other lists, albeit perhaps weighted differently, while others have largely been ignored by other sources thus far. Enjoy . . . Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM: “SOUL JOURNEYS”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 032011
 

 

Look what we just found! It’s a brand new video for a brand new song from a forthcoming brand new album! It’s all just brand new, just like 2011! And it’s from Finland’s Omnium Gatherum. They’re not brand new, but they are fucking good.

And this song? It’s the best new song we’ve heard in the New Year. Granted, the New Year isn’t even 3 days old yet, but we’ve got a feeling that 362 days from now, this song will still be one of our 2011 favorites — it’s that strong.

This is melodic death metal done right. It hits hard, it makes you wanna headbang, but it’s catchy, and it has a surprising — and surprisingly dreamy — interlude in the middle with clean singing, of all things.

The album will be called New World Shadows, and as we explained when we featured Omnium Gatherum in our Finland Tribute Week series (here), it was produced by Dan Swanö and it includes guest vocals from Mr. Swanö. In fact, that’s probably his voice during the middle interlude of this song. What a fucking coincidence, seeing as how we wrote about Mr. Swanö just yesterday (here).

Enough of our blather. Watch the video. You won’t regret doing it. Fucking awesome song.

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