AN NCS DOWNLOAD: HAEMIC’S “FIELDS OF SANGUINE”

 Album Reviews, Metal News  5 Responses »
Mar 192012
 

It’s been a while since we last wrote about 16-year old metal prodigy Ray Heberer. The last time we did that was in the context of a September 2011 post about an artist who goes by the name All Things Rotten, the artist who will be creating the album cover for one of Ray’s many projects, Dreams of Winter. But this post isn’t about Dreams of Winter. It’s about Haemic.

Haemic is a collaboration that had its genesis years ago, when a Hungarian musician named Adam Farkas wrote a series of songs, recorded them on synthesizer, and uploaded them to YouTube. Ray Heberer (who lives in Taiwan) found the music and contacted Adam, and they began re-recording the music with Ray performing on guitar. The two of them also found a vocalist via YouTube — Mitch Shinderman, who is an American.

Haemic have now released their debut album, Fields of Sanguine, and over the weekend Ray made it available on Haemic’s Bandcamp page via a “name your price” option. As you may know, Bandcamp only allows 200 free downloads per month before converting the download into a “pay only” option. Haemic’s fans exhausted the 200 free downloads available during March in less than 24 hours. So, until April, you’ll need to pay $5 to get the Bandcamp download.

We certainly don’t want to discourage people from doing that — the money will be going to a good cause. But Ray and his Haemic mates are anxious to get this album out into the world without delay. So, they’ve come up with two ways of doing that until the stock of free Bandcamp downloads replenishes. First, we’ve agreed to host a free download of the album here at NCS in a .zip file format. Second, the guys have uploaded a compressed .rar file of the album to Mediafire.

After the jump, you can stream the entire album and get links to the .zip and .rar downloads. We’ll also give you an address to use if you’d like to order a CD of the album. Continue reading »

CSR COMP

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 032011
 

Clean State Records is a label based in Australia that focuses on independent artists. To help promote new artists and their music and to help fund CSR’s own activities, the label periodically releases compilation albums, and the latest (G Force: Stick It To the Man) became available yesterday. What attracted me to this comp was the presence of a track from Reclusive Forest Council, which is one of the many music projects of Ray Heberer, a talented young musician from Taiwan who’s a friend of this site and who we’ve featured here before.

I suppose like most comps, this one is a mixed bag, at least for my tastes. It includes some melodic metalcore, some latter-day nu-metal, and some deathcore that didn’t do much for me, but the majority of the tracks were interesting and showed an impressive array of budding talent.

At the top of the list of songs worth having is the one from Reclusive Forest Council, “Romanticized Reality”. It’s an instrumental track that’s full-to-bursting with stylistic variety — pneumatic power chords, epic keyboard ambience, guitar solos that move from soulful to shred in the blink of an eye, a jazzy Mellotron-ish outro, and more. It’s almost like a medley of the different kinds of music that Ray has been exploring, and it showcases some of what he’s capable of doing. Good stuff that stands up to repeat listening.

Running down the list of other songs on the comp that I like, the next one is from another band we’ve featured here — Kakuna Vs Metapod. The song is “Slurry Dogs”, which happens to be the one we included in our original post about the band. To crib from what I wrote about it then: “It’s got mean-as-fuck drumming, automatic-weapon-style riffing, electronica, little bursts of catchy melody, about four different vocal styles, blasts of sonic mayhem — and bass drops.” There was a big novelty factor at work when I first heard it, but the song is still tons of fun to hear. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

RAY’S MUSIC

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  24 Responses »
Apr 272011
 

Sometimes we get into e-mail exchanges with NCS readers, and sometimes we learn a few things about them that you wouldn’t know just from reading their comments here on the site. Take Ray Heberer, for example (he uses only his first name when he leaves comments). Ray is 15 years old, approaching his 16th birthday. He lives in Taiwan. He goes to a demanding school, he’s on the track team, and he began visiting this site not long ago.

Ray is also a guitarist, and he also plays bass. He’s been playing for about 2 years, which would mean he started when he was about 13. I think I was still breast-feeding at 13. The only instrument I could play with when I was 15 was the one attached to my body. So, in one sense, what Ray does sort of depresses me. And, for those of us who are a bit insecure about our own talents, this story gets worse.

Ray also composes and records his own music, he’s a fair hand with synthesizers, and he’s the centerpiece of three bands (Haemic, Dreams of Winter, and Bloodred Fullmoon), plus his own solo project (Reclusive Forest Council). It’s all metal, but because Ray evidently hasn’t yet settled on the style of music he wants to make his focus, each of these projects explores different styles.

And to top it off, Ray is good. How good? Well, you’re about to find out. We’re going to play you some of Ray’s music, including a medley of melodies from the forthcoming Dreams of Winter album that Ray created just for NCS. We predict the time will come when you’ll be proud to tell people, “Hey, I heard that dude’s music on NCS when he was only 15!” (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »