SEEN AND HEARD: AL-NAMROOD, BLACK TUSK, DEAD FLESH, DVNE, GATECREEPER, HALNY, JORDSJUK, KULT IKON, RIITASOINTU, SIX FEET UNDER, SONS OF ALPHA CENTAURI, WARM GADGET

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 142024
 

What I’ve assembled for visitors today is an even dozen songs and videos from bands spread across six countries and a variety of genres (and at least one that’s not really metal), including death metal, black metal, sludge, doom, post-metal, progressive metal, deathcore, folk-metal, and some things that are harder to pin down. If you don’t find something to like, it must be because you searched for “no spring cleaning”.

One thing you’ll figure out fairly soon is that a lot of today’s songs rock out, providing some very catchy head-movers. There’s also singing (or close to it) in some of them (gasp!). But of course I’ve sprinkled in some ravagers too, and because I’ve arranged these songs and videos in alphabetical order by band name, one of those comes first.

AL-NAMROOD (Saudi Arabia)

The first song is “Lisan Al Nar” (Tongue of Fire) from AlNamrood‘s new album Al Aqrab, to be released by Shaytan Productions on June 9th. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SONS OF ALPHA CENTAURI (AND JESU) — “HITMEN” (AND A REVIEW OF “BURIED MEMORIES”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 162019
 

 

Following hot on the heels of their 2018 album Continuum, the English instrumental post-rock band Sons of Alpha Centauri (SOAC) have created a second part to the journey which began there, and have done so in a stunning collaboration with industrial metal icon Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu…) and ambient gloom metal maestro James Plotkin (Khanate, Jodis, etc.). The results of these creative unions are relentlessly fascinating, amalgamating a wide range of stylistic ingredients in a way that’s both compulsively head-moving and equally mind-bending. The music has genuinely primal power, yet also transports listeners into an alien cosmos and seemingly spirits us away into haunting realms that we enter at our peril.

This new album, Buried Memories includes two 10-minute monoliths of eclectic ambient progressive rock by SOAC — “Hitmen” and “Warhero“. “Hitmen” was mixed by Broadrick, and the album further includes his interpetive remixes of the track, one in his guise as Jesu and the second as the eponymous JK Flesh. James Plotkin created the mix for the second long SOAC track, “Warhero“, and then the album further includes a third, shorter SOAC track (“Remembrance“) mixed by Plotkin, as well as his remix of “SS Montgomery“, a single from the band’s landmark self-titled debut album.

What we’re presenting today is the premiere of the Jesu remix of “Hitmen“, as well as an impressionistic review of Buried Memories as a whole, in advance of its release on October 13th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SONS OF ALPHA CENTAURI — “SOLAR STORM”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 072018
 

 

It’s rare to find a video that suits a piece of music as well as Simon Risbridger‘s video for “Solar Storm” by the UK band Sons of Alpha Centauri. You listen to the song, and you can’t help but feel it’s telling a story, even without the narration of a vocalist. Your imagination will reflexively want to fill in the details in its own way, but the collaboration of the band with this director has produced a damned fine vision of their own, one that’s as much fun to see as the song is to hear.

As they say in the trade, it was a long wait for SOAC‘s new album, Continuum, which includes this song. It arrived on June 1st via H42 Records and Cobraside Records, a mere 10 1/2 years after the band’s self-titled debut album. There were a handful of splits in between, but nothing of the size and substance of this new record. Contrary to the proverb, good things don’t always come to those who wait, but they certainly did for us in this instance, and “Solar Storm” is a prime example of Continuum‘s rewards. Continue reading »