SEEN AND HEARD: THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, AZURE EMOTE, AND SOREPTION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 082013
 

Yesterday brought many items of news and new music that caught my attention, so many that I’m funneling them your way in a couple of posts this morning, this being the first.

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER

Last night the above image appeared on the Facebook page of The Black Dahlia Murder, with no further explanation. Preceding the appearance of this visual announcement, the gents at Metal Sucks posted some studio photos and a few more details, speculating that the band would have a new album ready by June — which turns out to be a good guess.

Presumably, the above image is simply a flyer of sorts and not the album cover, yet I’m intrigued by the absence of color and by the album’s title — Everblack. Not that I really needed anything further to cause eager anticipation for the band’s next work. That was a given.

Next, we move from a band whose name has become something of a household word in the realms of extreme metal to one I had never heard of before last night — and whose new album I’m now anticipating just as eagerly as new BDM. Check out this arresting album cover: Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE . . . SONGS ABOUT THE APOCALYPSE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Dec 212012
 

(Andy Synn wrote this latest installment in the “Five of My Favourite” series.  He seems pretty smug, given that today isn’t over yet.)

Well since the world didn’t end (you’re welcome by the way…) how about a quick column on five of my favourite songs about… the end of the world?

 

SCAR SYMMETRY – “CALCULATE THE APOCALYPSE”

Ah, what a tune. Thick and crunchy cyber-ised melodic death metal, with lyrics about the destruction of the world via the medium of a gigantic asteroid. Our inevitable destruction has never been so catchy.

‘Estimate time of impact
Calculate the fatal fact
Estimate the cataclysm
Calculate the apocalypse’

Continue reading »

NEW TOUR CONFIRMED, WITH DATES: DETHKLOK, MACHINE HEAD, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, and all that remains

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Sep 102012
 

Last week, numerous metal blogs reported the rumor that Dethklok, Machine Head, All That Remains, and The Black Dahlia Murder would be touring North America together this fall. Preferring to wait for something more concrete, we didn’t post about that. But this morning we saw confirmation via Lambgoat that the tour really is happening, along with a schedule of the dates and places.

The tour will hit 31 cities, beginning on October 30 in Norfolk, Virginia, and ending on December 8 in Atlanta. It’s almost entirely a U.S. tour, but there will be shows in Montreal and Toronto.

My feelings about the tour were pretty well summed up by Axl at Metal Sucks when he reported the rumor: “[T]his tour . . . does have one weak spot, in the form of a certain auto-tuned metalcore band whose frontman loves guns. That being said, I still wouldn’t skip this tour — thirty or forty minutes to take a breather at a show with three other awesome bands on the bill isn’t a bad thing.”

I still have great memories of Dethklok’s performance when they toured with Mastodon a few years ago and would think hard about paying to see them regardless of who else was along for the ride. But The Black Dahlia Murder will put on a helluva show, and I’ve never seen Machine Head and want to.

And as for All That Remains, their early albums were among my favorites for years when metalcore first exploded, but I’ve gradually lost interest. Still, maybe ATR will play some songs from This Darkened Heart and The Fall of Ideals, which could be a cool nostalgia trip. But I’m not counting on that. What are your thoughts about this tour?

Check out the schedule after the jump, and stream a song (“I Ejaculate Fire”) from Dethklok’s new album while you’re at it. Continue reading »

BLOODSTOCK 2012 – A REVIEW AND MUSIC FROM THE FESTIVAL (Part 2)

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 292012
 

(Our UK correspondent Andy Synn, who is a lucky devil, attended the mammoth BLOODSTOCK festival earlier this month and delivered a report on the performances. You can find his review of the festival’s Friday and Saturday shows at this location, and today we’ve got his write-up about what he saw and heard on BLOODSTOCK’s final day — plus a collection of videos (some of which are full sets) at the end.)

SUNDAY

Unfortunately, the first band to assault my ears on the last day of Bloodstock were the generally uninspired Kobra & The Lotus, a band who the metal media have been trying desperately to ram down our throats for some time now, but who don’t have the songs or presence to justify it. Not the worst band in the world by a long shot, but memorable only for how forgettable they were, and for the singer’s often flat, often forced, vocals.

So it’s a good thing we had Nile! After some admittedly hilarious sound problems (where you could hear the sound guy shouting and swearing at everyone to ‘Fuck off! We’re not ready!” after Nile tried to start their intro a tad early), the quartet finally kicked into a sterling set of challenging death metal mechanics. The new songs are definitely finding their place in the complex algorithm of Nile’s set, while a run-in by members of The Black Dahlia Murder for the climactic chant-along of “Black Seeds of Vengeance” helped add to that special “festival-feeling”.

Speaking of The Black Dahlia Murder, they were up next and also faced the unappealing task of presenting their razor-sharp melodic death metal to a crowd that had seemingly greeted their announcement with either measured ambivalence or outright hostility. But with good natured aplomb, and some hilarious stage banter, the quintet were definitely up to the challenge, packing an impressive number of songs into a short time slot in an effort to win over as many with their music as possible. Kudos for the handling of the naked guy (“Raise him up, I want to see his penis… no wait, keep him away from security… oh no, they got him. Enjoy jail dude!”), and well done on ending the set with more people in the field than they started with. Continue reading »

GREAT ALBUM – SHAME ABOUT THE ARTWORK

 Eye-Catchers  8 Responses »
Jun 212012
 

(Andy Synn gives us examples of reverse-Eye-Catchers.)

In between reviews (at the moment I have pieces on the new Vintersorg, Gojira, Ihsahn, and De Profundis in gestation) and work on future editions of The Synn Report (for which I have a vague outline of what bands I want to cover, and in what order), I’d like to drop in little columns on bits of metal culture tangentially connected with the music. It’s fun to do, and it gives me a bit of breathing space and a place to clear my head.

Now, while I have a long-running piece on metal lyrics and the art of writing them (and then setting them to music) in the works, I thought for now I’d do a short, irreverent piece on metal artwork.  More precisely, bad metal artwork.

Ok, so clearly I could have filled this entire list with bad black metal artwork… although similarly I could easily have filled it with bad death metal artwork (any number of covers featuring zombies, rape, or zombie rape would do) or bad thrash artwork (robots, tanks, robot-tanks, etc). But I’ve gone for a cross-genre approach to make things a little fairer, and to allow me to fit in some real stinkers.

All these examples have been chosen from my own collection, and I’ve selected a few pieces of artwork that have unfortunately been latched onto otherwise great albums. Not all of them are utterly terrible, but none of them do justice to the music contained within. Continue reading »

THE TOP 10 ALBUMS OF Q2 2011

 Listmania  32 Responses »
Jul 012011
 

(NCS writer Israel Flanders bravely sticks his neck out with his list of the best albums released during the second quarter of 2011 — April, May, and June.)

So I’m back. Been out of it for the last week or so and just decided it was time to take some lazy days, but it’s time to get back to the fuckin’ metal and the fuckin’ headbanging action. It’s now the end of the second quarter of 2011 and I figured I would continue my top ten of every quarter series, which I started at The Metal Register. So, just for refreshers sake, let’s take a look at what I picked for Q1. In no particular order I had…

Sylosis – Edge Of The Earth
Eradication – Dreams Of Reality
TesseracT – One
Born Of Osiris – The Discovery
Rotten Sound – Cursed
Amon Amarth – Surtur Rising
Crowbar – Sever The Wicked Hand
Paul Wardingham – Assimilate/Regenerate
Times Of Grace – Hymn Of A Broken Man
Deicide – To Hell With God

So now we move on to the list for Q2. I know people are going to complain, bitch, moan, and otherwise cry at me through the comments on how often I didn’t pick your favorite tech-death band that sounds like rejected Psycroptic demos, but if I haven’t heard it, I’m not gonna pick it. Now let’s get to the albums shall we?  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 5)

 Forthcoming Albums  6 Responses »
May 022011
 


What the hell is that big yellow thing up in the sky? It looks vaguely familiar, but it’s appeared so rarely here in The Emerald City over the last six months that we’re having trouble placing the name. Well, maybe the name will come to us. The great wheel of the seasons surely must continue to turn someplace, but in Seattle it seems to have been stuck on Winter since, like, forever. In some parts of the world, April showers bring May flowers, but here, April showers will probably bring . . . May showers.

Okay, enough whining. At least we don’t get tornados dropping from the sky like atom bombs and wiping whole towns off the map. And even though the weather hasn’t been our friend, we have metal to make up for the cold shoulder — and there’s a bunch of new metal headed our way.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. Continue reading »

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