NEW SONGS: VADER, VALLENFYRE, AND VOLTURYON; BARGHEST AND BONGRIPPER; DENIED

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
May 162014
 

Lots of new songs appeared today. I picked six to play for you, despite the fact that I could maintain alliteration for only two groups of them. In a rare display of concision, I will be concise. If you don’t find at least one thing to like in here, there may be no hope for you.

VADER

I’m borrowing Axl Rosenberg’s introduction to the new Vader song at Metal Sucks because it made me laugh:

Vader have released a new song, “Triumph of Death,” which you can stream below. It’s a visceral track which, believe it or not, may make you tear up a bit, as its subject matter is one to which we all relate: a metalhead is forced against his will to go see the (Hed)P.E. and SOiL tour, but he ultimately manages a bittersweet victory when he kills himself mid-show by inhaling next to a guy in a Primer 55 shirt, thereby attaining sweet release. The metal community has lost too many good men and women that way, and I commend Vader for calling attention to these tragedies.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: FUCK THE FACTS, MASTODON, VADER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 182014
 

Between pulling my hair out two days ago because our site was down and then frantically trying to catch up yesterday with posts we had promised to do on the day the site was down, I haven’t been as on top of new happenings as I’d like. So, to catch up a bit, here are a trio of new-ish things I’d like to share. There will be another round-up later today.

FUCK THE FACTS

My NCS comrade Austin Weber sent me the photo you see above. Hiding behind that absurdly large, absurdly metal mask is Mel Mongeon of Canada’s Fuck the Facts, putting on her metal face for a show in Chicago last night.

If you don’t know, the band have just begin a North American tour. Even without a mask of such epic qualities, Ms. Mongreon,  Topon Das, and their brothers in arms will still shake you to your core. Here’s the tour schedule as it now stands: Continue reading »

GAZE UPON THE COVER ART FOR VADER’S NEW ALBUM

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Mar 212014
 

There it is, the cover art for Vader’s next album (their 12th), Tibi Et Igni. My Latin is a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure Tibit Et Igni means “we will hammer the back of your head so hard your eyeballs will be ejected at the speed of sound and then we’ll start on your spine”.

The cover is damned cool. It was created is by veteran artist Joe Petagno, and the album was recorded by the Wieslawski brothers at Hertz Studio in Bialystok, Poland (we already mentioned them earlier today because they recorded Beneath’s new album). The album will be released on May 30 by Nuclear Blast. A two-song single will be released on April 18, both digitally and on 7″ vinyl.

Actually, I just checked, and my Latin is rustier than I thought. Tibit Et Igni apparently means “For You and Fire”. I think this is just another way of saying “we will burn you like dry kindling and scatter your ash to the four winds”. The track list is after the jump for those who are into that kind of thing (the bonus tracks look interesting). Here also is the band’s previously released quote about the new music: Continue reading »

CATCHING UP (PART 2): SOREPTION, VADER, WATAIN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Dec 112013
 

Continuing my effort to catch up on news and new music I missed while on vacation the last two weeks, here are three more items of interest, again presented in alphabetical order.

SOREPTION

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen the phrase “long-awaited and highly anticipated” in a press release about a new album, I could buy a nice new car, or maybe two. But it’s a phrase that absolutely fits this Swedish band’s second album, Engineering the Void. More than three years have passed since the release of their excellent debut album Deterioration of Minds. Even when the band finally released an exciting teaser of new music last June, there was no release date.

Finally, while I was away, the band announced that the album would be released by Unique Leader Records on February 18, and then just two days ago we got a lyric video for the first full advance track from the album, “Breaking the Great Narcissist”, and goddamn, is it good. Continue reading »

SUMMER BREEZE 2013 — DAY 0/1

 Concert Reviews  5 Responses »
Sep 022013
 

(Our roving reporter Andy Synn was fortunate enough to take in the 2013 edition of the Summer Breeze open air festival in Germany last month and has prepared a multi-part review accompanied by videos that he shot during the festival. Today we bring you Part 1 of his write-up.)

Apologies to anyone who might have been waiting for my SB review this year. The trip to Seattle took up 99% of my time since, so I didn’t really have much chance to write things up before now!

Let me tell you though, leaving your house at 1am and driving to Dinkelsbuhl (where the festival is located), arriving at around half 7 in the evening, is a LONG drive. I did the first stretch in one relatively unbroken 10 hour stint, but after that it was a case of frequent stops to rest every time I started feeling my eyes getting heavy. Urgh.

DAY 0

As it was, though, I made it to the festival in time to see Vader… well, some of Vader. Because one minor issue with having the opening night festivities situated in the 3rd stage tent is that you end up trying to pack an entire festival’s worth of people into a venue that, while large in itself, was definitely not designed for that purpose! Thus my Vader viewing experience became a curious mix of long-range appreciation and video-screen voyeurism. Continue reading »

TOURISM: “BACK TO THE BLACK” COMES TO THE U.S. (VADER, VITAL REMAINS, SACRIFICIAL SLAUGHTER)

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Jun 172013
 

Poland’s magnificent Vader spent the first part of 2013 laying waste to Europe in a tour called Back To the Black. Over the weekend, news surfaced that Vader will now be bringing Back To the Black to the U.S. For support, they will be backed by U.S. death metal veterans Vital Remains, California death/thrashers Sacrificial Slaughter, a Colorado death/black band named Execration, and a bunch of brutal death Floridians named Extremely Rotten.

I’m not familiar with all of these bands, but based on the ones I know, this should be a thoroughly maiming, blood-spattered experience. And of course, any chance to see Vader is a chance that should be seized.

Only an initial slate of 11 dates has surfaced so far, and more will be coming. Check out the first installment after the jump. Continue reading »

CARCASS AND VADER IN THE NEWS

 Metal News  1 Response »
May 132013
 

If you’ve been following us for very long, then you know we’re not a “news aggregator” site, by which I mean sites that simply copy and paste the daily flood of metal press releases and other newsy blurbs. That’s a useful service, but there are tons of other places out there which do that. In the category of “breaking news”, we usually focus on new music or videos, and we’re selective about what what we recommend. But mainly it’s because we have a small staff of unpaid slaves who spend most of their time sleeping or fending off creditors.

But I’m making an exception for the two items in this post, because they involve Carcass and Vader. Honestly, there’s not much meaningful news in this post, but . . . to repeat . . . the news involves CARCASS AND VADER!!

The news about Carcass is two-fold: First, we now have the first official photo (above) of the new Carcass lineup, courtesy of Adrian Erlandsson of Murder Mile Studios: bassist/vocalist Jeff Walker, guitarist Bill Steer, new guitarist Ben Ash (Pig Iron, Desolation, Liquefied Skeleton) and new drummer Dan Wilding (Aborted, Trigger the Bloodshed). And second, Carcass signed a deal last Thursday (May 9) with an as-yet-undisclosed label for the release of their new album, Surgical Steel. Why have Carcass not disclosed the label? Fuck if I know. Continue reading »

SHUFFLE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHUFFLE  17 Responses »
Aug 112012
 

As much as I like working on this blog, it has changed my listening habits. One of our missions is to stay abreast of song and video premieres and new albums, sifting through the flood of new metal to find things we believe are worth recommending and reviewing. So I spend almost all my listening time nowadays checking out metal I’ve never heard before. The cost, unfortunately, is that I rarely listen to what’s in the library of albums I’ve accumulated over the years. No more “oldies but goodies” for me.

But yesterday, on a whim, I decided that I’d spend the time walking to and from my job listening to what was on my iPod already, and I used Shuffle to pick what I heard. My iPod Classic is full. It has 22,331 songs on it, and almost all of the shit is metal. To put a new album on there requires that I delete another one, which is horribly painful to do. That process has made the library more top-heavy with newer music over time, which may explain why most of the Shuffle choices turned out to be of relatively recent vintage.

Anyway, it turned out to be a blast, because the first five songs that Shuffle picked were all really good and really beastly. The next couple weren’t as killer, so I decided to just go with the first five in this post. Oddly, two of the five turned out to be from Japanese bands.

DISMEMBER

Fuckin’ Dismember! What an auspicious way to start the Shuffle medley! I didn’t need reminding about how completely amazing Like An Ever Flowing Stream was — and still is — but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve listened to “Skin Her Alive”. What a thoroughly skin-flaying, meat-grinding experience. Continue reading »

THEMADISRAELI’S TOP 15 OF 2011: “CARNIVAL IS FOREVER”, “WELCOME TO THE MORBID REICH”, AND “AGONY”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 132012
 

(TheMadIsraeli forges ahead with his mission of reviewing or re-reviewing the albums on his personal list of 2011’s 15 best releases.)

I’m departing from my originally planned two-at-a-time format because grouping these three together seems appropriate to me.

Decapitated went through some hard times.  A van accident ended in the death of one of the most skilled drummers metal has ever seen and left their newly recruited vocalist in a coma (from which, to my knowledge, he still hasn’t recovered), and the remaining members seemingly left Vogg behind.

Who knows what caused Vogg to resist pronouncing the death of the band even though there was virtual silence from them for some time. But the even greater wonder is that Vogg was inspired to get back on the horse after not just being thrown off, but also being run over by a freight train along with the horse.  Was it his way of coping?  Was it just all he knew to do?  Regardless of the answer, it seems that out of a morbid tragedy laden with death and destruction, Decapitated has finally come to form.

Sure, the old shit was good — even great at times — but I would still classify the music as high-caliber standard death metal.  That was until Organic Hallucinosis came out.  It turned Decapitated’s sound upside down and right-side up again and produced a unique take on death metal — more groove-heavy, more experimental, and most importantly, not afraid to take note of modern convention. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT: OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW

 THE SYNN REPORT  15 Responses »
Dec 292011
 

(Andy Synn provides an unexpected SYNN REPORT, seizing upon the imminent calendar change to discuss the re-recording of 12 songs by 12 tremendous bands — and of course we’re including the music, which means 24 tracks. Fuck, this would be a mixtape that KILLS.)

So here it is, a surprise Synn Report to finish off the year. Arbitrary though the distinction may well be, the end of the year provides a perfect excuse to attend to a similar theme, the transition from the old to the new – re-workings and re-recordings.

Are they better? That’s an argument for the ages? Are they necessary? Hell, that’s probably an even worse argument to start up…

Primarily, re-recordings serve a twofold purpose – 1. to reinvigorate songs that might otherwise not be getting the set-time they deserve, and 2. – to royally piss off a band’s fan-base. Although there’s a chance that the second isn’t entirely intentional. Still, the re-recorded album courts controversy like almost no other, whether it’s a varied collection of songs that are chosen to receive the treatment, or a full re-recording of an entire album.

The full re-recording of an entire album is clearly the most contentious option, while single track re-recordings are often a much more successful and welcome proposition, most often appearing as b-sides and bonus tracks for the avid collector. The full-album re-recording, however, remains exceptionally and unequivocally divisive, alienating as many old fans as it attracts new ones.

So here’s a list of some of those renewed tracks that I think definitely have something to offer the listener, both old and new. I’m sure I’ll have to turn in my kvlt card after this, for promoting something so new and shiny, but ah well… Continue reading »

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