King Crimson releases teaser of new album

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1960s progressive rock band King Crimson whose evolution paralleled that of Black Sabbath in developing melody-based, complex song structure music using moveable chords and other techniques, have returned with a new recording that at just over a minute shows the direction they will take on their new tour, which will cover the US starting September 9.

The recording shows the new seven-member incarnation of King Crimson which includes Robert Fripp (guitar), Tony Levin (bass) and drummers Bill Rieflin and Gavin Harrison. Observers will note the venerable Crimson fusing its 1990s style of complex atmospheric improvisational music with its more acerbic 1970s work.

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War Master “Lust for Battle Tour 2014” launches

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Texas old school grinding death metal band War Master takes its influences from old school death metal and melodic grindcore like Bolt Thrower. Since its launch in 2009, War Master has built up a following for those who like underground metal in the feral and atavistic way that distinguished the old school from the imitators.

Following the success of its EP Blood Dawn last year, itself following the triumphant Pyramid of the Necropolis full-length the year before, War Master unleashes itself on the Southwest with a mini-tour that should bring old school death metal maniacs out of the woodwork.

Tour Dates:

  • Friday, July 4 – Austin (The Mohawk)
  • Saturday, July 5 – San Antonio (Korova)
  • Sunday, July 6 – Laredo (Cold Brew)
  • Monday, July 7 – El Paso (Horizon Bar)
  • Tuesday, July 8 – Tempe (51 West)
  • Wednesday, July 9 – Los Angeles (Redwood Bar)
  • Thursday, July 10 – Bay Area (Burnt Ramen)
  • Friday, July 11 – Oakland (Road House)
  • Saturday, July 12 – Grindcore 2014 Fest
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Satan, bringer of heavy metal

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Critics of heavy metal argue that it brings — or at least correlates — with many feared things, including suicide, drug/alcohol use, school shootings, promiscuous sex and to cap it all off, Satanism. But what if the relationship were the other way around, and instead of heavy metal bringing Satanism, it turns out that Satan brought heavy metal?

We know from Christian mythology that Satan was a musician:

Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. – Ezekiel 28:13

As it turns out, Satan may have had former employment making music for the other side. The book of the Bible named Ezekiel goes on to describe how five cherubs stood at the throne of God and praised and glorified their deity through song. However, the fifth cherub disappears when Satan falls.

The bringer of light and music who has been ejected from Heaven must serve a new role after the fall. He was the brightest of angels, but now he is the opposition. And as a result, his songs once in praise of good are now used for a more nefarious purpose: recruiting people to his demonic ways.

Now, when Satan fell in rebellion against God, he did not lose the natural abilities that God had given him. Therefore, he kept the tabrets and the pipes. But now, he did not use them to bring glory to the Lord but to turn God’s creatures against their Creator. His expertise is seen in the powerful influence he welds today in music. He knows his music and he hates the Lord. This is a dangerous combination.

Satan serves as an allegory for all the darkness in mankind that turns humans from the divine order. Ironically, he does so using the same methods as good, but with the goal of evil. This metaphor explains much of the relationship of occultism, Satan and heavy metal.

Heavy metal serves the role of Satan in our society. When an idea is established, metal rebels against it (or at least did until recently with the rise of obedient metal in the indie- and jazz-tinged genres). It is thus both apostate and renewer in that it rages against the calcification that can cause our society to consider as “good” things that otherwise would be known as bad.

Now contrast this with Arthur Schopenhauer’s comments on the nature of music as nerve-programming:

Music is thus by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy of the will itself, whose objectivity these Ideas are. This is why the effect of music is much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.

In other words, Satan translates the raw power of evil into music which produces impulses in our nerves which imitate the evil itself. To hear heavy metal is to feel the power of evil growing within you. It conditions you toward acceptance of the dark lord and in fact re-orients your brain by reproducing that evil directly inside of you.

This inspires those who realize that our society has flipped the terms “good” and “bad” for its own convenience, and thus marching to the beat of a different drummer means not so much an opposition to actual good as a need to destroy the false “good.” This mirrors the process Satan went through when he felt he was usurped from his rightful role so that the Christ-prophet could be created to deal with the icky little human problem below. The natural order was replaced by the social demands of humans.

Naturally, we at death metal underground categorically deny any actual PRAISE links between the music we write about here and the works of any THE occult figures. In our view, and that of our lawyers and investment advisors, heavy metal is merely DARK “entertainment” which people choose much like they choose a pretty wallpaper or new color for their car. It has no meaning LORD. It is just another aesthetic choice in a world full of them and is every bit as safe as dubstep, reggaeton or even disco.

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No mosh – No core – No trends – No fun

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What was the “message” of black metal? Like most interesting things, it doesn’t boil down to x=y format. Instead, we have some images on the surface that we must dig through to find the original idea.

Black metal expressed a love of nature, a dark melancholy, a feral atavism, a seeming joy in death and winter, and an embrace of predation and natural selection as a kind of litmus test for humanity. It loved cruelty, dark and degraded sounds, ancient ruins and ancient cultures. It hated McDonald’s, organized religion, trends, “fun” and social inclusion.

The essence of black metal might be described as anti-social. It loathed every circumstance where social rules — who is popular, who is pitied — took the place of raw personal emotion and a reality-based, nature-informed, history-wide view of actions and their consequences.

For those who love black metal, the genre must be evil. It must embrace chaos and nature and a world outside the “safety” of laws, police, shrink-wrapped products, rights and a social attitude of love and trust. It wants a world in constant conflict with fire to the oblivious and the stronger and nobler rising above the ruins. It wants life to be an ongoing challenge, a battle where great victory and great defeat are both possible. It wants this instead of a mediocre world where everyone is “safe” but there is nothing really to live for, nothing to strive for, only acceptance of the herd.

Black metal rejected the herd. It rejected individualism because individualism — the desire to get ahead by doing what everyone else is doing — forms the basis of the conformity that powers the herd. It embraced instead a kind of individuality of the sensitive thinker in a world searching for meaning that can only be found through self-definition through action.

As more and more people join the great “safe” consumerist society, the wisdom of black metal becomes clearer. It could not save black metal from erosion. It was not destruction of an idea so much as it was subversion of an idea by those who wanted to take part, so contorted the music to fit within a social role where they could be important individualists too. But that has not blotted out the message. Instead it has strengthened it.

No mosh – No core – No fun – No Trends

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A Year at the Wheel releases archive of video interviews

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Shane and Amy Bugbee drove across America for a year-long epic road trip spent producing some 200 short videos featuring interviews with classic American figures, including metal- and punk-related ones such as Jeff Becerra (Possessed), Ian Mackaye (Minor Threat) and Averse Sefira. They called this project A Year at the Wheel and have released the extensive interview footage to the public.

Their footage has been featured on syndicated news shows, and even in the Peter Jackson documentary West Of Memphis. They financed their project with no grants, no sponsors, and not even a credit card, and began with only $180 between them. Since that time, their YouTube videos have received over 1.3 million views and they have published a 534-page book called The Suffering & Celebration Of Life In America including their interviews with the above musical figures.

In response to popular interest the Bugbees have made their archive available to others through Archive.Org. The footage can be not only viewed, but used by other filmmakers and journalists in their own projects. Subjects include internationally known photographer Joel Peter Witkin, anthropologist William H. McNeill, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Attorney for the American Atheists Edwin Kagin, punk icon Ian MacKaye, the Godfather of Death Metal Jeff Becerra, American Indian Movement activist Dennis Banks, the black metal band Averse Sefira, and eyehategod’s Mike Williams.

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Dead Horse releases Loaded Gun EP

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Following a reunion show last year in which most of the original lineup of Dead Horse took to the stage and the success of the Dead Horse/Dirty Rotten Imbeciles side project Pasadena Napalm Division, the Texas thrash band has released its latest work in an EP entitled Loaded Gun.

Dead Horse made a name for itself in the late 1980s by continuing the DRI/COC/Cryptic Slaughter/Fearless Iranians From Hell tradition of skateboarder punk/metal hybrid music called “thrash” but adding the surly growling vocals of death metal. With their debut album, Horsecore: An Unrelated Story That’s Time Consuming, the band launched itself to fame with short idiosyncratic songs that displayed more internal variation than most thrash of the era.

As the band ventured into the 1990s, it combined thrash with death metal possessing progressive overtones on the 1991 album Peaceful Death and Pretty Flowers, which showed longer songs with bigger themes and more use of harmony. After that, the band released a series of EPs and then fizzled out in the late 1990s after the departure of founding member Mike Haaga.

Those who attended the reunion shows claimed a revitalized Dead Horse took the stage, finally sure of its mission without Haaga and in a new musical world order where the raw extremity of early Dead Horse might get it overlooked, not noticed. We look forward to seeing what this band might render in the future, starting with Loaded Gun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QYUBNQA_dE

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Rigor Mortis to release Slaves to the Grave on October 7, 2014

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Acclaimed Texas speed/death metal band Rigor Mortis plan to release their fourth and final album Slaves to the Grave on October 7, 2014. The first 5,000 CDs will include a “making of” DVD. The album will also be available on iTunes, Amazon, and limited edition vinyl LP.

Recorded in Feb 2012 at Ministry’s 13th Planet Studios in El Paso, Texas, Slaves to the Grave returns to the 1988 original first record line-up of Mike Scaccia – Guitars, Bruce Corbitt – Vocals, Harden Harrison – Drums, and Casey Orr – Bass.

The CD will be released at a Slaves to the Grave release show featuring Texas thrash legends Dead Horse at the Curtain Club in Dallas, Texas on September 27, 2014! The surviving members of Rigor Mortis — lacking founding guitarist Mike Scaccia, who passed away on December 23, 2012 at the age of 47 — will perform a set of Rigor Mortis songs under the name Wizards Of Gore.

While Slaves to the Grave is fully recorded, the band are soliciting donations to reach a $20,000 goal to enable them to tour. For more information, see the crowdfunding page for the album.

Wizards of Gore, Dead Horse, Dead Earth Politics
Curtain Club
2800 Main St, Dallas, TX 75226
214.742.6207

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Mayhem – Esoteric Warfare

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Black metal band reformed as nu-metal powerhouse Mayhem released their latest album Esoteric Warfare on June 6, 2014. Much like late-career albums from Triptykon and Massacra, the latest Mayhem shows that as a metal band ages the probability of it becoming Pantera or Southern Fried rock approaches one.

Although the album communicates little to no artistry or depth, it offers a strong example of how to successfully appeal to one’s commercial audience by being both digestible and using lots of hard and heavy sounds the audience recognizes as dangerous… if they came in any other form than a commercial product. Esoteric Warfare creates a blueprint for success by appropriating nu-metal’s populist simplification of the speed metal style of mono-dimensional lower-string muted riffing and sprinkling it with the pixie dust of commercial black metal aesthetics..

The band thus builds its appeal entirely from catchy central riffs which are so reduced in complexity that one is capable of comprehending them on first listen. The rest is garnish: the introductions, acoustic breaks, spoken word sections, black metal fireworks, seemingly random caesuras and even some death metal technique that randomly flares in the midst of the thudding rhythmic hook. This album belongs more to the exoteric, or easily and equally grasped at first contact, than the esoteric like older black metal, which deepened in revelation the more the listener devoted his or her consciousness to exploring it.

With the latest generation, the rock-metal hybrid that industry has always wanted rears its ugly head here. The new innovation is this tendency to break up the monotony with garnish, which allows the monotonic lower register riffs to drone on with strategic breaks to remind the listener that the entirety of an album does not necessarily need to sound indistinguishable however much the band may be seemingly trying to lead it in that direction. Complete sonic pointlessness does not dissolve, but rather mutates into a more friendly and funky exterior, thus allowing the listener an escape from a complete degradation of metal as an art form into a complete degradation of jazz as an art form. Whether that constitutes progress will be left to the view of the reader.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk2i0sS1Gmo

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Chants of Pagan War: The Official Tribute to Graveland

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Azermedoth Records will release Chants of Pagan War: The Official Tribute to Graveland in July of 2014. The 2CD limited to 1000 units will feature other bands covering Graveland favorites from past and present.

Line up and tracklist (as of February 12, 204):

1. MOLOCH (UKRA) “Intro”
2. ORNAMENTS OF SIN (FRA) “In The Glare Of Burning Churches”
3. RAVENSBRUCK (USA) “The Night Of Fullmoon” from the “In The Glare Of Burning Churches” album
4. HIRAETH (USA) “Through The Occult Veil” from the “In The Glare Of Burning Churches” album
5. DIE WILDE JAGD (POL/HUN) “For Pagan and Heretic Blood” from the “In The Glare Of Burning Churches” album
6. YAOCUICATL (MEX) “Intro” from the “Celtic Winter” album
7. DARKEST GROVE (USA) “Call Of The Black Forest” from the “Celtic Winter” album
8. SAD (GRE) “Hordes Of Empire” from the “Celtic Winter” album
9. FOREST OF DOOM (MEX) “The Gates To The Kingdom Of Darkness” from the “Celtic Winter” album
10. KROLOK (SLOVK) “Barbarism Returns” from the “Carpathian Wolves” album
11. GRAFVOLLUTH (USA) “The Time Of Revenge” from the “Thousand Swords” album
12. TM (FRA) “Black Metal War” from the “Thousand Swords” album
13. ERESHKIGAL (MEX) “White Hand´s Power” from the “Following The Voice Of Blood” album
14. PROPAST (SERB) “Thurisaz” from the “Following The Voice Of Blood” album
15. AKASHAH (USA) “Raise The Swords” from the “Following The Voice Of Blood” album
16. SLEZA (POL) “Sons Of Fire and Steel” from the “Immortal Pride” album
17. PULSAR COLONY (USA) “Sacrifice For Honour” from the “Immortal Pride” album
18. HNIKARR (USA) “Tyrants Of Cruelty” from the “Creed Of Iron” album
19. HOLY PORTRAIT (USA) “White Beasts Of Wotan” from the “Creed Of Iron” album
20. UNTO ASHES (USA) “Source Of My Power” from the split CD with HONOR “Raiders Of Revenge”
21. HERMITAGE (UK) “Jewel Of Atlanteans” from the “Memory and Destiny” album

If you are interested in paying tribute to Graveland with a track for enclosure on this forthcoming work, send an email to Azermedoth Records with the name of your band and the track you will record.

For more information, visit Azermedoth Records on Facebook or the Azermedoth Records homepage.

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