Vehemence to release new full-length

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Following an entire decade without a new album, Phoenix-based melodic death metal band,Vehemence, return to full-time duty in 2015, having reactivated the band and completed their fourth full-length studio full-length, Forward Without Motion, which is now set for release this Autumn via Battleground Records.

 

Vehemence will release Forward Without Motion through Battleground Records on October 27th in various formats, including a 2xLP set on 180-gram black vinyl in gatefold packaging, a CD version, and across various digital platforms.

 

http://www.facebook.com/vehemenceofficial

http://soundcloud.com/vehemenceofficial

http://twitter.com/vehemenceaz

http://www.youtube.com/vehemenceband

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Xibalba release video for “Guerrilla”

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Protest deathcore band Xibalba have released a new video for their song “Guerrilla”. Playing an easy-to-understand style of heavy music for the masses, Xibalba find a strong audience among the disenfranchised members of the lower echelons of society looking for validation and a call to revolution by catering to their mental needs in their gang-themed revolution lyrics.

 

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Sadistic Metal Reviews 05-27-2015

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Sadistic Metal Reviews function as your goto list for albums that should be recycled as material for making more copies of actually good music, if that’s even possible. These releases deserve no better than to be piled up and flattened by a machine. They’re wasting space and resources on completely useless, half-assed art.

Ethereal – Opus Aethereum (2015)

Playing a pseudo-symphonic black metal, Ethereal play a speed metal blanketed by racing, blasting drums with no creativity at all. The blanket comes in the form of the synth special “orchestral” effects which outline melodies on top of the repetitive music which never builds up to anything. The emphasis of the music is on how fast and brutal it is alone, in the spirit of the gimmicks of Godflesh Apocalypse. There are a few beautiful moments here and there in the album and this is the sort of candy some people will latch on to, but as an integral music work, it is of extremely sparse quality.

Mellevon – Solace (2015)

Somehow trying to unite ambient, pop “metal” and deathcore, Mellevon embarrass themselves with this blatant attempt at making pseudo-progressive music, the modern misconception of what progressive music is. The songs are driven by groovy rhythms in power chords, alternated by single-string tremolos that are just the backbones for chords (as opposed to being motifs), with a synth outlining the Epica/Nightwish – like melodies with a modern cliche “prog” twist.

Opium Lord – Eye Of Earth (2015)

Your typical sludge-like experience, this band’s music goes nowhere. It all relies on one rhythm, one riff and the pushing of this sole element by upholding how “heavy” it is. Representing one of the most superficial genres, Opium Lord give us 7 tracks with 10 riffs that are “ultra-heavy”. Get ready to headbang, brainless potheads.

Saturnian Mist – Chaos Magick (2015)

Saturnian Mist play a cheap brand of alternative metal that tries very hard to be tough and to insert “extreme” elements to sound tougher. The whole attitude of this band seems to be based on that all too common sentiment of posing at being a tough kid. The songs follow a pop format, and are based on chords with screamed lyrics on top of them. Major impact is in the contrast of certain sections. Endings are just abrupt, the songs do not lead from one clear point to another, but are rather just very messy.

Svärta – Sepultus (2015)

Ah, the black metal stereotype of flat-dynamics throughout a song have lead so many astray. With the idea tha black metal consists only on flat and intense sound repeated ad nauseam without any other aim than “Creatng atmosphere”, Svärta gives the world yet another bland modern black metal album. This band at least has the sense to be relatively consistent and they try to bring riffs back, or their main ideas at least. The lacking vision shows most clearly when they insert sections with no drums and clean guitar strums out of the blue with little relation to the rest of the song in order to create the cliche anti-climax that the unimaginative minds can summon as their only proposition.

Cold Cell – Lowlife (2015)

More pseudo black metal from the modern sludge crowd with post-metal tendencies. They try to “improve” on black metal by bringing in more clean picked chords, inserting more blank spaces in the music and forcing variety on songs. Not the kind of variety that is linked strongly within a song through different musical dimensions, but the kind of variety that results from not fucking knowing what to write and so being forced to insert whatever comes into your mind. This is not creativity, this is mediocrity.

Nightwish – Forms Most Beautiful (2015)

Representing the cheapest moves by the so-called symphonic metal bands, Nightwish makes songs with long, varied intros that vary from straight-up pop flares to the modern pseudo-prog groovy intros. Do not let anything here fool you, this is is just simple and low-quality pop music with catchy leads. The entire value fans of this music give it is reduced t “nice melodies”. It’s insulting that these people even want to sell themselves as metal. This is pop music, accept it once and for all and put all these candy-rock pop in the shelf next to Miley Cyrus.

Profezia – Black Misanthropic Elite – Moon Anthem (2015)

More intense, low-fi black metal that does nothing but ride a riff and repeat it until the band feels it has filled enough minutes. Combine this with slower tracks to create variety and you have more repetitive songs that try very hard at the same trope of “creating atmosphere” by virtue of their repetition. This is as tiring on its own as it is as a result of having heard this approach by countless other mediocre bands.

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Classical String Quartets for the death metal fan, fourth edition

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Today, we’ll visit string quartets from both the Romantic and Modernist eras. The purpose is to give continuity to the line started in the first few articles. We visited Beethoven and Shostakovich, then Mozart and Bartók, and for the last time we visited the respected teachers Haydn and Schoenberg. This time we visit one of the the Romantic heirs to the Beethovenian tradition, the writer of music with a very private character, Schubert, and the genius serialist composer Webern, one of the most (if not the most) outstanding students of Schoenberg.

 

Franz Schubert: String Quartet no. 14, Der Tod und das Mädchen

This quartet is dubbed after an earlier lied of the same name, whose main theme Schubert used as the theme for the the second movement of this string quartet.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlzv1yUFo-A

 

Anton Webern: 5 Sätze für Streichquartett op.5 (5 movements for string quartet)

It is a common misconception that serialism is a more mechanical method of composition, because it s a method. While some (including myself) believe it is an unnatural (contrary to the Common Practice Period notions) method contradicting the physics of frequencies, it is, apart from that fact, as much of a valid and constrictive method as any other. No more, no less. It just follows a different set of rules. And because it is counter-intuitive for people unaccustomed  to it, compositions with this method may well prove to be even more demanding by virtue of this lack of familiarity the general public has with it – it has harder to make something that makes any sense for the human ear. In my humble opinion, the dependency on an ethereal pulse becomes paramount in this type of music.

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Desolate Pathway announce Sorrows Path guitarist to guest on new album

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UK epic doom metal band Desolate Pathway are delighted to announce a guest guitarist for their upcoming album: none other than Kostas Salomidis of Greek stalwarts Sorrows Path.

Guitarist Vince Hempstead commented:

We would like to announce with honour that Kostas Salomidis from the amazing Greek Doom band Sorrows Path has recorded 2 guest guitar solos for our 2nd album planned for early 2016. Last week, Kostas recorded the guitar solos at Fragile Studios in Athens with producer Vangelis Yalamas, and the results are amazing. A great way to connect with our Greek mythology-based new recordings.

 

The band are also due to hit the road several times this year. Dates are as follows:

  • Jun 18th: The Cave, Addlestone, Surrey, w/ Hagstone & Famyne
  • Aug 29th: Power and Glory Festival, Hatfield w/ Stampede, Savage, Martyr, Sacrilege, Lord Volture, Toledo Steel, Salem, Dealer and more
  • Aug 30th: The Carlisle, Hastings, w/ Lord Volture & Toledo Steel
  • Sept 19th: The Carlisle, Hastings w/ Famyne
  • Oct 31st: Fest of Hades, Wakefield w/ Hamerex, Kaine, Aonia, Promethium and more.
  • Nov 13th: The Haunt, Brighton, w/ Temperance, Seventh Sin & Proscenium*
  • Nov 14th: The Anvil, Bournemouth, w/ Ded Orse, Bitter Divide & Seventh Sin*
  • Nov 28th: The Unicorn, London w/ Sir Admiral Cloudesley Shovell

* A Black Phoenix Rising Promotions special

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King Heavy to release self-titled debut

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Chilean / Belgian band King Heavy is set to release its self-titled debut full length on September 4 in Europe and September 19 in the U.S. King Heavy was formed in 2009 by ex-Procession founder Daniel Perez Saa and Luce Vee, known for being the vocalist of Dutch Doom Metal act Hooded Priest. Shortly thereafter guitarist Matias Aguirre and drummer Miguel Canessa were added to the line up and in 2014 the bandself-released an EP entitled Horror Absoluto, which was later repressed on split-vinyl by French label Emanes Records.

 

Track List:

  1. La Gárgola
  2. Life A.D.
  3. As Dawn Broke On The Day
  4. Thirteen Chosen Ones
  5. Wounds
  6. The Crowning
  7. He Who Spoke In Tongues

https://www.facebook.com/kingheavydoom

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Cult of Endtime stream debut

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Finnish death metal band Cult of Endtime are finally releasing their first album since the band’s inception in 2010, titled In Charnel Lights.

 

Tracklisting for Cult of Endtime’s In Charnel Lights:

  1. A Vast Cosmic Horror
  2. Cairns On Mercury
  3. Prognatus De Sigillum
  4. The Colossus Fell
  5. Hidden Gods
  6. Gnostic Haeresis
  7. Funeral Voyagers
  8. Discourse With The Dead

 

www.facebook.com/cultofendtime

 

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