Humanity follows this pattern: someone breaks away from doing the same stuff everyone else is doing, does something different and it resonates with smart people, so everyone else starts doing it but they use it as a new flavor for doing the same stuff everyone else is doing. They think this will let them be both new and familiar at the same time, and it attracts an audience who thinks like them, and then the different thing is destroyed. (more…)
It is our regrettable duty to report that Frank Dancsecs, founder of the legendary ACES Records in Tampa, Florida, has passed away on June 29, 2015. ACES was a gathering point for the early Florida death metal scene and invested support and belief in the early genre when it was rejected by most others.
Necrotic dungeon synth/cosmic ambient band Khand plans to release two upcoming albums. The band issued the following statement:
This hasn’t been announced yet, but there will be two albums released right around the same time: the aforementioned space/Mars concept album, and also one with Medieval/Fantasy elements. I have been working on both at the same time; recording the Mars album slowed down as I had to purchase some new equipment and and a new rig. But alas, I hope to have both of them out soon. As always, thanks for the support. There are still cassettes available as well, please contact me here if you would like some.
Album arts and/or newer track to be released soon.
Spacious death metal band Desecresy are selling copies of their past albums for anyone who has discovered them late and wants to capture all three, which are reviewed here. The band writes:
Still available from us:
Arches of Entropy CD 10 €
The Doom Skeptron CD 10 €
The Doom Skeptron LP 15 €
Chasmic Transcendence CD 10 €
It is our sad duty to report that Jaime Gonzalez, manager at San Antonio, Texas, metal record cavern Hogwild Records has passed away on July 4, 2015 after a long battle with cancer. For those who remember Jaime, he was an affable man who adored heavy metal and did not hesitate to extend a kind word to fellow metalheads. He will be missed.
Kaeck — a collaboration between members of Sammath, Kjeld and Noordelingen — introduces itself to black metal at a time when the genre has lost the momentum of two decades ago and replaced it with primitive but mostly uninspired, very similar music. Of that music, the clear forerunner is war metal, which takes the extremity of black metal to new heights but simultaneously reduces it to sawing high-speed chromatic riffs like later hardcore punk. Gone are the epic melodies and entrancing adaptive song structures. Through this, the techniques of black metal outlive the genre.
Combining the raw intensity of black metal, the odd vocals of pagan metal, and the melodic understructure of early 1990s black metal, Kaeck produces a high-intensity blast that resembles a more technical version of Blasphemy fused with early Immortal and Isengard. Where Zyklon-B created high-intensity black metal around simple melodies, and Dawn used constant melody over raging war-drums, or even Impaled Nazarene shaped songs from simple riffs rounding out into melodies over high-powered percussion, Kaeck keeps the melodic center to songs and uses it as a flavoring to otherwise savage riffs, but lets songs structure themselves to fit the melody. On top of this, vocalist Oovenmeester layers epic vocals that resemble those of Isengard, Storm or Mayhem “Life Eternal,” using these to produce both texture and melody to complement the raging guitars and resonant melody.
With that as the basis of its style, Kaeck varies the formula across the album, with each song being its own chapter with a different approach, but crafted admirably within the same consistent style to give the band a unified voice. Fast mid-range power chord melodies over blasting drums, in the Immortal Pure Holocaust style, give Stormkult an otherworldly feel that quickly descends into untamed rushing chaos and then emerges on the other side as a complementary melody. Keeping energy high, and using bass and guitars as a lead phrasal instrument over drums which frame them with less chaos than Immortal but a more flexible structure than most black metal bands short of Sarcófago can handle, Kaeck slashes out anthems of the abyss with a silver lining which suggests a divinity of thought in animalistic, irrational and feral assertion of the nature within. The result takes the best from war metal and fuses it with the best of classic black metal, creating the album we might have wished for when desiring Zyklon-B to be more complex or Dawn to be less drenched in melody as a technique.
Coming from a merger of the New Wave of Dutch Black Metal bands such as Kjeld, whose Skym roared up the black metal charts but features less internal variation in the style of Dawn with more varied riffing, and Sammath whose Godless Arrogance paid tribute to both Immortal and the most savage members of the black and death metal pantheon, this approach develops a consistent sound for these bands: old world melody, new world violence, and a fusion of the two that delivers both emotional and visceral satisfaction. Stormkult creates a world of its own and then soars above it like an avenging spirit crossing through the clouds before the sun, then allows its inner being to expand without indulging in any extraneous material. With this approach, and songwriting that taps into the melancholic rage and alienation coupled with a warlike desire to set the world right that defined early black metal, Kaeck stands poised to conquer much of the black metal world.
Released via Folter Records on August 28, 2015. Hear streaming track “De Kult,” exclusive to DeathMetal.org, streaming here.
Flake tobacco has a reputation for being for the more experienced pipe smoker because of its dense and hard-to-light form and the higher tobacco of most of these blends. Tobacco undergoes a process of refinement where it is picked, dried, cased and then cured by a number of methods. Some are fermented; others cooked; still others sun-dried or aged. The many varieties of tobacco come mostly from how the plant is grown, with varying degrees of nutrition and water, and how it is cased — a process where a small amount of flavoring is added — and cured, which also includes topping off with other scents, producing “aromatic” or flavored and scented tobacco. Coniston Cut Plug gets close to the raw tobacco with minimal casing and simple curing during which it is pressed in large blocks and allowed to age. When curing is done, these are sliced and those are somewhat broken up to produce lanky fibers of clumped tobacco leaf. This dense mixture has a reputation for being hard to light, although I have found that if you bend it in the middle and cram it loosely into the pipe with frayed ends pointing upward, two cardboard matches or one solid wood match will get it going. At that point, be ready for the gods of Nicotine. This alkaloid finds praise throughout history for those who mention its intoxicating powers. With Coniston Cut Plug, the gods of Nicotine ride in on a chariot of iron and whip your skull with burning flails. Many of us find this quite agreeable, but others pass along recommendations to smoke this while sitting down and after a full meal as you might feel it in your stomach. Glorious, rich smoke with a natural flavor somewhere between fresh-cut hay and charred wood-bark, Coniston Cut Plug provides a wonderful basis for a smoke that would be recommendable for all except for one horrific glitch: during the curing or casing, someone approaches this tobacco with a giant bucket of soapy rosewater and soaks it thoroughly. This creates a stench of noxious ammoniac rose around the tobacco that is so strong it is ill-advised to keep it in the same room where you sleep, lest it kick off a fit of sneezing. In addition, the rosewater smell permeates through the smoke, ruining an otherwise delightfully savage leaf-burning experience. Some writers speak of “ghosting” of the pipe, where former tobaccos can be detected in subsequent bowls. Coniston Cut Plug summons an entire army of undead zombie rosewater demons who infest the next several bowls, usually toward the end when the drippings ignite and momentarily haunt you again with the stench of decaying soap-slathered roses. If it were not for the rosewater infiltration, many of us would rank this among our favorites. Instead, it goes into the (far) back of the cupboard, where it will wait for a few years to see if the spectral roses will depart.
A supergroup comprised of members of Amebix and Voivod among other bands, Tau Cross emerged just a few years after Amebix returned with a radio heavy metal album named Sonic Mass in 2011 that used the Iron Maiden styled epic take on heavy metal to deliver a traditional Amebix point of view. That album also revisited the second album from the band back in 1987, Monolith, which showed a Motorhead influence repurposing the raw energy of the crust punk from earlier albums. Together, those two albums from after the “pure” crust era of Amebix demonstrate a direction toward heavy metal that combines the best of the early 1980s with the energy and concrete focus of punk. Tau Cross picks up from that point with a more varied approach, spanning from quality indie rock (non-emo) through modern metal like Filter with a host of minor influences as varied as Killing Joke, Metallica, Celtic folk music and Oi punk. This intensely varied album manages the best form of emotion, which is subtly built and keyed by a shift in the entire song, and not just vocals, creating an avalanche effect once it hits its trigger point and all of the previous material starts making sense in that context. Much of this will appeal to fans of Queenrÿche and other bands who specialize in taking mainstream styles, recombining them, and then dominating them with an ethos that originates in underground punk or metal but thrives in a more listenable form. Vocals are often reminiscent of Nirvana crossed with Minor Threat applied by Motorhead at a later Discharge pace, while guitars alternate between high-speed punk in the style of Cro-Mags but with more on-beat energy, but songwriting comes from the same intensely visual style that appeared on Sonic Mass, as if designed for an epic video that leaves the listener wondering for the next few days if they correctly interpreted the song. Song structures are formed of roughly verse-chorus patterning that is interrupted and redirected at key points, with interludes and pauses. Paranoid and cynical, lyrics seem to reflect a sense of total frustration with the modern condition converted into a bittersweet discovery of meaning in opposing it and going another way. First listen to this album let it be written off as hard rock, much like Monolith at first, but Tau Cross shows the benefit of years of experience in songwriting and working with melody, in addition to more flexible tempo changes and supporting instrumentals, and so takes that style in a more powerful direction. In many ways, this album picks up where the modern mainstream metal like Filter should have gone, which is to take the emotionality of alternative rock, the energy of hardcore and the epic structures of early 80s metal and blend them together into something terrifying and beautiful.
Longstanding Italian death metal band Sadist, famous for incorporating Pestilence/Atheist style progressive and jazz influences into their work in the early 1990s, have returned from retirement with a new album. This one features more bouncy and spacious speed metal rhythms, such as on Voivod Dimension Hatross or Anacrusis Screams and Whispers, but stays true to their habit of interweaving different styles and narratives with metal riffing.
Bizarrely, perhaps in some transposition of Nietzschean ideas, the album and band seem to be using the visual theme of hyenas against prey animals. While this is not the goofiest thing in death metal, it seems a bit ill-advised because of the general view of hyenas, which forgets what vicious predators — on par with wolves but more energetically violent — hyenas are. See for yourself what you think of this odd campaign and the music that supports it on the album teaser.
