First impressions: Kaeck (NL)

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Composed of members of Kjeld, Noordelingen and Sammath, Kaeck is a new style of black metal that upholds the intensity of war metal but infuses it with the elegant melody of classic black metal. The result is a surging malevolence on the surface with an inner core of transcendent beauty.

To the experienced ear, comparisons arise immediately to Impaled Nazarene and Zyklon-B, both of whom used the blasting full-speed attack with undertones of melody to its advantage. A more bestial presence occurs here, taking influence from both the death metal crossover of later black metal and the burly high-intensity rhythm and noisy attack of war metal. The result melds sawing riffs with rising hints of melody and then runs that violence into archly ascending phrases which emphasize a union of the aggression and the beauty into a rejection of all but the pure feral naturalism of both beast and forest.

Although Kaeck is in its earliest stages, the band has material currently being mastered which will unleash itself within the week. Several labels have shown interest and one will probably snap up this promising new take on older sounds because it achieves the rhythmic intensity of current metal in concert with the elements of black metal that made it the most enduring underground metal genre, namely its ability to find purpose in nature and alienation from the corrupted mess that is our society. Both listenable and true to its genre roots, Kaeck opens a door to new possibilities in black metal.

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Hells Headbangers unleashes free digital compilation Compilation Volume 8

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Underground survivalist label Hells Headbangers has released a free digital music compilation entitled Compilation Volume 8. Featuring cover art by maniac visualizer Antichrist Kramer in clear homage to Blasphemy Fallen Angel of Doom, the compilation provides free listening to introductory tracks to a number of bands from new and old undergrounds alike.

Hells Headbangers described it thus: “30 TRACKS TOTAL featuring brand new songs from upcoming albums by DEATHHAMMER, PROFANATICA, DEIPHAGO, DESTRUKTOR, NYOGTHAEBLISZ, CIANIDE, SCYTHIAN, BARBATOS, NOCTURNAL BLOOD, DIAVOLOS, BONEHUNTER, PERVERSOR, ABYSMAL LORD, and NEXUL, songs from newer EP releases by FORCE OF DARKNESS, DEMONA, The HAUNTING PRESENCE, DWELL, SHED THE SKIN, as well as material from earlier releases in 2015 and mid-late 2014 by SATANIC WARMASTER, GOAT SEMEN, ATOMIC AGGRESSOR, ABOMINATOR, DESTROYER 666, OCTOBER 31, AEVANGELIST, PERDITION TEMPLE, EXECRATION, GOUGE and The LURKING CORPSES.”

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Deceased completes work on Cadaver Traditions

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Speed/death metal band Deceased has gradually been drifting toward its heavy metal roots over the past two decades. Its personnel went on to create Doomstone and October 31, the former trying death vocals and guitars with traditional heavy metal, and the latter launching full-on into the old school of the old school.

After Doomstone Those Whom Satan Hath Joined appeared as the album that did Deceased better than Deceased, the band reconsidered and began to incorporate traditional heavy metal on albums like Surreal Overdose. Now the band formalizes its past with Cadaver Traditions, a 2CD set of 50 cover songs from the past three decades.

Deceased vocalist/drummer King Fowley noted on social media the progress made: “DECEASED ‘cadaver traditions’ update. i’m finishing the liner notes to it all this week and its going to press. 2 cd set of 50 cover songs from our 30 years together!!! june release as said before; stays right on projected time.”

Those of us who have often wished for an end to the split personality in Deceased look forward to this. Not only will it be many classics re-imagined, but it will show Deceased in the full power of its style which unites past to present and future.

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Graveland works around mass media, opens own store

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Despite being one of the premiere third wave black metal bands, Graveland have long been excluded from mainstream media and most distros as much for their esoteric music as their rumored controversial beliefs. Now, to work around that blockade, Graveland has opened its own web-store:

Graveland has also announced a split CD with droning fifth-wave black metal band Nokturnal Mortum. The band issued this statement: “After many years of staying as a solo project the time has come for some serious, epochal changes! Again, Graveland will be joined by other musicians that will be supposed to prepare the band for live performances. Working on two Gravleand tracks for the cd split with Nokturnal Mortum will be a little test for the cooperation within the new line-up. On the 7th/8th of March 2015 we have recorded drum section for both new Graveland compositions. The new drummer is no one else than previously announced Mirosław Rosiński (Mystherium, Horns, ex-Moontower, ex-Warfist). You can check the sample from the session below. In April we will record guitars again, later bass and vocals. Anna “Alruna” Oklejewicz also take part in those recordings, she is responsible for chello and medieval viella. Both compositions will be ready by the end of April. One of them will be also used for a video clip consisting of material recorded by Darken in Austrian mountains and forests.”

The first wave of black metal emerged out of the proto-black metal movement which appeared with the unholy union of Hellhammer, Slayer, Bathory and Sodom. From that, a second wave emerged in Norway starting with early Immortal, Burzum, Darkthrone and Mayhem. The third wave, led by bands like Ancient and Graveland, showed a willingness to refine this music into a more soundtrack-like and ambient form, going quasi-progressive in song structure as a way of evading assimilation by the rock music hordes. After that came the more mainstream revisitation of past black metal forms with the fourth wave, and finally the fifth wave of bands who reduced it to a form of droning punk music with minor-key motifs and black metal themes. After that, only retro and assimilation have remained.

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Morpheus Descends releases From Blackened Crypts compilation

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Early death metal band Morpheus Descends is back in the action, with future tours lined up and a re-issue of its complete recordings heading to stores. The compilation From Blackened Crypts combines the full-length Ritual of Infinity with the two EPs that followed, Chronicles of the Shadowed Ones and The Horror of the Truth along with other rare recordings.

The box set includes, in addition to the 2CD digipak, two new and unreleased tracks wich will see issue as a separate 7″ entitled From Blackened Crypts and a DVD entitled Visage of Malady which contains tons of live footage as well as interviews with the band, accompanying a 11×17″ double-sided poster and 24-page booklet. The tracklist is:

Disc 1
1. Oozing from the Urn
2. The King’s Curse
3. The Way of All Flesh
4. Corpse Under Glass
5. Immortal Coil
6. Trephanation
7. Proclaimed Creator
8. Accelerated Decrepitude
9. Submerged in Adipocere
10. Enthralled to Serve
11. Ritual of Infinity
12. Trephanation
13. Accelerated Decrepitude
14. Triformed Limbs
15. Stigmatic Crucifixion
16. Residual Kill
17. Cairn of Dumitru demo 93

Disc 2
1. The Cruciform Hills
2. Cairn of Dumitru
3. Autumn Bleed
4. Signs of Gehenna
5. Moupho Alde Ferenc Yaborov
6. Begging for Possession
7. Valley of Undead War
8. Shaitan the Unborn
9. The Horror of the Truth
10. Corpse Under Glass (Live Reunion-Martrydoom)
11. Accelerated
12. Trephanation
13. Triformed Limbs
14. Accelerated
15. The Cruciform Hills pre-release ’94
16. Residual ’91
17. Autumn Bleeds ’93

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Heathen Call – Volume IV

In the early 1990s, before Wikipedia and Metal-Archives destroyed knowledge by standardizing it, zine editors were like guerrilla truth-fighters. At their day jobs, they stood in front of copiers while a colleague nervously kept watch, running off thousands of sheets that they then stayed up until dawn stapling and preparing for mailing. Everyone who could be a fanatic took his or her turn firing off publications.

Heathen Call comes from that same spirit. Its goal is to write about heathen music, which is the intersection of folk and metal with sometimes ambient/soundtrack overtones that focuses on pagan/ancient topics and aesthetics. If the medievalism of Dead Can Dance or the Ren Faire seemed like fun, but with the vicious realist approach of metal, that would be the heathen underground. In this issue, Heathen Call covers long-running folk band Changes, black/folk metal band Gjhallarhorn from Ukraine, heavy metal band Akashah, and black metal band Grafvolluth. While this slants the content by weight toward the metal, the most interesting part is the Robert N. Taylor interview with Changes in which he discusses the challenges of staying realistic in a world dedicated to frivolous distraction to avoid seeing its inner emptiness. Changes formed in 1969 and in theory would have been included in the great folk music explosion, but they did not fit in with the flowers in the hair message of the age. Taylor brings forth not only forgotten history but more fully developed ideas on pagan, heathen and traditional culture than one normally hears.

This zine is spectacularly short and clean. The focus is clearly the content. With elegant but sparse graphics, black-on-white layouts designed for easy reading, and selective content of interviews with questions that get into the depth of purpose and motivation behind these artists, Heathen Call would not fit in with the “what amps do you use?” and “have there been many groupies this tour?” type writing that populist magazines aim for, nor the political dogma zombie recitation of the political magazines. As such, this is a rare animal. It would be interesting to see more interviews with people such as Robert N. Taylor and other thinkers in this area, and getting away from the also-ran black metal bands who are exploring a heathen area tangentially to being participants in the dead, bloated and off-gassing black metal scene, but as a content-based zine Heathen Call provides an interesting, quality read for those interested in this niche spanning multiple genres.

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Codex Obscurum issue #7 available for pre-order

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The seventh issue of New England old school metal zine Codex Obscurum has been completed and is now available for pre-order.

Featuring a list of bands including Deceased, Thanatos, Crypt Sermon, Dawn of Demise, Wastlander, Undergang, Blood Incantation, Magic Circle and Drug Honkey, the zine promises to be a continuation of the past concept of this hand-produced stapled and Xeroxed zine, which is focus on the music from a fan perspective without the nonsense and trappings of the music industry.

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Tau Cross releases first track “Lazarus” from upcoming album Tau Cross

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All-star metal/punk band Tau Cross — with members Rob “The Baron” Miller from Amebix on bass/vocals, Michel “Away” Langevin on drums, and members of Misery on guitars — has released the first single from its upcoming album Tau Cross. The single, entitled “Lazarus,” shows the style of this new band.

The band describes its sound as “the natural evolution of Miller’s work in Amebix,” and “Lazarus” bears this out — with one important detail that most forget. Amebix continued its evolution recently with Redux, which showed classic Amebix tracks with a Metallica Ride the Lightning treatment paired with atmospheric and ancient tribal sounds. Where Tau Cross picks up however is after Amebix Monolith, which sounded like old Amebix run through a filter of AC/DC and Motorhead. “Lazarus” returns to that point but brings to bear the full technical power and songwriting wisdom of these experienced composers.

Death metal fanatics may be hoping for a version of Amebix No Sanctuary or Arise with more technical instrumentation, but Tau Cross takes a more heavy metal approach but updates it with the high-intensity rhythms of punk and then a unique songwriting approach that can only be described as spirit or intent more than technique: a cosmic metaphysical outlook much like that of Tangerine Dream paired with a Celtic tribal feel that would make Absu drool. The problem that Miller and Away face in their “day job” bands of Amebix and Voivod is that those bands have already made a name for themselves in crust hardcore punk and progressive heavy metal already, and those expectations bestow too much baggage for material in another direction to be released under those names. So far, “Lazarus” is the only track released and it shows only a small slice of what Tau Cross will be, but there is promise in this continuation and outgrowth of the Amebix concept to a new level.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M3Y6AimGqs

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Supuration releases cover image for Reveries…

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French progressive rock/death metal hybrid Supuration have released the cover for their upcoming album, Reveries…. Created by famed underground metal artist Dan Seagrave, the cover image displays classic death metal symbology in its gnarled and organic textures in a mythological setting.

Reveries… will see release via Listenable Records on May 29, 2015. Mastered by Dawn Swano (Edge of Sanity), the album “is a re_recording of old songs written during the 90s” according to the band. Perhaps the combination of their newer more aggressive technique, classic death metal imagery and their inventive songwriting will forge a new classic.

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Why do all SJWs look the same?

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For those who are not so narcissistic that they are oblivious to the fact that Western civilization is in full downfall — and only a few hundred years after we fixed everything with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — the events in politics and the news seem like frosting on a cake. We know everything is in dysfunction, and that our leaders were elected for being entertaining, and that the end is rushing up to meet us. Death metal knew this thirty years ago and black metal formalized it.

The question of “why?” is too big for this article, but it is worth mentioning that some think it is genetic decline. All of the weird stuff in your shampoo, chemicals in the air from strange factories, preservatives in your junk food, toxic carcinogenic truck exhaust, and your genome getting hammered by bad TV and other brain-busters… maybe it all adds up. Perhaps technology is a one-way ticket to doom for all societies, and we’re not the first to invent it, and we’ll die out like the rest.

In support of this theory, I present a series of SJWs. They seem to be cut from the same cloth:

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It is not just the glasses, the body weight or weird puffiness of the flesh, or even the fixed zombie stare that comes of repeating the same non-solutions in the face of your society coming apart at the hinges. No, it’s as if they share some kind of genetic similarity, a mutation like Down’s syndrome or Mongoloidism. Is it a virus? Or simply broken-down DNA?

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They don’t help by dressing in the most ugly unisex fashion that retains its ugliness on both sexes, or by doing their best to look intently like both victims and V.I. Lenin in that famous “forward into the future poster” at the same time, both assertive and hurt. But beneath all of that, it’s like they are an alien species among us.

marie_harf.

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The fanaticism is obvious, that’s certain. But so is a kind of doubt, as if saying “I’m beautiful” doesn’t actually make it so. The sort of doubt that comes when reality peeks in around the edges of ideology and says, “Peek-a-boo! All the stuff you’re saying… it won’t fix anything. And you’re miserable and drink yourself to sleep five nights a week, after pigging out on TV dinners and individually-wrapped bon-bons.”

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In these faces there is something horrifying. They are not happy. They are not even content, or halfway joyful about life. They are hurt, angry and resentful. They are on a mission to destroy. The world has injured them and they are chronically unhappy, grasping for power as if it will fill the void in their souls (that, alas, eating 412 pies did not fill). These people are a joke. They are miserable angry vandals screaming like monkeys in a desperate attempt to both avoid the obvious, and make themselves feel better about their utter insignificance in the face of it.

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Smile for the camera! Smile big and show us what’s inside! Oh wait, nothing but worms and bitterness. Well, then do your best to look like some kind of squash. People like squash. You want people to like you, don’t you? No, you want them to serve you. To bow at your every whim, and bring you pies and bon-bons when the inner weeping gets so bad that a gallon of box wine can’t put it to rest.

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