After parting ways with Rhapsody of Fire, legendary mastermind Luca Turilli started his own project officially called “Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody”. The style of this new Rhapsody echoed the style that Turilli was recognized for in his own solo projects.
The project saw its first release in 2012 with Ascending to Infinity. Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody is now set to release a second album on June 19th.
Modern technical metal band Antropofago is set to release Æra Dementiæ, which was originally set to be released in 2014 but has been delayed until this year, August 14th.
Limited to 500 copies, Kaotoxin Records will release the album as a deluxe DigiSleeve double CD featuring an expanded version of Between Fear and Madness. Æra Dementiæ, features guest appearances by past and current members of Gorod, Insain, Nephren-Ka and Savage Annihilation.
US. heavy metal band Obsession will be releasing a re-issue of their album Carnival of Lies (a reunion album originally released in 2006 that is now out of print) through Inner Wound Recordings. Carnival of Lies is set to be released on July 27th in Europe and on Jul 24th in the U.S.
Track listing
Smoking Gun
Carnival of Lies
In for the Kill
Playing Dead
Imagining
The Offering
Pure Evil
I Don’t Belong
Written in Blood
Guilty as Charged
Marshall Law
Panic in the Streets
Judas
Obsession “Carnival of Lies” line-up:
Michael Vescera [Animetal USA, ex Loudness, Yngwie Malmsteen] – Vocals
Jay Mezias – Drums
Scott Boland [MVP] – Guitars
John Bruno [X Factor X] – Guitars
Chris Mccarvill [House of Lords, ex Dokken, Jeff Scott Soto] – Bass
Having been called everything from thrash to death or melodic death metal, Dew-Scented play metalcore in its original inception, as inspired by At the Gates’ style on Slaughter of the Soul. Everything from the simple drums which half of the time fall into variations of fast d-beats, catchy and short melodic ideas on the guitars with a tendency towards breakdowns for variety, to the blatant imitation of Tomas Lindberg. Being an heir to this tradition reviled by the fans of the old school styles and hailed as an improvement and distillation of the best aspects of the older music by the mainstream audience, Intermination invites a comparison with At the Gates’ come back album released last year, At War with Reality.
While the seminal band tried to bridge a gap between fans of its older and later styles by taking its metalcore-founding album and introducing more complex elements as visited in Terminal Spirit Disease and vaguely from With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness, thereby creating a middle-of-the-road offering that pleased neither group, Dew-Scented plant themselves solidly on the style developed in Slaughter of the Soul and part faithfully from there to create variations without bringing down the delicate and extremely constricted walls delimiting the definition of this minimalist, extreme pop genre.
Being the catchy, duple-time riff-fest that this genre is, Dew-Scented do a phenomenal job at creating solid, punching riffs which if not necessarily connect concretely with each other too well throughout a song (given the shock-oriented nature of this modern style), go a long way to maintain the drive of songs by switching and keeping the overall feel, avoiding the over-use of a particular riff. Without any ill-will towards this talented band, we must clarify that the album presents a very flat result, which is a necessary result of the definition of the genre as driven by impacting riffs and sonic shock tactics. The tight upholding of ideals of the genre in Dew-Scented’s hands, even with their carefully and appropriately crafted variations, becomes a hindrance in the context of a crippling genre.
Compiling gestures from throughout legendary band Blind Guardian’s discography, Beyond the Red Mirror shows us a synthesis of their journey, bringing in their late 1980s style along with updates in the power and so-called symphonic metal up to the present state of affairs in said genres. As such, this album’s strongest uniting element is the band’s own style, which lies in great part in the vocal approach of Hansi Kürsch. Apart from that, there is an evident diversity in the songwriting that ranges from the mediocre, to the best power metal from any period can offer. But it should be stressed that the consistency in style is still very strong and this along with the sober and talented songwriting skills of Blind Guardian lend a coherence to the music that set it on another level completely apart from the distracted music the vast majority of bands of its kind display. This is also something the band has improved on compared to its earlier albums where the anxiety to insert interludes bordered on gimmick instead of having them moderately and carefully contribute to the aura of the album. (more…)
Withering Soul’s upcoming album, Adverse Portrait, was engineered and mixed by Chris Wisco at Belle City Sound, and mastered by Dennis Israel at Clintworks Audio. Cover art is by Pierre-Alain D of 3mmi Design. The album is due out June 9 via Mortal Music.
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.
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.
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.
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.
