Upcoming Miasma – Changes Reissue

miasma changes reissue

Miasma’s Changes is being reissued on CD and LP by Rotten Relics Records. This pressing of the long out of print and compositionally coherent caveman death metal classic is the first with the original sound since the original Lethal Records one from 1992.  It is being done with the approval of all band members, who contributed comprehensive art, photos, lyrics, and liner notes. Rotten Relics says T-shirts will be available too and warns that a Brazilian reissue intended for the South American market only (yeah right) without authorization of the band and probably without the original master is scheduled for release at the same time so watch out.

Listeners may stay informed on Rotten Relics’ Facebook page.

 

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Sadistic Metal Reviews: Sunday Funday!

gargoyle shitting 2

Today’s F-grade death metal is brought to you by Corey M.

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Mortuary – Nothingless than Nothingless (2016)
The opening track is made up of the same chords for two and a half minutes. That the drummer can play five different beats over the chord progressions illustrates the pointlessness of the progression. This happens with most of the progressions in any given song – the drum beat is switched up in middle of the passage. Why does the band even bother writing these progressions if they’re so boring that not even the band wants to hear them played with the same beat for four cycles straight? This is the kind of “metal” that fans of modern “hardcore” get into. I can practically hear the PETA stickers and Vans shoes. You needn’t listen long to hear the influences – Pantera, Rob Zombie, and various Warped Tour-tier metalcore. At least Mortuary spared us any ironic rap verses or shout-outs.

 

Phobocosm - Bringer of Drought high res
Phobocosm – Bringer of Drought (2016)
Though it was easy to feel optimistic about Phobocosm’s future based on 2014’s Deprived (which this author still recommends – C.M.), it’s now time to give up on the band. Bringer of Drought shows Phobocosm embracing the Deathspell Omegacore post-modern metal virus, complete with songs of absurdly excessive length, mind-numbing guitar drones, artsy-fartsy dissonant chords that ring and grate, and minimal blasting-riffing which is the one part (all of about two minutes) that still sounds like death metal. The term “sellout” is severe and reserved for dire circumstances, but in this case it applies; Phobocosm has abandoned their obscure malevolence and Immolation-style warped riffcraft in favor of inoffensive but “deep”-sounding D-grade post-rock (see also: Adversarial). People who hate metal are the target audience.

 

ferium behind the black eyes
Ferium – Behind the Black Eyes (2016)
Extremely repititous, faux-angry-man vocals set to white-boy groove-metal rhythms. Choppy, math-rock-wannabe drum beats. Guitars that barely even play melodies, just semi-random notes on whatever beats the drummer somehow decides to play. My guess is that he is using a random number generator, or maybe a set of dice, to decide the rhythm. One cringe-inducing track made up of three piano chords and a whining voice repeating “She feels like home”. Mix all these ingredients in a big rusty pot, heat over an open flame til melted to a liquid, apply liberally to your (or a consenting partner’s) scrotum, and then revel in searing agony. Recommended for fans of being raped.

 

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NilExistence – Existence in Revelation (2016)
Terrible band name, terrible title, and terrible art aside, this is some tastefully brutal blasting with skillful musicianship and some evocative riffing. The vocals quickly become overbearing, which is a shame, since the intriguing Morbid Angel-style riffs sway to and fro, one moment up-close and vicious like a buzzsaw held to your face, the next distant and vast like a yawning cavern begging to swallow you whole. As usual with bands that try this, NilExistence trip on their own artillery by crashing together too many dissimilar riffs, like pages of a book shredded and then glued back together at random. These songs lack focus and therefore lack identity but something good may come out of these guys if they stay true to their influences and reign in the random deviations.

 

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Hemotoxin – Biological Enslavement (2016)
Human-era Death worship by competent musicians with a keen sense of exactly how much melodic variance per riff it takes to keep a listener’s attention from wandering. This could be a strength rather than a handicap but the riffs aren’t related through anything other than temporal closeness. The feeling of each song jumps from here to there with little rhyme or reason. Slow, chugging sections interrupt tremolo-picked blasting segments, then vice-versa. Occasionally, a tasty guitar lead explodes out of nowhere and then vanishes without so much as a trace of smoke, leaving us longing and dissatisfied. Lyrically we get a mish-mash of edgy lyrics about homelessness and suicide that seem to hint toward some insincere positivity by outlining gruesome subjects in a “profound” light. This all makes for a very frustrating listen since it’s apparent that the band care much for their presentation and musicianship but lack the crucial element that makes metal tolerable: the natural intuition required to coherently structure songs. Sound familiar yet?
Not even AIDS can keep Chuck in the grave.

 

4.1.1

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Vader – The Ultimate Incantation Reissue

VADER ultimate incantation reissue 2cd
Vader
‘s debut, The Ultimate Incantation, is being reissued on June 3rd on both CD and LP by Polish label Witching Hour. The original, discarded recording session produced by Tomas Skogsberg at the famous Sunlight Studio in Stockholm, Sweden is included as a bonus disc. The lost Swedish session released for the first time should make this reissue worth checking out for fans of the band along with those of Swedish and Slayer-style death metal in general.

We are proud to present the long awaited reissue of VADER’s debut album “The Ultimate Incantation”. This album was a milestone in death metal history and a groundbreaking masterpiece for the Polish scene allowing our bands to be heard beyond the Iron Curtain. With this record VADER’s international career begun and it’s a cult classic since then. Once again we made our best to deliver this classic album as a top notch release. To match our words we will attach an extra stuff with never before released original album session done by THOMAS SKOGSBERG in SUNLIGHT STUDIOS. And that’s not all. We also asked the master himself – DAN SEAGRAVE to prepare new artwork for this release.

The 2xCD digipack may be pre-ordered from Witching Hour here.

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Profanatica reveal The Curling Flame of Blasphemy

profanatica the curling flame of blasphemy

Profanatica have revealed the art and track list for their upcoming album The Curling Flame of Blasphemy. One of the few fruitful artists in current metal and a mainstay of our best lists, drummer Paul Ledney (also a founder of Incantation) and guitarist John Gelso have spent the third millennium refining the first wave.

Track list:

1. Ordained in Bile
2. March to Golgotha
3. Magic & Muhr
4. Black Hymna
5. Host Over Cup
6. Rotten Scriptures
7. Yahweh Rejected
8. Bleed Heavenly Kingdom
9. Vile Blessing
10. Curling Flame

Track six, “Rotten Scriptures” may be previewed on Hells Headbangers Compilation Volume 8.

Scheduled for an early summer release, the frequently “funderground” label promises that The Curling Flame of Blasphemy will be another:

metalucifer heavy metal bulldozer

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Here In After Turns Twenty


immolation here in after

2016 marks twenty years since the release of Immolation’s sophomore album Here In After. Completely leaving speed metal convention behind, dissonant riffing and jazzy drumming weld into an infernal, polyrythmic Bosch canvas. All songs burn narratively: verses melt into Vigna’s Luciferian leads. These guitar heroics marshaling the hellfire make Here In After a dawn-bringer for the uninitiated in Immolation. Crucify the criminal Christ again!

dali corpus hypercubus

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Good Friday Crucifixion Playlist

conan crucified boris vallejo

Billions celebrate Constantine’s syncretic solar deity’s crucifixion by eating fish today. Here’s a playlist of seven classic speed and death metal songs to contemplate this excruciating Roman suffocation method:

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Demolition Hammer reunites

demolition hammer epidemic is reborn

Demolition Hammer have apparently reunited according to the group’s Facebook page. The brutal New York speed metal band last released notable material almost a quarter century ago with the hammering death/speed hybrid Epidemic of ViolenceAlex Marquez of fellow death speedsters Solstice (and Malevolent Creation’s Retribution) is taking over the drum stool from the deceased Vinny DazeWhether any touring or quality material rises from this reunion remains to be seen.

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Morbus 666 – Ignis Divine Imperium (2016)

morbus 666

Article by Corey M

Featuring members of two well-respected underground metal bands – Imprecation and Bahimiron – the professional aptitude of the musicians is obvious as soon as Morbus 666’s album Ignis Divine Imperium is through with the first song, though that’s not to say that there is any showboating whatsoever from the players here. The sonic texture of this album is very similar to that of the latest releases by the aforementioned bands; dry, gritty guitars dominate the soundscape with a harsh midrange attack while scratchy vocals and a beautifully live-sounding drum set do little to assert their presence, but effectively support the hypnotically whirlpooling riffs.

Aesthetics aside, comparing Morbus 666’s music to that of Bahimiron is fair, because both feature a similar general sense of dynamics, method of structuring songs, and overall level of complexity (which is relatively minimalist in terms of modern metal in general). In both cases, we’re dealing with no-frills black metal that emphasizes gradual evolution of songs (strategically avoiding distracting melodic tangents) while eschewing ornamentation and anything other than rudimentary black metal technique: That is to say, the band’s whole arsenal consists mostly of tremolo picking, some creepy ringing chords, marching beats, and sometimes blasts. There are no guitar leads, acoustic interludes, stretches of vaguely disturbing ambient noise, or synthesized string sections. In fact, there aren’t even any drum fills or the sort of herky-jerky, stop-start tricks you might expect to hear from some of the more chaotic modern black metal acts. The engine of Ignis Divine Imperium is pure and relentlessly sinister melody, and for the most part, the band delivers impactful hymns that praise Satan as an anti-humanist archetype, denying (both lyrically and musically, and by extension ideologically) the casual fan the luxury of a comfortably passive listening experience.

The most effective bits of music in Ignis Divine Imperium are so simple and subtle that they may first pass by in a blur, but become more rewarding with repeated listens. For instance, the first track (“Fiery Abyss”) begins and ends with the same simple two-chord phrase, acting as bookends to the song. It works as an engaging introduction, but by the time this phrase is reintroduced, the experience of hearing it again is not just that of familiarity, but a more lucid contemplation of what sort of hidden meaning the melody implied at first, since it has now been contrasted with the winding riffs that have occurred in between the opening and closing.

To borrow another author’s* metaphor: Imagine standing at the edge of a valley, observing the lay of the land before you, and then descending into its depths and eventually emerging on top of the opposite edge. Looking back, you gain a more complete perspective of the depth and width of the valley through which you passed, since you are able to compare the span of time and steepness of the cliffs which you must have climbed down and then back up. In this same way, the introductory riffs of each song on the album serve to give the listener a general idea of what to expect, but it is not until emerging on the other side of the tangle of melodies that one can fully appreciate, by looking back, the journey as a continuum of experience, and realize that there was more to the introductory riff sequences than could be guessed by hearing them alone, as they relate to the riffs in the middle and then the end of a song. This seems like an obvious way to structure any song but amazingly (or not), many bands fail to make their songs interesting without drastic changes in rhythm and guitar techniques and naturally drifting from any main point that they wish to express. Meanwhile, the music of Morbus 666 succeeds by having strong riffs alone.

All this praise but some criticism yet; the simplicity of some of the riff sequences on this album work against the development of the song. There are definite stand-out tracks like “Fiery Abyss” and another near the end of the album, “Through the Black Fog Burns the Eyes of the Devil”, which explores the more majestic aspect of Satanic might with off-puttingly somber and yearning melodies, much like can be heard on the best Behexen tracks, but utilized much more convincingly by Morbus 666. However, other tracks sometimes fall into ruts which sound insincerely placid amidst the more viciously hateful passages. The band exercise possibly more restraint than is needed during these parts, which understandably serve as dynamic fluctuations to contrast and therefore highlight the harsher riffs, but they sound somewhat forced (as in uninspired) and can cause the concentration to falter after carrying on for so long. These minor flaws notwithstanding, the album earned a purchase from me, as I’m sure I’ll continue listening to it for some time to come. Besides, I’m very interested to hear another album from them, and hope that they can sharpen their songs even more, because they are on a war path and possess the firepower to eradicate any and all belligerents.

*If anybody knows who, I would like to know as well, since I remember the words but forgot where I read them, so can’t rightly credit the original.
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Mithras releases upcoming track from On Strange Loops

While I wait for a review of Sarpanitum’s Blessed Be My Brothers to make its way through the review queue, another Leon Macey project is making its way towards fruition. Mithras is an approximate descendant of Steve Tucker era Morbid Angel that presumably gets most of its media attention for throwing in some occasional melodic and muddy atmospheric sections. The upcoming On Strange Loops is the first new material from this band since their 2011 EP Time Never Lasts. Today’s track sounds about like what you’d expect from Mithras, which should make extrapolating whether you’re going to be interested in this band a trivial task.

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Incantation to release XXV compilation

When Incantation said they were working on a new album a bit back, they understandably were a bit tight-lipped about it. To tide us over until then, they’re releasing XXV, a small vinyl compilation that’s currently only officially available through the band’s website and is also being used to push a lot of merchandise. It contains one new track (“Obelisk Reflection”), as well as some rerecordings of previous Incantation songs, and some newish live versions to fill out the length of the LP. While the value of these is up for debate, this purchase may speed along the release of future content by Incantation. Or it might just encourage them to release more compilations.

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