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Metal can reach into the depths of ones emotions, and Ataul plan on doing this with their 3-song demo tape. This band from Laguna, Philippines create a sound that is dirty, ugly, and swampy, as well as grinding, to tempos that are slow and dreadful.
You may order your copy from Storenvy.com.
After releasing four albums and a split LP, France’s Glorior Belli have a new label home: Agonia Records. The new album is completed and is scheduled for release this fall, but beginning tomorrow (May 16th), the band will mark the start of their very first tour of North America. This will include afternoon and evening shows in Baltimore on the 26th.
May 16… Milwaukee, WI (Frank’s Power Plant)
May 17… Chicago, IL (Ultra Lounge)
May 18… Indianapolis, IN (Indy’s Jukebox)
May 19… Columbus, OH (Carabar)
May 20… Pittsburgh, PA (Belvedere’s)
May 21… Syracuse, NY (Club Fusion)
May 22… Somerville, MA (P.A.’s Lounge)
May 23… Providence, RI (Dusk)
May 24… New York, NY (Union Pool)
May 25… Philadelphia, PA (Kung Fu Necktie)
May 26… Baltimore, MD (Maryland Deathfest)
May 26… Baltimore, MD (Sidebar)
May 27… Louisville, KY (Diamonds)
For a hint of what their live shows are like, here’s a recent performance shot in Sweden.
Chicago’s Deathcult released their debut album on March 31st called The Test of Time (Caligari), and if you heard their album and enjoyed their brand of death metal, you’ll be happy to know that the album can now be purchased as a cassette. Only 100 tapes have been made, and they can be ordered directly from Caligari Records.
The heaviness of this track is mind-blowing, and there’s more to come when Sweden’s SVARTSYN finally release Black Testament (Agonia) next month (U.S. buyers will be able to pick it up on June 11th). “Demoness With Seven Names” is the third song on the album, and you can listen to it by streaming the YouTube player below. (If the player isn’t present, you may click here.)
Brooklyn’s Batillus just completed a North American tour, making it to snow in Virginia in the first days of spring 2013. They did this as a means to promote new music in the form of Concrete Sustain (Seventh Rule). The new album has them sounding a cross between Fudge Tunnel, Godflesh, and Buzzov•en, but you may find Batillus to be more abrasive and sinister sounding.
You may order the digital and CD from Amazon below, while vinyl pressings are available directly from SeventhRule.com
The first thing that made me want to hear this was the illustration of a living and breathing being coming out of a plant. What would I be getting myself into if I listened? Botanist is a one-man band operation from San Francisco, and the concept of the album was so interesting, it convinced me to take a serious listen:
Combining lyrical creativity and musical ingenuity, IV: Mandragora is a concept record on the alchemical creation of a mandrake, and how The Botanist is instructed on raising an army of mandrakes to wipe out humanity. The songs of Botanist are told from the perspective of The Botanist, a crazed man of science who lives in self-imposed exile, as far away from Humanity and its crimes against Nature as possible. In his sanctuary of fantasy and wonder, which he calls the Verdant Realm, he surrounds himself with plants and flowers, finding solace in the company of the Natural world, and envisioning the destruction of man. There, seated upon his throne of Veltheimia, The Botanist awaits the day when humans will either die or kill each other off, which will allow plants to make the Earth green once again.
If anything, this takes Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life Of Planets to a muck darker and sinister level, twisting the concept of what plants are or perhaps a look into what they were before they were used and abused by humans. It’s quite unique, and the fact that it is a concept album, a metal one at that, is even more interesting. There are moments of the production where the sound quality seems a bit thin, but it’s nothing that a bit of EQ can’t fix.
IV: Mandragora was released by The Flenser.
Total Drowning is a compilation put together by a net label who release drone and doom metal, and this one focuses on the old and new. It features music by SOL, Wyrm, AM esper, Outer Nothingness, Ainshval, and Omar Garita, and it’s pretty intense. To sample the tracks that are on it, click the Soundcloud player below. For access to the download of Total Drowning, click here.
It’s great when a band comes out with new music out of nowhere, or at least that’s the common phrase to use when someone makes music that blows you away, leading to the question “where did these guys come from?” In this case, Black Goat Of The Woods are from Indianapolis, Indiana and they play the kind of music that makes you want to deny everything good in the world, only to lead you to want to cut your eyes open with a razor blade. Some of it comes off like Venom if they were raised in the 90′s or 00′s, still bringing on that dark heaviness that made them famous in the 1980′s but playing with the kind of precision that lacks toe sloppiness Venom sometimes had in their heyday. With tracks like “Terrorize The Church”, “The Whoring Cunt”, and “Fisting Angels”, they will most likely not be welcome at your holiday get-togethers but outside of the shock tactics of the titles, Black Goat Of The Woods, don’t dwell too much on embellishments for most of the album, keeping things under the two minute mark (sometimes under the one minute mark). But when they do go for demonic anthems, as they do in “Crawling Through Hell”, they show what they’re all about by playing in a number of different speeds and structures, offering a glimpse of what they are capable of. There’s also a track here where the vocalist allows himself to get into David Lee Roth grunt mode, which for me tells me that while they are serious about creating brutality in metal form, they can add a bit of unintended/unexpected humor to throw listeners off. I hope the expected and unexpected will follow in future releases.
(Their EP is a CD-only release, which can be ordered by clicking here.)
Sea Bastard are a doom metal band from Brighton, England who come from, as their bio states, “the ashes of” bands like Jovian and Funeral Hag. Their brand of doom is on the sludge and death side of things, heavy like Black Sabbath, Melvins, and Sleep, but claustrophobic like Buzzov•en and Eyehategod. The vocals are brutal, the guitar riffs are a slash into the abdomen, and the low-end may make you nauseous. Not bad for a band who will be celebrating their second year as a band, and quite good for a group who had only released one demo before deciding to record an album proper. Like their demos, they explore dark themes and sounds in durations that are ten minutes or more, with the closing track (”
Masters of Unreality”) clocking in at a little over 16 1/2 minutes. For fans of doom and especially metal guitar, what I like is that it’s not just throbbing and slimy guitar riffs going on because that is a generic description of the genre, there’s a bit going on with each stage of each song. Sea Bastard are not for the timid.
