The UK’s Self-Inflicted Violence had managed to fly under my radar until recently, despite having put out an excellent album in last year’s A Perception Of Matter And Energy on Eerie Art Records. They sound kind of like a better version of Svarti Loghin, without all the weird alt-country elements. If you haven’t heard them, check out the songs on their MySpace page and prepare to be blown away.
The band has also decided to make a few unreleased tracks available for free download. The sound quality isn’t the greatest, but at least it’s something. See this blog post from the band’s MySpace page, or just click the download link below.
» Download unreleased Self-Inflicted Violence tracks from Mediafire
The band is currently in the studio working on their next full-length, which will be titled The Blue Sphere Floating In Black Seas. The new album should come out later this year.
US black metal band Woe haven’t gotten much press or exposure compared to bands like Krallice, Nachtmystium or Leviathan, but judging by their debut full-length A Spell For The Death Of Man, these guys are easily one of the better USBM bands to surface in the last few years. Woe plays a fairly typical, slightly depressive and atmospheric style of black metal, with a good sense of melody and excellent musicianship, and are highly worth checking out.
Woe isn’t quite giving away their album for free, but they are offering digital copies through Communitas’s Pay What You Want service, so you can get it for next to nothing if you so choose. You’ll get a high-quality, DRM-free 320kbps MP3 version of the album that also includes all album artwork.
» Download A Spell For The Death Of Man from CommunitasMedia
You can also buy a physical copy of the album from Stronghold Records.
Woe is currently working on their second album, which will be titled Quietly, Undramatically and should come out later this year.
Finland’s In Silentio Noctis’s debut album Through Fragments of Christianity is an interesting take on the usual female-fronted metal sound. The typical symphonic metal elements and operatic, melodic female vocals are of course present, but here they are combined with aggressive black metal musicianship to create something much heavier and more complex than fans of this genre are used to. Whether it works or not probably depends on your affinity for female singers, but In Silentio Noctis definitely deserves credit for trying to carve their own path.
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Of all the main metal instruments - guitar, bass, drums, vocals - the vocal aspect is easily the one I’m the worst at and the most mystified by. I can’t get myself to make anywhere near a menacing metal growl without fucking my throat up, which means I’m clearly doing it wrong.
So I was happy to run across this post by Seattle’s 7 Horns 7 Eyes vocalist Kyle Wood, describing some of the mistakes novice vocalists make, as well as describing the basics of metal vocals. He doesn’t go into too much detail, but he does make it clear what the right approach is. Wood also gives lots of credit to Melissa Cross’s The Zen of Screaming DVDs. Having just seen his band perform, I can definitely vouch for him being at least a pretty competent and fairly versatile vocalist.
Also, if you’re into sludge and/or Meshuggah-type polyrhythmic bands, you should definitely give these guys a listen. They clearly borrow a lot from Meshuggah, doing a lot of ultra-heavy off-time rhythmic stuff coupled with doomy, sludgey riffing. Their rhythm section pulled it off surprisingly well, so their upcoming debut full-length should be an interesting one. Supposedly it will be coming out later this year.
» 7 Horns 7 Eyes on MySpace
Black Hate has finally released some news regarding Dark Tribe’s long-awaited follow-up to 2004’s In Jeraspunta - Die Rückkehr der Tollwütigen Bestie:
We have some really great news! Just in this moment we are mixing the new Dark Tribe album “Archaic Visons” in our shelter!!! We have the pleasure to have again Angel of Doom in the duty for this task. We have planned to finnish the mixing in the next 3 days. And Angel of Doom will of course also do the the final mastering. So its not that far away anymore.
So it sounds as though Archaic Visions will be released this year, hopefully sooner rather than later.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who occasionally gets confused by all the random, bizarre metal band names out there. So to help make things easier for all you metal fans, here’s a first attempt to disambiguate a few similar-sounding band names. The bands in question are Orcustus, Orcivus and Obitus.
Orcivus is a Swedish black metal band playing dissonant, orthodox black metal very similar to bands like Borgia, Watain, Ofermod or Ondskapt. They just released their sophomore album Est Deus in Nobis earlier this month. They also have the coolest logo out of the three. Definitely a band to check out if you’re a fan of the recent group of orthodox black metal bands.
Obitus are also Swedish, and they also play black metal, but in a much more sterile, frenzied style. Founding member Anders Ahlbäck is also in Waning, and the two projects definitely sound similar, though Obitus’s style is a bit faster and more chaotic. They released their debut full-length March of the Drones last year. Obitus is apparently also a role-playing game from the early 90s.
Finally, Orcustus is a black metal band from Norway with the distinction of having Gorgoroth guitarists Infernus and Tormentor as former members. Founding members Taipan and Dirge Rep resurrected the band in 2008, and their self-titled debut came out last year. The name Orcustus apparently means “the inner circle of Hell where Lucifer resides on his throne.” Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Taipan also presumably gets his alias from the Australian snake of the same name, which has the most potent venom of any snake on earth.
I thought I’d throw together a post about the good and not so good that I heard in 2009. Despite attempting to listen to more albums from 2009, I really found only a handful of albums from the past year that I thought were really amazing. And as usual, my want list from 2009 is much longer than my actual ‘best of’ list; I still haven’t gotten around to listening to the new ones from Mistur, Nokturnal Mortum, Arckanum, Nazxul, and Askival among others.
Top 5 Albums from 2009:
Solstafir - Kold
Drudkh - Microcosmos
The Beast of the Apocalypse - A Voice from the Four Horns of the Golden Altar
Katatonia - Night is the New Day
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With The Stars
Honorable Mention:
Altar of Plagues - White Tomb
Ulcerate - Everything Is Fire
Sun of the Blind - Skullreader
Semen Datura - Einsamkeit
Urfaust - Einsiedler
Most Disappointing:
The Axis of Perdition - Urfe
Brutal Truth - Evolution Through Revolution
Belgian black/viking metallers Theudho are celebrating the winter solstice with a new EP showcasing the band’s new line-up. The Silence is being released as a free digital download as a gift to friends and supporters. The EP consists of re-recorded versions of four songs from Theudho’s back catalogue: ‘Silence reigned over the Bog’, ‘Fafnirs Blut,’ ‘Foreboding Dreams’ and ‘Gudrun’s Revenge.’
The free versions of the songs are 128kbps, so not great quality, but certainly listenable. You can also download 320kbps versions at the ConSouling Sounds digital store.
Theudho has also recently made all their albums available for streaming from Last.fm for free, so you really have no excuse for not checking these guys out.
» Theuhdo - The Silence free download
» Theudho’s page on Last.fm
I ran across Veil, an excellent atmospheric black metal band from Minnesota, recently. They have an interesting post about downloading their album on their MySpace page:
Ultimately I support physical formats (CD, Vinyl, Tape) but I realize that music downloading is here, and it’s not going anywhere soon, so it’s best to acknowledge it.
The band goes on to state that while they obviously prefer people buying their music, they recognize that their latest album Sombre is rather difficult to obtain. Apparently a bunch of places like iTunes are offering digital downloads of Sombre without Veil’s permission, so the band would rather fans just download it for free instead of giving these places money. I have my own opinions about downloading music and the associated laws and regulations, but it’s interesting to hear the perspective of an underground metal band on the issue.
Although they don’t have any copies yet at the time I’m writing this, apparently The End Records will have some physical copies soon:
» Buy Sombre from The End
Or for the impatient, download it in 320kbps here:
» Download Sombre for free
