Belgian black metallers Gorath have inked a deal with German label Twilight Vertrieb, and will be releasing their fourth album MXCII in early 2010. Here’s a brief description from the band’s MySpace page:

Gorath’s fourth one, MXCII, again is a concept album all about local history, facts and religious items - All seen through the eyes of the heretic. Mixed at Shumcot Studio by Renier Schenk and mastered by Dan Swanö at Unisound.

MXCII is the follow-up to 2008’s Misotheism, and it will be one of the releases I’m most looking forward to in early 2010. You can check out the track ‘Heidewake’ from the new album at Gorath’s MySpace page.

Misotheism continues to be almost impossible to find a copy of in the US. You can currently get a copy from Ominous Domain, and I’ve been told that The End Records should soon be getting some copies as well.

This seems to be all over the internet already but I think it’s hilarious so I’m going to post about it anyway. Death metal band Embryonic Devourment are basing their next album Vivid Enterpretations Of The Void on the Reptilian Agenda, which is a conspiracy theory developed by former professional football player, author and reporter David Icke.

Icke’s theory essentially states that a race of 7-foot blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from outer space secretly controls the world. Many world leaders, including both Bush presidents, Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair are asserted to either be controlled by the reptilians or to be themselves reptiles in disguise.

You can check out Wikipedia for a bit of info on David Icke and the Reptilian Agenda, or you can check out some of Icke’s books on the subject:

» The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World

» The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy

If all that’s not enough, you might want to check out the lengthy interview that Embryonic Devourment posted recently on their MySpace page with Zulu Shaman Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa talking about reptilians and all sorts of other bizarre stuff.

The Drakkar Productions site recently posted an update about French black metal band Mortifera:

“The full MORTIFERA discography will be reissued also under APPARITIA Recordings on CD & LP format and Official merchandising will be printed. A new album is to be expected in 2010. More information regarding set release dates when available!”

As far as I know Mortifera is on hold and has been for awhile, so it’ll be a bit of a pleasant surprise if they actually do come out with new material next year. Neige doesn’t seem to be involved with the band any more though, so even if they do produce some new material the sound could pretty different from their previous full-length. Their past releases haven’t been easy to obtain here in the US though, so hopefully the reissues will help with that somewhat.

Osmose Productions has secured a deal to reissue Hate Forest’s entire back catalogue, consisting of 6 albums in total. The reissues will be coming out over a span from October 2009 until March 2010. From the Osmose site:

“The re-issues will come under special packaging Digisleeve limited to 1000 each, with much improved booklets and carefully remastered audio version, close to original.”

Hate Forest is notable for its members going on to form numerous other well-known Ukrainian bands such as Drudkh, Astrofaes, Blood of Kingu and Khors.

The long-awaited new album from Velvet Cacoon is finally available from Full Moon Productions. “Atropine” contains eight songs spanning over two discs. Unlike the older material, the music on “Atropine” takes a droning dark ambient approach, abandoning the lo-fi black metal sound the band is known for. The new songs do create a dark, unsettling atmosphere that fits in perfectly with the band’s other material.

For now you can order the album from Full Moon Productions; presumably it will make its way to most other metal retailers and distros in the coming weeks.

The band has also announced that an MCD of raw black metal songs titled “P aa Opal Poere Pr. 33″ is scheduled for an October release.

Dark Essence Records recently announced the signing of Norway’s Cor Scorpii, and the label plans to re-release the band’s debut “Monument” along with the “Attergangar” demo later this year. I’m hoping this means that the album will be easier to obtain in the US.

Cor Scorpii is made up of several former Windir / Ulcus members, and as you might expect they play black metal in the “sognametal” style similar to Windir’s music, but with less of a folk influence. Their debut album “Monument” was released last year.

Funeral doom masters Evoken have posted two new unmastered track samples, titled ‘Omnicient’ and ‘Vestigial Fears,’ on their MySpace page. The two tracks come from a split EP which should be released later this year. The band also plans to upload two more samples to their page on Facebook.

Evoken has also announced plans to re-release their 1994 demo “Shades of Night Descending” later this year through Displeased Records. The reissue will also feature a new layout and additional material from the band’s 1996 and 1997 demos, so it should be great for hardcore fans or people who haven’t been able to track down a copy of the demo.

Suffocation’s entire new “Blood Oath” album is now available for streaming from the Suffocation MySpace page. The album comes out July 14th in North America and July 3rd in Europe (why Europe gets an earlier release date despite Suffocation being an American band is something I can’t understand).

A first listen through the tracks left me somewhat disappointed. Mike Smith’s drumming is awesome as usual and seems to be getting increasingly complex, but the guitar riffing wasn’t overly impressive and the overall sound wasn’t that great either. I’m hoping that maybe it’s just the quality of the MySpace-uploaded samples, or maybe that a few more listens will give the new songs a chance to grow. ‘Cataclysmic Purity,’ the song they’ve had up for awhile on MySpace, was the only one that really stood out.

Comparing the quality of the new songs to the last track, the re-recorded version of ‘Marital Decimation’ from “Breeding The Spawn,” you can really hear the difference between their newer songwriting style and their older compositions. The re-recorded tracks they’ve done for the last few albums have been invariably awesome; honestly I think they should just re-record the remaining songs and release an updated version of “Breeding The Spawn.”

» Order Suffocation’s “Blood Oath” from Amazon.com
» Check out Nuclear Blast’s CD + T-shirt packages for “Blood Oath”

Germany’s Woburn House recently posted an update on their MySpace page about the status of their upcoming album, “Monstrous Manouevres In The Mushroom Maze.” The band has been talking about this album since late last year, but apparently they had some problems with their former label and are now back on Paradigms Recordings, which released their debut. The new album is now expected to be released either late this month or in early July.