National Sunday Law’s debut was a kaleidoscopic mix of heavy sludge metal and mellow keyboard atmospherics. The band’s latest EP, mysteriously titled The Fifth Ape, largely continues in this style, but the new material is noticeably heavier, often resembling Remission-era Mastodon or fellow Los Angeles heavyweights Intronaut.

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Legendary stoner doom band Sleep will be embarking on a short US tour later this year. Bassist Al Cisneros (now with Om and Shrinebuilder) and guitarist Matt Pike (now with High on Fire) will be joined by Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder for a small selection of shows across the US. The band will be performing the Holy Mountain album in its entirety, as well as selections from Dopesmoker and other songs.

The band will be joined on some of the dates by Lichens, Scott Kelly, and YOB. Check the Sleep MySpace page for tour dates.

If you haven’t checked out From Glory To Infinity, the latest release from Italian death metal band Faust, surely you’ve at least seen the eye-catching topless-nun-with-implants cover art. If that wasn’t enough to make you buy this album, Faust is getting set to release the picture disc edition of the album on July 1st through Negativity Records. The picture disc will feature exclusive artwork, and is limited to 666 copies.

Faust features bassist Steve DiGiorgio (Sadus, Death, Testament, Autopsy, James Murphy, Control Denied, Iced Earth, Quo Vadis), and other members have played in Ancient, Bulldozer, Blotted Science, Dimmu Borgir, Vader and Vesania. Quite an experienced bunch, in other words. From Glory To Infinity came out late last year, and is the band’s first full-length.

» Faust - From Glory To Infinity album page on Musical Warfare
» Faust on MySpace

The latest offering from enigmatic French entity Blut Aus Nord continues to challenge and distort our expectations. The vinyl-only release What Once Was… Liber I is the band’s first through new label Debemur Morti Productions, and apparently will showcase some new facets of Blut Aus Nord’s music:

What Once Was constitutes an epitaph for the past; a headstone for the present; and a funeral of the future. With a cheeky sidestep - nodding appreciatively in the direction of old school Death Metal whilst maintaining Blut Aus Nord’s own trademark take on Black Metal - the French mavericks bare a previously-undisclosed visage. This release will be “Liber 1″, the first in a series of intriguing, raw and primitive releases running parallel to their main body of work.

The album can be purchased from Eitrin Editions, or Ominous Domain if you are in the US.

Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn are one of the few metalcore bands that I can actually tolerate, largely because of two things. First, HSB’s ferocious combination of melodic death metal and all-out brutality separates them, at least to my ears, from the vast majority of their metalcore peers, and secondly, frontman Marcus Bischoff’s throat-shredding vocal assault is easily one of the most uncompromisingly vicious that I’ve experienced in any metal band. Invictus is the band’s 6th full-length, and the third installment in their “Iconoclast” series of releases, following 2008’s Iconoclast and 2009’s Bildersturm DVD. After the last few full lengths it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Invictus pretty much follows the same formula that has served the band so well on previous albums.

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Works Of Ein is a web-based underground music “unlabel” dedicated to releasing unusual and evocative music in various genres such as death metal, black metal, doom, industrial and dark ambient. Currently they are making each release freely available to the public as an mp3 download.

Check out their site at http://worksofein.com for more information about their goals, as well as the most up-to-date list of releases. Works Of Ein recently released Contaigeon’s debut “Death at the Gates of Delirium”, a brutal death metal assault in the vein of Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse. With cover art like this you know it has to be awesome:

They have a couple more albums planned for release very soon, so be sure to check the Works Of Ein site frequently.

Colorado’s Nightbringer is light-years ahead of most US black metal bands, both in depth of philosophy and musical composition. The musicianship on new album Apocalypse Sun is impressive, but it’s only part of the picture. Really, what Nightbringer have created with this album is a fusion music and lyrical imagery into a piercing vision of unfathomable malevolence.

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Nokturnal Mortum’s album hasn’t left my CD player since I got it, which isn’t too surprising. Despite coming out near the end of last year, The Voice of Steel was quickly hailed as one of the best of 2009, and rightfully so. What I found much more shocking was both how amazingly well-crafted and how accessible the songs on this album are. This is one of those albums where not only is each song unique and memorable, but there isn’t a single weak track. And while folk melodies and traditional instruments abound on The Voice of Steel, as one would expect from a Ukrainian pagan black metal band, Nokturnal Mortum often strays into traditional heavy metal territory in several places on the album, giving the songs a much broader appeal.

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Ragnarok’s ‘Collectors of the King’ manages to overcome what has to be one of the worst intro tracks I’ve ever experienced and delivers a blackened assault worthy of the band’s Norwegian heritage. Easily one of this year’s most ferocious black metal albums, Collectors of the King is almost death metal-like in it’s suffocating bleakness and unrelenting heaviness.

Unfortunately, one other thing it shares with an awful lot of today’s death metal is a lack of variation. The songs kind of blur together after awhile, with occasional riffs here and there that stick out. ‘In Honour of Satan’ contains some pretty good riffing and rather memorable melodic lines, while ‘Ancient Crown of Glory’ moves from the usual blasting into a crushing breakdown towards the middle of the song. But really most of the album is made up of Ragnarok’s gut-ripping, full-speed-ahead black metal replete with blast beats and HansFyrste’s brutal vocal delivery. Those looking for something creative may want to look past Collectors of the King, but black metal initiates looking for a fix among 2010’s releases should know that few albums will rival this one in sheer destructive power.

» Buy Collectors of the King from Amazon.com

Polish painter Zdzislaw Beksinski is an artist whose name I ran across in the links section of some other artist’s page, and at the time I didn’t think he had any relation to metal whatsoever, other than perhaps as a visual inspiration. His work is so unbelievably cool and so completely metal that I kept coming back to it. After finding some more information about him I learned that Beksinski’s paintings actually have been used by several bands, including Nightbringer, Leviathan and Blood of Kingu. His unique visual style has also probably served as inspiration for numerous other bands and artists in the genre.

Beksinski was quite prolific and moved through numerous styles over the course of his life. He is perhaps best known (certainly in the metal world) for his output during his “fantastic period,” which lasted from the 1960s through the 1980s and saw Beksinski producing paintings featuring dark, disturbing and surrealistic imagery. His art depicts alien landscapes, strange decaying textures, and mysterious hooded or skeletal figures. The disturbing, otherworldly nature and skeletal elements of his work often causes Beksinksi to be compared with H.R. Giger. Beksinski himself said of his painting during this period that he wished to paint “in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams”.

Unfortunately, Beksinksi was tragically murdered in 2005 over what sounds like a petty disagreement with a teenage aquaintance. In his later years he had shifted to a sparser, more abstract style and also experimented with digital art and photography manipulation.

Beksinski fortunately has several websites dedicated to his work. His (extremely well-done!) official site is located at http://www.beksinski.pl/, and is one of the only sites I’ve been to where the embedded music is actually a good thing.

There is also an extensive gallery of his work at the Dmochowski Gallery site, especially useful if you get tired of the flash browsing on the official site.

You can also buy Beksinski limited edition art prints from The Belvedere Gallery. At $395.00 each they are kind of expensive, but having a Beksinski print in your house seems worth the money to me!

Finally you can buy a few cheaper prints as well as some books on Beksinski from Amazon.com. The Fantastic Art of Beksinski seems to be a good representation of his work.