Pittsburgh’s most interesting band, the psychedelically inspired freaks of Black Moth Super Rainbow, has confirmed plans for it next album Eat Us. According to a press release, the album will be available on May 26 through Graveworm and is apparently their “first fully hi-fi” album. To tide us over, the band has posted some sample pieces from the album.. AVAILABLE HERE.
More new metal is making its way online today; here’s the rundown:
 Mastodon, “Divination”(STREAM – skip to 21:30 mark to hear song) from forthcoming album Crack the Skye, available tentatively on March 24, 2009 It’s already been nearly 3 years since their brilliant third album Blood Mountain launched them into the spotlight, and now they are back with their epic, carefully crafted Rasputin influenced, (elemental) ethereal based followup. There’s really no telling what direction these guys will go in, but my instincts are telling me it well take them into progressive and uncharted territories that will elevate their profile as “forward-thinking metalheads” even more! |
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Brutal death metal kings Cannibal Corpse are set to soon release the album that promises to be even heavier than 2006’s Kill. These veterans have set the goal of making each of their albums heavier than the last, and although that’s getting tougher and tougher each time, an authentic Florida session with Erik Rhutan has helped these veternans achieve it. This is one of the most anticipated death metal albums of the year, and for now you can hear it all for free… |
 Kylesa, “Said and Done”(STREAM) from forthcoming album Static Tensions, available on March 17, 2009 Kylesa sounds like they’ve really grown into their own skin on this album. Their gritty, grooving doom sounds more precise and psychedelic this time around, and there’s a nice polish over the tracks that adds a fullness to the sound that I haven’t heard from them before. If the rest of the album sounds like “Said and Done” this will be an sure album of the year qualifier and a career peak for the band. They’ll be here to play this live in early April with Haunted, Nachtmystium, and Intronaut. |
Sweden’s post-metal leaders Cult of Luna are soon releasing a feature DVD entitled Fire Was Born as a part of a redux release of their much-heralded recent album Eternal Kingdom (which even appeared on my top 10 of 2008!).
Fire Was Born will focus on a gig recorded at the Scala in London on the tour last July 2008 (featuring the extended lineup of the band – including two drummers) playing a 1 hour 30 min set. It will also include an interview with Johannes and Anders answering questions from fans all around the world and the videos for “The Watchtower”, “Leave Me Here”, and “Back to Chapel Town” and will be available for sale on March 23rd. For now, check out the following preview clip:
The vicious, technical new album called The Harvest Floor from San Diego-based modern grindcore/death metal forerunners Cattle Decapitation was just released last week by Metal Blade, and it’s fucking awesome. Put bluntly, this isn’t your typical 1 minute slash-n-burn straight-for-the-jugular grind that many seem to practice; this is some well-structured, epic music! Go to the band’s myspace now to hear the massive, chaotic opening tracks from the album, “The Gardeners of Eden” and “A Body Farm”. Over at Buzzgrinder, vocalist Travis Ryan had this to say about the songs:
“1. “The Gardeners of Eden”
This is the last song we wrote for The Harvest Floor as we knew we needed to craft the way the album starts out and we already had the song that was going to be the last song on the album. I like subtle reference things like staying with formulas or patterns with mostly everything but the music, that’s their job anyways. Such as using Garamond and Edwardian Script fonts together and laying out the art similar to the previous release. The same goes for this song. This is yet another anti-Christian song kicking off the record. Whereas “Unintelligent Design” (2006’s Karma.Bloody.Karma) dealt with the idea that if in fact humans are the work of a creator, he’s certainly a fallible fuck then… “The Gardeners of Eden” focuses more on the “creation” as being a destructive juggernaut hell-bent on eroding the planet. The title raised an eyebrow or two within the other band members when I told it to them (I come up with song titles first then write the lyrics) and it almost didn’t come to fruition. I explained the whole “well, the world is like the Garden of Eden and us as humans trim and cut down the garden so that makes us “gardeners”” and I kind of just went with it and it works even though the term “gardener” isn’t very brutal. Funny thing is, it was inspired by the track “People” by Boyd Rice in which he refers to the natural order of life needing “a brutal gardener” once in a while to trim some of the fat(humans) off the land(planet earth).
2. “A Body Farm”
Musically this song sort of spills out of the first track as it is connected by feedback ring-out and an atomic bomb blast. The idea of the “brutal gardener” spills into this as well in the form of a sociopathic crime scene investigator that runs a “body farm”. A body farm is a controlled environment operated by forensic specialists that emulates environmental effects on cadavers. They literally place real dead humans on the ground and study everything from causes of death to time of death and so on. The problem is, this guy has one in his backyard and his subjects are works of his own doing: he is also a serial killer and his victims are also the ones that help him solve other crimes. I thought I was really fucking clever with this until our graphics guru Cain was reading the lyrics as he was laying out our album and said “hey, this is just like that show Dexter!” He proceeded to tell me about the show Dexter where the guy is a serial killer as well as a blood spatter analyst. I promise you, I had loosely heard of the name of the show before, but never had any idea what it was about before writing this song. I’ve started watching it and it’s actually really good! Excellent cinematography… Anyways, I need to get cable. This show is rapidly getting up there with my favorite show ever Curb Your Enthusiasm, even though it ripped me off… that was a joke.”
Gotta love the creativity in these gems (and Ryan’s Curb reference..). These guys called Cattle Decapitation also recently recorded a new video for the song “Regret and the Grave” (seen pictured in a still above) which will presumably be available online soon. Right now, they’re out on a short Southwest/West coast tour with Psyopus, Book of Black Earth, and Gigan.
LISTEN: “The Gardeners of Eden” & “A Body Farm” (from The Harvest Floor, 2009)
There’s no reason to abbreviate or extend this press release at all:
“Isis, the Los Angeles by way of Boston band, has set a May 5 release date for their anticipated new album, Wavering Radiant (Ipecac Recordings). The album, produced by Joe Baressi (Tool, Queens off The Stone Age), will see a limited edition vinyl version released on Apr. 21. Tool’s Adam Jones contributed guitar to two songs from the new release. More details soon.”
New music from Poison the Well’s latest release, the 7-inch vinyl II/III (available starting yesterday, January 20th) , has surfaced online in the form of “Bowie” at the band’s myspace page. You might have guessed from the title, but the album release is the second in a series of three 7-inch releases of unheard material from the Versions sessions in 2007. As you will hear, “Bowie” shows that the band definitely ventured even farther in their experimental path than final version of Versions might have indicated. It’s progressive, emotional, “heavy” stuff, but still I’m really hard-pressed to believe that this is the SAME band that brought us the intense metalcore classic The Opposite of December… oh, soooooo long ago. Either way, no one else has taken the path that PTW has, and that alone is something to be admired. With the next LP release on the horizon, I’m looking forward to see if the decide to push the new sound of Versions and the 7-inch series even farther or abandon it completely for another experiment. They’ve still got me watching. Check “Bowie” out here.
It’s not just for the hippies anymore! Minnesota premiere annual summer celebration of festival music has announced it’s return for 2009, and in the tradition of other “jam-festivals” like Bonaroo, their adding a bit more diversity to their lineup. In addition to yearly staples such as Trampled By Turtles, Umphrey’s McGee, and Wookiefoot, this years’ 10KLF will feature performances by big-name artists DMB, Widespread Panic, and alt-country heros Wilco. Even Minneapolis-based Cloud Cult will be performing. My personal favorite of the list is Mississippi river folk-punk William Elliot Whitmore. Who are you excited to see? The party’s worth it every year, and this year it seems like the organizers have finally put together a promising enough itinerary to ensure it’ll be packed. Keep reading for the full list.. Continue reading
Barack H. Obama was sworn in today at a few minutes past 11 AM CT.
Sepultura, is releasing their next album A-Lex this week (their first without a contribution from EITHER Cavalera brother, who have now rejoined together in the band Cavalera Conspiracy). Although Sepultura 2.0 has undeniably made an exceptionally good album, Sepultura with the Cavalera brothers was untouchable. In fact, I would confidently stand behind the statement that 1989-1996 era Sepultura provided the greatest output of any metal band of all-time. Today, we take a look back at the band to their peak to celebrate this unbelievable, visionary band.. this is their classic “Arise” taken from Sepultura’s original VHS release, Under Siege.
Solid Gold played to a lively, capacity crowd at the Turf Club on January 16 in St. Paul. Lookbook opened up the night and DJ Gigamesh provided the music for the dancefloor before, in-between, and after the sets. Here are some photos:
Solid Gold
Lookbook
DJ Gigamesh
Cannibal Corpse, Evisceration Plague 
MIND INVERSION 