Metal has become an aggregate of everything that went before it, and everything that threatens to destroy it.

Agruss’ new release Morok shows us the worst of both this amalgamation and the influences it has received from mainstream nu-metal, which itself is like a rap/hard rock fusion with no relation to metal.

Mixing equal parts indie rock, progressive-ish rock, black metal and post-hardcore, this CD is great if you just read the ingredients. If you analyze how they’re put together, you see that this is not only unrewarding to a metalhead, but artistically worthless. It has no direction. It’s not composed like metal, where radically different riffs fit together to make a dynamic story, but like rock, where radically different riffs provide distraction from the emptiness. The entire idea of even mixing all these influences and coming up with something good is a complete write-off. That’s like taking all the ingredients in your refrigerator and combining them, claiming you’ve made “super-food.”

The nu-metal influence comes from the necessary use of binary dynamics when making such carnival music. These riffs are so diverse with no relation to each other except key that the only thing that can be done is to sort them into two categories, “hard” and “soft,” and play those off each other. The result is a lot of wandering riff, then screaming and blasting, and then more proggy stuff to lighten the mood. It’s more of a mix tape than a CD.

It’s amazing how a lack of common sense can convert such potential into garbage. These guys are accomplished musicians and they have some good ideas. But like burying intelligent statements in a rant about eating feces, the indie-metal aggregate approach isn’t working for them or any alert listeners of this music.

VIC RECORDS has signed a license deal with the longest running and most respected Death Metal act from Mexico THE CHASM and LUXINFRAMUNDIS PRODUCTIONS for the European releases of the reissue of their legendary Procreation of the Inner Temple debut album from 1994.

The CD will also include their complete 1993 demo, rare pics and extensive liner notes from Olivier ‘Zoltar’ Badin. In addition, VIC RECORDS will release a new exclusive repressing on digipak of their very well received and most recent album Farseeing the Paranormal Abysm, which was originally released on a limited edition by LUXINFRAMUNDIS PRODUCTIONS in 2009 and mainly available in North America and sold out for close to 2 years.

VIC RECORDS will also release the second album of Mexico’s most underrated occult killer act SHUB NIGGURATH! Their second full length album A Deadly Call from the Stars comes also as an exclusive limited edition digipak. Previously released on THE CHASM’s front man Daniel Corchado’s own label Lux Inframundis Productions in 2011, it was limited to 500 copies, and sold out in 5 months.

The cooperation between LUXINFRAMUNDIS PRODUCTIONS and VIC RECORDS will also lead to the release of the second solo album by THE CHASM’s vocalist / guitar player / composer Daniel Corchado: MAGNUM ITINER INETRIUS, this new album will be conformed of 12 compositions of epic 60+ minutes of atmospheric, experimental yet dark and melodic instrumental metal!

Finally some words from THE CHASM founder and front man Daniel Corchado (ex-CENOTAPH (Mex) and ex-INCANTATION):

“I’m proud to announce and confirm the license/cooperation deal we have signed with long time The Chasm believer Roel and his label Vic Records (responsible for releasing early classics by bands such as Hammerfall, Katatonia, Crystal Age, October Tide…) for the new limited pressings of Farseeing the Paranormal Abysm, Procreation of the inner temple and Shub Niggurath’s A Deadly call from the Stars, this new venture was mostly planned and materialized with the European supporters in mind, based in the Netherlands, with the network and distribution VIC posses, this releases will available in a more practical and easy way for those believers looking to add this albums to their collections. In related news, the new Magnum Itiner Interius album will be released in Europe by Vic Records as well, Luxinframundis will be in charge of the American edition of this epic instrumental caravan.

Chicago, May 2012.”

For more information and ordering, contact VIC RECORDS.

Peruvian ripping occult death metal Mortem is teaming up with US band Perversion (from bullet-riddled Detroit) for a short tour of the east coast. Prepare your altars!

• August 3rd – Silver Spring, MD @ Caracol Bar – 609 Sligo Ave – Silver Spring, MD 20910
  w/ Perversion (Detroit, MI), Ashencult (Philadelphia, PA) & Inverted Trifixion (Gaithersburg, MD) – Just outside of DC!
• August 4rd – Brooklyn, NY @ TBA w/ Perversion (more info coming up this week)
• August 5th – Chicago, IL @ TBA w/ Perversion (more info coming up later this week)

Horror Pain Gore Death Productions has reissued the classic debut album from Deceased “Luck Of The Corpse” on CD format. This version includes restored artwork, remastered audio as well as rare bonus tracks. Below is the official description:

True Death Metal from the grave… raw, ugly and proper! Haunting corpses with shrieks of underrated sickness, Luck Of The Corpse is a prime example of just how Death Metal the 80’s could get. Despite it’s release in 1991 as the first band signed to Relapse Records, Deceased’s debut album reanimates tracks primarily written & demoed throughout ’85-’89 and easily stands ground with Possessed, Necrovore, early Death, and demo-era Morbid Angel. This is the album that forged Deceased as one of America’s pioneering, legendary underground bands… a classic debut that still holds up 20+ years later! Features restored artwork taken from the film Black Sabbath, remastered audio and includes the unreleased 1990 Raw Demo plus a never before heard version of Feasting On Skulls recorded in 1998. Up The Tombstones!!!!!!

For wholesale information please email wholesale@horrorpaingoredeath.tk

You can order your copy for only $10 including shipping from Horror Pain Gore Productions.

Mortuary/Infernal Conjuration “Baja Tour 2012”

After 20 years of absence, Mortuary returns even more aggressive, irreverent and extreme than ever before. They will be playing songs from their latest record, Death Will Not Leave the Throne.

• Friday, June 15, 2012: Mexicali
• Saturday, June 16, 2012: Tijuana
• Sunday, June 17, 2012: Ensenada

See the full flyer here.

Join them and be part of death metal history! Expect the worst!

If they can have a “National Day of Prayer,”
We can have a National Day of Slayer!

Culture is something you can inherit, or choose. We choose metal as our culture, and Slayer as our ambassador. No other band captures the spirit of metal with such intensity. Every year on June 6, we celebrate the International Day of Slayer to hail this spirit.

How to Celebrate

• Listen to Slayer at full blast in your car.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast in your home.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast at your place of employment.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast in any public place you prefer.

DO NOT use headphones! The objective of this day is for everyone within earshot to understand that it is the National Day of Slayer. National holidays in America aren’t just about celebrating; they’re about forcing it upon non-participants.

Taking that participation to a problematic level

• Stage a “Slay-out.” Don’t go to work. Listen to Slayer.
• Have a huge block party that clogs up a street in your neighborhood. Blast Slayer albums all evening. Get police cruisers and helicopters on the scene. Finish with a full-scale riot.
• Spray paint Slayer logos on churches, synagogues, or cemeteries.
• Play Slayer covers with your own band (since 99% of your riffs are stolen from Slayer anyway).
• Kill the neighbor’s dog and blame it on Slayer.

http://www.nationaldayofslayer.org/

The first thing people say, almost like a spell to ward off mistaken appreciation, is that this band is not the same band who cranked out “Fear of Napalm” and “Corporation Pull-In.”

That’s true — and it’s a good thing.

While the old material is as classic as a castle on the Rhine, and will inspire grind-heads for many generations into the future, times have changed and grindcore is trying to adapt to a modern (post-1994) era of metal.

Most options for this are bad as they are limited by strict genre constructions. For example, one can try to be “tr00” kvlt d-beat, or even blurcore, if not falling into the randomness trap that produces carnival music like metalcore, in which no part resembles the others and no sense is made; you’re supposed to appreciate it like the sample platter at your local seafood place. But it’s not fulfilling.

The new Terrorizer album instead wisely takes after Napalm Death’s Fear, Emptiness and Despair, which acknowledges the maturation of the genre by streamlining it and thus giving it a bit more room to grow. It reduces the genre to a minimum but with clear boundaries so that experimentation, not of the surface kind that consists in adding jazz solos and a bassoon and playing the album live on a basketball court, but of the inner kind where melody and form are explored as an emulation of the sounds and emotion of life.

Intelligently, this Terrorizer aims to be a blast of energy that rivals any 5-hour stim supp or purple drank you can find. It’s pure pulsing percussion kinesis, driving forward like the pumping of a panicked heart transitioning to ‘kill’ mode during combat, but without the darkness or cruelty of intent of death metal or black metal. Instead it’s like punk crossed with techno, using the mixture of crust and death metal riffing that has always made grindcore easy to grasp but hard to appreciate in depth.

Within this framework, there’s a lot of variation, including a fair number of melodic hooks that provide emotional content. Anthony Rezhawk’s rasping voice is back in monotone mode, where he sounds impatient and dismissive, as is appropriate for an album about the zombiefication of the human species slowly destroying the planet (whether that’s metaphor or not awaits a detailed reading of the lyrics). Pete Sandoval provides excellent percussion, and under the guidance of these two seasoned songcrafters, the raw power of the new bassist & guitarist is shaped into compelling songs.

This will be one of the best of 2012. People are unwilling to admit this fact now because that requires bucking a social convention in that, (a) “it’s not the old Terrorizer” and (b) it’s rather “pop” in its own sense of not attempting depth, or jagged self-drama, but instead making songs to stand on their own as objects of revelation of the world. The old Terrorizer could not exist now because its members have moved on but also because the world has moved on, in circumstance and in music, and this new album rises to incorporate those changes and make of them an interesting and paranoid tale.

1. Intro
2. Hordes of Zombies

3. Ignorance and Apathy

4. Subterfuge

5. Evolving Era

6. Radiation Syndrome

7. Flesh to Dust

8. Generation Chaos

9. Broken Mirrors

10. Prospect of Oblivion

11. Malevolent Ghosts

12. Forward to Annihilation

13. State of Mind

14. A Dying Breed

15. Wretched (bonus track)

16. Hordes of Zombies (demo)

New social networking site for those who like tradition, philosophy, realism, occultism and/or art.

• KalkiNet

You might ask yourself, “What the heck is that thing?”

According to its creators, it’s an Asp-burger, a neologism of asparagus and burger.

They didn’t understand when I began barking like a seal, rocking back and forth, stimming and solving complex math problems.

As regular users of our forum, or “Aspies,” know, Asperger’s Syndrome is a bullshit psychological catch-all term for mildly autistic people who are also smart.

Currently our psychological establishment, who have absolutely nothing to gain by removing diagnoses and instead prescribing 20 years of therapy at $150 an hour, are considering removing it as a category of mental illness.

In the meantime, it seems to me that society itself is spergin’ out. Would you like more Coca-Cola with that obsessive need for control, or perhaps more television in stead of bouncing your leg up and down, or indeed some sports events to shout random words at?

Amon, the resurrected pre-Deicide 1990s band featuring the Hoffman brothers who served as guitar in Deicide, releases its debut CD “Liar In Wait” on June 3, 2012 at the band’s official website.