Today, Neurosisconfirms the band’s invitation to perform at this year’s upcoming installment of the massive Heavy Montréal Festival, in Montréal, Quebec.
Neurosis is one of the latest acts to be confirmed for Heavy Montréal, having just been announced alongside the likes of The Devin Townsend Project, Sanctuary, Obscura, Cattle Decapitation, Revocation and more, joining the roster of artists already confirmed to play at this year’s event, including Slipnot, Faith No More, Korn, Lamb Of God, Iggy Pop, NOFX, Mastodon, Meshuggah, Testament, Nuclear Assault and countless others. The open air Heavy Montréal gala will overthrow Quebec’s largest metropolis on August 7th – 9th, and Neurosiswill take the stage on the opening night, Friday, August 7th.
Prior to their Heavy Montréal debut, Neurosiswill make their return to the brutalizing Maryland Deathfest in Baltimore on Memorial Day weekend. Running from May 21st through 24th, the band’s Neurot Recordings kin Yob and Ufomammut will perform the opening night of the event, while Neurosisis set to play the final evening, headlining the Edison Lot A stage, following performances from Skepticism, Winter, Goatsnake and Tombs on the same stage.
Additional Neurosis live actions will be announced in the very near future.
Neurosis Tour Dates:
5/24/2015 Edison Lot – Baltimore Maryland @ Maryland Deathfest
As Pathway, the impending new full-length from Oakland-based atmospheric doom-bringers, Secrets of the Sky, draws near, today the band offers up the stunning new visual accompaniment to fourth track Angel In Vines. The video was directed and edited by Andrew Nethery (Melvins, Kyuss Lives, Dead Meadow), creator of the band’s 2014 “Decline” clip, and starring Melissa May and Zack Warren.
Guitarist Clayton Bartholomew elaborates,
For this video, we went back to director Andrew Nethery, who also did the video for the song ‘Decline’ from our first record, To Sail Black Waters. He did a great job for that video and was an easy guy to work with. For the ‘Angel In Vines’ video, we let him run with his own vision. The song itself relates to the loss of innocence, and he found an interesting analogy to express this same sentiment, while keeping the video abstract and not just giving away the premise of the song. We like that he was able to avoid cliché and the imagery he was able to capture is a definite work of art on its own.
Following their stunning debut album On The Steps of the Temple, the Arizona-based instrumental duo Tempel take their sound to the next level on their forthcoming sophomore effort “The Moon Lit Our Path”, due June 16 in North America, June 15 in the UK/EU and June 19 in Germany.
Recorded at guitarist Ryan Wenzel’s Phoenix-area Arrowhead Studio, “The Moon Lit Our Path” — which features intricate artwork by Lucas Ruggieri (Kylesa, Dragged Into Sunlight), as seen above — features five colossal tracks that mix progressive, black, death and post-metal into one mammoth sonic cocktail.
Today, Tempel is pleased to reveal the album’s opening track, the eight-minute composition Carvings in the Door. The song is now available as an “instant grat” download with digital pre-orders of the new album on iTunes and Bandcamp. Fans can also stream the track in its entirety on PureGrainAudio or directly below via YouTube.
Being a casual listener, it is easy to miss black metal’s essence completely. It is easy to think that it is just some repetitive “atmospheric riffing”. What we forget is that verbal descriptions of things do not reflect reality in its entirety but are just placeholders for things we know. And for things we do not know, they just serve as attempts to describe aspects of the object in question. This is why, when it comes to detailed descriptions of feelings, we resort to poetic language, metaphor and example, a simple “sad” or “happy” is not enough to express the experience precisely. This is also where the difficulty of expressing and discussing the success or failure of a music to convey something lies. Some critics resort to evaluating purely musical aspects in a technical way which lets them make solid judgements from the vantage point of tradition and taste. Taste itself lies in the middle-ground between what is considered objective and subjective, since it is a concept developed communally, not individually.
Absconditus take black metal’s most superficial description at face value and runs with it. Kατάβασις (Katavasis) is a collection of repetitive, atmosphere-inducing-oriented pieces that serve more as a background than as proper music. The tracks here all sound like introductions to something else. Simple repetition along with a little groovy improvisation on the drums and a melody here and a melody there carry this set of intros to the end. One gets the feeling that something is about to start and then each track ends. And then the album reaches an uneventful stop. It is as if Absconditus is just making a series of proposals of ideas that could become songs. Even if Absconditus would take its time more and develop actual songs, the way ideas were presented in Katavasis was cliche-oriented and crowd-pleasing, so that the result would still be average at best. This project/album needs to be restarted from scratch.
Abyssal Throne is now in stores. On Monday, May 4th, Nethertale is releasing an average album, a supposed conceptual work of some appeal to mainstream metal fans in the vein of technical wanking death metal, which is accompanied by a soon to be released novel written by its own vocalist. A run-of-the-mill work of a band that will bring more of the same to please the crowds of metal posers. Available now in Tipo stores, Leyenda rock, Pentagram and Loita underground … Surrender to the Commercial Mainstream!
Luciferian Rites play black metal in a style that at first calls to mind middle-period Graveland. The hand-strum technique outlining chords is also in line with Immortal’s At the Heart of Winter and less obviously with Burzum’s technique. Immortal haunts this monument of an album in its most aggressive parts, but it is the commanding voice of Fudali that we hear echoing through the halls. Once the first impression has passed and the inventory of recognizable influences has been done, though, the individual beauty slowly comes out. It does not reveal itself, as this is very subtle music. It is the listener that must tune in, must hang on to the song, the album, and hear as every inseparable and utterly dependent — and necessary — part of its construction works together to create the transcendental black metal experience.
Drums play an incredibly important role here, lending an eloquence not even Immortal or Graveland, from whom Luciferian Rites borrow their musical language, show. The Achilles’ Heel of When the Light Dies is that songs start and end in strong statements that only serve as such because nothing comes before or after them, respectively. After a song starts, though, it is carried through a seamless transition of sections whose single riffs appear to be the most simple but that brought together create a magnificent super-riff. This could go on and serve as the song itself, but the band will often take a break in the middle, only long enough so that it counts as one. Unlike most other bands who use this structure, Luciferian Rites does not do this as a means to restart a song that has ran out of gas. Instead, in this brief moment the listener’s attention is brought back from the stupor of the first part of the song into conscious focus, only to renew the journey.
Some will say this album is seen in a positive light on this site because it adheres to old school precepts. Simple-minded people prefer simple explanations, it relieves them from the burden of having to think analytically. The truth is much more complex. Luciferian Rites excels in the subtle art of coherent, sensible, and purposeful composition, independently of the style. In their effort to find simple explanations and excuses not to have to face judgement and challenge their own views and the status quo, composition choice is equated to musical style. To some degree this is true, some styles have been built upon essentially flawed concepts (see Deathcore). But it is not true to the extent that we excuse bad composition by calling it stylistic difference, because “we are just different, but no one is superior”. This misplaced humanitarian impulse drives art to starvation and highlights gimmick and novelty acts as the masses of casual listeners turn their heads towards momentary satisfaction.
When the Light Dies is a strong candidate to the Mexican metal pantheon, standing in quality besides the best of legendary countrymen Avzhia and Cenotaph. Calling to mind the sensibility of Ancient’s Svartalvheim, Luciferian Rite’s sophomore release expertly builds on the classic works, sweeping aside accusations of retro-worship in a confident gesture of originality.
German Death/Thrash Metal outfit Dying Humanity just released the first music video for “I Am King” from their upcoming album Deadened. The new album will be released on Bastardized Recordings June 12. Stay tuned for more details. Dying Humanity also documented their recording experience in the form of a pair of video studio diaries.
Demoncy’s new release: Empire of the Fallen Angel (Eternal Black Dominion) is set for international release onJune 29th on both CD and vinyl LP formats via Forever Plagued Records. Although originally released in 2003 after years of mysterious silence, the renamed Empire of the Fallen Angel (Eternal Black Dominion) is an entirely new recording. Whereas the original 2003 album was recorded with a full band lineup, this Empire of the Fallen Angel (Eternal Black Dominion) was recorded solely by Demoncy founder Ixithra, with the first four tracks being entirely new compositions.
Tengger Cavalry is a band from Mongolia whose main selling point is that they make extensive use of Mongolian traditional instruments in a metal context. Now, it may be that I am prejudiced both towards East Asian metal and the prominent use of folkloric music in metal, but there are statistical reasons for that. East Asians are not known for their originality in metal (not only…). And very often, when a band sells itself mainly because it uses traditional instruments we can smell the stink of gimmick all over it. Some kind of prejudice is based on the probability of an event given our experience. Sometimes enough experience justifies the validity of this probability. And sometimes we may find ourselves erring in our prejudice. But Tengger Cavalry are not the exception, they are the rule.
The “metal” element in this music is provided through a Rammstein-styled modern stadium heavy rock, a little ala Rob Zombie. The rest is comprised of simple, repetitive melodies played on folk instruments that are never developed . Decorations are provided by different kinds of instruments, while the Rammstein element is used as a backbone. This would work very well as a soundtrack for Arcade machine slasher games, providing a momentary sugar-high with no lasting nutritional value.
The production value here is necessarily very high quality. The music is incredibly catchy and all the same irrelevant, placing Blood Sacrifice Shaman in the same category of embarrassingly cartoonish party-rock-pretending-to-be-metal as late Chthonic and Babymetal. Recommended as T.V. commercial jingles for on-line games and such.
CVLT Nation is very proud to present the seventh covers compilation of their CVLT Nation Sessions series with AMEBIX’ Arise! This reinterpretation of a genre-defining classic is up for exclusive streaming and free download via CVLTNation.com, and features Plagues, Abstracter, Druglust, Coltsblood, American, Agrimonia, Okus and Larvae! These young musicians have done astounding tributes to one of the most iconic bands in punk and metal history.
The CVLT Nation Sessions is a musical project with the aim of reinterpreting iconic music that has influenced a wide spectrum of genres, while also widening the audience for the participating bands. CVLT Nation has recruited some of its favorite underground heavy bands from around the world to record covers for free distribution and download via CVLTNation.com. All mastering is done by Black Matter Mastering in Nashville, Tennessee.
AMEBIX Arise! – The CVLT Nation SessionsTrack Listing:
