Necrophiliac – Maze of Forking Paths Set Announced

by Guest Contributor on August 11, 2016

Necrophiliac - Maze of Forking Paths

Xtreem Music is reissuing Necrophiliac‘s Chaopula: Citadel of Mirrors and all of their demos on a two cd anthology titled Maze of Forking Paths.

If there’s a pioneer band in the Spanish Death Metal scene, that’s NECROPHILIAC! Emerged in ’88, the band released various demos until ’92 when their classic album “Chaopula – Citadel of Mirrors” was released. After that, the band did split-up and it’s now when, after 6 long years trying to get this release out, Xtreem Music is proud to announce the release of a 2-CD containing this album with all demos, unreleased 7″EP’s and live tracks with unreleased tunes on it.

“Maze of Forking Paths” is a complete collection of the band’s studio & live recordings from ’88 to ’92, all remastered with the best possible sound and a killer booklet full of photos, liner notes, demo covers, lyrics, flyers, etc. This is a mandatory release to understand where the spanish Death Metal scene comes from!

Release date for “Maze of Forking Paths” will be September 1st through Xtreem Music on 2-CD format with limited T-shirts available at the same time. You can visit NECROPHILIAC’s official Facebook here: www.facebook.com/necrophiliacdeathmetal and listen to an advance song on the following links:

http://soundcloud.com/xtreemmusic

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Budějovický Budvar – Czechvar (Budweiser Budvar) Original

by Cory Van der Pol on August 11, 2016

czechvar can

Czechvar (Budweiser Budvar outside of the US) is the original Budweiser beer whose demonymic name Adolphus Busch appropriated for his green apple tasting adjunct lager omni consumer product in the 19th century. Czechvar and Pilsner Urquell were the two beers the communist government of Czechoslovakia chose to export to increase foreign currency reserves. Unlike Pilsner Urquell, Czechvar‘s production was modernized after World War II despite the recipe remaining largely the same an Budějovický Budvar was not privatized after the fall and failure of communism, still remaining an asset of the Czech Ministry of Agriculture. This means that that Czechvar/Budvar remains largely the same as it was decades ago, having kept its distinctive yeast strain, exclusive use of whole-cone Saaz hops, and ninety day lagering period in in comparison to SABMiller slightly genericizing Pilsner Urquell in order to stock it on the import shelf every deli and bodega the world over to compete with the likes of Beck’s, Heineken, and St. Pauli Girl.

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Sorcier des Glaces / Ende – Le puits des morts (2016)

by Daniel Maarat on August 10, 2016

sorcier des glace and monarque - Le puits des morts

Le puits des morts is a split album featuring Sorcier des Glaces and French black metal band Ende. On the first side, Sorcier des Glaces present four all new songs in their distinctive style of epic black metal continuing from their last few albums (including North from earlier in 2016) after the band’s abandoning of keyboards.

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“C” Is For Average

by Stephen Cefala on August 10, 2016

c_is_for_average

Metal was born of the fusion of heavy rock, horror music, progressive rock and the nascent proto-punk movement. The history of rock is the history of rebellion and rule-breaking: from Friedrich Liszt making his strings break live at key moments on purpose, to Jerry Lee Lewis lighting the piano on fire, to the Beatles with their hairstyles and jackets which were radical for the time, to the Doors being suggestive on the Ed Sullivan show, through Hendrix burning his guitar, to Kiss being super-sexual and painting their faces, to Black Sabbath who sang about Satan and magic, to Metallica who combined neoclassical with thrash and had a hard-partying image, to Slayer’s seemingly outright Satanism. Metal is about taking things one step further, breaking the rules and being unique. Not about following them.

Good music aims for a grade of “A” by experimenting and breaking the rules, but in doing so, takes the chance that it will get an “F.” Think of good music as Icarus: he flies toward the Heavens (or in the case of metal: towards hell) aware he is taking a big chance. He may well crash and burn to the ground in pursuit of his musical ideals. It’s a risk Icarus is willing to take.

Today we have way, way too many bands following all the rules of their genre, and not enough acts pressing ahead. When I look at my local scene it is clear that the bands who have stayed together a long while, while following the rules of their genre, are the bands who have been most successful. Most of these bands have decent music and are listenable. But its not stuff I want to listen to more than once, or see live more than once. This is the curse of local bands: competent, good at following trends, but not so good that they break out and become emblematic of those trends.

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Opening the Tomb: Exhausted Prayer

by Stephen Cefala on August 8, 2016

exhausted_prayer_-_ruined

This band has been around for two decades. I recently found out about them and recommend the album Ruined from 2014.

If you would enjoy a fusion of Cynic and Satyricon, you should enjoy this. Some of the tracks are less effective than others because the band is experimenting with different song arrangements and techniques. The core of this band is killer chord progressions which are very melodic and form a basis for adding riffs to a song without randomness. The bass guitar playing is most excellent throughout. The vocals are simply effective in context with nice rhythmic placement but fairly generic texture. I give Ruined an A-. I had to deduct a point because there was one track I disliked, “Prey.”

  • “Not Competent”: Drummer has some unusual time signatures like early Cynic. This is a great mix on this recording. I like how you can hear the bass guitar. The feel of the double kick drums lacks a bit of groove. There is a great amount of variety in the guitar parts and some nice melodies. The leads early on sound like a Satriani jam slowed down or something. The vocals don’t add much to the recording, but they do not harm it either. And he does a great job of singing in the right spots and not over-doing it. It’s a bit mellow and understated for a black death band, and that actually makes it more relaxing and pleasant to listen to. The riff changes are pretty smooth. However, they lead to surprising places. And the songs suck you in and then end before you are ready for them to. Which keeps me listening to the next track.
  • “Redacted”: Here’s more of a tight blast beat type intro with a mellow Killing Joke styled guitar riff over it. Now we finally start hearing some thrash and it rules, but then we get stuck in some doom mire before thrashing again. Around the three minute mark we start to get into some utterly awesome late 80s thrash guitar riffage, but with death metal highs. Then a sudden surprising uptick into a blast-beat outro.
  • “Ruined”: An alternate time-signature intro which doesn’t seem to fit in well. Followed by A Perfect Circle Type Riff and then back to the intro again, and then soloing. Not so sure about this tune. Skip.
  • “Prey”: A mysterious sounding intro riff which is very enticing. Followed by a double kick groove with a really unusually beautiful sounding chord progression with some nice bass touches also. This song has a very nice riff progression overall and it takes you deeper and deeper into its reality.
  • “Wasting Games”: Horror film score-like catchy grinding intro riff rules. Killer slow groovy, heavy riff with some Danzig styled vocals. Nice! Followed by a blast beat. WTF?! This is F’ing weird progression and it conquers. This song should have been like first on the album ha. More hard rock, but different riff (plus blues solo) after that. Oh yeah mama!
  • “Orthodoxy”: Grainy whiskey inducing into. Starts to get kind of apocalyptic with a dreary tempo. This song is kinda chill. It’s smooth with a charcoal flavor and its on the rocks. Not sure about going straight into the blast though after that. Oh well. Its a cool riff though at least. Picks up into insane blasting and jazzy chords. Thinking this track would have been better split into two separate shorter tracks. I dig them individually, except for the 6/8 time riff because I hate A Perfect Circle and stuff like that. But that’s over quick and we get a radical sounding simple riff which triumphs. This song is very interesting overall.
  • “Downturn”: This song starts with a Gothic sounding blasted riff which is neat. The second riff has a Swedish death metal beat and it rules. I am now wishing they had used that beat way more on the recording because it rules. Around the 1:25 mark there is an extremely nice epic black metal riff which is simply unusually Gothic and melodic sounding. Nicely done. I am confused to why they ruin that mood by putting the technical jazzy stuff afterwards. But then back into black metal riff with Swedish beat again, and at that moment I am loving it.

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