Nocturnus launches kickstarter to fund album re-issue

by Brett Stevens on May 5, 2013

nocturnus-thresholdsClassic Florida progressive death metal band Nocturnus, famous for spidery riffs interlaced with outer space keyboards, dominated the metal world’s appetite for bizarre and uncompromising music back in the 1990s, but their music is now out of print.

Their label, Earache Records, wants to re-issue the Nocturnus classic Thresholds, but there’s a catch: the fans have to pay for it in advance. Unlike the usual underground pre-orders, where individual fans order the album and when there’s enough cash the label takes it to print, Earache is using a Kickstarter page to launch the funding request.

If demand is met, Thresholds will be pressed on 100 clear, 200 green, 300 purple and 400 black LPs with the recording taken from the original DAT master. For more information, visit the Nocturnus Thresholds re-issue Kickstarter page.

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Interview: Jester King

by Mike Arsenyev on May 4, 2013

Jester KingMany metalheads enjoy a nice brew. It was only a matter of time before a beer company was founded by fans of metal.

Being from Texas I have noticed a new brand of beer that has infiltrated my local corner stores. I observed a common face-painted figure on the label. It piqued my interested to purchase my first ‘Black Metal Imperial Stout’ beer. It was dark. It was strong. Oddly when I drank this beer I was listening to Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, but the alcohol enhanced it; almost gratingly. Some may perceive this as Black Metal further being commercialized, but that already happened in the 90’s. Jester King is operated by metal fans, which assists in promoting metal in commonplaces. In the scheme of things, this may further bring attentions to the genre.

Jeff from Jester King has offered some of his time to answer my questions.

Howdy Jester King! Thank you for your time. First off, what started Jester King? Did it start as a micro-brewery?

Jester King was started by my brother Michael and me. We began working on it in 2008 and eventually opened in 2010. We started and still are a micro-brewery making beer in the Texas Hill Country.

The main reason I am conducting this interview is to inquire about metal. What started your Black Metal beer? Are you guys Black Metal fans? How did you come up with the mix for this beer?

I listen to Black Metal and thought there were some similarities between the music and the beer. The beer is dark and punishing, but it also has some more symphonic notes from its fermentation with farmhouse yeast. I thought the musical style fit the beer. As far as the recipe, it’s a hybrid between the English and Franco-Belgian brewing traditions. The malt and hops are all English, but the fermentation is with Saison yeast.

Outside of Black Metal, what other types of music do you enjoy?

I also enjoy crossover thrash, blackened death metal, third wave ska and western swing

I noticed a lot of rather ‘morbid’ or ‘twisted’ themes with your beers. How did this come to be? Did you want to make a statement with each new recipe?

We try to make beer that’s a reflection of who we are and what we believe. We want what we do to have meaning, and that meaning comes from within. We try to put out work that has authenticity and character. We’re confident that if we be true to ourselves and do good work, there are others out there who will embrace it, even though we know mass appeal is something we’ll never have. We’re comfortable with that.

Some of the imagery, artwork and language we use can be somewhat dark and disturbing from time to time. Again, we try to be true to ourselves knowing full well that it’s not going to be for everyone. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

How has the response been to Jester King? I’ve noticed that grocery stores carry it now. Are you continuing to gain momentum? Will you eventually take on Shiner Bock? Do you even like Shiner Bock?

It’s been good. We’ve been really flattered in many cases by the reception it has received. We put a lot of thought, trial and error, great ingredients and time into our beer, so we’re grateful that it’s had a good reception. Right now we’re focused on unique flavors from wild yeasts, barrel-aged wild beers with fruit, and 100% spontaneous fermentation using our coolship.

I doubt we’ll ever make much more than a few thousand barrels of beer a year. By comparison, the Spoetzl Brewery that makes Shiner Bock is over 500 times larger than us. We’ll never come remotely close to their production volume. I actually haven’t had a Shiner Bock in quite some time, but I’m sure I’ll revisit it at some point. When I drink locally usually I’m having beer from Texas breweries such as Live Oak, Real Ale and (512).

Since we’re on the topic of Texas beer, I have always thought of Lonestar tasting like the dirty convenience stores that it’s often bought in. What are your thoughts on Lonestar? They do have a rather great marketing slogan of “The National Beer of Texas”.

The last I heard was that the Lonestar brand was owned by a hedge fund in Connecticut. I would hope that most people see that slogan as no more than hollow marketing rhetoric. I actually don’t have a problem with light lager. If someone loves light lager, that’s great. What I have a problem with is the companies that produce light lager (and their distributors) propping up laws in Texas that make it more difficult for small breweries in Texas like Jester King to sell beer.

When your team brews beer is metal allowed in the workplace? Is it part of the process of making your beer?

Metal is encouraged! My brother Michael listens to metal too. Lately he’s been playing Nile and Gortuary. Metal is definitely part of the beer making process for me. I can’t envision doing my work without it.

If I were to visit the brewery can I receive some extra beer for conducting this interview?

We’d be glad to share some beer with you.

 

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Slayer

by Brett Stevens on May 3, 2013

jeff_hanneman-slayerAnd so, after a long time of thinking he was immortal, we have to say goodbye to Jeff Hanneman and hope that all the doubters are wrong and there’s some metal Valhalla where he’s drinking Heineken and exploring all those solos that he did not have the energy on earth to discover.

In the traditions from which I come, the way we handle death — which we handle badly, if at all — is to describe the meaning of the life. This enables us to get away from the person, who is either nothingness or eternity per the rules of logic, and instead look at what they fought for.

In other words, what drove them to engage with life and reach out every day, which are things most people don’t do. Most of us just “attend” to things, like jobs and families, and hope for the best. The giants among us are driven onward by some belief in something larger than themselves or than the social group at large. They are animated by ideas.

For Jeff Hanneman, the idea was both musical and a vision of what that music should represent. He peered into the dystopia of modern times with one eye in the anarchistic zone of the punks, and the other in the swords ‘n’ sorcery vision of a metalhead. When he put the two together, he came up with something that makes Blade Runner and Neuromancer seem gentle.

Having seen this, he came back.

“I have seen the darkened depths of Hell,” the chorus begins. For Hanneman, his sin was too much sight. He saw the failings of his present time, like a punk; he saw how this fit into the broader concept of history, like a metalhead. Putting the two together, he saw darkness on the horizon encroaching and assimilating all it touched.

To fight back, he created music for people such as himself, youth adrift among the ruins of a dying empire. He created music that made people not only want to accept the darkness, but to get in there and fight. Not fight back necessarily, but fight to survive. He helped us peel away social pretense and reveal our inner animals which have no pretense about predation and self-defense, unlike civilized people. Hanneman prepared us for the time after society, politeness and rule of law fail.

This was, in addition to the shredding tunes, his gift to the world: a vision of ourselves continuing when all that we previously relied on has ended. Like all visionaries, he was before his time, and like many, did not live to see his vision realized. However, for millions of us, he gave us hope.

It is also worth noting that Slayer renovated heavy metal in such a way to set its highest standard. In any age, Reign in Blood, South of Heaven and Hell Awaits will be a high point for a genre. They fought back against the tendency of metal to become more like the rock ‘n’ roll on the radio, and to lose its unique and entirely different soul. Hanneman and his team pushed forward the frontier for metal, and pushed back the assimilation by rock music.

In the wake of Hanneman’s death, we are without a king, so to speak. The elder statesman role passes to a new generation, and they must find in their souls the bravery and fury to create much as Jeff Hanneman did, a standard and a culture based in a vision that surpasses what everyone else is slopping through. We are poorer for the loss of Jeff Hanneman, but our best response is to redouble his efforts, and push ourselves forward toward a goal he would respect.

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Cathedral – The Last Spire

by Jon Wild on May 3, 2013

cathedral-the_last_spireProduction: Digital compression presents a narrow range of murky distortion, rendering instruments detectable but unexciting.

Review: For their farewell album, Cathedral present a fusion of stoner rock and doom metal riffs, with the occasional synthesizer interlude to break up the monotony. Having chosen to forgo death metal growls, vocalist Lee Dorian belts out vocals in a style more in common with hard rock than with extreme metal.

Tracks are executed competently, as can be expected from a group of experienced musicians. However, what’s missing is any sense of purpose. Tracks drag on for an excessive length of time and while the notes and structures may change, the overall vapid and uninspired spirit does not take leave.

In an attempt to shake the listener awake, the band inserts a few abrupt changes of instrumentation that presumably are supposed to provide energy and new focus to the track, but instead have more in common with the modern metal technique of carnival show composition, whereby vastly different themes are placed in succession and the relationship between them is left ambiguous, while leaving the problem of missing spirit unresolved.

As a concluding release, this is undoubtedly a disappointing way to end the band’s career, as it has more in common with the band’s later work than with their first release, Forest of Equilibrium. Far into the future, that will be what is remembered as the band’s high mark and if it’s remembered at all, The Last Spire will be but a brief and unfortunate footnote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXb22VAIU6E

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Chris Reifert of Autopsy reveals details of “The Headless Ritual”

by Brett Stevens on May 2, 2013

autopsy-the_headless_ritualAutopsy returns to death metal on July 2, 2013, with a new full-length album entitled The Headless Ritual.

Famed for their contributions to late-1980s death metal and its continued guidance through the 1990s, Autopsy arose as a band playing a chaotic, filthy, organic sounding form of death metal, which was in contrast to the more rigidly technical “Morbid Angel” inspired bands of the day. In many ways, Autopsy was a bridge between the more structured death metal and the more chaotic but more melodic bands from the grindcore world like Carcass and Bolt Thrower.

Fresh from the studio, Chris Reifert (drums) was able to give us a few words on the nature of the new album, its style and the future for Autopsy.

You’re in the process of recording The Headless Ritual. How do you see this album as continuing and differing from your previous works?

Actually it’s complete and we’re just waiting for it to come out at this point. Musically and lyrically it’s pretty much Autopsy. No major changes, but no rehashing of old ideas either. It’s a big nasty chunk of death metal, simply put.

Will you be using the same production as previous albums for The Headless Ritual? Can you tell us how it sounds so far? Will it be more punk-influenced, or more metal-influenced, than Macabre Eternal?

We went with the same method of recording as we always have, but this one sounds a bit bigger than Macabre Eternal, I dare say. And again, it sounds like Autopsy. There’s fast stuff, slow stuff and all the weird stuff in between.

Thanks, Chris!

At deathmetal.org, we’re naturally looking forward to the new Autopsy. Not only is it another of metal’s legends come back to life in the post-2009 old school metal revival, but it’s also a personal favorite that we believe has potential to revive the intensity of death metal.

Furthermore, this album also promises to bring back the thoughtful and the odd that defined the genre so much during its early days. It was a frontier then and the frontier may be re-opening now. As Chris says, “There’s fast stuff, slow stuff and all the weird stuff in between.” This is a welcome break from the all-ahead-go clones that have made death metal seem one dimensional.

The Headless Ritual will show us Autopsy at the peak of their ability and returning in fine form and fine spirits, as these answers show us. Thanks to Brian Rocha at Fresno Media for his help with this mini-interview!

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Morpheus Descends to return at Martyrdoom Festival

by Staff on May 2, 2013

return_of_morpheus_descendsOne of the original death metal bands, Morpheus Descends made heavy old school death metal during the hazy transition between 1980s and 1990s styles, preferring a slower and resonantly crushing approach to their percussive music just as most bands were opting for faster and more technical work.

With 1992’s Ritual of Infinity, the band showed the culmination of their early demos and live appearances in an album that came to define not only old school death metal, but become the example of the New York Death Metal sound: industrial textures, crushing rhythm changes, primitive riffs in complex combinations.

Many of us who uncovered Suffocation’s Effigy of the Forgotten remember seeing Terrance Hobbes wearing a Morpheus t-shirt. As it turns out, there was another Morpheus who wanted the name; history doesn’t mention them much. Morpheus Descends kept going and influenced all of American and European death metal.

After Ritual of Infinity, Morpheus Descends went on to release two more EPs of a technical nature before disbanding. Now at the Martyrdoom II Festival, where Morpheus Descends will perform at a club called Paper Box on 17 Meadow Street in Brooklyn on June 29th, we will see what this band has been up to in the intervening years.

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Impiety to unleash mini-album “The Impious Crusade”

by Staff on May 2, 2013

impiety--the_impious_crusadeOn August 6, 2013, Impiety will release its latest assault upon the world of mortal beings. Titled The Impious Crusade, this mini-album (that’s an EP for you 80s fanatics) will include five new songs of what we can only assume is the characteristic ripping fullback-rushing-at-Satan rhythmic metal that has made Impiety famous.

Unfortunately, assume is all that we can do. Other than describing the music as “innovative, brilliant and totally unforgiving,” the band has given us no clues. However, Impiety rose to fame for — in a time when bands were “experimenting” by including known influences from other genres — being cuts-to-the-bone pure rhythmic high speed chaotic death metal. Unlike war metal, they kept in the complexity of old school death metal and worked in even a bit of melody without turning into the over-tuned saccharine that afflicts many metal bands today.

In short, people have loyalty to Impiety because Impiety had loyalty to metal at a time when it was unfashionable and definitely not trendy to do so. Over the years, their output has been consistently within this theme, although it has improved, and has attracted numerous tributes. With this release, however, more may be afoot because the band are suspiciously mute on the topic of style.

The Impious Crusade will be released on Hell’s Headbanger’s Records, who promise more information today on this developing story.

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Deathchain video premiere

by Ralph Archer on May 2, 2013

Deathchain, a Finnish band that shares members with Demilich, Winterwolf and Jess and The Ancient Ones, recently released a video for their song “Seven Asakku Shadows” taken from their latest album, Ritual Death Metal.

The video is a slow motion celebration of flowing metal haircuts, complete with a guy pouring milk on his head and Antti Boman providing backing vocals in a robe and Cthulhu mask.

Ritual Death Metal is out now on Svart Records.

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