Graveyard of Souls is out now on Kaotoxin Records. The album is available on digital, CD and limited-edition vinyl and is on sale now at www.kaotoxin.com. Produced at both the Blackout Studio (Enthroned, Emptiness) and Sainte Marthe Studio (Arkhon Infaustus, Deep In Hate, Department of Correction), Graveyard of Eden is the follow-up to the band’s 2012 debut Black Throne of all Creation.The album was released on March 9 as a limited-edition (500 copies) deluxe DigiSleeve CD (Digital version and North American released on March 10). Vinyl treatment – white collectors vinyl (100 copies) and standard black (400 copies) – was made available on April 13.
With the street date for Italian progressive metal sextet Kingcrow sixth album, Eidos, rapidly approaching, a new single from the record has been released through an exclusive premiere of “The Moth”.
Devin Townsend Project released the double album, Z², in late 2014 and will now issue each part, Sky Blue and Dark Matters, in their own separate packages on August 7. The lyric video for the track “March Of The Poozers” taken from the Dark Matters side of the album can be seen on the InsideOut YouTube channel here: http://youtu.be/1NGQjRMXg28
You can view lyric videos for the tracks “Rejoice” and “Rejoice” below:
Paradise Lost has finally officially released their 14th album, The Plague Within, in North America. The band has also announced exact tour dates along with the release.
“The Plague Within” – European tour 2015
27.09 – IE Dublin, The Academy
28.09 – UK Belfast, The Limelight
30.09 – UK Manchester, Academy 2
01.10 – UK Glasgow, Garage
03.10 – UK Wolverhampton, Wulfrun Hall
04.10 – UK London, Koko
05.10 – DE Cologne, Live Music Hall
06.10 – BE Antwerp, Trix Muziekcentrum
07.10 – NL Utrecht, TivoliVredenburg
09.10 – DE Berlin, Huxley’s Neue Welt
10.10 – SE Malmö, KB
11.10 – SE Göteborg, Sticky Fingers
13.10 – FI Helsinki, The Circus
15.10 – SE Stockholm, Debaser Strand
16.10 – NO Oslo, John Dee
17.10 – DK Copenhagen, Pumpehuset
18.10 – DE Hamburg, Gruenspan
20.10 – CZ Prague, MeetFactory
21.10 – PL Wroclaw, Alibi
22.10 – PL Gdansk, B90
24.10 – CZ Ostrava, Barrak
25.10 – SK Bratislava, Randal Club
26.10 – HU Budapest, Barba Negra
27.10 – HR Zagreb, Vintage Industrial Bar
29.10 – SI Nova Gorica, Mostovna
30.10 – DE Munich, Theaterfabrik
31.10 – AT Vienna, Arena
02.11 – IT Milan, Live Club
03.11 – CH Solothurn, Kofmehl
05.11 – ES Barcelona, Salamandra
06.11 – ES Madrid, Sala Arena
07.11 – ES Bilbao, Sala Stage Live
08.11 – FR Bordeaux, Rocher de Palmer
09.11 – FR Paris, Le Trabendo
10.11 – FR Strasbourg, La Laiterie
12.11 – Liverpool – O2 Academy 2
13.11 – Nottingham – Rock City
Italian black metal band Dogmatic Absolution is set to release their album The Poetries of Oppression which will be released digitally on June 9th and have made public one of the tracks as a preview.
Skillfully bringing together doom/death, modern atmospheric and war metal styles, Unorthodox Equilibrium is more than a fitting name for describing the musical approach used in this album. Bands playing in any of the aforementioned styles have typically fallen prey to different misconceptions. Some have failed by attempting to adopt an orthodox position simplified to the precept that genre cliches guide songwriting and that the result will be good if it “feels good”. Others have taken a route that attempts to bring more original ideas into the mix but whose ultimate goal is still that each section gives them a certain feeling, an “atmospheric/ambient” effect. We can summarize the cause of these blunders by saying that their approach has been too pleasure-oriented.
In Unorthodox Equilibrium we can hear familiar voices bearing the mark of Worship in Last Tape Before Doomsday, Disembowelment (I refuse to follow ridiculous indications as to what letters should be written in uppercase format) in Transcendence into the Peripheral and Esoteric in Paragon of Dissonance. Unlike them, though, Shroud of the Heretic only slightly avoids falling into complacency with the immediate effect of their arrangements and instead channels these as methods used measuredly. The band manages to promote a sense of movement in each section while maintaining atmosphere without depending on stagnating in the harmony within one section or getting anchored to one kind of texture or intensity level for too long. This makes the album an incredibly varied experience within the non-restrictive but focused confines of a florid and eloquently coherent language.
Independently of whether this was a conscious decision or not, the heterodox and non-monolithic composition route taken by Shroud of the Heretic avoids this atmospheric metal trap and represents an excellent indicator of an artistically healthy direction for this subgenre of metal.
Perversor play a fast and ripping minimalist death metal which some would be tempted to encase in the line of primitive South American so-called black metal were it not for the strong structural development so strongly evident in the detail-intense songs which defeat any accusations of purely atmosphere-oriented thinking. In fact, Anticosmocrator gives us the opportunity to contrast their more musical approach to that of bands with a more vague and atmosphere-building composition mindset. This difference lies in the importance of keeping a balance between evocation and solid musical construction.
While Perversor fills all the requirements to be classified beside any atmosphere-minded bands like those playing war metal, for instance, it far outdoes them by virtue of achieving solid development of ideas in the composition of their songs. Typically, Perversor will take a fast riff and develop both variations on the riffs or transitioning into riffs that are easily recognized as being related to the previous ideas through the interval relations in the patterns used while the rhythms and register are changed. This is a formula that is easily summarized but which nonetheless requires great skill to apply and expand to create convincing songs that both take the listener from a beginning to a distinct ending yet do not exceed the natural reach of the riffs and ideas used.
This is the sort of release that is excellent but will not turn the heads of those who are always on the look out for bands thinking “out of the box” as if that were the whole basis of good music. Perversor compose songs on a solid basis and while not diverging or breaking any limits, create evocative, musically competent and whole music that should be at the top of any discerning metalhead’s list for 2015 .
Attempting to create an atmospheric kind of death metal, Mefitic build their style on alternating sections of slow, assertive chords in simple rhythms and droning/fluttering, tremolo-propulsed, slowly-advancing melodies and motifs, both usually played in low registers to maintain the aura of heaviness. Unfortunately this is all that there is to say about this album. The description of a superficial traits is all that can be said for it, as the music construction is based on it and therefore paper-thin. The reason why it still deserves a review of its own is twofold. First of all, it gives us the opportunity to point out the deficiency of this songwriting approach, and second because Mefitic remains consistent and coherent throughout the whole album, which is more than can be said of the vast majority of releases.
While we must acknowledge the focus that Mefitic has displayed throughout the whole album, the overall result must be judged and its limitations pointed out. The consistency in color and expression is laudable and should be emphasized as an example of consistent songwriting. The limitations lie in the music being too riff-oriented and the goals remaining superficial, being completely bent on a sort of evocation and heaviness, leaving the musical composition as secondary. While in metal we consider that this is generally ideal, solid and effective composition should not be disregarded in favor of writing atmosphere-oriented sections that are lined up one after another. Solid composition gives a clear direction, an intricate picture to be discovered through subsequent listens. Forgetting about it leaves you open to the danger of painting a confused or too-general a picture that remains too mystic, indicating a way but not undertaking it.We condemn Woes of Mortal Devotion because this is all it achieves: the building of a foggy and general atmosphere that doesn’t solidify into a clear picture of anything.
Sporting the grindcore label, Maruta try very hard and not altogether without failure to insert technical deathcore riffcraft into a grindcore overall approach. While the technical abilities of the band is not in question as the musicianship in this album is superb and clinically precise, and neither is their creativity challenged, as they remain in focus in terms of style and approach through and through as they bring distinct ideas into the album, the premise of it all is not entirely convincing. The reason for this is that the carnival approach that the technical deathcore, although not completely incompatible with grindcore, is deficient by nature, bringing down the music against the effort of a talented band like Maruta.
Grindcore is known for short songs with abrupt beginnings and endings. The genre is characterized by spasmodic outbursts of madness with ventures into heavy and slightly groovy mid-paced sections whose focus remains on the brutality and aura of the music. All this is achieved by Maruta on Remain Dystopian, however, this is only the superficial description of the genre, the first impression it gives to an audience, and this is where most bands, including this one, get trapped. The grindcore of early Napalm Death, Blood or Repulsion can be described in that way, each with different percentages and variations of said description, but there is something that sets them apart from the crowd and it is that at the construction level, the relation between riffs is still carefully maintained. In Impulse to Destroy, Blood remains fluid through riff transitions even when the they switch between speeds or intensity levels, the smoothness within the song is maintained. At the risk of sounding contradictory, I would venture to say that even relatively abrupt transitions remained smoothed out through execution of small fills or very brief affectations that are characteristic of Blood. Maruta, on the other hand, obfuscate the music with the carnival approach of modern metal bands, creating interest through surprise instead of coherence and build up.
All in all Remain Dystopian is a far more accomplished effort than the vast majority of its contemporaries and fans of the genre should keep one eye on them. While fans of modern metal call this incoherence of the music “experimentation” and “nonconformity”, it all boils down to a lazy gimmick. Maruta has the technical chops, and they definitely have the vision as their focused compositions show us, but the chosen direction is perhaps not the best. Were Maruta to correct this direction and it is possible we would have a modern giant of grindcore in the making.
