Reunited Swedish death metallers DESULTORY will begin recording their as-yet-untitled new full-length in November with producer Tore Stjerna at Necromorbus Studio in Sweden (Watain, In Battle, Nominon). The album will mark the band’s first long player in nearly 14 years. Said DESULTORY guitarist Håkan Morberg: “The songs are a mix of fast and heavy melodic […]
Acheron is one of those bands that has been making quality death metal for a long time, yet has remained far underground. Whether due to the overtly Satanic/anti-religion themes – which I find odd, considering that this is death metal – or vocalist Vincent Crowley’s sometimes controversial views and comments (or, rightly or wrongly, the interpretations of such), Acheron has never gotten the level of acclaim that its peers have, yet continues to give the fans what they want. The Final Conflict: Last Days of God has been a long time coming, but it has been worth the wait. Released on Displeased Records, the album is proudly rooted in the old school with an organic sound (from Bill Korecky), beefy riffs, strong arrangements, and a songwriting approach that is pretty damn catchy (in a death metal sort of way). I spoke to Mr. Crowley by phone, but failed to ask him whether he rode his white horse or spoke to the dead. It’s still a good read though, helped in no small way by the guy’s affable nature and willingness to leave it all on the table.
That discrimination is an alien element to the metal scene is common knowledge. Today it’s played by people in every walk of life, from high school students to street cleaners, from conservatory graduates to white-collar clerks. Daniel Estrin, the leader of Australian Melodic Metal phenomenon Voyager, is a lawyer. But first of all, he is a man of huge musical gift and romantic spirit, who writes songs nearly as exotic for metal as his motherland’s aborigines are exotic for the rest of the world. No wonder, the band’s upcoming third album I Am The ReVolution is being impatiently awaited by the fans all over the globe. It’s not that frequent that we are exposed to metal stuff proposing such a perfect match of 80’s neo-romantic grandeur a la Depeche Mode, Ultravox and A-Ha and catholicity of contemporary metal. If you are still in the dark, it’s high time to ‘come to light’ and jump the leaving train, for the revolution has begun and it won’t be waiting for latecomers.
Swedish Progressive Metal act, Katatonia, is set to release their latest album, Night is the New Day, on November 10th via Peaceville Records. The highly anticipated album, from one of Europe’s premier Progressive bands, Night is the New Day is the follow up to Katatonia’s groundbreaking 2006 release, The Great Cold Distance. It is their […]
“Terraphobic” from Lansing, MI’s Dagon is one of those albums I casually grabbed from my ever overflowing box of promos to check out. I’m not ever certain why I decided to grab it. Perhaps it was because I’d realized that I’d not reviewed any albums yet from Bombworks Records. Regardless, it was a fortuitous grab, as Terraphobic knocked me square on my ass with what is sure to end up one of my favorite albums of 2009. The band’s self-described “ocean metal” is a blistering slice of classic Swedish melodic death metal (In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Hypocrisy) with traditional metal (ala Iron Maiden) flourishes, thrashing riffs, white hot soloing, and a knack for writing memorable melodies. This one has got it all. Oh yeah, and the lyrical themes are entirely ocean-centric. Guitarists Chris Sharrock and Briant Daniel, bassist/vocalist Randall Ladiski, and drummer/vocalist Jordan Batterbee better be ready for the big leagues because metal this good won’t go unnoticed for long.
Kicking Off October 2nd, High On Fire and Converge Will Tour With Stars of Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse and Grammy® Award Winner, Mastodon During Seven-Week Tour EA’s “Brütal Legend”; to Sponsor Metal Tour. This fall, two of the most popular bands in metal will co-headline a 34-city North American tour as the Grammy® Award-winning Mastodon hits […]
According to the label’s website: “We are proud to inform you that Sickening Horror (Athens, Greece) signed a deal with SFC records to release their second full-length album, which will be out on August 21-st 2009.The band was founded in 2002 and the first stuff has been created under the influence of monsters of the […]
Fresh off a successful stint on this year’s Summer Slaughter Tour, Finnish folk metallers ENSIFERUM will kick off a US headlining tour in support of their upcoming full-length From Afar on November 5th. Support will come from Nuclear Blast recording artists HYPOCRISY and EX DEO as well as Sumerian recording artists BLACKGUARD. Said ENSIFERUM guitarist […]
Prosthetic Records’ has signed Seattle’s Trap Them. The band’s sound combines elements of old school Swedish death metal, punk, and d-beat and takes influence from bands such as Entombed, Black Flag, Nasum and Tragedy. Trap Them has spent time on the road with Napalm Death, Disfear, Skeletonwitch, Victims, Rotten Sound, Toxic Holocaust, and Coliseum, amongst […]
Williams Street Records Newest Album from Best-Selling Williams Street Records announced today details on the most highly-anticipated death metal album release of the year — and it’s for none other than the animated band from Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse. On September 8th, the world’s most brutal animated band will once again reign supreme with the all-new release […]
(July 20, 2009) – Vagrant Records announces an October 6, 2009 release date for Desperate Living, the fourth full-length from Southern California’s HORSE The Band. The twelve-track set was recorded at White Buffalo Studios in Los Angeles with producer Noah Shain and includes several special guests. “Noah really cared about helping us get exactly the […]
I, like many others, have a deep fondness for Pierced From Within. For many, it’s like a capstone to the silver age of death metal, a brutal yet technically complex episode embedded in the minds of the long time fans; the guys that had seen a Tirant Sin show or two in a garage or […]
The Black Dahlia Murder has announced Deflorate as the title of their new album, which is scheduled for a September 15th release. “A Selection Unnatural”, the first single, will begin streaming exclusively on Revolver Magazine‘s website on Tuesday, July 7th. Vocalist Trevor Strnad comments: “Hear Ye thrashing metal maniacs! We have returned with our most […]
Don’t ask Mike Scalzi about the true metal scene or his presumed secret formula for penning Celtic inflected “cult” heavy metal. A shit he does not give, as such conjecture presupposes premeditation. As guitarist/vocalist/leader of Slough Feg he simply writes what comes naturally and the “secret” is no secret at all. The inspiration comes from the Big Three of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest, and the delivery just happens to have a unique, Celtic folk slant. It really is as simple as that. Just spin the outstanding new release Ape Uprising and give it some thought; you’ll hear it, trust me. As you’ll see, I didn’t have to say a whole hell of a lot to elicit a marathon response; or maybe I’m just that good. Nah, I just caught him in the right mood and moment. Onward we go.
There is no secret formula to the death metal performed by Wisconsin’s Jungle Rot. It’s about a riff, a groove, and a growl. It is what it is; always has been and always will be. Themes of battlefield horror are spat out over tight, rumbling rhythms and choruses into which you can sink your teeth. Label troubles be damned, Jungle Rot soldiers on with a new album in What Horrors Await that is even tighter, better produced, and just as memorable as anything they’ve released thus far. With the firm backing of yet another label in Napalm Records guitarist/vocalist/founder Dave Matrise brings us up to date on the war-torn world of Jungle Rot.
Death, magic, and doom; yep, sounds like Candlemass to me. And what a rejuvenated band the legendary quintet have become with the addition of Solitude Aeturnus howler Robert Lowe. It’s not like the self-titled comeback album with Messiah Marcolin is anything to sneeze at (it is indeed a great disc), but when Lowe entered the fold for King of the Grey Islands, he breathed new life (new death?) into the band, a quality that is even more evident on Death Magic Doom, an album that saw Lowe actually record with his band mates. It is certainly my favorite of the last three albums and, dare I say, one of the best albums of the group’s career. It is a grand declaration of Candlemass doom that weaves Leif Edling’s crushing, yet darkly beautiful, riffs with morose melody and a songwriting effort that is nothing short of stellar. Lowe discusses his place in the band, as well what will easily end up one of 2009’s top metal albums in Death Magic Doom.
Only 2 albums into their career, Scotland’s purveyors of “True Scottish Pirate Metal”, Alestorm hardly need any introduction. Their debut, the raucous, Captain Morgan’s Revenge, put the fun back into metal, and with the follow up, Black Sails at Midnight, the band have further upped the Pirate-y goodness. Chock full of brazen metal seas shanties of rum, women and plunder, the band seems destined to truly blow up on an international level, aided by the bands recent tour of the US. I caught up with the pleasant and portly pirate who plays guitars, Dani Evans to find out a little more about this group of amicable musical privateers….
Everyone loves lists right? Well, rather than the usual blog where some internet hack, wanna be journalist tries to come up with a list of 10 metal related things or rants about retarded people and tries to make it funny, we here at Teethofthedivine.com thought we would try something different.
Why not put together a list complied from the people actually responsible for bringing the music to us? We scoured our email address books, Myspace pages and little black books for various Metal luminaries including band members, record label staff, media and PR staff, producers and the guy that mops the stage after concerts to get their 5 favorite albums of all time.
Here is the highly collaborative, incredibly comprehensive, exhaustive and informative end result (as usual, feel free to comment, add your own list or simply sell us viagra):
(Thanks to those folks that supplied their lists and the teethofthedivine staff that harassed them)
Award-winning Glendale, AZ heavy music powerhouse JOB FOR A COWBOY has completed work on its hotly-anticipated sophomore album, entitled Ruination. The record will see a July, 2009 worldwide release date via Metal Blade Records. The follow up to the quintet’s celebrated debut album Genesis, Ruination was recorded at Audio Hammer Productions in Sanford, FL with […]
Interestingly enough, the same week this interview was conducted with Ben “Boss” Hogg the vocalist was also officially welcomed as one of two new writers for Teeth of the Divine. I always enjoyed reading Ben’s work in Metal Maniacs (R.I.P.), his preference for the gnarly ‘n nasty aspects of metal (not unlike mine) and I look forward to reading his contributions here.
Speaking of the gnarly and the nasty, in addition to his front man responsibility in Beaten Back to Pure (new album coming later this year), Hogg has been the vocalist of underground super group Birds of Prey for three albums strong now, including a brand new release called The Hellpreacher. A concept album about an inmate-turned-priest, Birds of Prey – also including guitarists Erik Larson (Alabama Thunderpussy) and Bo Leslie (The Last Van Zant), bassist Summer Welch (Baroness), and drummer Dave Witte (Municipal Waste, Discordance Axis) – continues with its southern ‘n sludgy brand of old school death metal and brings along with it an even better compositional approach. Read all about it right here, straight from the Boss’ mouth.
New Orleans, LA’s sons of American no-frills black metal, GOATWHORE, have just announced that the title of their fourth full-length album, and second for Metal Blade, will be Carving Out the Eyes of God. For the follow up to 2006’s A Haunting Curse, GOATWHORE headed back to St. Petersburg, FL to record with producer Erik […]
There is prolific and then there is what Fistula’s Corey Bing does. The man that has redefined the term. A veteran of the Northeastern Ohio sludge/doom battle zone, Bing has played in numerous heavy hitting acts – Accept Death, Sollubi, King Travolta, Ultralord, you name it. But Fistula has always been the area’s flagship act with a sound that is quintessential in its hatefulness and crushing weight, yet one that is also varied and always impeccably written and recorded. New album Burdened by your Existence owes as much to crust as it does Black Sabbath, driving listeners into the ground with crawling menace and ripping out throats with quick turns into speedier tempos, and everything in between.
Bing is a lifer in the truest definition of the term. Guys like Corey are the reason I continue to write about the world of metal, particularly the underground superheroes like Bing and the fertile community in which he resides. His work is created out of love, nothing more, nothing less, just like many of the scene veterans with which he has played. In the interview that follows, Corey and I discuss Fistula past and present, his former and current projects, record labels, and what this beloved thing call metal is supposed to be all about. As much as I hate to make self-important douche-bag claims, I’m inclined to call this Fistula interview a pretty damn definitive one. Soak it up and sweat it out.
Normally, for me to attend a decent metal show I have to either drive 2 ½ hours East to St Louis or 2 ½ hours West to Kansas City. However, once in a while Columbia, Missouri, a mere 30 minutes from my house, will have a decent show at one of their smaller venues (Origin, All That Remain, Mastodon, Between the Buried and Me). So once I saw that North Dakota/Minnesota noise merchants Battlefields were going to hit up one of the venues along with former label mates Sleeping In Gethsemane (who by the way are a very cool instrumental metal act) , I had to attend. I also thought I would squeeze in an interview with a band which has released two very impressive albums (2007s Stained by the Blood of an Empire and 2009s Thresholds of Imbalance) that take the typical post rock genre, add some doom, some progressive elements and a sprinkle of hardcore. So on a chilly evening outside the venue I shared some beers and visited with the very amicable trio of vocalist Rusty Steele, drummer Rob Schmidt and guitarist Matt Ricigliano….
Word on the street is you’re the kind of person that has equal amounts of love for Hellhammer and Discharge. It is just something about the worlds of primitive hellish bludgeon and nihilistic d-beat aggression. So why not start a band called Dishammer that combines the finer points of both of those seminal bands? A nasty little act from Spain did just that and dubbed the ugly cuss Dishammer. An album called Vintage Addiction was then birthed in all its punk, metal, Satanic, and pornographic glory and released on CD and vinyl formats via lordly underground label Hells Headbangers. Vocalist/drummer Dopi took the time to educate us about all things Dishammer. It’s a philosophy and a way of life, kids! Get with the program now!
One usually knows what to expect from a Unique Leader release, which is not a bad thing. It just means that the soup of the day is technically proficient death metal brutality. Most, however, would not expect the soup de jour to be made in Ankara, Turkey. But that only means that some folks on these shores have not been paying attention to what has been for some time now a fertile extreme metal scene. Enter Carnophage, one of the shining stars of the Turkish death metal movement. Deformed Future / Genetic Nightmare consists of eight smartly written compositions that are savagely delivered and technically competent, yet also surprisingly varied, often groovy, and individualistic. In other words, you can in fact tell when one track ends and another begins. Guitarist Berkan Basoglu checks in with The Teeth