Another new Every Time I Die song, 'Decayin' with the Boys', has been released

           Lambgoat has a new Every Time I Die song up for streaming! 'Decayin' with the Boys' is a slower, less crusty affair than 'Thirst', which debuted last week, but it's still chock full of the Buffalo act's trademark southern riffs and raise-your-beer-and-sing-along one-liners, this Keith Buckley's screaming 'Salvation is a hell of a thing!'

           Stream the new song here.

Wolves in the Throne Room release new track - 'Celestite Mirror'

       

          Earlier this year, Cascadian black metal duo Wolves in the Throne Room announced that they were breaking their three year hiatus to release an ambient EP entitled Celestite, which would be an exploration of the more ambient parts of their 2011 record Celestial Lineage.
           Today, the band debuted a new track from the record entitled 'Celestite Mirror'. At fourteen minutes, the song dwarfs the band's previously short, two-minute synth breaks. Slowly growing in majesty, while preserving the classic WITTR 'cosmic ritual' vibe, what's most interesting about 'Celestite Mirror' is its lack of motifs evoking nature. It's nebulous, scintillating, and beautiful, but as it veers into a series of stochastic bleeps and bloops around the 6-minute mark, I can't help but feel like the woods of Cascadia - which characterized all of WITTR's music to date - are getting the short end of the stick.
           In any case, 'Celestite Mirror' is grandiose and beautiful, echoing Brian Eno's bliss but with just enough misty mystery mixed in to an entrancing effect. Stream it at Pitchfork here.

Solstafir break silence on new record

       

        Solstafir's flighty, passionate take on post-metal have made them legends not only in their home country of Iceland, but around the world as well. Since the early 2000s the band have melded shoegaze, post-hardcore, black metal, and emotive vocals into a profoundly unique beast of a machine.
         After teasing us for the past six months, the band have finally released the title of their new album, the newest since 2011's Svartir Sandar. On August 29th, Season of Mist will be releasing the fifth Solstafir full-length Otta. Mark your calendars!

          Stream one of my personal favorite cuts from Svartir Sandar below:

Diocletian - Gesundrian REVIEW

         

           Diocletian's behavior over the past year has been similar to their music. Besides a split with Weregoat and a cataclysmically short EP back in 2012, the band have been silent since 2010's last full length War of All Against All. This year, however, they exploded back into existence, playing MDF and releasing their newest full length Gesundrian in the scope of just a few months. Just as abruptly, the band cancelled their US tour dates due to a family emergency.
          To summarize, the band appeared without warning, exploded fitfully, and then (unfortunately) departed. A common theme to war metal, the bestial bastard son of black metal, death metal and grindcore spawned in the early 90s by acts like Blasphemy and Archgoat, and Diocletian's newest is no exception. Gesundrian is a militant, horrifying 8-song conquest that refines the New Zealand act's commendably pointed take on the genre without showing any mercy.
          Diocletian have always had a slightly more epic and intricate take on bestial black/death than their comrades in bands like Revenge, who spew their tangled, torrid bass lines and gurgled vocals like a cloud of mustard gas while machine-gun like blast beats add to the carnage. From the lone rider on the cover of Gesundrian, horse bucking defiantly, to the medieval ambiance of opener 'Cleaved Asunder', to the album's name, Old English for 'sundered', Diocletian's newest outing evokes a sense of Dark Age triumph. Almost the sort of feeling you'd get from a power metal album but, in Diocletian fashion, it's murky and violent - there's no 'battle glory' to be found in the corridors of this album, just the harsh reality of violence and destruction.
           One of the biggest problems artists in Diocletian's genre face is keeping a listener entrenched within the music. War metal straddles the divide between grindcore and black metal, often incorporating the instrumentation of the former with the propensity for longer songs of the other, and the result is songs sometimes overstaying their welcome, or coming off as just a raging mass of noise, which, in the spirit of metal, is interesting for just a few minutes. Diocletian's solution since their inception has been to infuse their music with a sense of order and direction. War is chaos, but Diocletian, as if in the form of puppeteers, skillfully manipulate the chaos into a directional affair.
            Gesundrian's skillful songwriting, however, isn't just a function of Diocletian holding the audience's interest. Rather, the record features a plethora of  new ideas, from the monolithic, static-y doom center of 'Cleaved Asunder' and intro of 'Steel Jaws' to the guitar-drum tradeoff in follower 'Wretched Sons' - which has both instruments consistently moving to and from the forefront. 'Traitor's Gallow' features death and black metal riffs overlaid in a brutal harmony. Vocalist Logan Muir lays the vocals on in a raspy medium between black metal shriek and death metal roar, and he uses them sparingly, allowing the choking atmosphere to totally engulf the listener - not a new choice, but Gesundrian features sparser vocals than usual.
            What these artistic choices add up to is Diocletian's most varied and cohesive, kinetic release yet. Songs move flawlessly between fast and slow portions, although, understandably emphasis is placed on the former. While Diocletian's solution isn't perfect, it's worked for them since 2009's Doom Cult, and given them an edge in the war metal game. Gesundrian is a foray into the thick of battle, and not one any fan of death metal should deprive themselves of.


             

Every Time I Die premiere new song 'Thirst'

       Buffalo metalcore kings Every Time I Die recently played the first new song from their new album due out in July, From Parts Unknown. 'Thirst' was formally released via Noisey, and from what I can hear, it sounds like Every Time I Die have been jamming some noise punk, as it's a far more dissonant, chaotic song hearkening back to previous albums such as Hot Damn! The video is also totally accurate for how I reacted to a new album from these punks.
       Jam 'Thirst' below..

           And the awesome artwork from From Parts Unknown. As Noisey mentioned, no hot pink!? What is this?

           

King Dude - Fear REVIEW

          

         With a name like 'King Dude', it's hard to imagine dark folk maven TJ Cowgill being the least bit frightening. But, as his self-professed 'sister' Chelsea Wolfe has been managing, King Dude has been spinning his own brand of bizarre, eerie folk since 2010's Tonight's Special Death, and with his most recent outing, aptly titled Fear, Cowgill continues to purvey his trademark ominously soothing take on folk.
          For Cowgill, disturbing your audience isn't as simple as being outwardly terrifying like a metal band, but it's about the overall contrast set up between Cowgill's chilling lyrics about Lucifer, witches, etc. and his calming, Bob Dylan-esque acoustic guitar and low, calming voice. The result is similar to a creepy child in a horror movie - outwardly innocuous, but there is something fundamentally wrong with what it's doing. With Fear, however, this delicate equilibrium is almost completely overturned as King Dude abruptly switches directions.
          Fans of the band will instantly appreciate songs like 'Maria' and 'Bloody Mirror' as unchanged from previous King Dude outings. 'Lay Down in Bedlam' features the particularly haunting "The moon will love me all night long..." as Cowgill's guitar plunks discerningly happily behind him.That being said, the rest of the album veers unexpectedly towards a far more rock-ish direction, featuring the unthinkable - an electric guitar. While 'Demon Caller Number 9' twists things up with a fiendish warp to Cowgill's voice, 'Fear is All You Know' features unclean vocals near the end as Cowgill lets his expertise with death metal band Book of Black Earth take the reigns for a hot second. Meanwhile, 'Bottomless Pit' could easily be a folk punk jam, with Cowgill adopting a Joe Strummer-like drawl.
          At first glance, however, this seems counter-intuitive given the record's title. For an album called Fear, it's severely lacking in the scares departmen, especially considering Cowgill went on record talking about how he wanted to make "geniunely horrfying music". However, as he goes on, it becomes clear Fear is dealing with a far more metaphysical kind of fear than the hair-rising satanic chills of before.

So I chose the next most obvious fear I felt everyone shared. And that is the fear felt during early adolescence. As we move away from our childhood towards our adulthood we (in a sense) watch helplessly from the confides of our own slowly deforming, prepubescent bodies as the "child-mind" is ripped away only (or buried deeply into our subconscious) only to be replaced by the cruel, maniacal, sex crazed "adult-mind" also known as the ultimate product of a civilized adult world reality.

          It's a genius idea that tackles one of the most powerful epiphanies people have in their adolescent years - no one actually knows what they're doing, and most are just rolling with the punches as life goes on. 'Empty House', the record's penultimate and longest song, bemoans the feeling of unpreparedness for major life events.
           Fear flows quite well, despite the band rapidly moving back-and-forth between traditional King Dude fare and the new rock direction the band debuts. For every sneering countrified rock song, there's a soulful, emotional ballad to counter it. It's a delightful balance that's deftly maintained as Fear plays itself through twelve songs, finishing on the deceptively light-hearted 'Watching Over You'. Most commendably, Fear doesn't drag its feet, honing in resolutely on where it wants each song to go. Every atmospheric break feels strictly necessary - not like a place filler. Whether or not Cowgill succeeded in writing some truly horrifying music is irrelevant - Fear is terrifyingly sad, happy, and angry, and this whole emotional gamut means the album is over far too soon.

IdiotInRemission weighs in on the Inquisition controversy

         

       Let me preface this with a blanket statement: I enjoy Burzum. Mr. Vikernes' political stance aside, I find him to be a musical genius and a talented artist whether he's creating black metal, dungeon synth, or whatever strangeness he's got going on now. I enjoy Peste Noire, and I enjoy some Satanic Warmaster. But I am not a nazi. I'm half Iranian, so any legitimacy I could have in the eyes of other white supremacists is absolutely moot. My grandfather fought in the French Resistance during World War II after fleeing Francists in Spain, and my girlfriend and absolute best friend in the world is Jewish.

          See what I had to do there? Because of my tolerance for music the metal community deems 'questionable', it fell to me to defend myself by citing everything from my ethnicity to my family history. Anyone could read those sentences, point a righteous finger and howl "J'accuse!" and that would be enough for most people.
          The same thing has been steadily progressing for Seattle BM outfit Inquisition, who some may know for their mind-bending 2013 release Obscure Verses For the Multiverse. After singing the praises of the band for nearly a year, the metal community abruptly turned on the band earlier this month. A self-described 'ex skinhead' posted a lengthy post on everyone's favorite alarmist social justice/metal blog Shameless Navel Gazing (the same blog who declared Lord Mantis' Death Mask as 'transphobic') in which said ex-skinhead Jason Gallant detailed an encounter between himself, then the driver of  Inquisition's tour bus, and bandmembers Dagon (Jason Weirbach) and Incubus (Thomas Stevens) in 2008.
          According to Gallant, after showing the band a swastika tattoo, Weirbach and Stevens 'applauded' and went on a lengthy right-wing rant about their love of the nazi era until Gallant gallantly (see what I did there) shut them down. Since the SNG post, the internet has exploded with speculation and amateur witch hunts into the issue. Metal Injection debuted some sensationalist articles on the matter, eventually calling off all bets with a sardonic "I don't care". The debate seems to have polarized fans - in one corner fans argue that, because Inquisition's subject matter deals almost exclusively with your run-of-the-mill anti-Christian angst and cosmology, the band's political views are inconsequential. In the other corner, folks are calling for the band's heads - insisting on their ostracism to the same controversial state as most NBSM acts. In a lot of ways, it's the same debate people have been having about Burzum for the past twenty years, but I digress.
           That's not to say the band have completely avoided the issue. Weirbach posted a similarly long-winded interview on the matter through Decibel in which he attempts to put the rumors to rest while dodging loaded questions from the interviewer. When the issue of Gallant's tattoos is brought up, Weirbach stays vague, insisting that his reaction to the tattoos was mostly shock. And when the issue of he himself being NS at the time is brought up:

Absolutely not. I’m not a Nazi and I’m not out to persecute a particular race—or any race—white or non-white[..]But I can honestly tell you that I never flat-out said I thought it [nazism] was a horrible thing, or that I was against it, but never did I say I was with it and that I believed in it. What I have always told people is I understand it. I understand that when you look at history and what was happening at the time, whenever you put yourself in everybody else’s shoes[...] it doesn’t matter how ugly it is to you or how great.

         Meanwhile, MetalSucks has done some investigating into the issue. Some of the evidence is fairly weak, but some other is fairly damning, the most sterling of which is Dagon's contribution through his side project 88MM (ಠ_ಠ) to a 2006 NSBM compilation from 'Satanic Skinhead records' (ಠ_ಠ) called Declaration of Anti-Semitic Terror (ಠ_ಠ). The band have been affiliated with unsavory NS types since their inception, with Antichrist Kramer, a well-known NSBM aficionado, designing the cover art for all of their full-lengths since 1998's Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancestral Cult to 2011's Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystic Macrocosm (aside: I think Inquisition may have been one of the bands Seth Putnam targeted with his parody project Impaled Northern Moonforest). However, the unifying factor of all the evidence in favor of Dagon being NS is that most of this information is not new.
          Declaration of Anti-Semitic Terror was released in 2006. 88MM has put out almost no material, and if its last.fm stats are any indication, the project is also dead. Even if the 2008 story of Jason Gallant is true, it has been six years. The most recent development was Satanic Skinhead's closing early last year. Antichrist Kramer hasn't done work for the band in three years.  Let's assume that Inquisition are not or no longer NSBM - the ensuing witch hunt and dredging up of information like this represents a dangerous development wherein those you associate(d) with can be used against you. This is not a good development for a variety of reasons.
          For example, let's assume Joe is in a band and he hires a Valerie Solanas worshiping lunatic feminist to be his roadie on tour. Joe does not care about his roadie's political affiliation, but makes a point of talking with them about it out of curiosity or politeness. Does that make Joe a radical leftist? No. So why then does Inquisition's business dealings with skinheads earn them such condemnation? Why is one person's spotty eyewitness account from six years ago suddenly inviolate truth?
           The Inquisition controversy represents one of the most ill-executed and frankly exceedingly unnecessary witch hunts in recent memory for me - and I go to McGill, the university that popularized the term 'microaggression'. The evidence, when it isn't out of date, is problematic at best, and at its core it represents the fervent desire of the metal community to castigate on a moment's notice. I will be continuing to listen to Inquisition, with my conscience clear, until recent, firm evidence develops, if it does at all. Is it likely that the band were NSBM? Yes. Is it likely they still are? Well, going off the few details we have - note Dagon's use of the present tense in his interview - we plain and simply do not know.
         

Lord Mantis - Death Mask REVIEW

       

      As metalheads, many of us pride ourselves in our desensitization to ideas and imagery society deems 'objectionable'. Metal is a genre founded on eschewing what's palatable and 'safe' for the cryptic and extreme - from its early days the genre has attracted the scorn of the mainstream public, who view it as, among other things, offensive and excessive. But every once in a while an album comes along that manages to shock even some of the most hardened metal fans.
       Obviously, then, such a record needs to be truly, indisputably, disturbing or deranged. An album frightening to listen to alone at night, or one that fills even the most stalwart Revenge fan with a sense of something terribly amiss. These horrifying descriptors somehow manage to perfectly encapsulate the menace of Lord Mantis' third outing Death Mask - a record which may be 2014's most controversial to date. The album art, designed by Jef Whitehead (of Leviathan fame) attracted the shock of the metal press and the condemnation of social justice advocates earlier this year, who declared the art transphobic. Despite the band's laconic reply to these accusations with "You're so far off the mark here.", the controversy set in and Death Mask became one of the most hyped sludge albums of the year.
       Lord Mantis are a Chicago-based blackened doom supergroup featuring members of Indian and Avichi, who both released excellent new records from the sludge and black metal aspects of Lord Mantis this past winter (seriously, if you haven't heard From All Purity yet, do it). With two previous records to their name, each more vomitous and torturous than the next, it would have been easy to assume Death Mask would have been a continuation of 2012's Pervertor, which, while a fantastically good album, would have made Death Mask feel like a bit of a stagnation.
         Instead, Lord Mantis have shifted their framework entirely, opting for, as previously mentioned, a far more vile, disturbing twist to most of their songs. While this seems difficult, considering how already disgusting their previous material was, Death Mask has the band's trademark bile manifest in different ways, each more terrifying than the next. Vocalist Charlie Fell moves effortlessly between black metal howl and scathing hiss, and occasionally erupts into a bizarre, spine-tingling banshee scream. The title track slowly but surely, over the course of most of the song, rises in intensity, with every note gradually growing heavier as Fell howls over it, featuring a bizarre, hissed chant of "ass, ass, ass, ass..." for a good thirty seconds, as well as a whispered 'amen' which, in the context of the song, are totally unsettling. 'Coil', in turn, features eerily modulated vocals that seem to melt out of the hypnotic guitars.
          The ingenious thing about the vocals on this album is that, without the instrumentals, they would be almost laughable. The gurgling 'blood, rust, incinerate' on 'Possession Prayer' doesn't make any sense, but when scored against a churning, throbbing mess of bass, guitar, and screeching cymbals, or feedback later on in the song, it becomes far more ominous, and the pervasive bondage subtext makes the album that much more unnerving. Lord Mantis is very much one unit - with the instrumentals and vocal supporting each other through the suffocating twists and turns Death Mask has to offer.
        Even the largely acoustic break 'You Will Gag For the Fix' manages to be somewhat disturbing, using just enough melody for you to feel that something terrible is about to arrive when it does with 'Negative Birth', the record's most doom-y song by far.
          Expecting a sludge band to be heavy is like expecting a puppy to be cute - and while Lord Mantis satisfy your need for sonic crushing, guitarists Charles Markuszewski (of Avichi fame) and Ken Sorceron (of Abigail Williams fame)'s songwriting on Death Mask eschews the grooviness of previous outings for mid-range black metal riffs. The frequent black metal sections allow the band to raise the intensity ever so slightly, which in turn adds to the sense of fear and minds unhinged that Death Mask has in such spades.
             As soon as you start to see an end to the torture, 10-minute annihilator and album closer 'Three Crosses' comes in for a horrifyingly intimate finish. 'Three Crosses' has the band throwing absolutely everything they have into one crusty cauldron and stirring it around violently - feverish melodies and guitar solos wax and wane as the crushing backdrop relentlessly plows on. Fell's vocals appear sparingly, allowing the sickly mire to utterly encapsulate the listener.
          Death Mask is not an easy pill to swallow, and every new listen reveals something new and terrifying. Alongside similarly excellent releases from Thou, Coffinworm, and Indian, Lord Mantis' new outing is sure prove the year's most utterly disturbing release. While at its most terrifying, Death Mask doesn't approach the bizarre macabre of acts like Gnaw Their Tongues, it's nevertheless a profoundly bizarre, ghastly trip whose mashochistic adherents will return to time and time again.


         
         

Whitechapel - Our Endless War REVIEW

     

           Once upon a time, deathcore was a spurned, scorned, and mocked genre of music. The kind of Hot Topic scene fodder only eclipsed in stupidity by crabcore, but as time has passed the genre, and its flagship acts, have differentiated and evolved beyond the "killing whores" gimmick of years past, to the point that some of its offshoots - djent, namely - are well-respected and discussed in the underground music community.
        Whitechapel, the Tennessee act who appeared at the tail-end of deathcore's heyday (2008's The Somatic Defilement), are no different. Following the trail blazed by Job For a Cowboy, Whitechapel have slowly transitioned from deathcore to bonafide death metal over the course of six years, with 2012's self-titled album surprising metal critics and deathcore fans alike, who praised the album's BDM-style songwriting and avoidance of deathcore tropes.
      Two years later, the band have released their fifth record Our Endless War, and while Whitechapel's maturation has undeniably continued, Our Endless War marks the start of a transition back into deathcore, but not in the way you'd expect. Lyrically and musically, Our Endless War cranks out a palpable hardcore influence, with the title track being the most sterling example. Beginning with a mighty D-beat that segues into guitar-vocal medleys that could easily be from a Mammoth Grinder record, the song opens the record with a fist-pounding anti-government rant. And, while the lyrics are nothing to write home about, they're the first example of the record's awesome "fuck yeah!" moments. You know, those parts of Hatebreed or Terror songs where you can't help but point your finger and scream along? Well, Our Endless War features tons of them, with Phil Bozeman's characteristic brutally low-end roar belting out such eloquencies as "no one cares...KILL YOURSELF!" on 'Mono' or "THE MOUTH OF HELL IS OPEN WIDE TONIGHT!" on 'Let Me Burn'.
     If you go into a deathcore record expecting well-written lyrics, you're generally going to be sorely disappointed, and with Our Endless War Whitechapel embraces the dumb, effortlessly navigating the middle between tongue-in-cheek stupid (think Thy Art is Murder's hilariously obtuse descriptions of hellbeasts destroying humanity), and good ol' deathcore angst a la Suicide Silence. It's a sign of Whitechapel's experience in the genre, and particularly commendable when you consider their debut album featured "gangrenous vagina" used un-ironically.
      Our Endless War is a forty-five minute, ten-song mosh trip during which there's always something to get excited about. Breakdowns are used tastefully and scarcely, and while saying Whitechapel uses 'riffs' might still be a stretch, Our Endless War's tight, three-guitar assault features enough bounce and heaviness to have you nodding your head no matter the song. Things only really start to drag around the middle of the final track 'Diggs Road', when the band abandons all pretense of rhythm and runs amok through what's almost an ambient break. But otherwise, Our Endless War features a bunch of new ideas, and the album even closes with a southern-rock style guitar solo.
         The trouble with reviewing deathcore is that it exists in a small microcosm of its own - with its own tropes, cliches, and ideas that arose spontaneously due to the genre's exile from traditional metal. There's thus very little cross-pollination between the two genres, outside of the more obvious BDM elements Whitechapel bring to the table. But nevertheless, Our Endless War represents a step in 'traditional deathcore''s evolution. Just as much as djent saw the dynamic grooves of deathcore taken to the next level by the introduction of polyrhythms, albums like Our Endless War, and artists like Whitechapel will see the evolution of the crossover between death metal and hardcore that metalheads began turning their nose up at a decade ago.
         That's not to say Our Endless War runs totally error-free - it is still a deathcore record, and thus suffers from many of the same problems that have always plagued the genre. For as fun and heavy as the guitarwork is, it can get boring hearing the same four or five frets continuously, even if they're ingeniously arranged thanks to the genius of Alex Wade & co. And while Phillybo may have been one of the first practitioners of deathcore rapping, that doesn't mean it's any less eyeroll-inducing to hear it used. Nevertheless, for a band that were writing some of the most generic deathcore this side of Suicide Silence, Our Endless War is a refreshing little snack that shows that deathcore bands haven't run out of ideas yet.