Category Archives: Free Downloads

In Case You Missed It: The Noumenon – Apocrypha

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The Noumenon – Apocrypha (Self-released, 13 December 2011)

Well, would you look at that — the week’s halfway over already. But then again, that means there’s still half of it left. And I’ve got a terrible fucking headache. Feeling lousy seems to be a common problem this time of year though, especially living in a city that’s notorious for its unpredictable and ever-shifting weather patterns. The past couple mornings the temperature has been hovering just above freezing level, but it’s supposed to go up about 25 degrees higher by the time I leave work this afternoon. It’s hard to get adjusted to stupid shit like that, and the fact that every day this week has had high or very high pollen levels has not helped things one bit. But, whatever. I can sit here and whine and bitch about it, but that won’t do me any good — so instead I’ve decided to take some allergy pills, drink a shitload of coffee, and throw on my headphones with some loud fucking metal music until I can’t feel anything anymore.

Fortunately, I find that today I’ve got a new CD with me, Apocrypha by Edmontonian band The Noumenon, which is pretty much just what the doctor ordered…
 
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Out Last Month: Tribune – Elder Lore / The Dark Arts

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Tribune – Elder Lore / The Dark Arts (Corpse Corrosion Music, 20 March 2012)

Whenever I discover a new band, I usually try to learn as much as I can about them, including where they come from. If it’s a country or a city I’m not especially familiar with, occasionally I’ll hit Wikipedia and see if there are any interesting facts to be learned there. Maybe I’m just a major dork, I don’t know. Whatever. Sometimes I like to look at a map of where a band comes from, just to see where it is in relation to things I do know about. This is how I discovered that the city of Burnaby, British Columbia, is right next to Vancouver, near the Pacific coast and just above the U.S./Canada border. Playing with the settings a bit, I found myself looking at a topographic map of that general area. In this way, I found that Burnaby is surrounded by a few lakes, and most of the land seems to be pretty close to sea level anyway. From that I would surmise that there just might be a good bit of swamps or marshlands near that area.

Now, I wasn’t just randomly seeking out information on the geographic characteristics of various cities in Canada. No, I was learning about Burnaby because it’s home to the band Tribune*, to whose recently-released double-EP Elder Lore / The Dark Arts I had just been listening. The blend of riffs and vocals they incorporate into their particular version of death metal might give you the impression that they come from the same backwater bayou country as Down or Crowbar, rather than the frozen tundra of British Columbia, which is what set me on that particular path of research. But anyway, hometown notwithstanding, these guys have put together a combination of styles that I’ve decided to call stoner/death metal. You just need to check it out to see what I mean.
 
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* By the way — I don’t know if it’s a Canadian thing or what, but I’ve learned that the band’s name is pronounced differently than I originally thought. It’s actually supposed to be “TRY-bune” (as in “tribunal”), rather than “TRIB-une” (as in “tribute”).
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Happy Record Store Day!

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Today — Saturday, 21 April 2012 — is the fifth annual Record Store Day. Basically, it’s a celebration of the small, independent music sellers, and it’s all full of special offers, free stuff, discounted prices, and some unique items that won’t be available any other time! You can learn more about the concept on the Record Store Day website or Facebook page. They also have published a list of stores that are participating in today’s event, so you can see if there are any in your area!

If you don’t have any participating local stores, you can take a moment to reflect on how sad the current state of the music industry is, such that so many small retailers have been forced to shut down over the past few decades. But then, cheer up! Because several online distributors or labels are also offering special Record Store Day deals, and for your convenience I am collecting a few of those here…

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Get ’em While They’re Hot: Download the New Dreaming Dead Album for Free (Today Only!)

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Dreaming Dead have officially released their new album Midnightmares (the follow-up to their 2009 full-length Within One) today. Described as “elements of black, death, thrash and Schuldiner-inspired progressive metal [melded] into one thought-provoking and intense sonic assault,” this trio of Angelenos (vocalist and guitarist Elizabeth Schall, drummer and vocalist Michael Caffell, and bassist Juan Ramirez) operate with a strict M.O. of DIY. So in putting together this new album, they aren’t working with any fancy labels, they just went to their fans to help raise the funds using Kickstarter — which has successfully met their goal of $5000, enabling them to release the album on both CD and vinyl!

To celebrate this achievement, and to celebrate the release of the album, the band has announced that they are giving away free downloads TODAY (20 April 2012) ONLY! Head on over to their Reverbnation page, PRONTO, to get in on this deal!

The Kickstarter campaign also runs through midnight (Pacific time) tonight, so there’s still time to join in and grab some great thank-you gifts, including CD and/or vinyl copies of the album, t-shirts, all the way up to a private show in your backyard (southern California area only)!

If you miss out on the Kickstarter thing and the free download thing, you’ll still have the chance to buy physical copies and other merchandise from the band’s online store.

Once again, you can download the album for free from here, just for the rest of today. I’ve got my copy already (and an actual review will be posted soon), now what are you waiting for?

Dreaming Dead website, Facebook, Reverbnation, Webstore

Just Released: Obolus – Lament

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Obolus – Lament (The Flenser Records, 10 April 2012)

In the “Inferno” section of his Divine Comedy, the poet Dante describes his descent through the various circles of Hell, including the particular sins which had landed the condemned souls in each of these, and what tragic fate had been assigned to them.  A large part of the allegorical nature of this tale revolves around the narrator’s interaction with some of these damned creatures; while often serving as political commentary on what he perceived as misdeeds in his own time, Dante’s poem also speaks on the evils of human nature in a far more universal sense.

Of the nine circles through which the author must pass, the seventh is the final resting place for those deemed guilty of sins of violence.  This circle is further subdivided into three narrower rings.  The section “Canto XIII” discusses what he sees in the second of these three rings, which is classified as sins of violence against oneself:
 

“… we had put ourselves within a wood,
That was not marked by any path whatever.
Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour,
Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled,
Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison.”

“There do the hideous Harpies make their nests…
They make laments upon the wondrous trees.”

“I heard on all sides lamentations uttered,
And person none beheld I who might make them,
Whence, utterly bewildered, I stood still.”

 
Soon, at the urging of his netherworldly guide Virgil, our hero discovers that the voices he hears are issuing from the disfigured trees themselves, in which form are trapped the souls of those who had ended their lives by their own hands.

By breaking off a piece of one of their limbs, he finds he is able to address the tortured soul within, and have it respond to his inquiries:
 

“As out of a green brand, that is on fire
At one of the ends, and from the other drips
And hisses with the wind that is escaping;
So from that splinter issued forth together
Both words and blood…”

 
If the lamentations he heard from this poor, wretched being could be captured on tape, I’m sure the result would be extremely similar to the just-released Lament by the San Franciscan atmospheric black metal band Obolus.
 

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Out Last Week: Elizabeth – Where Vultures Land

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Elizabeth – Where Vultures Land (Throatruiner Records / I for Us Records, 04 April 2012)

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth repeating: I have a lot of respect for bands and record labels who do what they do for the right reasons. Here, “the right reasons” are not to get rich and famous and live a life of luxury by taking advantage of people, but simply to create (for the bands) or disseminate (for labels) art based on a true passion for doing so. Now, I’m not saying that nobody should ever make money from their art — a lot of work goes into it and everyone involved totally deserves to recoup their expenses and bring in enough extra income to hopefully be able to continue what they are doing! But at a certain point, it seems like making a few dollars becomes more important than sharing a mutual love of music, and that is just a sad situation for anyone to be in.

Having said that, it’s obvious Matthias Jungbluth of French (Breton) label Throatruiner Records is in this for the right reasons. Anyone who would start an extreme metal label nowadays has to know beforehand that they aren’t going to be bringing in a ton of money, considering the state of the music industry these days, and so there must be some degree of passion for the art itself. The label specializes in small releases on vinyl or cassette, as well as some other merchandise, supplemented by free downloads of those releases in order to expose the artists to as many people as possible.

 
Packaged with the free download of an album from Throatruiner is the following text (contained in a file named “FVCK LARS ULRICH.rtf”):

Thanks for your download, we hope you will enjoy this record as much as we did! When I have started Throatruiner Records last year, one of my guidelines was to put all my releases on free download. Because the stuff i love should live without any boundaries. So if you want to support Throatruiner Records & our bands, please visit http://throatruinerrecords.tumblr.com/ and pick some stuff, we need it; and if you think we don’t deserve any $, be kind, share this album with five of your friends!

Sorry for your ears.

I’ve discovered a lot of great new music through this label, one example of which I’d like to share with you today.

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Get ’em While They’re Hot: Three Free HUGE Compilations from Grip of Delusion Radio!

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Check this out! The nice people at Grip of Delusion Radio have put together a gigantic compilation in three volumes (over one hundred songs altogether!) and they’re yours for the taking, absolutely free of charge. There are some pretty awesome bands represented here, including a couple I’ve written about in the past (Vulture and Undersmile) and one that I’ll be reviewing very soon (Fire in the Cave), plus Banda de la Muerte, Heavy Lord, Forged in Flame, Wo Fat, Cultura Tres, Thorr Axe, Behold! The Monolith, Shroud of Despondency, and tons more!!

These were just released on Sunday (01 April) and by Monday they had already run out of free Bandcamp downloads! But mere minutes ago, it was announced that due to the generosity of The Soda Shop, they’ve just added on another thousand downloads… so hurry up and grab one while you still can!

See the Bandcamp widgets below for each of the three volumes, where you can download them if you like (or just listen to the songs and then download your favorites)…

If the Bandcamp well runs dry again, don’t fear, they have alternate download capabilities on this page — including a link to Mediafire (where you can grab the songs one at a time) and Dropbox (which offers all three volumes in a single Gig-and-a-half bundle).

 

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Get ’em While They’re Hot: Free Meshuggah Track Download, Ticket Giveaway

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Well, the nice people of Scion A/V have done it yet again, hooking you up with some more free metal.  This time around, they’re letting you grab the song “I Am Colossus” from Koloss, the new Meshuggah album that was just released on Nuclear Blast.

Here’s what Scion had to say about the band and this song:

The larynx-lacerating, off-the-meter metal of Swedish powerhouse Meshuggah is so distinctive that it birthed its own sub-genre, called djent. On this exclusive single for Scion A/V, the band plumbs heavy grooves as only they can. Turtle-paced but with tightly-coiled potential for acceleration, “I Am Colossus” is one of the best Meshuggah songs in their gem-stuffed discography. Power up.

FREE DOWNLOAD OF MESHUGGAH’s “I AM COLOSSUS” HERE.

 
 

And if that isn’t enough for you, Scion A/V is also giving away a pair of tickets to every Meshuggah show on their upcoming tour with Baroness and Decapitated.

  To enter for a chance to win:

1. Read the RULES and TOUR SCHEDULE: http://www.scion.com/Meshuggahsweeps

2. Follow ScionAV on TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/ScionAV

3. Tweet “@SCIONAV #Meshuggah [date of show]”

Each winner will be chosen at random from the entries provided for each show. Winners will be contacted via Twitter one day before the concert with details on how to redeem the tickets.  Tour dates are listed below…

 

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Just Released: No Anchor – Rope/Pussyfootin’ 7-Inch

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No Anchor – Rope/Pussyfootin’ 7-Inch (Self-released, 17 March 2012)

Good morning, readers. It felt like this week was never going to end, but it’s finally Friday! All we need to do is fumble our way through one more day, then the weekend will officially be here. Pretty awesome, huh? Although sometimes even just one eight-hour day still feels like it lasts forever, and besides that, it’s hard to get excited about anything this early in the morning, right?

Well don’t worry, I’ve got something to help you survive one more workday. Go grab a cup of coffee and get your headphones on, and brace yourselves for some grungey noise-rock all the way from Queensland! Brisbane’s No Anchor have just unleashed a brand new 7″ with four songs (three of which are free to download!) over an eight-minute span that should give you just the jolt you need.

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Just Released: Melvins – The Bulls & the Bees (Free Download!)

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Melvins – The Bulls & the Bees (13 March 2012, Scion A/V)

I’ve just got two things to say: first, there is a new Melvins EP, and second, it’s absolutely free to download. Really, that should be all you need to hear.

The generous people who run Scion A/V have done it again, putting out a handful of songs by an incredible band for no cost or obligation at all. I still don’t know what they get out of it (I’ve grabbed a copy of each one of their free releases so far, but I’d still never be caught dead behind the wheel of one of their ugly-ass cars!), but I sure am thankful they keep on doing what they’re doing.

This time, as you can see, they are featuring a five-song collection by the Melvins, who surely need no introduction to anybody reading this. But just in case you just immigrated to this planet from Pluto, or you have been in a coma since Ronald Reagan’s first term as U.S. president, let me bring you up to speed. These guys almost single-handedly invented sludge, grunge, and stoner metal. At the very least, they were highly influential in the genesis of each of those styles, and have been consistently churning out quality tunes for almost three whole decades.

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