So the fifth album by Cleopatra Records recording artists (and Pittsburghers) Icarus Witch is coming out in two weeks!
Here is a video teaser for Rise, to be released on the 3rd of July:
You can also listen to the album’s title track here.
Furthermore, the band has filmed a video for the track “The End,” which they hope to be able to get edited and released prior to the release of the album… which is where you come in!
Good morning! It’s early as hell — I haven’t even had any coffee yet and I can’t quite see straight — but this news is too big to wait around before sharing. Sometime in the middle of the night, I got an email from Scotty at Tankcrimes Records saying that there is now a second pressing available of the Municipal Waste / Toxic Holocaust Toxic Waste split!
You can read all about this split 12″ release at this earlier post, if somehow you missed the news the first time around — including the track listing, a brief history of each band, summer tour dates, etc.
(And don’t forget — there’s also more free Municipal Waste tracks available to download for free here!)
But the big news right now is that 1000 more copies of this record are NOW AVAILABLE to buy (ORDER HERE), since the first ones flew off the shelves almost immediately. Pictured above, the new versions include:
200 – Striped (Green/Yellow/Blue)
350 – “Toxic Spill”
450 – Highlighter Yellow
And that’s not all — Tankcrimes has also released all four tracks from the split for FREE DOWNLOAD grab it here…
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Municipal Waste: website, Facebook, Myspace, Reverbnation
Toxic Holocaust: Facebook, Myspace, Reverbnation, Bandcamp
Tankcrimes: website, Facebook, Myspace, Bandcamp
Svartby are an extreme folk metal band from Saint Petersburg, Russia, which was formed back in 2003 by a keyboardist/composer/lyricist named Giftsvamp. Actually, “extreme folk metal” is a phrase they sometimes use to describe themselves, but they actually prefer the term “Svartcore” because the unique sound they create just doesn’t quite fit with what you’d normally consider “folk” music, or “extreme metal” or even “metal” music. They blend elements of all of these, but essentially “Svartcore” is centered around the band leader’s orchestral creations, which are then augmented by heavy metal guitars, drums, and death-metal-style vocals.
“Svartby” itself is the name of a fictional “black village” which is inhabited by mythical creatures — mostly either mischevious or malevolent ones (such as witches, gnomes, and imps) — and these form the main basis for the band’s lyrical content. Despite the band’s Russian origin, at first their lyrics were written entirely in Swedish, although over time, they began adding many songs in English as well.
The latest of these releases, Elemental Tales, first saw the light of day in February of this year, on CD via German label Trollzorn Records. However, the band is of the opinion that music ought to be freely available to all listeners: they have been quietly encouraging the album to be shared on the internet since the time of its release, and now they have established a Bandcamp page for themselves, where all their albums can officially and legitimately be downloaded for free. Bear in mind, though, you also have the opportunity to pay any price you choose — which would be highly appreciated by the musicians, who say they had never earned any money from their own music before now (explaining that, instead, everything has always gone to the record labels to offset expenses). (Read more about the band’s decision to give their music away for free here.)
So without any further ado, let’s discuss this recent album, and then I’ll give you the opportunity to listen to it and grab a copy of it…
California’s A Band of Orcs would love to release their forthcoming self-titled album in the huge, full-color glory that is a double-LP picture disc vinyl format. They would also love to come to your house and slay you and your family, then steal all your gold and eat all your food. They don’t seem too particular about which of those things takes place, but I suspect you might have strong feelings about one or the other.
Fortunately, the band has decided to give you the opportunity to help ensure the first outcome can happen — which would also ensure that you are spared during the orcs’ eventual quest for world domination. If that sounds appealing to you, here’s how it works…
Is it just me, or does it seem like we’ve gone a little troll-crazy lately? Over the past couple of months, there have been quite a few posts about the “True Norwegian Balkan Metal” band TrollfesT…
We’ve had the revealing of the artwork for their upcoming NoiseArt Records album, Brumlebassen (shown above) as well as information about the story behind the troll-in-a-bee-costume character; later we learned about the release date (24 August) and watched a video teaser for the album, just to name a few.
Well, as it turns out, the merry band of trolls have even more surprises hidden up their sleeves! (Do trolls have sleeves?)
Good afternoon, Readers. How are you? This day has been dragging on forever, and I’m so glad it’s finally ending! There seems to be no amount of coffee sufficient to keep me alert today — no matter what I do, I feel like I’m stuck in slow motion and surrounded by fog. This morning I was feeling pretty terrible but then I took some allergy pills, and now I’m feeling… nothing. Just sort of dazed. Which would be totally fine if I didn’t have to be at work, and even then it might not be so bad if my job didn’t revolve around numbers and thinking and stuff. Times like this, I feel pretty nervous to come back the next day, because I’m always afraid I’ll hear about some big mistake I made where, like, I forgot how to add and I ended up being off by a million dollars someplace, or that I totally zoned out and missed a step, and some important thing didn’t get paid on-time or whatever.
Ugh, it would totally hurt my head just thinking about it, except for the fact that at the moment I am more or less incapable of feeling any pain. So, nevermind.
Do you ever have days like this? It’s actually not so bad, like being all cozy inside a drug-induced cloud. Of course, in this particular instance, those drugs are ones that were legally purchased from a pharmacy (actually I think they’re even Wal-Mart brand, how stupid is that), but, whatever. This afternoon I’ve been listening to some equally tripped-out, hazy, cloudy music, and I thought just maybe you’d like it if I shared it with you — keep on reading and then give it a listen; maybe you won’t even need any chemical substances to feel like you’re in an altered state!
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you’ve been paying attention to this blog over the past month, you’ve seen the name Vesperia a few times. That’s because this newly-renamed band has put together a brand-new demo to reintroduce themselves to the world, and each week throughout the month of May, they released a new track for free.
Well, now that they’ve all been made available, the whole four-track package can now be downloaded for free (or any price you choose), for your convenience. There’s also more stuff on the horizon for these guys — including a newly-added tour date and an upcoming live DVD!
So I’ve taken this opportunity to collect all the information I’ve previously shared about the band, combined it with the new stuff, and while I’m at it, I’ll say a few words about the music contained in the demo. Which, again, you can go download for free. Ready? Here we go…
Good afternoon, Readers! Time for another album review. It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these things; I hope I remember how…
With its roots in Australian soil, but being a collaborative effort between members (who are also involved with various other projects, including Azoth, Bleakwood, and Ironwood) living in both Sydney (NSW, AU) and Portland (OR, US) Greed & Rapacity have the goal of “channeling and venting the worst of human nature in sonic form” — not surprising, considering they have deadly sins as namesakes.
Following a demo in 2010, this spring the band’s debut EP Loki Bound was released on cassette by Milam Records (although it’s also available as a digital download, so don’t worry if you never bothered to get a new tape player after the batteries leaked and corroded your Walkman’s innards fifteen or twenty years ago).
The album was named for the god of chaos in Norse mythology, who was bound by the other deities for his mischievous crimes, and had a serpent suspended above him, from which venom would occasionally drip onto the captive, causing him to writhe in pain and agony.
(Click for larger size)
As a music blogwriter based in the Pittsburgh area, I feel like it’s my obligation to keep myself relatively informed in terms of what’s happening in the local scene, and then to spread this information to you, the loyal reader, whether you live near here or on the other side of the world. It’s a pretty big job, but I really do try to stay on top of things.
Sometimes I need a little bit of help, though. In one particular case, I had to discover a pretty amazing local band when their 2011 demo tape was featured on another (non-local) blog. That was The Number of the Blog, and I’d you link to the original post, but several months ago TNOTB went off to live on a farm somewhere with lots of land where it could run around with other blogs and be happy and free…
However, the band — Moths — is still alive and well; that two-track demo still features some excellent tech-metal drumming and guitarring as well as nicely-done death-metal vocalling, AND it’s still available for free download (stay tuned till the end of this post); and in fact, just yesterday they released a brand new song that you won’t want to miss…
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I’m going to share some more new music with you, but first somebody out there has to promise to answer the question in the title of this post. Deal? Okay, good.
So our good friend Mihai, who is a guitarist/keyboardist/songwriter for Dirty Shirt (more about that band here), also has a solo career (using the name M.T.) as a remix artist. Now, I know what many of you are probably thinking: a “remix” just means taking a song and adding some kind of techno dance beat behind it, right? Well, a lot of the time that’s true, unfortunately, and admittedly there really isn’t much artistry involved there. However, the work that M.T. does is more like re-composition, because he generally takes the original vocal part, but very little else from the actual song; instead, adding instruments and sounds of his own.
Anyway, earlier this week I learned that he had taken a number of these creations and compiled them into a digital album called Rock RMX Collection. Due to legal complications (with the various copyrights on the original source material) this release will not be made available to download or to purchase in any format, but it’s out there in cyberspace for you to listen to, if you choose to do so.
Valley of Steel 