London four piece LIMB originally went into the studio in January to record their demo, just went in and did it live, and Witch Hunter Records have remixed the three tracks for release on this CD EP.
When I say remixed though, don't expect any kind of polished nonsense though, it's still a raw sounding document of a band laying down their tracks together in the studio, overdriven and tight as anything.
Opener Daemoness is a slow paced track with crushing riffs and bass lines reminiscent of Godflesh or Neurosis, with quieter passages also helping to set the mood.
Black Rat has a more bluesy, desert-y feel to it, with a more traditional rock vibe to the track if that's possible with such a fuzzed out monster, Sam Cooper's hands wandering along the frets like Geezer Butler getting the fuck out of Birmingham.
Rob's vocals are quite low down in the mix, demanding attention but letting the music flow effortlessly around them, the whole mix stirred up by Jodie's drumming.
I love the way the closing track Dead Voice goes from a Witch-style stomper to Goatsnake-esque sludge easily, and then back again as they ride off into the sunset.
Magic, can't wait for the full length.
Limited to 100 copies on CD, this comes with a folded card inlay and parchment insert, housed in a plastic wallet, with artwork by Chris Alliston and layout by Limb. It is also available through Bandcamp (pay what you want download), Spotify, Amazon and iTunes.
YES!!! We can't wait for some good time rock and roll action with our good pals in ORANGE GOBLIN.
See all the Scousers working this one into their Valentine's Day dates... "It'll be too busy on the 14th love, let's go out on the Tuesday instead..."
MONDAY 22ND OCTOBER 2012 – ORANGE GOBLIN ANNOUNCE UK TOUR FOR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 Following ORANGE GOBLIN'S amazing shows supporting DOWN across the UK we are happy to announce that the band will be hitting the road for a full UK headline tour in January and February 2013. Dates are as follows: January 30th – Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach 31st – Brighton, The Haunt February 1st – Southampton, Talking Heads 2nd – Plymouth, White Rabbit 3rd – Bristol, Fleece 5th – Norwich, Waterfront Studio 6th – Wolverhampton, Slade Rooms 7th – Sheffield, Corporation 8th – York, The Duchess 9th – Manchester, NQ Live 11th – Glasgow, King Tuts 12th – Liverpool, O2 Academy 2 13th – Nottingham, Rock City Basement 15th – London O2 Academy Islington
Irish dates will be also be added. Special guests to be announced. Tickets available at www.kililive.com, 0844 871 8803 and usual outlets.
For us, its all about the True Wave of British Heavy Metal, and so it should be for you too.
Awesome backing vocals from Leo of Forsaken on this.
Simon has one of the sickest voices in Metal right now, and the band...oh my word the band.
From the Bloodstock Website: Here at Bloodstock HQ we’re excited to announce our first headliner for 2013. The Grammy-nominated, Danish metal legend KING DIAMOND will dazzle eyes and perforate eardrums in the Friday night top slot.
After a six-year touring hiatus, the band triumphantly returned to the stage in 2012 for European festivals, Hellfest and Sweden Rock. Friday night’s closing performance at Bloodstock Open Air 2013 marks not only their first ever UK festival appearance, but their first UK show of any kind in many years and will be their only UK date in 2013. When asked about Bloodstock, the mighty King quoth: "I'm looking so much forward to this, we all are. Finally back in England! The people at Bloodstock have gone the extra mile to make this possible, and will be expanding the stage to fit our full production. This is gonna be DARK and very HEAVY!"
This special headline appearance racks up alongside the previously announced special guests, ANTHRAX and ACCEPT, and UK exclusive appearances from FIREWIND and FOZZY. Bloodstock ‘Early Bird’ tickets are available from the Bloodstock store at the bargain price of £100 (plus booking fee) for a four-day weekend pass. Snap ‘em up quick, as this limited time offer won’t last forever!
Wow!
On the ol' Death Decks this morning: Demises from Glaswegian trio Headless Kross.
Punishing! It's punky doom metal, with the emphasis on the METAL! A two track EP, this sees the band knocking out some great riffing, with some intense Kevin Sharp style vocals from throatman/bassist Derek - who is no slouch on the fretboard either!
First track Army of Serpentine has a real headbanging riff running right through it, a slow middle section with an almost Floydian feel to it, which I like a lot. The Great God Proteus (That's the Old Man of The Sea for those of you who didn't study Classics at school) starts with some funereal drumming and slide guitar. Why don't more doom bands use a bit of slide? I think Tommy Duffin of the Kross is onto something here! The track then morphing into foot tapping, head nodding territory, sounding huge. Love the drum/feedback outro too, Jonny!
The EP is available for just £5 (that's around €6.50 or $8, jet-setters) from their Bandcamp page (which also has a link to their album Bearon it too) and you get a free patch and immediate download in your choice of file format.
In a nutshell: If the band you're in starts playing different tunes, I'll see you on the dark side of the doom
An official Iron Maiden press release from earlier today:
"More dates have been added to the Maiden England European Tour 2013. Maiden will play 5 shows in Germany - the dates are: the Festhalle Frankfurt on 11 June, the O2 World in Berlin on 18 June, O2 World in Hamburg on 19 June, Open Air Arena Singen-Aach on 29 June and Open Air an der KöPi-Arena in Oberhausen on 06 July. Tickets go onsale October 20th with our fanclub presale starting on October 15th."
THEE CLAW says: Fuck yeah, Bruce Bruce and the boys are back in Europe!
Baitin’ The Trap Records Presents…
Iron Witch
‘Single Malt’
1. A .45 To Pay The Rent - 4:33
2. Single Malt - 5:06
3. Booze Blues - 4:10
4. Jailhouse - 3:50
5. The Cruelty Of Mankind - 7:02
Running time – 25 minutes
Release date: February 2013
Format: LP
Cat #: BTTR002
We already reviewed this bad boy back last July and we said it was boss, so you should get yourself along to sort out grabbing a copy now it is being reissued on vinyl.
Buy or Die!
CVLT NATION are streaming the tracks from the upcoming HEKSED 7"; a Type O Negative and Joy Division cover that really should be heard, JD have been getting dropped all the time for a few years now, but it's nice to see one of our favourite groups since way back, Type O Negative, getting some plaudits from people who don't own Hello Kitty mousemats.
Do you get me?
Hail, droogies! SJW here... I just wanted to give a big shout out and give all of our best to Len and the boys in the mighty ASOMVEL for the 2012 edition of the Full Moon Dog festival, being held at The Cockpit in Leeds, UK. Both myself and Patchie are as sick as dogs (pun intended) not to be in attendance for this year's show but we are planning on holding our own tribute to Jay Jay over the weekend, summoning the awesome majestic spirit that he brought to the stage each and every time he got the chance. What a guy... What a fucking guy!!
This is what it's all about, kiddies!!
The 2012 FMD fest line-up is a cracker, and it is sure to be a great day. We look forward to seeing the DVD when it is unleashed on the great unwashed masses some time in early 2013!
I am utterly thrilled to discover that one of my heroes, Michael Schenker will be playing just down the road from Liverpool, in Warrington, close to my birthday next year.
I've never seen the man live, so I'm well excited (also a bit weary, we've all heard the stories) about it!!
Recently, spurred on by a bit of nostalgia in the form of a Cradle of Filth gig at the Liverpool Royal Court Basement Bar that appeared on YouTube from 1993, I started to trawl through some clips of demos from back in the early nineties that have been uploaded to YouTube, mainly from the old UKBM days.
I came across clips from Middlesbrough's Malediction whose "Mould of an Industrial Horizon" was a favourite back then, and on visiting their page at the Metal Archives found that Guitarist Darren O'Hara also formed another band, Cerecloth, who I had never heard before.
Anyway, here's the tracks off their demo Godless Passages from '92, a good indicator of the kind of Death Metal coming out of the UK in the early nineties.
Can't find any more information about them online though!
Death’s landmark ‘Spiritual Healing’ record is nothing short of genre-defining. Originally released in 1990, Spiritual Healing marked a new turn in the Death discography, one which ushered in cleaner production, a new level of boundary pushing musicianship and songwriting skills that were previously unimaginable from a metal band. Spiritual Healing sets the standard for riffs, insane time changes and of course mainman Chuck Schuldiner’s masterful guitar solos. Now reissued as a double cd housed in super deluxe packaging featuring brand new liner notes from Death players James Murphy and Terry Butler, Chuck’s sister Beth Schuldiner and Michael Poulsen (Volbeat), disc 1 features a completely new remaster of the original album and disc 2 contains 16 previously unreleased rehearsal, outtakes and studio instrumentals.
Limited edition (2000 machine numbered copies) triple cd digipak
Relapse really are pulling out all the plugs stops with their reissues of these classic Death albums!!
...probably about the tenth post on here we've had on here entitled that.
Anyway, Rick of Iron Witch has started up a label recently, Baitin' The Trap Records which looks to be bringing out some fine doom/sludge in the coming months, including the Lord Misery EP, a rough mix from which can be found by following the above link.
UPDATE! Just discovered that the second release will be a vinyl pressing of Iron Witch's SINGLE MALT EP. Which is great news because that EP is a belter.
We absolutely love Doomentia Records, and we also have an awful awful lot of time for a certain Mr Paul Speckmann, so we would urge you all to get over to their website and check out the reissue of "On the Seventh Day God Created... Master" (on CD and blue/black vinyl!) which comes in a cracking package containing a 7" EP too (the '91 Demo!) only €18!
And, proving that nostalgia is not the only thing on their minds, they have released the latest MASTER album "The New Elite" (only black vinyl left, collectors) the punky "new" sound of Master continues on this one.
Also over there they have the ABOMINATION demos from '88-'89 on vinyl (RED WAX!) which is has an altogether nastier more street feel than MASTER.
Been a while hasn't it? I've had this album for what seems like an age now, and I've been sitting on a review for quite some time; a combination of things (namely the lack of a functioning computer) have kept me from getting it out, so apologies for that.
Hailing from possibly as far as you can get from Claw Towers without starting to come back, Wellington, New Zealand's BEASTWARS have unleashed this leviathan from the midst of the Pacific Ocean, and what an album it is.
"Damn the Sky" starts off with a slightly misleading Broadrick-esque riff and muttered vocals from Matt Hyde which on first listen made me think for some reason of Brendan Perry fronting a guitar band, but that notion is soon blown away when he opens his lungs and bellows, a raging voice that could strip paint.
Bassist James Woods immediately makes his presence felt, fuzzed out scuzziness jostling against powerful drumming from Nathan Hickey to give a real sense of depth and movement.
When they strip the sound down to concentrate on the vocals, like on the track "Mihi", you really get a sense of the bluesy delivery from Matt that is equal parts tortured sounding and really expressive.
I must - just for a second - talk about the packaging of the album here. Sitting in my vintage 1960s swivel leather chair in the listening vault at Claw Towers and feeling to the riffs fall out of the speakers, whilst poring over the gatefold sleeve with it's depiction of a Lovecraftian apocalypse on it adds something to the listening experience that just isn't possible with a CD or a download.
(the wax is lovely white and black marble too)
There's a real early nineties underground rock feel to a lot of the record, I hate to use the "G-word" because it conjures up far too many negative connotations for readers of this blog, but in a kind of fuck-the-mainstream way, not in any way you'd compare it to 90s MTV Rock. You'd be mad.
In places, like on "Call Out the Dead", the music is given room to breathe and a real sense of space and scale can be felt, with Matt bellowing "CALL OUT THE DEAAAD!!" over the top.
However, for me, the standout track is "Red God", where there is a bit of a - dare I say it - groove going on, and you tap your feet, nod your head, maybe break out the ol' air guitar! Good, sludge-tinged heavy metal that sits nicely against the melancholy feel of tracks like "Iron Wolf", and the brooding menace of "Cthulhu" which brings to mind a powerless ship, listing in the dark Pacific as hideous tentacles rush towards it from the deep.
The album closes with the storming "Empire", which contains all the components that make the album such an enjoyable listen in spades, with a cracking solo from riff meister Clayton Anderson.
In a nutshell: I can't decide if they sound like trawlermen or bikers. This is the sound of a battle between road hogs and sea dogs.
Band Page: beastwars.bandcamp.com
Witch Hunter records still have copies of the vinyl here for my fellow Europeans, if you are in America give Grave Dancer Records a visit here.
If you must insist on buying a CD (You're missing out, believe me) then Europeans visit Ozium and everyone else visit SmokeCds
Buy or Die.
Edit:
Here's a look at the wraparound art for the album:
Front:
Back:
And, if you needed any more convincing, a live performance for the track "Red God" on NZ television:
