2011 was a pretty damn impressive year for music. As you can see from my top albums list, which covered a majority of the best albums, but is far from containing all the albums you should have already listened too. Anyhow, I think it goes without saying that 2012 has some pretty big shoes to fill.
I'll say it again, I've been rather obsessed with Technical Death Metal lately (and Tech Deathcore for that matter. *cough*Halo Of Gunfire*cough*) It's a genre I hadn't explored enough, and it's chock full of awesome stuff. Psycroptic are a band I need to check out still, but their new song is a clear sign of the fact that their new album The Inherited Repression, which is due out February 7th, will be a great one. Hit the jump to hear the song!
My Dad's starting his own blog, focused around music videos and other videos you can find on youtube! Check, check, check it out! http://seekingchris.blogspot.com/
I've had a pretty busy weekend, but over the past two days, one of my favorite deathcore bands Arbiter released two bits of great news!
Firstly we've got album covers for both Ironclad and Machinations! Here they are:
Pretty schweet right? They look cool side by side but for some reason blogger is a huge douche about pictures and won't let me do that. (Google, you need to fix the picture formatting system.)
And that other bit of news is...
They made a Christmas EP! Awesomely titled, A Very Arbiter Christmas.
The EP has three tracks and I believe is due out 12/21. Unless that's just when the first single comes out. Either way it's awesome.
Here's the three tracks also:
1. Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Thundergroove Lane) 2. Awkwardly Silent Night 3. Egg Nog'd (Bonus Track)
I'm pretty stoked. I cannot wait for Ironclad/Machinations.
Oh and as a bonus third bit, Connor posted a rather hilarious cover video:
The West Memphis Three were finally freed recently. You can read more on their entire story here or just Google West Memphis Three and you'll find a plethora or information. In light on the events, hollywood, never missing a beat on doing a controversial/popular in the news biopic, has thrown into production 'The Devils Knot', a film about the West Memphis Three, which will now star Reese Witherspoon as the mother of one of the murder victims. Should be interesting.
Well it's about that time of year. 99% of the releases this year have come out so I figured I'd tally up what worked best for me this year. Maybe you'll agree, maybe not. But check it out, and leave a comment if you want. Here are my top 15 releases.
(On an aside, blogger has an atrocious way of handling multiple images, and it would not let me put the images to the left and right of each block of text without having some stupid problem here or there that ruined everything. So it's all centered. Sorry if it bugs you.)
Post-Hardcore band The Marilyn Effect recently released their debut EP Vanitas, and sent me a copy to listen to. I have to start this by saying I'm not all that adept on Post-Hardcore bands, it's not my favorite genre, but I'm pretty open minded about anything heavy, so I gave it a shot.
Firstly, since I can't seem to be able to keep this as a weekly article, I'm not going to keep lying to you all and change the name to Plundering The Depths Of Bandcamp! I'll still try to keep it an recurring segment, but I'm just not making it time based.
Moving on, this time I found a band called The Kennedy Veil. They are a pretty fantastic sounding Technical Death Metal band (A genre that I have to admit I've been pretty obsessed with lately.) The album is called The Sentance Of Their Conqueror.
Becoming The Archetype posted their cover of O Holy Night recently. It's a cool and almost scary take on the song, but it works really well in my opinion. It's also the first preview we get of the 'new' band with new vocalist Chris McCane and new drummer Michael McClellan. There isn't a huge amount of Chris' vocals on the track, it's actually a little disappointing in that manner, but he seems to do a pretty good job replacing Jason Wisdom's low growls, but Jason has fairly unique mids and highs so we'll have to see how he does whenever they release a new full length.
Here's a youtube video of the single:
You can also buy the single on iTunes and through other places.
This one is rather interesting. Lifewar, from 2010's The World Is A Thorn is sort of a really long outro for Decending Upon Us, which is the frirt track on the album. Lifewar is also only 1:52 long. So when I pulled this up I wasn't really sure what to expect. What you get is rather interesting though. It's one continuous shot of Ryan Clark, with a rather epic beard, singing the lyrics with flashes of imagery projected on him with mud and dirt being put on him and washed away. The video is full of christian imagery, as are the lyrics of the song, which is obviously no surprise to anyone who knows the band. Ryan also gets decked pretty hard in the face towards the end, and takes it like a man.
Anyhow, it's an interesting little piece, and it's short, so check it out.
I've been a fan of Chevelle for a while. Not a die hard fan, but they've never made a bad album in my opinion. Chevelle are sort of in an odd place for a lot of people. Their Tool influence is pretty obvious, both musically speaking and in terms of Pete Loeffler's vocal style. Many have passed them up as a band sucking up to Tool, which is most unfortunate, because if you dig deeper you'll find that on the surface they might be taking a number from Tool's sound, but overall they are their own band. Chevelle has crafted their own sound and in my book they are one of the best Alternative Metal/Rock outfits today.
For one of my classes we were put into groups to make a 5 minute short film. It was a lot of fun to do, although I had enormous amounts of trouble exporting because my computer was struggling to handle all the video. But none the less here is what we came up with! http://vimeo.com/33257286
It's called A Little Privacy, and it's about a guy named Ken who is about to go to rehab, but wants to get one last fix in before that. Although he runs into all sorts of trouble in doing so.
Man it's been a great new week! I have to say I've been waiting for this bit of news for a long time, and I was a bit scared it might never come because these guys aren't the biggest band in the world unfortunately. However, I'm happy to say that To Speak Of Wolves entered the studio today to start the recording process for their follow up to 2010's Myself > Letting Go.
See that great beard there? Well unfortunately you won't be for a while. It seems that Jason Wisdom, the frontman for progressive metalcore band, Becoming the Archetype has left the band, along with 'Duck' their drummer. Jason's wife is having a kid soon, so it's understandable why he's leaving, but It's sad to see him go.
I was sent a link to download this EP from German Progressive Deathcore outfit Secrets Of A Psychopath for free this morning thanks to the vocalist dropping me a line on my Last.fm account. I'm not sure if he personally sought me out, or if he was spamming peoples wall, which I wouldn't blame him for, but regardless, I saw free music and decided it couldn't hurt to give it a listen. It also helps that it wasn't just a single, it was a solid 5 track EP, which in my opinion an EP needs to be at least 5 tracks. So my pre-requisites were met. Oh and the album art looked professional, which is always a good way to attract potential listeners.
As with my Oceano post, I'm a few days late on this one too, but good news is still good news no matter when you hear it. that being said, if you happened to be stumbling through bands facebooks and happened across Hour Of Penance's page you may have noticed this post:
