Now Playing: Lots of music on Tuesday!

Posted by Witness to the Void on Mar 20, 2012 in Now Playing | 0 comments

Introducing… Technical Tuesday!

At my place of employment I enjoy the distinctly awesome opportunity of being able to listen to music of my choice while working. This of course allows me to listen to a lot of metal. The weather outside very much influences my choice in music – once old man winter leaves for the year, Immortal’s At the Heart of Winter doesn’t see rotation again until the first snow.

If the season can influence my music choice, why not the day? Hence, Technical Tuesday, a new weekly column where I will be giving very short summaries on each album I listened to, and picking a weekly winner. Let’s begin….

Former Origin singer has new band!

Posted by Witness to the Void on Mar 4, 2012 in Newsflash, Now Playing | 1 comment

Newsbrief from August, 2011:

James Lee of Origin is back with more crushing technical death metal!

Ok, so I guess it isn’t exactly news since the album came out in August of last year, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. I have to admit that I am a complete Origin fanboy – the band has done no wrong to my ears since I randomly picked up their self-titled album without hearing more than a single song by them. It was the first technical death metal album I ever owned… I am getting all nostalgic!

When I heard that James Lee, the lead voice of Origin wasn’t going to be on their latest record, I was terribly disappointed. Devastated. Destroyed. However, Entity turned out to be easily one of the best albums of the year anyway. And now we have Face of Oblivion!

The Embers of Man is probably going to sound a lot like Origin to a lot of people. To that I would agree – but hey, what’s better than having a new record by one of your favorite bands? Having TWO new records by one of your favorite bands! I will take it!

Here is the video for “Lecherous Indignities,” which will give much joy to Origin fans, and more ammunition for Origin detractors. In my opinion it sounds more like earlier era Origin, but that’s more than fine by me.

Face of Oblivion – Embers of Man (2011)

United States, Comatose Music, Technical Death Metal

New Meshuggah? Why yes, I will!

Posted by Witness to the Void on Feb 26, 2012 in Now Playing | 0 comments

“The Exquisite Machinery of Torture”

I was given 2002′s Nothing as a birthday gift, and went into it completely blind. Or maybe deaf?  But either way, the result was the same: LOTS of headbanging induced migraines. TONS of them! One really mean one happened as result of a head-to-steering-wheel collision during “Straws Pulled at Random.” The slow, cold, bleak, churn reminds me of that giant sound the robots make in the Terminator films. 

Back to metal, Destroy Erase Improve, Chaosphere, and Nothing are absolutely essential albums. I honestly think Meshuggah was the single most influential metal band of the 2000′s (see progressive metal, djent, etc.) Anyway, here are two new tracks of mathematical devastation from alien robots from the future! Koloss will result in weeks of brain scrambling headbanging starting March 27, courtesy of Nuclear Blast.

Review: Detrimentum – INHUMAN disGRACE

Posted by Witness to the Void on Jan 25, 2012 in CD Reviews | 0 comments

DETRIMENTUM
INHUMAN disGRACE (2012)

England, Deepsend Records, Technical Brutal Death Metal

Like schoolchildren, the metal community loves to bicker over sub-sub genres. Clearly technical brutal death metal differs radically from brutal technical death metal, and therefore deserves as its own separate entity. Thrash/death vs. death/thrash, doom death, death doom, slamming brutal death metal, slam death metal, guttural slamming brutal death metal…

Review: Xenocide – Galactic Oppression

Posted by Witness to the Void on Jan 23, 2012 in CD Reviews | 1 comment

XENOCIDE
Galactic Oppression (2012)

Canada, Self-released, Progressive / Technical Death Metal

Galactic Oppression via Technical Death Metal? Beam Me Up, Xenocide!

I am a sucker for anything cosmically related in metal. The depths of infinity lends itself perfectly to guitar squeals and rubbery bass. In my iTunes I have multiple playlists devoted solely to those technicians that choose to transverse the cosmos.

In contrast, I am rarely on top of upcoming releases from bands I don’t really know about, especially when they aren’t on one of the bigger metal labels. Hence, I stumbled across Xenocide’s Galactic Oppression album purely by accident – like a small spaceship running into some random object the far off, remote galaxy of the internet. But this is no space junk – this debut fell length contains a wealth of captivating technicality, memorable song writing, and stellar musicianship. The engineers of this vessel, a five piece from Vancouver, Canada, describe their music as “galactic death metal” for fans of “astronomy, death metal, and technology.”

Some Cold Metal for Cold Days: “Of Winter Born” by Ignominious Incarceration

Posted by Witness to the Void on Jan 18, 2012 in Now Playing | 0 comments

Metal is an extremely seasonal genre of music. In winter the frozen forests of Norwegian black metal reign supreme. In spring the progressive melodies bud with the returning greenery. We trudge though the swampy thickness of sludge in summer, or windmill along in Florida. We contemplate death and mortality in the sorrows of doom during fall. And then we return to winter.

“But when is the season for technical death metal?!” you cry. “All of them!” I say, “You just need the right albums!” Ignominious Incarceration’s Of Winter Born is just one of those coldly calculated technical albums for winter, but adds a steamy cup of melodic flourish to warm you up during the coldest days. Take this one on that long ski trip deep into the mountains.

A Technical Death/Thrash Onslaught – Gnostic’s “Engineering the Rule”

Posted by Witness to the Void on Jan 18, 2012 in Now Playing | 0 comments

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a housefly? Buzzing around, changing directions constantly with no loss in momentum - zip, around a corner! Zip, under the table! There! Here! WOAH, someone tried to swat me! Too slow!

This is how I would imagine it would be, anyway. Now, instead imagine that you, as a fly, have the density and momentum of a freight train. A very angry freight train. Covered in broken glass. That is how Engineering the Rule by Gnostic sounds, and I mean all of that in the best way possible.

Review: Sarpanitum – Fidelium EP

Posted by Witness to the Void on Jan 18, 2012 in CD Reviews | 0 comments

SARPANITUM
Fidelium (2011) EP

United Kingdom, Self-released, Blackened Technical Death Metal

Amongst the Catacombs of Blackened, Atmospheric Brutality…

In many ways death metal can be compared to horror movies. The obvious comparison lies within the superficial subject matter, yet with deeper research viewers/listeners can find another great similarity; the divide between the fans of old and new. Some new technical death bands, like the twelfth iteration in a big Hollywood franchise film series, slap the audience in the face with the auditory compliment to blood, guts, and gore, delivered in an almost sterilized fashion. Such gives way to complaints about pro-tool driven, break down ridden copies of a copy, or the modern “weedly-deedly” death metal bands that have forsaken the sinister atmospheres and lurking fear of the disturbing death metal of yesteryear.
Yet occasionally a new entry into the field remembers the absolutely essential atmospherics of old, while bringing a certain new flair to the genre. It drips with a diabolic climate, moving like a sinister, maddening force, playing at the edges of our mind, but simultaneously delivers the tingling terror that makes a listener/viewer say “I have never seen anything like this before” in both technique and subject matter. Everyone has seen a slasher film, just as everyone has heard a death metal album about zombies.