New Metal-Neaera and Mourning Wolf

Today brings us news of yet another anticipated metal album release in early 2013.  This news makes me happy because I have been a fan of this German band since their 2008 release, "Omnicide-Creation Unleashed."  The new disc, scheduled for North American release on March 5, is entitled "Ours is the Storm".  Today they have unveiled the title track of the new disc, and as expected, it rips. 

With galloping melodeath riffs over a bleak ream of guitar-based atmospheric wandering, the new track is everything Neaera fans have come to expect.  Vocals switch back and forth between skin-tearing howls and blistering grunts as the somber guitar leads drown listeners in an inescapable torrent of fury.  From what this track shows, the band's sound will change little with the release of this album, with minor adjustments in the how palbable the bleakness is.  This music is for fans of melodeath, reminding of some Dark Tranquillity and Omnium Gatherum tunes.

So far, I'm liking what I'm hearing.  Check out the new track below.


Also to be filed under the 'new' folder, is an unexpected gem I found over at No Clean Singing.  The band is from Washington and is called Mourning Wolf.  As is often the case with new music I encounter, I found the cover art to draw me in. 

As far as style goes, Mourning Wolf melds metalcore riffing with blackened atmospheric moments similar to, but not as grand as Alcest.  I'm not a huge fan of metalcore or black metal, but I decided to listen anyway.  The relief in this release is that the music includes no vocals at all.  I'm a fan of bands that tend to blur the lines between genres, and Mourning Wolf pull it off well.  Their new EP is available as a name-your-price download from their bandcamp page, which also provides us with the full stream of the EP.  This release contains only two tracks, but they average better than 8:30 in length.  Check out this new EP.  You will not be disappointed. 

We will return to some less hard-core stuff tomorrow.  Until then, thanks for listening and enjoy!

Skyharbor-Blinding White Noise review

Anyone who reads our blog on a regular basis probably knows that as a general rule, I don't do djent metal.  This is much less a rule than a guideline, so there are bound to be some exceptions.  Skyharbor's latest album is such an exception.

Here is why I am making an exception for this album: This disc is less djenty and 'core' than 99% of the scene bands in existence.  If you are unsure what a 'scene band' is, let me try to explain it in layman's terms.  A 'scene band' is a band whose music conforms rigidly to a set of stylistic standards within a certain sub genre, or 'scene'. 

While this album is certainly a metal album, it does not fall back on the metalcore crutch that many djent bands do and in fact includes syncopated djent riffs as merely a backing to the rest of the music, which in retrospect hardly sounds metal at all. 

The full title of this album is "Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos".  It is essentially a two-part album where most of the tracks come with the Illusion prefix and the final three carrying the Chaos prefix.  The Illusion tracks are exceptional progressive-styled rock tunes that drift on auras of grandeur line thin, wispy clouds scooting across the sky.  Vocals on these tracks are surprisingly melodic, using vocal effects to stretch some notes.  These tracks are obviously meant to take on an illusory tone.

Conversely, the final three tracks, the Chaos tracks, are more up-front metal approaches, mixing in fewer of the stretched vocals and introducing screamed vocals for the first time.  These harsher vocals are carried out tastefully and do not invade the overall atmospheric content of the album as a whole, only further enhancing that atmospheric qualities. 

This is an album I somehow missed this year.  I certainly listened to fewer metal releases in 2012, and this one didn't even register until it showed up on a year-end best album list over at The NewReview.  The album cover alone convinced me to check it out, and I liked what I heard.  If you are into progressive metal and hard rock, you will enjoy this disc.  Listen to the full album stream from the Basick Records bandcamp page below.  This is a very good album.  To get a full taste of what this record has to offer, at least listen to one Illusion song and one Chaos song.  As always, thanks for reading and enjoy!

New tunes from Jessica Bailiff and Mutiny Within

Today's new music post is going to cover two completely different artists, both of which just happen to have new material either already released or in the pipeline. 

When one thinks of solo shoegaze artists, he or she needs only to reference Jessica Bailiff.  Bailiff released her new album "At the Down-Turned Jagged Rim of the Sky" a few months ago.  This release not only caught her fans by surprise, but her record label as well.  Bailiff has a low, melancholic voice on this song, which helps to define the music as hers, as opposed to Tamaryn.  This song is similar in style to Tamaryn in that it incorporates looping reverb passages throughout its lower tempo.  It is pretty repetitive, but this does not have a chance to get old, as the song is less than four minutes long.  This is an interesting track to say the least, and the cover art is outstanding!  Check out Take Me to the Sun (So Warm, So Ready) below.


Mutiny Within is, at first glance, nothing more than another American metalcore outfit, but this label is ingenuous at best.  Atypical of most metalcore in that it uses mostly clean vocals with a few accentual screams, this is a good track that shows decent growth from the band's previous releases.  Mutiny Within has a new record called "Synchronicity" coming soon, and this track debuted just the other day at The NewReview.  While the NewReview page has apparently been taken down, the soundcloud link still exists.  Unfortunately this track does not have an embed option.  To listen to the new track, Embers, go here.  Sorry for the brief nature of this post.  We will return with more substance tomorrow.  Until then, thanks for reading, and as always, enjoy!

New stuff from SycAmour and Winters Wish

I feel I have to star this off by quoting a movie called Mercury Rising.  "I'm so glad I missed the whole (djent) thing, so my (ears are) virgin territory for (punchy riffs and soaring melodies)". 

If you are unfamiliar with the recent wave of djent music, I can offer some insight on what the term implies.  Djent is a sub genre of metal built from fragments of metalcore, groove metal, and thrash.  It gets its name from the way it sounds, because the riffing sounds like the word djent.  It mostly earns a negative connotation these days amongst fans of extreme metal music due to how popular it became a few years ago where bands began to copy each other.  It seems that the basic template is the early work of Meshuggah.  This style of music is pounding, groovy metal music with both extreme and melodic vocals.  Michigan's SycAmour does not list Meshuggah as an influence, but you can hear it in their music.  This is heavy music with low, growling vocals during the verses, and uplifting clean vocals for the chorus.  I never was a fan of djent or anything related to it, but I am a huge fan of both Textures and Gojira, which take the Meshuggah sound and adapt it to their own philosophy on heavy music, therefore earning them a sound all their own.  I'm not willing to say yet whether SycAmour has their own style nailed down, but what I do hear is pretty good.  Take a listen to the stream from their bandcamp page below.


Winters Wish is a Sydney-based pop outfit that creates haunting melodies with slow, layered pop vocals over a stunning wash of ambiance.  This is not your average drone ambient, either, as the music is rich is soul and texture, something that drone is not.  The problem with this group is that their self-released EP "Persia" is so fresh that you cannot seem to buy it anywhere.  What is a person who likes the music to do?  At least they do have a full stream on their bandcamp page, which I am embedding below.  This music has a great balance between pop and ambient that I find to be unique and intriguing.  Listen below.  Enjoy!

New music from Nick Efremov and Underoath

I've got some sad news and some happy news for you today.  Since I try to be a glass-half-full kind of guy (what's the point anyway?--it's half a glass, right?) I'll share the happy news first.

Nick Efremov has released a bunch of new music available for free download at Soundcloud.  Efremov is a Russian electronic producer who composes beautiful works of dream-pop/electro-gaze laden with rich reverb.  After listening to just one of the new songs, I decided I would pick this up.  After all, you can't go wrong with free.  The textures Efremov weaves into this music are breathtaking, rounding the arc from full-on shoegaze, to repetitive dream-pop, to electronic ambiance, and back again.  His vocals are understated, layered, and looped to create the stretched melodies that make up the music.  While this music is mostly electronic, moments of distorted live instruments creep through the music.  It appears that most of the songs are written in Russian, so I am sharing one that is obviously in English.  Check out December here.


Now that I have the happy out of the way, I lament to be the bearer of the sad news.  American Christian Metalcore band Underoath is disbanding after some fifteen years in the business.  They have just announced plans for their farewell tour and have shared perhaps their last brand new song, which is streaming now.  I became a fan of Underoath after hearing the solid release "Define the Great Line".  After that, I picked up a copy of "Lost in the Sound of Separation" as soon as I could.  This disc also did not disappoint.  As I mentioned, Underoath is a Christian metal band.  Lyrically, most of their songs deal with personal, emotional issues and religion.  This band manages to blend harsh, screaming vocals with beautiful melodic clean singing as well as any I have ever heard.  When they break out the clean singing, the pace of the music slackens to reveal heartfelt, somber guitar melodies enriched with ambient atmospherics.  Underoath is as good as metalcore gets.  This new track, Sunburnt will apparently be released with the farewell tour live album.  This is a great track by which to remember this excellent band.  Check it out below.  Thanks for reading and enjoy!!

New tunes from Mechina and All That Remains

Good afternoon, everyone!  I have some new stuff to share with you today.  Yes, that means I found some, and in unusual places at that.  Thank YouTube, sort of.

The first couple of tracks are from Mechina, an industrial metal band from Chicago.  Mechina hasn't quite hit the big time yet, but they have existed for nine years per their Facebook page.  The style of music they play is reminiscent of Fear Factory, but with a few electronic elements, all contrasted against grand orchestral swells.  After I heard the band's previous album "Conqueror" I was hooked.  That album showed a lot of promise.  These new tracks showcase what the band is good at, indicating an excellent upcoming release.  These tracks are from the band's forthcoming album "Empyrean", which is due out on January 1.  The first of these tracks is very much indicative of the music Mechina plays.  The second is a longer, purely orchestral version of the same song.  It is incredible, so hopefully it makes the new album.



The next track I found out about through the usual channels, from The NewReview, which has been severely lacking in interesting music of late.

All that Remains is a band I have experience with.  I own copies of both "The Fall of Ideals" and "Overcome".  This new track captures the same style as both, not as heavy as "The Fall of Ideals" and not as mainstream-sounding as "Overcome".  As with most metalcore, the chorus is filled with catchy clean singing that is easy to understand and sing along with, while the verses employ mostly mid-range screams.  The harsh vocals I think sound relatively stale and generic on this track, but the cleans are dynamic.  It remains to be seen whether the forthcoming album can deliver the sort of music I crave enough to purchase it.  The new album, "A War You Cannot Win", will be released on November 6.  Check out the first single, You Can't Fill My Shadow below.  Enjoy!

Namesake-The Movement

Today's post was going to be about a new song from As I Lay Dying, but then I stumbled across this interesting track from Atlanta's Namesake while looking for the AILD song over at The NewReview. 

I'm much more impressed with Namesake than I am with AILD.  Don't get me wrong, I like AILD, though their later albums have gotten bland and sounded like same old-same old metalcore. 

Namesake have released the single The Movement, which will be on their new album, Borders & Fences.  The new track is an anthemic modern rock tune that does not fall into the same trap as most newer modern rock bands do.  The repetition isn't overbearing on this song.  Layered vocals form the chorus while keyboards play through the song's underpinnings, creating a spacey atmospheric vibe.  I also am digging the album cover quite a bit. 

Check out their new track below.  It is impressive.