Roadburn Festival held their annual on-sale party last night, as they kicking off the 2017 festival with a party, bands Ortega and Gomer Pyle., and tickets going on sale at Tilburg’s 013 Club. The festival has also announced Ulver to play a special performance at Roadburn. Details below: Continue reading
Chelsea Wolfe, Mysticum, and Magma, have been added to Roadburn Festival 2017 as part of John Dyer Baizley’s (Baroness) curation of the fest. Deafheaven, Subrosa , The Bug Vs Dylan Carlson Of Earth, Crippled Black Phoenix have also been confirmed for special Roadburn appearances. The 22nd edition of Roadburn Festival will take place April 20-23, 2017 at the 013 Venue, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Continue reading
This article simply doesn’t come close at all in fully capturing the enormously good festival atmosphere at Inferno. From beer tastings with Nøgne Ø and pre-parties and afterparties, to all the food, drinks, good people and merch stands, to the music conference and the actual live shows, Inferno is a well-oiled machine that sees no stopping. Happily this makes each year’s Easter plans set in stone. There’s no other place like Oslo during Easter, if you’re into extreme metal that is, and aren’t we all?
For the first day of the festival there was a lot of different venues being used, some involving a little bit of walking. Basically the easiest way of dealing with this was picking the Scandic hotel Vulkan stage, since this not only is the biggest of the venues, but it also has two stages, a big 1500 or so capacity stage upstairs and a smaller stage on ground level. The first act to be caught live was Australia’s tech death band Psycroptic, impressing with just how groovy and catchy they manage to make a bombardment of death metal sound. It seems effortless as they stomp their auditory boot in our faces. Following the impressive performance by Psycroptic was Gorguts. They sadly came off as a bit too technical for a lot of the audience members , judging from how the room cleared a little bit. Maybe it is their almost jazzy approach at times, or their slightly introverted and inaccesible music, who knows? After catching a very impressive performance by the Icelandic brutal death metal band Beneath dowstairs in the pub venue, we all headed up to catch headliners Exodus. With Steve “Zetro” Souza back, the band – this time missing Gary Holt on guitar – focused slightly more on the material from albums he originally appeared on, making room for songs like ‘Blacklist’ and ‘Impaler’ from Tempo Of The Damned. As usual Exodus deliver the goods, if not in a slightly too relaxed manner, lacking that youthful energy. But hey, who can complain when ‘The Toxic Waltz’, ‘Bonded By Blood’, and ‘Piranha’ are being played? After an hour or so of happy tough-guy-lyrics thrash metal it was nice to go to bed though, knowing that the rest of the festival would be within a 100 meter walking distance from our hotel, and all in one single venue. As we all know, festivals are hard.
The first band Thursday that we were able to catch, was none other than Polish masters of death metal, Vader. As usual they delivered the goods, dealing out songs spanning all of their career, even though the focus seemed to be on their earliest material, with songs like ‘Carnal’, ‘Dark Age’, ‘Vicious Circle’, and ‘Wings’. Yet again, they also gave us strong renditions of ‘Come See My Sacrifice’, ‘Helleluyah!!! (God Is Dead)’, and ‘Triumph Of Death’. It would also be wrong not to mention the enormous effort taken on by guitarist Spider in keeping the audience thoroughly engaged throughout the show. He basically made up fifty percent of the Vader machine.
Next band, delivering blitzkrieg just after the Polish death metal barrage, were Marduk. Opening their set with ‘Frontschwein’ and ‘Blond Beast’, they also proved themselves as one of the better and more relevant bands out there when it comes to a solid live show. Classics like ‘Slay The Nazarene’ and ‘Burn My Coffin’ were intermixed with newer material like ‘Womb Of Perishableness and The Levelling Dust’, and that the band has come to the point were they have to leave out classic songs, is yet another sign that they have been delivering good material for a long time now.
Both Vader and Marduk were mainstage bands, playing the Rockfeller stage. Cattle Decapitation were to headline the smaller stage downstairs, at John Dee. With last year’s phenomenal The Anthropocene Extinction (Metal Blade) under their belts, the American ensemble had managed to fill John Dee to the very brim with their fans. The band is also clever enough to focus on that album and the one before it, Monolith Of Inhumanity, by far their two best albums in terms of both quality material that separates them from the rest, and also probably their two most popular releases within the metal community. ‘Forced Gender Reassignment’, ‘Your Disposal’, ‘Manufactured Extinct’, and ‘The Prophets Of Loss’ are all really good songs, and with a convincing performance to a Cattle Decapitated-straved audience this went down as a concert to remember. Too bad they were placed on the smaller stage, especially since the sound production is much better at the mainstage at Rockefeller.
The biggest surprise and the most memorable performance of this year’s festival was easily that of Norwegian veterans Mysticum. They performed live for the first time in Norway in ages, and they brought with them a grand production worthy of an headliner act. All three members were elevated on three tall platforms, the poles for said stands being large videoscreens, as most of the stage was one big videoshow. If not displaying static to accompany the light show, the screens showed huge satanic symbols, war imagery and so on. It was … Well, for the first time in years someone brought something exciting and new to the concert stage, even making a blasé writer like myself smile from ear to ear.
WORDS BY PÅL TEIGLAND LYSTRUP AND JULIA TUOMINEN
Raise the horns! Inferno Festival hits Norway this week and for year 16 there is no sign of slowing down. A total of 42 bands, 25 from outside of Norway! From traditional black metal, to thrash, to tech death and more, many a fans music tastes will be delighted by Inferno! Headliners like Mayhem, Marduk, Mysticum, Exodus, Sodom Suffocation, Vader, Nile and Gorguts make this sure to be one of the best the fests history. For the third year in a row, Ghost Cult will be there to cover it!
Today kicks off with the club day featuring bands like headliner and thrash legends Exodus. They wil be joined by Gorguts, Psycroptic, Sahg, Vreidhammer, Mistur, 3rd Attempt, Dødsfall, and more.
Thursday night brings the major night of the fest with Marduk, Cattle Decapitation, Mysticum, Vader, ICS Vortex, and Shores of Null to name a few of major heavy hitters.
Friday might be the most well-rounded day of Inferno. Two death metal legends in Nile and Suffocation, thrash kings Sodom, Blood Red Throne, the epic Craft, Wormlust, The Crawling and more.
Just in time for Easter Sunday, Saturday night will close out the fest with Mayhem, Moonsorrow, Nifelheim, Månegarm , Order, and Nordjevel . As always there are vendors, a music conference, other kinds of entertainment and beer!
Tickets are still available, details below:
4 days festival pass (including club night): SOLD OUT!
3 days festival pass (without club night): 1500,- NOK. (including ticket fee)
http://www.billettservice.no/event/inferno-metal-festival-3-dagerspass-billetter/468605
Club day pass (only wednesday): 460,- NOK. (including ticket fee)
http://www.billettservice.no/event/inferno-metal-festival-klubbdag-billetter/474805
Thursday pass (Marduk, Vader, ICS Vortex) 600,- NOK. (including ticket fee)
http://www.billettservice.no/event/482975
Friday pass (Nile, Sodom, Blood Red Throne) 600,- NOK. (including ticket fee)
http://www.billettservice.no/event/482977
Saturday pass (Mayhem, Nifelheim, Order) 600,- NOK. (including ticket fee)
http://www.billettservice.no/event/482979
Tickets available at Billettservice (http://www.billettservice.no/). Phone: +47 81533133
http://www.infernofestival.net / http://www.facebook.com/InfernoMetalFestival
INFERNO HOTEL
http://www.infernofestival.net/hotelbooking
Single room: 725,00 NOK
Double room:
1 person: 999,00 NOK
2 persons: 999,00 NOK (499,50 per pers)
Superior room:
1 person: 1.180,00 NOK
2 persons: 1.280,00 NOK (640,00 per pers)
3 persons: 1.530,00 NOK (510,00 per pers)
Deluxe room:
1 person:1.280,00 NOK
2 persons: 1.380,00 NOK (690,00 per pers)
3 persons: 1.630,00 NOK (543,00 per pers)
Business Suite:
1 person: 1.480,00 NOK
2 persons: 1.680,00 NOK (840,00 per pers)
3 persons: 1.930,00 NOK (643,00 per pers)
4 persons: 2.180,00 NOK (545,00 per pers)
Executive Suite
1 person: 1980 NOK
2 persons: 2180 NOK (1090 per pers)
3 persons: 2430 NOK (810 per pers)
4 persons: 2680 NOK (670 per pers)
E-mail: inferno.christiania@choice.no
http://www.clarionroyalchristiania.no
Mysticum is streaming a music video for “The Ether,” from their 2014 release Planet Satan, out now via Peaceville, here and here.
The band has announced its highly anticipated return to the stage after 19 years, with a main performance at Finland’s Black Flames of Blasphemy Festival on November 14, 2015.
1. LSD
2. Annihilation
3. Far
4. The Ether
5. Fist of Satan
6. All Must End
7. Cosmic Gun
8. Dissolve to Impiety
In other Mysticum news, a themed restaurant called Planet STN had its grand opening in Guadalajara, Mexico. Under construction for many months, the Planet STN restaurant notably includes a range of Mysticum-spiced delicacies from its menu, an endeavor brought about by the owner’s (undeniable) love for the band, mixed with themes of astronomy and ancient ET civilizations (Annunakkis). The menu mainly features Italian cuisine with an entire burger selection compiled of Mysticum-inspired names, including the irresistible and mouth-watering sounding Annihilation LSD Burger! Reports of Black Magic Mushrooms being included are yet to be confirmed. Check out Planet STN on Facebook here.
Mysticum has released their second album Planet Satan, out now via Peaceville. The album was recorded and mixed at Fias Co. Studios with producer Sverre Dæhli and mastered by Tom Kvålsvoll at Strype Audio in Oslo.
Watch a track-by-track video commentary for their Planet Satan album available here and an album trailer here. Listen to “LSD” here.
Demilich –Nespithe (Necropolis, 1993)
After all the noise being made about the giants of Sweden and the USA, it’s about time the Finns got a look in. Although don’t look too closely as you may not escape with your sanity intact after any length of time exposed to Nespithe, the single album by Kuopio’s Demilich, a quartet who decided to take death metal, dissect it in the most painful and morbid ways possible before reassembling it with alien technologies. The riffs and guitar lines make Voïvod sound like AC/DC, so complex, mangled and downright weird are the time signatures. The percussion and bass guitar are restless and almost jazz like, and as for the bizarre, almost burped vocals (recorded with no effects) and long-winded sci-fi themed lyrics, no one apart from the band had any idea what was going on. Too weird to live, Demilich, have reformed and split several times since the release of this thirty-nine minute monument to madness and maybe, just maybe it’s for the best.
diSEMBOWELMENT – Transcendence Into the Peripheral (Relapse, 1993)
Surely the North of England, with its bleak moors, freezing temperatures and morbid ethos was the perfect setting for doom/death, especially when you take into account the impact of the Peaceville Northern Doom Trinity of My Dying Bride, Anathema and Paradise Lost, right? Well you’d be dead wrong, for the finest example of that genre, then and ever, crawled out of the Australian bush twenty years ago in the form of diSEMBOWELMENT, who with the utterly peerless Transcendence Into the Peripheral mashed death metal and doom together not in some harmonious accord, but more like a berserk Victor Frankenstein drunk on the horror of his own creation. Nightmarish, drawn out doom sections sap your energy and will before rabid grind-speed blasting parts appear out of nowhere to pin you to the wall and spit blood in your face before retreating back into the darkness, while the sinister melodies and tortured moaning vocals do their best to make things even worse. An endurance test that few make to the end of, Transcendence Into the Peripheral proved that location meant jack if you hated yourself enough to begin with.
Thergothon – Stream From the Heavens (Avantgarde, 1994)
Just when you thought that metal couldn’t get any slower or depressive sounding, along came a trio of Finns who had other ideas, all of them in different shades of black. They were known as Thergothon, and with the forty minutes of anguish and drawn-out misery they committed to tape in the beginning of 1994, they not only explored more of the abyss than ever before, but created an entire new genre; funeral doom. Characterised by one-note downstrokes, haunting, ethereal keyboards and vocals alternating between diseased death grunts and stark clean-sung laments, the music captured was so wrist-slashingly bleak it’s no surprise that the band called it a day soon after. The host of imitators spawned was inevitable, but none yet have come close to capturing the barren, disfigured beauty on offer here.
Mysticum – In the Streams of Inferno (Full Moon, 1996)
Black metal was in a tight spot in the late 90s with the old guard past their best and the new school more interested in vampires and bloodsucking than darkness and extremity so thank fuck for bands such as Norway’s Mysticum who decided that the way forward was to look to the future. However, this was a nightmarish, militaristic future of deadly guitar riffs, merciless programming in place of live drums and an aesthetic that was just as grim as anything the Helvete brigade could ever conceive of. In short, Cyber-Black Metal was born, and were it not for the utterly shoddy efforts of the bands that followed in Mysticum’s wake, the black metal landscape would look very different today. Doubt the quality of this recording? Then head over to the band’s website where it’s free for all to hear.
Floodgate – Penalty (Roadrunner, 1996)
If you thought that Down were the only stoner/doom band with a singer recruited from a thrash/groove act that mattered, then you’ve obviously never heard Floodgate, and shame on you. Featuring the mightily refined and recognisable pipes of Exhorder’s Kyle Thomas, Penalty is a timeless classic that will appeal to anyone with a passing interest in rock and metal. The songwriting is stellar, with the effortlessly catchy grooves of ‘Through My Days Into My Nights’ and the loose, flowing rhythms of ‘Shivering’ lodging into your brain for days afterwards. Heavy without being abrasive and always enjoyable, it’s a tragedy and a mystery that Floodgate only ever recorded one album given the talents and resources at their disposal. As it is, we only have Penalty but it’s a record that keeps on giving and will never let you down, and for that we should be thankful.
JAMES CONWAY
As any fool who follows the metal scene can tell you, there’s one hell of a lot of albums out there to listen to. New bands are emerging at an unprecedented rate, the old guard you thought long-dead are reforming quicker than you can say “Greatest Hits Tour” and bands that really should just lay down and die are instead locked into a seemingly never-ending cycle of record/tour/record, regardless of whether their fans have had enough. Grave Digger, Illdisposed and Paganizer have released forty albums between them. Does anyone own any of them? Thought not…
So, what about the bands who released just one full-length before disappearing into obscurity? What impact have these single-figured artists had on our beloved scene? The answer is quite a bit. More than quite a bit, in fact… With that in mind Ghost Cult is proud to present the fifteen essential albums by bands that only gave us one opportunity to hear their wares.
Read on and see if you agree.
Repulsion – Horrified (Necrosis, 1989)
Once regarded as the fastest band in the world, along with being one of the innovators of grindcore along with Napalm Death and Terrorizer, Flint, Michigan trio Repulsion released Horrified in 1989 to a largely unsuspecting public. Its light-speed, hideously ugly legacy has endured to this day, with the band still headlining festival stages on the strength of this one 29-minute recording. Featuring some of the most frantic, caustic riffage ever captured, along with suitably sickening lyrics and of course, that iconic goofy zombie on the front cover, Horrified is an extreme metal classic that you will never get tired of spinning. If you don’t lose your shit when the riff to ‘Black Breath’ begins you probably aren’t human.
Carnage – Dark Recollections (Necrosis, 1990)
When you think of Swedish Death Metal the obvious names that spring to mind are Entombed, At the Gates and Dismember, but there is one often overlooked act whose contribution to the genre is utterly essential. They were Carnage, five spotty oiks from Stockholm whose sole release Dark Recollections was perhaps the purest embodiment of the Sunlight sound that all bands of the genre strived for; buzzsaw guitars, twisted melodies and indecipherable barked lyrics concerning violence and death. Given the whiff of grindcore that imbued the recording it was unsurprising that guitarist Mike Amott soon jumped ship to join Carcass while the rest of the band merged with the remnants of Dismember. However, the spirit of Dark Recollections was absorbed into that band, a more than fitting legacy for an album of such macabre excellence.
Winter – Into Darkness (Future Shock, 1990)
Picture if you will, planet Earth devastated by a nuclear holocaust; a grey, rotting visage of sunless skies, obliterated cityscapes and blasted landscapes. Now imagine that some malign sorcery has resurrected the corpses of Celtic Frost to be this ruined world’s own house band, playing endlessly on only for the benefit of the endless piles of corpses that stretch to the blackened horizon. This is what Into Darkness by New York trio Winter sounds like. Arguably one of the most miserable, lifeless recordings of all time, this is a tortuous forty-six minute crawl through wretchedness via the medium of lethargic doom riffs, clattering percussion and gruff, indifferent vocals. You’re not meant to enjoy it and it’s no surprise Winter only managed one EP after committing this monstrosity to tape.
God Macabre – The Winterlong (M.B.R., 1993)
Another Swedish death metal act that lasted all too briefly, that isn’t to say that Vålberg’s God Macabre didn’t have the talent, as anyone who has spent time with the short but sick The Winterlong will enthusiastically tell you. Far more morose and bitter sounding than most death metal albums that were being released at that time, their sole release may have only lasted twenty-seven minutes but the songs on offer had ‘timeless’ stamped all over them, blending catchy yet savage riffs with mournful melodies and an innate disgust and horror at life. Recently re-issued with the band reforming last year, now is the time for those unacquainted with this forgotten classic to recognise one of the most important bands in death metal, in Sweden or anywhere.
Disincarnate – Dreams of the Carrion Kind (Roadrunner, 1993)
With death metal already beginning to show signs of creative stagnation in 1993, it took the twisted vision of one of the genre’s most talented and well-travelled soldiers to show that all was not lost and that where there was death there was life. Enter James Murphy, who after stints in Death and Obituary decided to take the lead, which he did with the utterly brilliant Dreams of the Carrion Kind under the Disincarnate name. If you thought Death had started to sacrifice songwriting in favour of technicality, found Obituary a tad dull and Suffocation a bit too over the top then your prayers were answered, for Murphy somehow managed to filter all the plus points and none of the weaknesses from those aforementioned bands into one of the darkest, endlessly fascinating and still inherently listenable Death Metal albums of all time. Their split was a tragedy that often comes with an excess of talent but news that the band has reformed is a hopeful sign that more people will soon become aware of Dreams of the Carrion Kind and the brilliance of James Murphy.
JAMES CONWAY