[Welcome one and all to our three thousandth post. I think I claimed the last milestone too. What a dick.]
My most anticipated album of the year - Ex-Lives by Buffalo’s own Every Time I Die – is just around the corner, and in building up to its release the band have been releasing a series of short videos discussing its creation and where they are as a band now. I don’t usually have time for these, but ETID are an intelligent, well-spoken and honest bunch of guys, and I have a lot of time for what they have to say.
This is, of course, on top of the official version of the track they released a few weeks back that had been bootlegged live many times, called ‘Underwater Bimbos From Outer Space’. It’s a brilliant, unreserved song, and one of the many reasons I’m cacking my pants in anticipation of the promo.
Ex-Lives is due out March 6th on Epitaph, and as per the story behind the artwork, it promises to be a riot.
When it comes to metal music videos, I tend to prevent myself from getting my hopes up. More often than not, I am tragically disappointed when my favorite bands release a music video. Lately, I seem to be drowning in boring, mediocre, and cookie cutter videos that wouldn’t dare push the boundaries of a cliché but rather just pump the video out, get paid, and move on to the next half-assed gig. It’s rare to find a director or crew that are passionate enough about the music that they are motivated to actually produce something unique, powerful, and fitting for a song. Basically, there needs to be more directors like Andrew Pulaski at Abstrakt pictures, who put the work and artistic vision of his videos above all aspects like money, time, and risk. His latest piece for Born of Osiris is a perfect example of the bars he is aiming to raise.
The video opens with a gorgeous high-speed ascendance into space, (of which I’ve watched countless times because it fits absolutely perfectly to Born of Osiris’ ambient interlude ‘The Omniscient’), to a dimension beyond ours where we get to see the amazingly talented Cameron Gray’s artwork explode into life. Turn it on 1080p and keep your third eye wide open, because this video is quite the trip, and one of my longest reviews yet.
Roma Ivakov is an Australian guitarist who puts out phenomenal solo work that has elements of shred and djent. To me, he sounds like John Petrucci of Dream Theater meets Meshuggah. Yes, that is a massive compliment, and he deserves it. He already has an album out titled Golden Stellar Pyramid, which you can stream and purchase here. The playing and composition is stellar, and I’m even more excited for his upcoming album! From what I understand, some tracks on the new album might have vocals too. His untitled album should be coming out soon, according to his Facebook page. Here are some videos of him playing some new songs that will be on the new album.
Well, not really. But Dream Theater‘s lyric video for ‘Build Me Up, Break Me Down’ from their latest album A Dramatic Turn of Events is pretty good. Normally, lyric videos are just the lyrics to the song framed with a few effects to some imagery, but this one goes a little bit extra on the chorus. The song isn’t the best one on the album, but I guess it’s the most radio-friendly one. Check it out!
The long-awaited music video for Born of Osiris‘ ‘Follow the Signs‘ is now upon us, and it rocks. The video was shot last year (as evidenced by the inclusion of former guitarist Jason Richardson) and has since been on the drawing board for some time due to the extensive CGI and production that went along with the video. There’s a lot of really cool imagery and graphics going on, and it’s easily one of the cooler looking music videos to come out from a band of their size in the last few years, slightly cheesy use of green screen aside.
I’ll spare going too deep into the video for now, as resident video columnist Chris Collins has a review coming up soon along with a quick interview with the video’s director, Andrew Pulaski. Be sure to check back for whenever that gets posted, as it’s sure to be interesting!
Born of Osiris’ opus The Discovery is out now on Sumerian Records (as if you didn’t already know!).
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time again. It comes but once a year, but it’s oh-so-sweet when it does. You know what I’m talking about – the unveiling of a brand new Red Fang video.
For all of you that have heard 2011′s Murder The Mountains, you’ll already know that it’s near impossible to resist the urge of releasing your almighty air guitar skills upon it. I know I’ve spent a fair amount of time rocking the fuck out to ‘Wires‘ and ‘Number 13‘ but it’s THAT guitar solo in ‘Hank Is Dead‘ that gets the goosebumps going and, lo and behold, Red Fang bestow this bastion of rock ‘n’ roll upon us. Featuring a variety of air guitar performances, ranging from the brilliant to the slightly disturbing, and even the return of the ‘Natty-Light-Mo-Beel’, the ‘Hank Is Dead‘ video is the quintessential accompaniment to the audio. In other news, the Chris Collins video blog will now be changing it’s name from ‘Reel Metal’ to ‘The Red Fang Video Happy Hour’.
So, here’s something that you will probably hate on principle (I don’t blame you):
Hacktivist are what I’d call… rap-djent. Yes, this will probably turn off most listeners, but I can definitely see some potential in this kind of music. Right now they sound like Linkin Park meets Tesseract and Meshuggah, and surprisingly, I kinda dig it.
Well, I used to like old school Linkin Park back in the day, so perhaps that has something to do with it. But they’re walking a fine line here, because this can easily turn into something very sour. I’m both mildly intrigued and slightly turned off, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for them. As it stands, this song is an acceptable experiment in fusion, all the elements are well done as parts, and it comes together pretty decently. The problem is, there is probably not too much overlap in listeners of all these styles, so most people will not be happy with the final combination. But if you do enjoy both styles, well, good for you, and keep an eye out for Hacktivist!
So yes, the track will feature on Dead Set On Living, Cancer Bats‘ fourth album, which will be out on April 17th, which the band have described as more upbeat than their last effort Bears, Mayors, Scraps & Bones, and will actually be less of a ‘traditional’ hardcore record. Vocalist Liam Cornier said of it:
“In a lot of ways we get really inspired by non-metal bands. For me, I find I really like looking at other things because I just don’t want to make a traditional hardcore record lyrically. So for me, I listen to a lot of indie rock and I’ve been getting super psyched on a lot of that, like the new ‘Helplessness Blues’ by Fleet Foxes”
Furthermore, the record is rumoured to feature Dez Fafara of DevilDriver and Kate Cooper of An Horse on the song ‘Bastards‘. Should be interesting. Anyway, enough waffling; here’s the video!
Not really, because there’s not much ado about valleys in this one, but it’s a pretty cool video nonetheless, and doesn’t afraid of anything. Debuted today over at NME today, the new video from Mastodon for the track ‘Dry Bone Valley‘ is chock full of odd, morphing faces, pretty colours, and imagery synonymous with ancient central American cultures. Check it out:
One of the tracks from their most recent album The Hunter, it is something of a rare gem as it features the vocals of drummer Brann Dailor, rather than the usual Brent Hinds or Troy Sanders. It’s actually one of my favourites, partly because of this – the delivery and vocal pattern is pretty cool, and it’s got that expansive Crack The Skye feel; an album I love dearly.
Mastodon are currently on tour in Europe supporting the record with U.S. tour mates Red Fang, and will soon head to the UK for a stint before flying out to Australia to play Brisbane’s Soundwave Festival in late February.
As you may remember, Tesseract (with vocalist Dan Tompkins still intact) did a short acoustic session for Metal Injection last year (video from the session above). It looks like the idea of Acousseract went over well and has stuck with them, because they’re releasing a new acoustic EP this year called Perspective (a working title). The EP will feature acoustic interpretations of select tracks from One with newcomer Elliot Coleman on vocals.
Now, TESSERACT fans will be pleased to hear the band is currently working on an acoustic inspired EP with new vocalist Elliot Coleman, to be released in Spring. Below is a video of bassist Amos Williams performing a bass guitar play through to a track from the EP. The video can be seen here, and Williams offers this insight on the video forthcoming EP:
“I’ve been planning to film myself playing along to TesseracT’s debut ‘One’ for a while now. Over the Christmas holidays I asked our fans which song they would like me to film first, to which the answer was ‘April’. This got me thinking however, as ‘April’ has evolved quite a bit, in a similar fashion to the way ‘Concealing Fate’ had evolved over the years of performing it on tour. So, I figured it would make sense to perform the latest version of ‘April’ which we’re about to release with our new EP, which has the working title of ‘Perspective’. We’re still not sure if this will be the title, but at the moment it kind of makes the most sense.
The EP itself was inspired by an acoustic session we filmed last year in New York, whilst on tour with Protest The Hero. It made us realize that a few of the tracks sounded really great when re-arranged and approached at from a different perspective. It will feature 3 new versions of tracks from ‘One’ plus a very special cover.
Once we finish off this EP we will stay in the studio and begin work our new album. This is shaping up to continue the TesseracT sound we began to develop on ‘One’. A sound that is dynamic, tender, crushing, soaring, visceral, beautiful, emotive and heavy. A box of contradictions and infinite possibilities. With maybe the exception of Euro House…we’re not really that into Euro House…sorry.”
If Tesseract manages to release the acoustic EP and a full length album this year, then 2012 is going to be HUGE for Tesseract on top of their breakout in 2011, which saw their debut album One on many of our year-end lists, including getting top honors for both editors’ lists. What are the chances of them getting album of the year two years in a row? I hope we get to find out!
