Tag Archive: Opeth

New Ghost Album In The Works!

Feb.02, 2012

Who’s excited for some new Scooby Doom? The Satanic songbirds Ghost are hard at work on a new album, hopefully to be released in time for the pending apocalypse!

Blistering.com recently did an interview with one of the Nameless Ghouls, and asked about the follow up to Opus Eponymous:

The Nameless Ghoul: Most of the material has been written already. Throughout the production and writing, we’ve been using the word “divine” a lot. Whereas with the first album, the sound was slightly “wooden,” we want the new album to be stone and golden in terms of being lavished and divine. So we are trying to paint an even more solemn religion and there’s all sorts of dramatic steps forward. The first album is about the arrival of the anti-Christ, about a coming darkness. The new album will about a current darkness, the presence of the devil, how it relates to divinity and how it’s futile you grasp whatever is divine.

Excellent news! Opus Eponymous really made waves since its release, and hopefully they can keep up with their strong forward momentum. While we’re waiting for the new tunes to take shape, you can catch Ghost supporting Opeth and Mastodon this Spring on the Heritage Hunter tour.

- JR

Tags: Ghost, Mastodon, Opeth

Tours And Rumours Of Tours Pt. 1: Mastodon, Opeth, Ghost Tour Dates Announced!

Filed Under: Tours and Rumors of Tours

Jan.31, 2012

It’s finally here; Opeth and Mastodon have announced their co-headlining North American ‘Heritage Hunter Tour’ featuring the loveable Swedish Satanists Ghost. The tour is rather extensive, going from April 4th through May 12th and will see Mastodon and Opeth swapping out closing spots.

Without further ado, here are the dates!

* Denotes Opeth closing show
** Denotes Mastodon closing show

04 Apr – Portland, ME @ State Theater**
05 Apr – Boston, MA @ Orpheum Theater*
06 Apr – Montreal, QC @ Metropolis*
07 Apr – Toronto, ON @ The Sony Centre For The Performing Arts*
09 Apr – Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory**
10 Apr – Wallingford, CT @ The Dome**
11 Apr – New York, NY @ Roseland**
13 Apr – Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theater**
14 Apr – Grand Rapids, MI @ Intersection**
15 Apr – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE**
16 Apr – Knoxville, TN @ TN Theater*
18 Apr – Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom**
19 Apr – Dallas, TX @ Palladium*
20 Apr – San Antonio @ Back Stage Live*
21 Apr – Corpus Christi, TX @ Concrete Street*
23 Apr – Denver, CO @ Fillmore*
25 Apr – Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues**
26 Apr – Hollywood, CA @ Gibson*
27 Apr – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theatre*
28 Apr – Reno, NV @ Grand Sierra Resort**
30 Apr – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theater*
01 May – Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum*
03 May – Edmonton, AB @ Edmonton Events Ctr*
04 May – Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Hall**
05 May – Saskatoon @ The Odeon**
06 May – Winnipeg, MB @ Burton Cummings*
09 May – Washington DC @ The Fillmore*
10 May – Charlotte, NC @ Fillmore**
11 May – Myrtle Beach, SC @ House of Blues*
12 May – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade Music Park**

Tickets go on sale February 3rd, but presales will be available starting February 1st at this location.

I am beyond excited for this. Anyone else making the trip out to Knoxville?

- JR

Tags: Ghost, Heritage Hunter Tour, Mastodon, Opeth

Tours and Rumors of Tours—Part Two: Mastodon/Opeth/Ghost Touring North America This Spring??

Filed Under: Tours and Rumors of Tours, WILD SPECULATION!

Jan.17, 2012

Above image and awareness courtesy of Metal Injection.

And the touring schedule of 2012 gets that much better as Blabbermouth reports rumors of Mastodon, Opeth, and Ghost working out a North American tour for this Spring. There’s not much to tell right now, but I shouldn’t have to explain to you folks why this is pretty damn awesome.

Personally, I’ve never been able to see any of these three fantastic groups perform live, and if the rumored trek is extensive enough, I hope to not miss it, and I pity the fool that does. I think it’s safe to say that live music won’t be dead in 2012. Between this and Summer Slaughter, metal heads should be set!

- JR

Tags: Ghost, Mastodon, Opeth

Farewell, 2011: Alkahest’s Top 20 Albums Of 2011

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.29, 2011

This is probably one of the better years for me since I began listening to metal. I don’t know if it’s due to a broadened taste, me actually paying more attention this year, or if the genre decided to collectively progress, but 2011 was just absolutely fantastic. I knew six months ago that compiling a best-of list for this year would be tricky, and of course it was!

Here’s the thing with my personal top-20 that you’ve probably read of in other lists; after the first couple of albums, the list is completely arbitrary and depending on my mood of the day, this list could be shuffled all about and perhaps replaced. My list also doesn’t follow our ratings scale and essentially came down to what I felt I enjoyed the most this year. So if you’re thinking to yourself, “hey, Alkahest gave X a 4 and Y a 5, then why is X listed higher?”…

Well, you’re going to have to figure that one out on your own, I guess. I’m fickle. Let us begin!

View Full Article »

Farewell, 2011: DeusExMachina’s Top 21 List

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.28, 2011

2011 was an absolutely absurd year for not only metal, but music in general. Such marvelous records from the best names in music. But no doubt that you know this, so lets not waste time, eh?

View Full Article »

Farewell, 2011: Nayon’s Top 21 of 2011

Filed Under: Lists!

Dec.27, 2011

Wow, this year was an amazing year for metal. There were many great technical and progressive albums, which is what I consider to be my ‘main’ genre. A lot of my favorite bands came out with excellent albums, and there were a few surprising newcomers. Some of these I’ve reviewed myself and given a great score, so it won’t be a surprise. Some of these I didn’t have the time to review, which was a shame. Anyway, without further ado, here is my list of top 20 of 2011:

Honorable mentions:

Tre Watson – Gravestones

The reason I’m not giving this an actual rating is because Tre is a close friend of mine, so I can’t be unbiased about this. It’s a really great EP, and especially the last track is a masterpiece. Definitely listen to this.

Substructure – Monolith

These guys just came out of nowhere. They do a great blend of Born of Osiris and The Contortionist, a.k.a progressive spacecore. The reason it’s not in my actual list is because it’s quite short and a bit derivative. It’s still a good listen though.

Empirine – The Great Excursion

These guys perform a technical/progressive death blend of Opeth, Obscura and Cynic. They’re pretty incredible, and we’ve covered them a few times, so you should definitely check them out.

View Full Article »

Corelia: The Cut Guest Interview!

Filed Under: Interviews

Dec.09, 2011

“The Cut? Wait, what is that?!”

The Cut is a student-ran magazine at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Among their ranks is resident metalhead and admin Dan Curhan, regular HBIH reader and commenter. While The Cut is a music rag of sorts, their focus isn’t really the same as ours; while Dan runs a monthly metal column, the overall scope is more broad and all-encompassing. Not too long ago, Dan hit up Heavy Blog favorites Corelia for an interview and thought it appropriate for us to cross-post. We were more than happy to oblige! Read Dan’s interview with guitarist Chris Dower, bassist Adrian Alperstein, and drummer Clayton Pratt below, where they discuss their excellent new EP Nostalgia and vocalist Ryan Devlin’s new position in The Human Abstract.

The Cut: You guys have just recorded and released your EP, and you did that all yourselves, right?

Chris Dower: Yeah, we pretty much did everything ourselves. The only we didn’t really do ourselves was the final mastering. The guy who mastered it, his name is Luke Martin, he’s from the UK. Um, cool guy. Never really talked to him, just over Facebook, but he offered to master the EP for free. So we called him up.

The Cut: Nice! So did you buy all your equipment? Or did you rent it? Or..?

CD: Well, Ryan [Borrell, the other guitar player] and I both own Axe-Fxs, so that makes recording the guitar pretty easy. Other than that, we just used Superior Drummer for the drums, and vocals…

Clayton Pratt: Yeah, vocals we pretty much did the same thing. Cheap stuff, we used a [PreSonus] FireBox, which is a lower model of a Firepod, which we used for the interface and the preamp for the mic. The mic we used was an SM-7b, and going into Cubase, and yeah, that’s it. That’s all we use.

The Cut: Nothing too fancy, but it came out really good.

CD: Yeah, we were surprised. We were kinda wary – we started recording the EP and we were like “uhh how’s this gonna turn out? we’re not really experienced with self recording.” It was painful, but it turned out really well, I think.

CP: Yeah, it took a lot of extra time making, like, that kind of stuff sound professional. We just took the extra time to make it sound professional.

View Full Article »

Tags: 3, Between The Buried and Me, Corelia, Dream Theater, Opeth, Periphery, Protest the Hero, Sikth, The Human Abstract

Hey! Listen To Empirine!

Filed Under: Audio, Listen To This!, New music

Nov.15, 2011

Empirine are a Swedish duo who play a pretty interesting flavor of technical death metal. They sound like Omnivium-style Obscura with the vocals, tone and general style, Focus-era Cynic with some of the riffage and vocoders, and Damnation-era Opeth with the clean interludes. Is your mouth watering already? Just go check out their EP The Great Excursion below!

I think they have a very bright future ahead of them with their strong mix of great influences, so please support Alexander Edlund (vocals, keyboard, production) and Robin Brinck (everything else)! I will definitely be keeping an eye out for these guys.

- NT

Tags: Cynic, Empirine, Obscura, Omnivium, Opeth, The Great Excursion

Gojira Signs To Roadrunner Records; Studio Video Now Available

Filed Under: General News, Upcoming releases, Video

Nov.11, 2011

So everyone’s been all super excited as of late because Gojira are in New York recording their new album. Not only that, but they’re now signed to the biggest metal and hard rock label around, Roadrunner Records. They’re letting fans in on the action by opening their official YouTube account and posting the first studio video of them in the studio, seen above.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

“We are so stoked to walk with the legendary Roadrunner,” Joe said about the new partnership. “We discovered Sepultura, Machine Head, Death, Fear Factory and so many other great bands thanks to these guys. Roadrunner has been a great source of inspiration for us as metal fans. It’s an honor to be part of this family today as a band. We feel we’ll get the right support at the right moment in our career. We cannot wait to release our new record and get back on the road.”

A lot of people are anxious over this new business relationship, but I don’t really see any harm in it. Roadrunner’s roster has many fantastic acts who make the albums they want to without issue, like Dream Theater, Opeth, and Porcupine Tree. They also signed Mastodon and Periphery for distribution outside of North America. Everything’s going to be just fine on this front. For those who aren’t keeping count, we should be getting a new Gojira album as well as their star-studded Sea Shepherd EP (Brent Hinds, Randy Blythe, Max Cavalera, Frederik Thordendal, and Devin Townsend) in the next year. This is exciting! We’ll have more release information as its given.

- JR

Tags: Dream Theater, Gojira, Mastodon, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Roadrunner Records, Sea Shepherd

Leprous – Bilateral

Filed Under: Reviews

Nov.08, 2011

Leprous

Bilateral

01. Bilateral
02. Forced Entry
03. Restless
04. Thorn
05. Mb. Indifferentia
06. Waste of Air
07. Mediocrity Wins
08. Cryptogenic Desires
09. Acquired Taste
10. Painful Detour

[08/23/11]
[Inside Out]

Leprous are a very interesting band. While they’ve had stylistic changes over the years, the style they’ve reached at `Bilateral` is definitely where they sound most comfortable. If you wonder what they sound like, it’s a bit difficult to explain, but I’ll try. Try taking Dream Theater, adding haunting characteristics of Opeth, sprinkling in some of Frank Zappa‘s craziness, adding a very Levi/Werstler style of guitar, and adding some of Devin Townsend Project‘s Deconstruction stylings, you’ll have the right mix. Now, if those names made your stomach turn with disgust, this album is obviously not for you. But if you’re a regular reader of ours, most of these names probably made you jump with excitement. Well then, hop in and experience this crazy journey with me.

View Full Article »

Tags: Devin Townsend, Devin Townsend Project, Dream Theater, Ihsahn, John Petrucci, Leprous, Levi/Werstler, Opeth, zappa