If the Google do not make a sucker out of me ( 😀 ), Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and from there are this three piece band called June DeVille, founded in December 2007 and as they say: “not split up yet.” 😀 And actually I didn’t stumbled into them, they found me. (Thanks Max!)
Their music is what we call post-metal and they flavor it with some grunge left-over spices, that kind of noisy and heavy grunge what once was the driving force behind Soundgarden. And well, June DeVille was a quite nice surprise. First at all, they have nerve. Sometimes it sounds like Zakk Wylde does it in his better days with Ozzy and Black Label Society. Secondly, but not at least, they wrote and recorded a couple of great songs. Read more June DeVille – Swan Songs Of The Coyote (2011)
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Samael – Lux Mundi (2011)
Samael was a hell of a guy! 😆 😆 😆 Actually an important archangel in Talmudic and post-Talmudic lore, a figure who is accuser, seducer and destroyer, and has been regarded as both good and evil. Also called Sammael and Samil, he is considered in legend both a member of the heavenly host with often grim and destructive duties and a fallen angel, equatable with Satan and the chief of the evil spirits. One of Samael’s greatest roles in Jewish lore is that of the angel of death. In this capacity he is a fallen angel but nevertheless remains one of the Lord’s servants. As a good angel, Samael supposedly resides in the seventh heaven, although he is declared to be the chief angel of the fifth heaven. It is said that he was the guardian angel of Esau and a patron of the Roman empire. Read more Samael – Lux Mundi (2011)
The Phantom Carriage – New Thing (2011)
Throatruiner Records have a nice, fan-friendly approach by making most of their products accessible for free-download. I just wanna say this, on one hand the legal – or not – free downloads helps to spread and popularize the music and the new bands mainly, but on the other hand, every and each free download makes the artist lives one grade harder and one drop bitterer. So, I’m just telling you, support your favorite artists in any way you can, please share this album as much as you can, give them as much as you can. You may not realize how much that matters. The underground and the new artists deserves at least this much. Otherwise in a few years we may left exclusively with the plastic stuffs offered by the big corporated shitheads. Fuck. I had to say that. Thanks.
The Phantom Carriage are an extreme, but excitingly experimenting band combining different genres from black metal to jazz. “New Thing” is gloomy, intense and exciting, so don’t let yourself scared away by the very first impression. Read more The Phantom Carriage – New Thing (2011)
Ocoai – The Electric Hand (2011)
Ocoai are an awesome surprise. Guitarist and engineer/producer Travis Kammeyer and drummer Tim Smith met in in the summer of 2006 and wanted to try something different, they wanted to be the loudest and heaviest band around. And the sound of Ocoai is kind of muddy, sludgy, spreading into multi-layered dimensions, imagine Moody Blues jamming around with Down or Sigur Rós playing some Mastodom songs. I hate labels and labeling music, but this is kind of cinematic Metal. Ambiental, spacy constructions, ingenious use of the cello, gentle guitar tunes or crushing riffs and noisy explosions completing and overlapping each other in a nice, natural flow. Without a vocalist they managed to fill up the wide spaces, but still, I believe a powerful throat can take them much further. In any case, not a James LaBrie copy I had in mind, but eventually someone with the qualities and abilities of John Bush (Armored Saint, Anthrax). Read more Ocoai – The Electric Hand (2011)
Rhian Sheehan – Seven Tales of The North Wind (2011)
Rhian Sheehan predominantly writes music for film and Television, his music has also appeared regularly on BBC television programming, including Top Gear, and has been used for a variety of TV commercials and movie trailers and short films worldwide.He composed the soundtrack to the UK’s National Space Centre’s We Are Astronomers, a 360° Full Dome Film narrated by Doctor Who’s David Tennant which is currently screening in digital planetariums around the world, as also composed the score to the 13 part prime-time TV Drama series “The Cult”,and the Emmy Award winning series “Reservoir Hill”. Read more Rhian Sheehan – Seven Tales of The North Wind (2011)
Saul Williams – Volcanic Sunlight (2011)
Poet, writer, actor and musician, Saul Williams, graduated in acting and philosophy, comes back with his fourth studio album and the same colorful, vibrating and intense mixture of hip hop with noisy – industrialized – electronic and spices of Afro beats and tribal and rapping vocals. Saul Williams sounds distinguishing even for the alternative hip hop scene, he’s a strong character with attitude and he’s one of the most vocal critic of the so-called War on Terrorism.
I love the genius “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!” from 2007 produced by Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and “Volcanic Sunlight” is more powerful and intense album even than his previous works. Read more Saul Williams – Volcanic Sunlight (2011)
Snowman – Absence (2011)
Even after 2008 Snowman relocated to London from Perth, Western Australia, they still kept that ancient, mystic, native Australian perfume in their music and “Hyena” have that hypnotizing brightness which floating around in gentle circles and ties you down smoothly. It’s simply beautiful and have a discrete charm and powerful magnetism. Diving deeper into “Absence” we will discover a multi-dimensional world made of subtle synthesizer layers, tribal percussion and drums, discrete guitars and amplifier feedback, and mysterious vocals. Sometimes everything seems pretty strange or untouchable and distant, but it’s vibrating and addictive. It’s a mixture of World music, Psychedelic and Ambiental music, soundtrack like music for a movie eventually played backward, back to a forgotten, obscure or even vanished universe from the dawn of the times. Read more Snowman – Absence (2011)
And So I Watch You From Afar – Gangs (2011)
“Gang” is the second full-length studio album by instrumental rock band And So I Watch You From Afar, from Belfast, Northern Ireland. After releasing their self-titled debut album in 2009 the band had toured the UK as well as in support of High On Fire, Crippled Black Phoenix, 65daysofstatic and Yourcodenameis:milo, Clutch, Oceansize, Envy, Trash Talk and Them Crooked Vultures and getting noticed by UK and European media. Consists of Rory Friers and Tony Wright on guitars, Johnny Adger on bass and Chris Wee on drums, And So I Watch You From Afar plays a colorful and dynamic Rock, Celtic sounds like themes are blended with groovy Rock themes, pulsing riffs and melodious themes are shifting each other quickly, and rapid passages are followed by nice and quiet breaks. Read more And So I Watch You From Afar – Gangs (2011)
Otep – Atavist (2011)
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“Drunk on the Blood of Saints” will rip your head off before you know it and all the 12 new songs from “Avavist” are intense and unforgiving bulldozers of modern Metal, even “quieter” songs like “We Dream Like Lions” will smash you into the ground. Read more Otep – Atavist (2011)
Silverstein – Rescue (2011)
I discovered Silverstein back in 2009 when they released their previous album “A Shipwreck in the Sand”, a colorful, intense, modern Metal album. The Canadian band formed in 2000 at Burlington, Ontario, have been navigated from Emo to Screamo and while those labels seems uncomfortable and commercially more and more unproductive, they switched to the much generous Post-hardcore. Well, as I said “A Shipwreck in the Sand” was a powerful and very inspired release and the first concept album by the band. Meanwhile the band moved to a new home, Hopeless Records and “Rescue” marks their first album release for the new label and maybe they were under some pressure… Read more Silverstein – Rescue (2011)
