UK Doom Metallers Conan have just uploaded a video of them performing a new song of their upcoming album, at the Buffalo Bar, Cardiff. The name Hawk as Weapon, already sounds cool to me, and the live recording sounds promising. I’ve always wondered what these guys would sound like live, and all I can say is that they sound louder and heavier than in the studio. Which is a good thing.

Then who are Conan? We wrote about them little over a month ago, and we were all quite positive. I wrote about their latest record Horseback Battle Hammer

their music feels like you’ve just had a massive blow with a war hammer, and now you lie on the ground, which is wet from the rain, while you can’t feel anything.

The Sacrificed is one of those bands with which I don’t know whether I like them or not. I picked some of their songs from different samplers, since their name seemed to be big in the Christian world. For some time I couldn’t be bothered with it, but when news came out of their upcoming album III, I picked out their song Offended and started to listen. Now, this song is supposed to be on that album, but apparently I had it already a year the before was out. Now a year later label Roxx Records released another song, called Fallen. Like Offended, this song actually surprised me, and makes III a very promising album.

The Sacrificed are an American Heavy Metal band from Florida, who have been around since 2005. With their album’s The DaVinci Hoax (2007), 2012 (2010) and now III, they seem to be taking their time in order to make an album. Style-wise they seem to be taking a Heavy Metal approach, with a very big splash of Modern sounds incorporated, which makes for a very nice, and enjoyable listening-experience.

We have some wickedly brutal news tonight. California Deathcore outfit Impending Doom have released the first single of their upcoming album Baptized in Filth, called For the Wicked (as you’ve probably seen). The single comes with a lyric video, which seems to gain popularity in the Core scene.

Their Facebook page reads:

Formed in 2005, jumped right into the touring lifestyle and gained their success very quickly. The band has released 1 e.p. and 3 full length records, selling over 70,000 records world wide.

Sounds impressive, and it’s true, despite their Christian background and bold lyrics, they tour the world with the biggest bands in Metal, such as DevilDriver, Dying Fetus, Chimaira, Whitechapel, My Children My Bride, the list goes on and on.

One of the bands that lie close to my heart are Danmaku, a UK Thrash band that granted me the honour of reviewing their debut, when I was but a freshman. Now, more than half a year later, I still remember Paul Harrington and his “blood-covered tank of death”. Last week I send a quick e-mail over to the home front, to check out how things were going.

In short, Danmaku are a three-piece Death/Thrash outfit, with members from Anaal Nathrakh, The Ocean and Hospital of Death. Their debut Turn Up the Gas, certainly adds some coal to the fire, and contains seven tracks of tearing and intense Thrash Metal with some kick ass Hardcore vocals from Mike Pilat. You can read my full review here.

Today saw the release of Alcest’s long awaited (at least by me) third full-length, with a long French name I do not care to write again, but which translates as The Voyages of the Soul . Pretty interesting title. As of today the whole album is uploaded on Youtube, so I’m just picking out some of the highlights for you to listen to, before you buy this beauty.

Ok, wait. I won’t get you any highlights because there are none. This is one big fucking highlight to me. So at the end I will just dump you a link to a Youtube playlist with the whole album and I’ll wish you a whole lot of epic fun with this for the next hour.

Roughly four months ago I brought you all some exciting news from Slovenia, remember Within Destruction? The young lads were able to impress us with their song Cardiomyopathy (yes, I’m able to spell that out by heart now), which came from their upcoming album From the Depths, to be released this year.

Seven days ago, they made me even more pumped by releasing the second single to From the Depths called King of Serpents. I must say that this is a tiny tad different from Cardiomyopathy, but it’s still typically Within Destruction. That is to say, that it’s still “a combination of Melodical Death Metal riffs, Metalcore rhythm section and melancholic and fast Black Metal melodies”, but in King of Serpents they have thrown in a splash of ‘normal’ Death Metal as well.

Hell, we’re up to date. Yesterday “Melodic Death Metal”-outfit Miseration put out a video for their song Dreamdecipher. Yeah, the Melodic Death Metal is in quotation marks because our holy bible (aka the Metal Encyclopedia) says that, but I can tell you, this is not Melodic Death Metal. Sounds more like Technical Grindcore to me.

Who are Miseration? You ask. Miseration are a Swedish band formed in 2006, and have since produced two full-lengths, on which they play a very heavy, Grindcore-influenced kind of Melodeath. Stylistically they are a very interesting band, and I haven’t really heard something like what they did on their first two albums before. Dreamdecipher however takes their sound to a less original height, although it’s still a good song of course.

Another slab of news, hot from the press! Well, that’s the digital press of course. It hasn’t been too long since I personally reviewed American Prog Death outfit Dischordia’s debut EP Creator, Destroyer, but already the guys have put out a new single called There are No Words. This was released to celebrate that Dischordia reached 500 fans on Facebook, quite an achievement for a band that has only one EP out!

There Are No Words presents us with another fine piece of Progressive Death Metal, being in no way inferior to the work on Creator, Destroyer. The music is still very technical and Djenty, but there are some splashes of Deathcore to be found now. There Are No Words is a piece of instrumental music, which repulsed me at first. I’m not really into instrumental Metal. However, here the lack of vocals goes nicely with the newly added Deathcore influences. Next to that, there are the typical Dischordia-ish spoken words and a deep growl near the end of the song.

I was just done writing an article when I stumbled over Cage, whom have just released their latest effort Supremacy of Steel. Normally, I’m not too much into Power Metal, but listening to this band just put a smile on my face. Where Black Metal Bands are known for singing about the occult, Thrash Metal bands about killing posers, Heavy/Power Metal bands are known for singing about Metal in general. However, Cage takes all of this over the top and covers this Metalness with a sauce made of even more Metalness. It seems like they took the American concept of deep fried butter, and replaced the butter with Metal. Well that’s Metal isn’t it?

Supremacy of Steel shows Cage at their best. Where previous releases seemed to be a bit flat in the mix, they have overcome this and now they are steaming on to bring the world their deep-Metalled Metal. This Metal is formed by a combination of Heavy Metal, Power Metal and a splash of Speed Metal. This last is probably due to the resemblance with Agent Steel’s work (you know the alien stuff, the screams etc.). One can’t deny the fact that Sean “The Hell Destroyer” Peck’s vocals have a lot in common with the sound Rob Halford pumps out of his throat. However, again the boys take it over the top, and Peck seems to spend whole songs screaming the lyrics in stead of normally singing.

The Fallen Divine are a Norwegian Progressive Metal act, who released their first full-length, called The Binding Cycle about two weeks ago. Now one can stream the entire thing exclusively on metalunderground.com so that’s where I will be linking you to after the jump.

The Binding Cycle is not your average Progressive Metal album à la Dream Theatre or the like, no, it’s heavier, drenched in Blackened Death Metal influences and melodies. The album is very dynamic, with a lot of alternation between heavy and quite moments. With the album bordering on the 50 minutes, it’s not the longest Progressive Metal album, but with 8 songs, this is quite a reasonable length.