The power of humor should not be underestimated. I got this request today to check out a band’s (actually it’s a one-man project from what I gather) new album. There was a link to a ”silly commercial for it”. I clicked it, thinking I’d get to hear a few tunes that would allow me to let the guy know either ”no, sucks!” or ”yes, but don’t fuckin’ wait for it”. Instead, this thing cracked me up and landed Zelophilia an instant post.

A short one though, ‘cause I gotta run. But I’ll feed you the commercial first. Watch it and then see if you’d care to check out the music after the jump.

That’s a four-word, descriptive title and so my first thoughts were that I’d be dealing with another half-arsed American Deathcore band again. Wrong! At least partly. Yes, this material is American, the band is from Boston, Massachusetts, but no this isn’t really Deathcore and it’s certainly not half-arsed. The band itself describes their game as ”modern Death Metal” and state that ”they do not seek to follow trends”. That’s good, I like bands that find their own path into global appreciation.

Your Pain is Endearing was formed in 2008, combining a blast-in-the-mouth brutality with pure aggression and also ”technical mastery”. Sounds like a billion notes per minute then, doesn’t it? But the truth is that these guys haven’t lost track in their search from churning out the most complex sequences of notes in the most teeth-breaking manner and are building songs that work.

Something else I haven’t got time for. But I just couldn’t neglect feeding you this. That’d be criminal, even though it isn’t even Metal. But it’s fuckin’ Metal! If you just took a look at that pic, you probably exclaimed something like “What in the name of Flying Fuck is that?!” That’s what I said. Turns out it’s Keith Medley’s home-made 27-string guitar type of thing and we’ve got a vid of him playing it. It’s hot shit!

United States, internet-based Grindcore outfit Malodorous have returned with a new demo, after 5 years. After their debut Amaranthine Redolence, of which especially Eyes of Abomination gained some limited fame for its ferocious double bass rolls. Now they’re back with a new demo Augury of the Aborted, which was released yesterday.

The good thing is, that we have some freebies again. The guys have decided to give this demo away for free, and that doesn’t come with a sleek looking Bandcamp page, but with a low-fi Mediafire link. Hell yeah!

Veil of Maya are new to the palette of Deathcore outfits I know (which isn’t too big). While Eclipse is the longest piece of work I ever heard from a Deathcore act, the others being EP’s and single songs, it left me craving for more, which is bad in the case of an album.

Starting off, Veil of May were kind of thrown into my lap by James Montheit of Hold Tight! PR, so they kind of crashed into my life. What first caught my eye was the running time and the number of songs, I mean, how can you write so many songs, and have such a short album? With only 28 minutes of playing time, it hangs in between of an LP and an EP, and there is not a lot of meat to be taken on. But that didn’t keep me from jumping in, and after all, I found Eclipse to be pretty good.

This one’s by suggestion of visitor Ventilation Shaft. The band in question’s first album, titled Distant Tides (2006), is one of the guy’s all-time favorite Power Metal albums. Since that the band has stepped up the ”spice factor” a bit, but the roots are still present.

We’re talking about an American band and currently a three piece, manned by Matt Moliti (guitars ‘n’ vocals), Randy Knecht (bass) and Brian Larkin (vocals). A drummer is currently lacking. The band is from New Jersey and has been active since 2004. After Distant Tides there was Humanity Dethroned (2008) and soon there will be From Refuge to Ruin (2012), all are full-length records. Following VS’ suggestion, we’ll be serving some of each today, in chronological order. Because it’s logical.

Just a quick one by suggestion of motig, the guy who seems to dump links on our plate for a living. His suggestion this time was to check out a US Thrash Metal outfit named Vektor and even though we’ve been treating them before, there’s no harm in checking them out again. The band holds house in a town called Tempe, Arizona. From what I’ve seen / heard / read, Arizona is a pretty hot place and that has rubbed off on these chaps’ music: it’s hot as shit!

If I had to describe their music in one sentence, I’d say it’s the result of kinky inbred sex of the kids that themselves sprung from all four of the Big Four of Thrash having an orgy with four of the classic Norwegian Black Metal outfits. This stuff is fuckin’ deranged!

Gilead Media has hooked us up with a presser for the forthcoming 12″ vinyl release from Brooklyn, New York’s Mutilation Rites. This release is titled I Am Legion and will be issued as a one sided 12″ containing three songs with the second side being an etching of the cover art, if I understand correctly.

Mutilation Rites was formed in 2009 by Michael Dimmitt (guitar) and Justin Ennis (drums) and after line-up struggles has finally stabilized with the addition of George Paul (vocals/guitar) and Iain Deaderick (bass). The presser describes the sound as “filthy Black Metal with a heavy dose of Thrash”. Let’s see how accurate that is.

I’ve got an interesting mix of Thrash and (Melodic) Death Metal to share today. It’s actually neither but both, hard to describe. But before we get into the details, let me introduce the subject band and its album at hand first. The band in question is called Last Transgression and it’s an American Metal unit, from a place called Prattville, Alabama, that has been active since 1994. For a band that’s geriatric! In all those years the band has released nothing but four full-length record, the last of which, titled Perpetual State of Collapse, came out in 2002. Until 2011 happened and they popped Cynic Verses onto the market of Metal.

Cynic Verses appeared somewhere at the end of October 2011 and is since available for legal download for just five measly bucks on the group’s BandCamp hide-out. As hinted at, that’s not a lot and I’m about to explain to you why that is. It all comes down to the fact that Cynic Verses is a pleasant album, flowing, natural, headbanging, pure. No bullshit, but a collection of ten good songs.

This month, the Eversoles will return with a sophomore effort, less than half a year after they released Lebor Gabala Erenn. It has been said that a band gets a lifetime to record their debut, and only to months to come up with a sophomore album. Ankou Awaits in this case are one of the only bands that live up to this saying.

It seems like Thomas Eversole has stepped away from the pure black metal sound, as the headlines are marked by the words Black, Death, Doom and Thrash. However, after hearing the first notes of Crog Buidhe, I noticed that the spells cast by Lebor Gabala Erenn have not gone away. Still, going deeper into Crog Buidhe, which served me with some hampering guitar riffs, which worried me, as they took away the flow of the whole music. But I simply couldn’t believe that Thomas had lost his mind, and made something terrible. Later I discovered that, though the weird, hampering guitar parts scared me off at first, they are quite original, and help to accentuate the more drowning, flowing tremolo parts, for which Ankou Awaits have become famous.