A whole bunch of news has been coming to us over the past few weeks, and in there is something interesting for everybody: we have new videos, album teasers and new release dates coming up!

I’ve been exploring the web for a while and lately I discovered a lot of interesting new bands, some of which completely blown my mind, as they push the boundaries of what I held for possible. Some of these aren’t completely Metal, but all of them are exceptionally cool and certainly worth of your time. So enjoy the next half hour of Post-Alternative Blackened Punkcore.

Shining

First up are a Norwegian band called Shining, which is not really a name associated with the more serious, dark or violent themes addressed in Metal. It comes as no surprise then that Shining started out as an acoustic Jazz-quartet. However, after two albums, they started taking their music apart and evolved through a form of Jazzy Post-Rock to what they are today on their album Blackjazz, a dark combination of Industrial, Jazz, Deathcore, Alternative and Experimental Metal. In one word, Avant-Garde Metal, whatever that might mean.

It’s weird, considering the name of this blog, but for some reason I’m not doing too many Death Metal reviews. I think I this is my second or third one, and to be precise, it’s my first Brutal Death Metal release. Exciting.

About half a month ago the boys themselves approach us via Facebook, and their description of “Death Grind / Black Metal / Melodic Brutality” appealed to me, so I took the job. At first though, I was hesitant as in my experience, Brutal Death Metal bands got fairly low grades. That is, in comparison to bands from other genres like Black Metal and Hardcore. However, when I first turned on this 17-minute long piece, I was quite surprised to hear something which grabbed me. Usually, I feel that in Brutal Death Metal, the heaviness is drowning out in its own blood, and together with this, my interest for the music. Corpse Filled Caskets does not contain the loudest riffing, but there is some really interesting drumming and riffing going on which, together with the witty dialogues in between make for an enjoyable quarter of an hour.

I had a hard time making my mind up about this album. This album just pulled me two ways, and I couldn’t choose whether I liked it or didn’t. In the end, I found that this album is just what it says, it’s an album for the heretic.

It’s funny that for days, no weeks I couldn’t make sense of this record at all. Started it more than a few times, but I often just quit half-way through, often out of pure boredom. However, now it has gotten a little more depth for me, I can finally start on pulling this apart properly. When I skim through the song titles, the first thing they make me think of is Warhammer 40,000. The whole god-thing, the power, the Latin phrases etc. really make my mind go towards my two best friends who play this shit, but I don’t because it’s too damn expensive. Anyways, I still don’t know what it is with this album so let’s just dive in.

It’s been a while since I wrote something, but this is mainly due since we had Christmas, I had to work, we had guests over etc. A bloody busy Christmas it was for me. So just to relax, I’ll kickstart my writing with some good old Melodic Death Metal. Although this genre seemed to have somewhat bled to death for me, there are still some gems left alive, which seem to catch my attention from time to time.

One of them is Burial Earth, who are a Netherlandish band (officially abandoning the word Dutch, because it’s stupid), which arose from the ashes of Docile in 2009. In 2010 they released their first demo simply called Demo 2010.

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.

Today is Sunday, which is a day of celebration, it’s not only the day of the Lord, but also the start of a new week. So to celebrate we’re looking at something new, something unusual. We’re just heading out to the Punk side of things where we find Nuclear Scorn. Nuclear Scorn are an American band that pumps out a mixture of Crust, Grindcore, D-Beat and Blackened Thrash Metal. It must have been the Texan sun which gave them hyperthermia, because this shit is crazy in comparison with some of the stuff we normally have here.

As a kid, I’ve always been fascinated with Punk. Not only with the movement and its attitude towards society, but also with its attitude towards music. It has always amazed me how these people approached music as an art, rather than as a commercial thing. In that way, Metal has a lot in common with Punk. On the other hand, over the years I have grown appreciative of Thrash and Speed Metal as well. Genres like Crust Punk, Crossover and Hardcore Punk seem to have made the combination of Thrash Metal and Punk very attractive.