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.

Despite – or perhaps because – I had a 20 hour working day yesterday / this morning, I had plenty of time to listen to music. Just didn’t have any fuckin’ time to write about it, as I was wrestling 1.4 million line Excel docs and PowerPoint files with way too much fuckin’ bullcrap. That wasn’t particularly fun, but one of the main things that kept me going until 4:30 a.m. was fellow Dutch national Christian Olde Wolbers, with his both chugging and catchy jamming which I’d like to share today.

If his name strikes you as familiar, that’s perhaps because he’s been a long but no longer standing member of American Industrial Metal formation Fear Factory, on both bass and guitar duties. On top of that he has worked with Mnemic, Threat Signal, Devin Townsend, God Forbid and many more. Currently he’s involved in Arkaea and Beowülf and he’s the CEO of his own company in goalkeeper’s gloves, Aviata Sports. Summarizing, you could say he’s a busy man.

[The Baboon is growing! And not just by eating a pile of burgers every day. No, sir. Today marks the first contribution of yet another new writer and contributor of good taste and heavy attitude. Today Havik Incarnate introduces us to an unsigned Swedish band he regularly listens to: Mudpusher! Apparently it helps a lot if your cranium isn’t hurting!]

Let’s face it. Scouting for good bands these days that have the potential to kick your ass so fast that you wouldn’t even feel it for the first few seconds & power-slam you back home, has become more of an undertaking than the enjoyable experience that it used to be eons ago. No wonder, when artistic integrity is based on skinny jeans, power-ranger-like visages and racoon fringes. All that changed for me however, when I stumbled across Mudpusher.

Credits to Erska for introducing this insane Finnish band to us. The genre was mentioned as Industrial Melodic Death Metal, which caused a raised eyebrow from me for sure. However, true to their word, that is what they play. Somewhere in the vein of Mors Principium Est with the synth-drenching of your average Amaranthe track, Fear of Domination carve their own brand on the genre.

[Our new team addition, 'Danimal or Buffalo' from New Zealand - which means you can call him a kiwi - drops in today with his second album review, after he first reviewed Dawn of the Sociopath of Portugal's Echidna. He stays in Portugal for now, as he continues with a influence-rich piece of Groove Metal by We Are Killing Ourselves, a.k.a. W.A.K.O. Very much worth your time!]

Yet again Portugal surprises me. We Are Killing Ourselves have produced a bone cruncher of an album, titled The Road of Awareness. This album surprised me with all sorts of elements shining through, from slow crunching chug Metalcore style to fast palm mutes and big sounding lead solos. It all passes by in a matter of seconds.

When you see the release date of this album, August 25^th 2008, you could say ”better late than never”. But, if you’re a bit of a regular reader, you may know that The Baboon wasn’t even a splash of semen yet in 2008 and so we couldn’t have reviewed it in time unless we made use of some fuckin’ time warping equipment or something. So, instead we’d like to say ”it may be slightly senior, it’ll still get it up fast!”

The band responsible for Mirror Faced Mentality is called Scamp and they’re Danish. To be exact, they hail from Århus, which is on the bit of Denmark that’s connected to the erst of Europe as well as the second largest city in Denmark. At current the band is made up of four dudes, called Mikael Rise (vocals and didgeridoo – yes, you read that right, didgeridoo), Morten Christensen (drums), Kristian Bruun (guitars) and Martin Dalmark (bass). At the time Mirror Faced Mentality was recorded the latter wasn’t in yet, but a dude named Mads Christensen (guitars and bass) was.

There’s this dude called Mitch Luckner, who fronts a band called Suicide Silence. There’s this other dude, named Cameron “Big Chocolate” Argon, who used to do vocal duties with a band called Burning the Masses and formed a band named Disfiguring the Goddess too. The two got together. And created a monster.

We thank SSTEVB for this monstrous suggestion!

The title of today’s contribution is a bit strange, but it fulfills its purpose to the effect that all featured bands are included. Concretely, these are The Defiled, Syranic and SIC. Genre technically speaking we’re stepping into the realm of Modern Metal. That may not mean a lot to you, but that’s pretty much the point: bit of Metalcore, pinch of Nu Metal, sniff of Thrash and truck loads full of Groove, all blended together in a powerful modern production.

Much as you can dedicate your time to Metal, there’s no fuckin’ way you’re going to be able to keep up with everything that’s released. Not even if you limit yourself to everything that has a name to be reckoned with. The Project Hate is such a name, and I’d stick my hand in a sheep’s rectum if less than 80% of you have read or heard the name at some point in your life. Hell, I regularly stick my hand in sheep anyway, so what the fuck do I care.

The three Swedes from Örebro, recently reinforced by a charming lady called Ruby Roque from Portugal are up to their eighth album since the band formed in 1998. The album, Bleeding the New Apocalypse (Cum Victriciis In Manibus Armis), came out halfway into February of this year and if Rufio hadn’t turned my attention to it, I probably wouldn’t have found out about it until somewhere around the end of the century. But Rufio did, so let’s take a closer look at this thing.

For the fans of occult Black Metal, we’ve got one from the Italian label of utterly fucked-up, but usually highly enjoyable, occult Black Metal, Code666. About a week or two ago an album by the UK formation The Axis of Perdition was released through the label. It was the band’s fourth studio album since it was ripped from its mother’s smelling, bleeding uterus in 2001.

Tenements (of the Anointed Flesh) is how the band baptized this fourth one of its own creations. The Code666 fact sheet states that the album is “an album that cuts to the very heart of The Axis of Perdition and exposes the diseased core with a violence, depth and derangement that is so far unmatched in the band’s discography. Haunting, moving, excruciating and excoriating in equal measure, it is an album that demands attention from start to finish and will leave no listener untouched.” It also describes the album’s genre as “Industrial Psycho Metal”.

Well fuck me sideways! I have to review that?! I fear I’ll end up as a gibbering drooling maniac if even three seconds of it reach my ears, let alone a full one-hour album of it. Still, for the glory of Metal I’ll set myself to the task.