Metalcore is a genre often despised by metalheads, but personally I’ve never seen the problem with it. The origins of Metalcore, Metal and Hardcore Punk, are both great genres and the resulting combination of melodic lines and brutal rhythms certainly appeals to me. So why the hate? We don’t hate on Melodeath either which, although taking a slightly different approach stylistically and structure-wise, does the same thing; combining melody and rhythm.

Well, enough ranting for today, let’s move on to take a look at Ruled By Reason. Again they come in via my Tumblr page, where I posted a text-post on my favourite Metalcore band Still Remains. Assuming I posted similar stuff all the time they followed me, but sadly (for them), I mostly do pictures and sometimes a Black Metal post (sorry guys). Anyways, listening to their stuff, I found that their music is really interesting.

Despite that I’m late, in case Santacock has been a bit of a cheapo with his gifts this year, maybe I can make up for it with two little tips that’ll get you value without having to empty your purse. Nerve End and Mirrors of Obsidian have and EP and full album respectively up for free, at least if a digital version of the releases will satisfy you. However, like always, we would like to stress that you can in fact support these bands by donating a little something. It isn’t ‘name your price’ for nothing.

As I was checking out some of Death’s work, I made a jump to Toxic Holocaust’s latest work. The two minute-long Judgement Awaits You didn’t really attract my attention, but as I clicked through to Revocation’s latest single No Funeral, my day got better. It was fresh, catchy, yet extreme and fast. This was something I needed more of.

Revocation was formed in 2006 and they have released three albums and one EP to date. In order to stay with today, I decided to dive into their latest album Chaos of Forms, released just about 4 months ago. Looking at lyrics, song length or anything, this is nothing special, but boy, this album just gets me banging from the first note.

Sidestepping their Brutal Death Metal roots, Dutch quintet Toxocara have embraced a slightly different angle on their third album AtmosFear. Understandable, given the significant line-up change they underwent, but at least there are some remnants of the older style, now mixed in with some industrial and Tech-Death touches. Their main aims seem to be intensity and speed, both of which they achieve with much aplomb, and display a maturity that can only be gained from each of the members having his own respective bands on the side.

Ignoring the frankly strange title-track intro of children singing, the first proper track Black Widow kicks off nicely with a blazing fury of Technical Death Metal, powered by human drum-machine William Vlierman, who dominates much of the album. An echo of The Monolith Deathcult is present (logically given they share Martijn Moes as guitarist), but they also incorporate elements of Obscura in the solos from Moes and Vince Zwarts, and some tasteful melodic lines.

A couple of months ago we covered a song by a German band named Vaulting. I characterized the song as having ”plenty of fast-paced leads, hooks and sharp edges”. A few weeks later the band released its debut record Nucleus, containing thirteen brand new songs of pretty much the same general inclination. If it wasn’t for a bunch of them being rather different.

So Nucleus is a debut according to drummer Sebastian Gathof, so it’s kinda strange how Encyclopaedia Metallum lists 2008’s Epilog as a full-length too. Because taking a closer look at it, it seems more like an EP, with only 18 odd minutes of playing time. Yet there are eight songs which is more than you’d expect on a normal EP. The key is in the Grindcorian length of songs: one of them is only four seconds.

Visitor Simon was out in Montréal a while ago, where he discovered some new material that was to his liking. Bookakee is one of them, and they do Technical Brutal Death Cumsplatter Metal. Other than that the band consists of five guys and that they love to kill Super Mario on stage, my intel on these guys is pretty limited.

So, I’ll just proceed with giving you the tunes. First one is a song called Bookakee Blast, the first song from their first EP, released last June.

You guys remember Fractals, the Technical Deathcore outfit from Britain? Although their debut full-length is only seven months young, they’re already back at our doors with an EP called Corridors. This EP clearly show’s the guys have matured over time with everything from lyrics to music becoming more professional and solid.

Style-wise the guys have kept to their Technical Death Metal roots, but Corridors seems to show that they know what they’re doing. Where Paradox contained a lot of short songs ranging between half a minute to two minutes, Corridors shows more lengthy songs, and personally I find it more pleasant to listen to than Paradox. I even found myself tapping my foot to it, which is quite something regarding that this is not really my cup of tea.

This album has been described as Post-Black Metal, and, although I’m not sure what that means, I’m happy to go along with that. Whatever Post-Black Metal may mean, all I know is that Resilience is an album full of brilliant Atmospherical, Technical and Electronic Black Metal.

Résilience is the french word for, you guessed it, resilience, which means something like flexibility. I’ve been wondering what this title meant, but as I couldn’t make any sense of the lyrical content of the album, I thought it must have to do with the listener. As I discovered, one has to be a very flexible listener in order to appreciate the music, and personally, I had some trouble shaping myself to this album. It took me two months to actually start on this album, but yesterday night I saw the light, and I journeyed into the magic land of Smohalla.

Where Part 1 of my favorite 2011 freebies covered two full-length releases Part 2 looks at two EPs which by coincidence both found their way to my ears via NCS.

The list so far:
10. – Savage Messiah – A plague of Conscience
09. – Blastanus – Collapse

08. – Meankind – 22.Zero

According to Misguided Aggression’s Facebook, their music has been described as ”combining the power of Pantera, the aggression of Lamb of God and the precision of Meshuggah”. I don’t know who said that, but the person had it spot fuckin’ on! The band from Woodstock, Ontario plays its material loud, chugging and aggressive, with staccato, syncopated and perhaps even polyrhythmic riffage.

Their material isn’t particularly accessible, but let me tell you, once you get into it, it just absolutely mashes your brain to pulp. Flood the Common Ground (2011) is the band’s follow-up to their 2009 debut Hatchala. From that, we’ve got some face melting lined up for you after the jump.