Animals as Leaders started as Tosin Abasi’s solo project. He’s a Washington D.C. based guitar player who played guitar for Born of Osiris & Reflux. He now has a full instrumental band with Javier also playing guitar & Navene Koperweis from Animosity playing drums. This is a mixture of electronic, ambient, progressive metal & jazz that I can just hear Tosin has spent years perfecting the sound of.
From down south. No, further south. Guanajuato, Mexico. Ominous Crucifix is bringing some much needed Satanism back to death metal. They are from Mexico, but the songs are all sung in English. It’s a bit different from other Mexican death metal albums in that it doesn’t have much blasting, its more intricate & there’s melodies. More like Scandinavian death metal.
USX guitarist/vocalist/wordsmith Nate Hall will release his first solo record this Spring via Neurot Recordings. Titled, A Great River, the ten-track opus offers up a lush landscape of sonic richness. Recorded in March 2011 by Travis Kammeyer at Fahrenheit Studio in Johnson City, Tennessee, A Great River features the pastoral artwork of Dark Castle’s Stevie Floyd, viewable below…
Renowned shredder Stéphan Forté (Adagio) has set February 28th, 2012 as the North American release date for his highly anticipated instrumental solo debut, The Shadows Compendium. Proving that shred is far from dead, Forté demonstrates otherworldly skill and technique on this neo-classical metallic masterpiece. The album will be distributed in the United States by E1 Distribution. The Shadows Compendium features several guests such as Jeff Loomis, Mattias Eklundh, Glen Drover, Daniele Gottardo and Derek Taylor.
Thunderous post-instrumental outfit PELICAN have announced the long awaited follow-up to their sprawling 2009 full length What We All Come To Need, a new four song EP Ataraxia/Taraxis to be released via Southern Lord on April 10. With members now residing in separate cities, the EP represents a new chapter in the band’s evolution with a reenergized focus on composition and the utilization of the recording studio as a creative tool in the songwriting process, yielding one of the most diverse efforts in the band’s prolific discography.
Inferion to Release Long Awaited Album The Desolate Digitally on January 15th Hell will finally arrive on earth on the Lord’s Day, January 15, 2012 in the form of INFERION’s The Desolate. A face melting assault of traditional black metal, The Desolate is the result of many years of writing and recording in fits in starts and in myriad locations, including Iraq when main man guitarist/drummer/vocalist/composer Nick Reyes was deployed with his U.S.
A long overdue split release, Sri Lanka’s psychotic auditory terrorists and the legionaries of the 666th battalion of the Raavan cult have congregated to create, manifest and aid world spiritual warfare. Released on limited edition vinyl by Dunkelheit Produktionen in December 2011, the seven deranged and trance inducing hymns of tantric mantras – collectively known as Astral Mantras of Dyslexia – are now being released by Dunkelheit on Digipak CD on February 25th with different artwork and a huge booklet!
