Relapse Records

REVOCATION have confirmed an August 6th release date for their new self-titled album via Relapse Records. This is their 4th full-length release and the first featuring new bassist Brett Bamberger. Today the band has unveiled the artwork and tracklisting for the album. The artwork was created by Orion Landau (Dying Fetus, Obscura, Nile).

Royal Thunder, the Atlanta-based band who released their debut album CVI in May of 2012 to rave reviews including a recent accolade from Rolling Stone’s David Fricke (“heavy with the meaty, base elements of early-Seventies British blues”), are offering a free download of an acoustic version of “Parsonz Curse” via Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/parsonz-curse-by-royal-thunder-free-mp3-20130523).

LORD DYING come from Portland, Oregon, a place over abundant with purveyors of the heavy riff. A region where the inhabitants are plagued with nerve and joint damage due to lack of sunlight. In a time where everyone is trying to out-sludge or out-doom each other LORD DYING gives something less than a fuck. They are a metal band with members of Black Elk , Portals, Le Force, and Cremains, who in their short, one year's time as a band have shared the stage with Red Fang, Down, Unsane, Yob, Valient Thorr, Black Cobra and many others.

True Widow, the Texas trio who masterfully create a minimalistic and haunting reinterpretation of shoegaze, have revealed several Circumambulation (July 23, Relapse) details including album art, track listing and a three-minute trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-el5_jOZ14&list=PL1C442755F1FAD624&index=1 ).

Finnish hardcore heroes UNKIND have released the title track from their forthcoming album Pelon Juuret via Blow The Scene at this location. The site describes the song as having "a relentless d-beat drum attack, screaming note bends, and throat-shredding vocals" in addition to being both "immediately compelling" and "apocalyptic". Pelon Juuret was recorded with producer Kari Nieminen at Noisecamp studios in Turku, Finland at the end of 2012 and will be released on CD/LP/Digital via Relapse Records on July 9th in North America, July 8th in the UK / World, and July 5th in Germany, Benelux and Finland.

RED FANG return this fall with their as-yet-untitled third studio album on Relapse Records. The Portland-based group is currently in the studio finishing the disc with the producer Chris Funk (Decemberists) and mixer Vance Powell (White Stripes, Raconteurs, Kings of Leon). This same team worked on RED FANG’s last album Murder the Mountains, tagged by NPR as “a sleeker style of riff-heavy metal” (April 2011) and Alternative Press magazine as “a near masterpiece of tangled tar pit riffs and whisky-and-bong-hit vocals” (April 2011).

ASG, the North Carolina quartet who will release Blood Drive, their first new album in nearly six years on May 28, are streaming the 12-song release via Pitchfork Advance (http://pitchfork.com/advance/117-blood-drive/).   Alternative Press has awarded the album a four-star review, adding “mentioning these ASG cats in the same breath as riff-rockers Torche or Queens Of The Stone Age is not only misleading, it might even be an understatement.”  Decibel gaveBlood Drive an 8/10 review and said “it’s refreshing to hear a metal band that doesn’t have to compromise heaviness on its way to pop nirvana.”

The godfathers of grindcore, Brutal Truth, have announced a run of summer and fall European festival appearances and tour dates. Kicking off July 24th at Metal Camp in Slovenia, the grind veterans will perform a string of 10 dates before heading back in September for another run. A complete listing of dates is included below with more to be announced shortly.

Finnish hardcore heroes UNKIND have posted an in-studio episode chronicling the making of their forthcoming album Pelon Juuret . Watch the episode here. The album was recorded with producer Kari Nieminen at Noisecamp studios in Turku, Finland at the end of 2012 and will be released on CD/LP/Digital via Relapse Records on July 9th in North America, July 8th in the UK / World, and July 5th in Germany, Benelux and Finland. A trailer for Pelon Juuret is available here while exclusive pre-order packages are available via Relapse here.

The first whiff of The Fleshland, the fourth LP from Tokyo-based graverobbers, COFFINS, is permeating the air today, as the label has exhumed the first single from the album. Constructed for the massive more than six-and-a-half minute "The Vacant Pale Vessel," the lyric video animates the gorestrewn cover illustration of The Fleshland as executed by the gruesome hands of Chris Moyen (Morbosidad, Black Witchery, Incantation, Blasphemy, etc.), as he has so morbidly done with all of COFFINS previous albums as well.