“Indentation” is the second track from ZEBECK’s album “Dharma”, released via Wormholedeath Records.
The video perfectly captures the essence of Zebeck’s unique sound and style and it is now available to watch on Zebeck’s YouTube channel.
Dharma is the second album of the instrumental metal/fusion project Zebeck. The music is characterized by strong dynamics, playfulness, and spontaneity, with influences spanning from jazz to death metal.
The album “Dharma” can be streamed on all major digital platforms here: orcd.co/dharmazebeck
Zebeck is an instrumental Metal/Fusion project by Franco-Swedish guitarist/composer Thomas Frisk. The first trio emerged in Malmö, Sweden in May 2007 with Jens Wall on bass and his brother Hannes Wall on drums. In late 2009, the band recorded their 10-track debut album entitled “Emancipation”. However, the trio soon split up after realizing they were drifting apart musically. In the fall of 2010, drummer Rickard Langnesund joined Zebeck, followed by bass player Anders Lindskog in early 2011, and “Emancipation” was released in May 2011 when the second line-up made its live debut.
In 2013, Thomas relocated to Stockholm while material for the second album started to take shape. In late 2015, Zebeck set sail to reclaim its Mediterranean origins in Nice, France, forming a new trio with Pierre Dor on drums and Alexandre Bedetti on bass.
The group made several live appearances together before Alexandre tragically passed away in 2020, bringing a sudden halt to the trio. After a couple of years of concern about the future of the project, Thomas decided to pick up the pieces and produce a new record alone. Thomas: « I felt the music had naturally evolved over the course of the last 11 years and I was ready to release it to the public. It proved to be a good choice as the positive response has been overwhelming, and today I am very proud to announce the signing of a licensing deal with Italian label WormHoleDeath for the release of Zebeck’s second album « Dharma ». This marks a new step in the development of the project and I’m very excited to put together a new line-up, bringing the music to you live! »
Photographer credit: Rob Brens (Black Cow Productions)
Australian death metal trio WEREWOLVES have today announced plans to release their fourth album, My Enemies Look and Sound Like Me, via Prosthetic Records on August 11. Alongside the album announcement, the band has shared lead single Under the Ground with an accompanying music video. In WEREWOLVES’ own words, Under the Ground is the death metal equivalent of Tupac’s ‘Hit ‘Em Up’ and takes issue with metal, the bands, the fans, and themselves.
Speaking on the album announcement, bassist/vocalist Sam (also of The Antichrist Imperium, The Berzerker) comments: “Here it finally is, the recording that will cement our place in the technical death metal world as some of the greatest soloists and most thought-provoking lyricists working in music today. Our ability to shape raw art from ethereal nuance is second only to our famously slow craftmanship.”
He continues: “Of course I’m fucking kidding. This album is as idiotic as the rest, if not more. CAVEMAN RIFFS. Blasting. Screaming. Bowing to a shrine with pictures of Mortician, Marduk, and Angelcorpse. This isn’t going to be the album that brings people together and catalyses world peace. Apparently it has greater emotional reach than our earlier work but we haven’t noticed that ourselves, we’re morons. I can confirm that there is more swearing on this album than all the others, it’s positively Australian-esque”.
Drummer Dave Haley (Psycroptic, Abramelin, Ruins, King, Blood Duster) and guitarist Matt Wilcock (The Antichrist Imperium, The Berzerker, Abramelin) agreed, simply stating: “PISS”.
My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me is the mature effort of a band approaching the midpoint of both their career and their lives, fine-tuning audio violence and desperate to leave nothing on the table before the hormones fade and dementia kicks in. Opener Under The Ground is an apoplectic death metal middle finger to the genre and all involved within it. Title track My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me demonstrates that the band have absolutely no intention of slowing down at all, while Destroyer Of Worlds is a slow creepfest that makes a lie of the previous sentence. Elsewhere, songs like Brace For Impact and Neanderhell demonstrate that WEREWOLVES are only getting more rabid with age – the BPM is appropriately crazed WEREWOLVES fare.
Mixing and mastering was handled, as always, by Joe Haley (Psycroptic), and the artwork is a remarkable simulacrum of modern social media discourse by long time collaborator Mitchell Nolte, and depicts two frenzied opposing groups of people massacring each other and themselves in a screaming horrified rage.
My Enemies Look and Sound Like Me tracklist: 1. Under the Ground 2. My Enemies Look and Sound Like Me 3. Bring To Me The Kill 4. Brace For Impact 5. Destroyer of Worlds 6. Neanderhell 7. I Hate Therefore I Am 8. I Knew Nothing Then and I Know Less Now 9. Do Not Hold Me Back
Upcoming WEREWOLVES tour date: 21 July – The Bendigo Hotel – Melbourne, Australia w/ Exhumed
Right in time with the SCORPIONS European Tour, with Scorpions – Colours of Rock, BMG is reissuing the eventful band history of these hard rock legends in blazing iridescent colour. The Special Coloured Vinyl Editions will be released on June 16, 2023, and feature five album highlights from throughout their career on a variety of coloured vinyl. Three of five legendary albums remastered for the first time from original master tapes: Fly To The Rainbow, In Trance, Virgin Killer.
Saying that the Scorpions can look back on an eventful history as a band would be an understatement. Their spectacular story is now becoming a new and very colourful experience: With Scorpions – Colours of Rock, BMG is announcing the reissue of five album highlights by the legendary German hard rock band who have shaped the music world – now appearing on coloured vinyl. Alongside versions of Fly To The Rainbow, In Trance and Virgin Killer, remastered for the first time ever, are further handpicked treasures including Tokyo Tapes and Taken By Force.
Relentless success, constant musical evolution, and ass-kicking performances worldwide – as colorful and eclectic as the career path of the biggest German rock band has been and still is to this day, just as multifaceted are the vinyl colours of these twelve reissues. The colours chosen for the vinyl versions not only reflect the iridescent band history, they are also paired with the style of the original artwork of each individual album.
A particular treat for hard-core Scorpions fans, of course, must definitely be the four albums remastered for the first time in history:
“Fly To The Rainbow” (1974) already showed strong hard rock influences and already foreshadowed where the band would later go musically. “In Trance” (1975) was the Scorpions’ first work recorded together with producer Dieter Dierks. With their shortest album, the 35-minute “Virgin Killer” (1976), the band moved another step away from psychedelic influences and towards hard rock.
Reissued collectively under the title Scorpions – Colours of Rock are the following five album highlights from 1974 to 1978: Fly To The Rainbow (1974): 180g 1LP, pressed on transparent violet vinyl In Trance (1975): 180g 1LP, pressed on transparent vinyl Virgin Killer (1976): 180g 1LP, pressed on powder blue vinyl Taken By Force (1977): 180g 1LP, pressed on white vinyl Tokyo Tapes (1978): 180g Gatefold 2LP, pressed on yellow vinyl
The Scorpions are undoubtedly amongst the greatest rock bands of all time. The band line-up today includes singer Klaus Meine, Scorpions founder Rudolf Schenker (guitar), Matthias Jabs (lead guitar), Pawel Maciwoda (bass), and Mikkey Dee (drums). The incredible career of the hard rock titans from Hannover, Germany, has already lasted for more than half a century, during which their music has taken the world literally and figuratively by storm, selling more than 110 million albums, breaking one record after the other, while continuously evolving and reinventing themselves again and again. It was just last year that they cemented their status as legends with the new album Rock Believer: No. 2 in Germany and Switzerland, No. 4 in Austria, Top 20 in the UK, and Top 60 in the USA. So it comes as no surprise that the Scorpions have rocked their way to a reputation as one of the best live bands ever.
Calgary’s own prog-power band Red Cain have released their new single The Great Hunt from the band’s upcoming albumNÄE’BLISS, out everywhere on June 2nd. Accompanying the single, the band shares a music video filmed at their most recent live performance. The Great Hunt displays the band’s cinematic influences right out of the gate, opening up with a haunting intro and quickly ascending flawlessly into the classic progressive heavy metal sound they are known for. The latest single off of the upcoming album NÄE’BLISS is reminiscent of Periphery, Kamelot, Mastodon, and others like them, seamlessly blending heavy melodic undertones with progressive power metal instrumentals and striking vocals.
On the single, the band comments: “And now – the Hunt is on! With our last single for the upcoming album NÄE’BLISS, we are pleased to debut one of the heaviest tracks in the Red Cain repertoire – The Great Hunt. A stomping, driven ¾ march utilizing 8-string guitars and layers and layers of bass, this track pushes further into the djent riffs present elsewhere on the album, yet contains all of the usual characteristics of a Red Cain anthem – lush electronic backing, soaring, aggressive vocals, and a pulsing, headbanging groove.”
Red Cain has released singles and videos for Blight, We Are Chaos, and Fisher King, giving listeners an indication of the band’s reinvented sound. With Blight, the band moved the needle firmly into the progressive part of their prog-power style, delivering an atmospheric, chilling, and dynamic performance meant to mimic the unstoppable advancement of the blight over the land. We Are Chaos hits hard with technicality and groove, combining the melodic shadowy presence of Kamelot with the controlled aggression of Gojira. Unsettling, bombastic and unrelenting, Fisher King showcases a musical and lyrical contest of wills between the ‘Chosen One’ archetype, and his antithetical, flawed, yet lethal opponent caught in his unrelenting march.
CHECK OUT THE ALBUM’S PREVIOUSLY RELEASED SINGLES: BLIGHT – LISTEN / WATCH WE ARE CHAOS – LISTEN / WATCH FISHER KING – LISTEN / WATCH
The full-length album NÄE’BLISS is set to drop on June 2nd and is inspired by the Wheel Of Time series. An homage to the legendary world of Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic, NÄE’BLISS, was mixed by Tyler Corbett, Sole Audio, and mastered by Alan Sacha Laskow, Perfect Filth Studios. With a grimdark edge, downtuned guitars, death metal influences, and an unrelenting march forward, NÄE’BLISS is a foray into the reverse side of the Wheel of Time story – that of the Forsaken, antagonists, instruments of the Great Lord of the Dark, and the brutal and captivating allure of letting Chaos reign supreme. On the album, Red Cain comments: “We are all massive fantasy fans, and for us, Wheel of Time rubs shoulders with LOTR as a genre-defining epic fantasy series that started it all. The world of the Wheel is a brutal, compelling world with multitudes of fascinating characters, and we were particularly interested in exploring its more visceral aspects – an area which begs to be paired with heavy metal. We’ve seen some of our musical icons, like Blind Guardian, successfully go down this path, and it was magnificent to see new musical interpretations of those stories spun out by them – not to mention some bloody good fun. Now, it is our turn to ride forward in another turn of the Wheel.”
TRACK LISTING
Fisher King
Blight
The Great Hunt
We Are Chaos
Sightblinder
The Man Who Can’t Forget (Part I)
Crane of Malkier (Part II)
Fires of Heaven (feat. James Delbridge)
MORE ABOUT RED CAIN:
Born out of the vast prairies and snowy peaks of Alberta, Canada, RED CAIN is a modern progressive metal project with Eastern European roots. With intricate songwriting, powerful vocals, eerie soundscapes and strong electronic-backed groove, Red Cain champion a fluid, dynamic, and unique style centered around telling dark, conceptual Faustian sagas and constructing those into an unforgettable live experience, described as “Melancholy and Rage”. They self-released their debut self-titled EP (2016) to excellent reviews, and followed this up with two award-winning full-length albums, Kindred: Act I (2019), and Kindred: Act II (2021) telling a sprawling conceptual saga, working with Sliptrick Records globally to have over 3500+ physical copies sold, as well as over 200,000 digital streams to date.
The band has hit #1 on the Canadian National Loud Charts on multiple occasions and is a 1x winner, 3x nominee for the Metal Recording of the Year at the YYC Music Awards. Music videos for ZERO and Juliet have won 17 awards at international music festivals (Berlin Short Film Festival, Venice Shorts, Hollywood Art & Movie Awards + more). The band has a strong history of collaboration, with a highlight being their work with Juno Award-winning vocalist Kobra Paige of heavy metal band Kobra and the Lotus, on the track Wing of the Crow. With the upcoming 2023 album NÄE’BLISS, Red Cain takes a further step into cementing their status as innovators and has sights set firmly on another ambitious and conceptually exciting project.
RED CAIN ARE: Evgeniy Zayarny: Vocals Samuel Ridout: Guitars Tyler Corbett: Guitars Kalie Yan: Bass/Vocals Taylor Gibson: Drums
Swedish experimental metallers VAK are ready to deliver more mesmerizing sludge with their second single “Sewer Café”.
As always VAK delivers top tier experimental metal. Sewer Café is a technically intriguing and musically challenging track, where VAK plays around with sonic elements in the very outskirts of the sludge genre. Resulting in a short yet adventurous track built on melodic rhythms and an underlying disturbing pulse.
VAK states: “The tricky track ‘Sewer Cafe’ mobilizes our melodic force and is an example of how far down our heaviest riffs are able to dig. We wanted to give the listener the sensation of helplessly falling through the soil, and into the forgotten catacombs of the city underground. And here waits another surprise: a concealed cafe with various offers and the possibility to speak your mind without fear of betrayal!”
artwork: Jonathan Hultén
ABOUT Well-produced, doom-groovy, stoner/sludge Swedish metal band VAK were highly praised for their previous album “Loud Wind” (2019). UK Magazine Zero Tolerance wrote that it was “one of 2019’s contenders for best stoner metal album! […] It’s one thing to pack an album full of crushing riffs, memorable hooks, and passionate performances, but VAK truly evoke a unified togetherness that beams throughout”, while Metal Temple (UK) gave it a 9/10, stating that “VAK is its own unique breed, one that has hints of the past but is focused solely on the future.” Praised for their ability to incorporate more than just one style and genre in their music, drawing inspiration from a great variety of bands and artists, VAK’s upcoming album is something to look forward to!
BAND MEMBERS Tobias Alpadie – Guitars Anders Bartonek – Drums Patrik Engström – Guitars Jesper Skarin – Bass, Vocals Robin Skarin – Keyboards
Finnish metal band ENDLESS EXAM releases the final single before the debut album to be released in early June. According to the band’s singer Nina Kuronen, the song ‘I ain’t your toy’ is about a relationship between two people. The desire of the other party to build a deeper connection does not interest the other person who only has his own fantasies and selfish goals. Eventually the situation escalates and turns upside down.
The band describes the song as follows: “We wanted to make this a straight-forward and grooving song with a big chorus. It has slightly industrial-vibes there. Works really great in a live gig”
The band releases their debut full-length ‘Voice of passion and agony’ on June 2nd 2023.
THE ROCK ALCHEMIST – Italian Rock Band from Turin with a strong sonic identity that blends modern rock with progressive, hard, alternative, and pop elements!
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
