Sea Bastard - Great Barrier Riff

So it's time for me to pimp my own shit again.  For those who don't know, Funeral Hag died out around July this year.  It was always Jon's band and he got bored of it, so that was that.  Somewhat fortunately for us, Jovian (another Brighton doom band) had split a month or two before us, which meant that the mighty Oliver Irongiant was no longer in a band.  Both Steve and I instantly thought of Oli when we decided we should find another guitarist, and thus Sea Bastard was born!

I like to think SB has the best of both worlds; the groove of Hag and the relentless slowness of Jovian, plus a little something extra!  These first 3 songs were written in about a month after starting the band and recorded live and dirty (apart from the vocals) at 284 Studios on Brighton seafront.  Be warned, this demo sounds pretty horrible.  It's meant to.

Someone made this video for YouTube if you wanna check out what we sound like.  This is our fastest and (so far) most popular song, Aqua Vitae.  It's about whiskey.

320K MP3s from Archive.org
FLAC from Archive.org
Various formats from Bandcamp

Sea Bastard on Facebook
Buy our shit!

The Amenta - V01D

 Right, I know, it's been bloody ages.  I got rather distracted with life, or video games, or fuck knows what the hell I was doing.  Anyways, I'm back again and here's something awesome for you all.  I grabbed an album by The Amenta a while ago because they were playing at Wacken Open Air.  I go to Wacken every year and I generally try and check out all the bands beforehand so I know who to go see.  Anyways, I grabbed The Amenta's Ocassus album and rather enjoyed it.  Then I completely forgot about it and forgot what they were called.  Fortunately, I managed to remember the other day and grabbed some more of their stuff.

The sound is pretty brutal, and seems to be described as Industrial Death Metal, right up my street since The Berzerker are one of my favourite bands!  The Amenta are a bit more traditionally Death Metal than The Berzerker, the drums are a bit more natural sounding than the gabber-style triggered kicks you'll find there (only a bit), but just as relentless and heavy.  There're plenty of keys adding depth to the sound throughout and some nice industrially sounding intros and breaks.  Well worth a listen if you like that sort of thing.

V01D is an interesting project.  It's a free release with 16 tracks and 4 videos, mostly composed of re-recordings or remixes of tracks from previous releases.  I guess this makes it as good a place to start as any and the production is solid throughout, the re-recordings sounding even more brutal than the original versions!  Check out the video below and if you like what you hear go grab the album.  Highly recommended.

320KBPS MP3 from TheAmenta.com

The Amenta Official Website
The Amenta on Myspace

Tribute To Bolt Thrower

This is a free release from the French netlabel Metal Factory Records. Not heard of any of the bands before but given it a listen and they do quite well at covering many Bolt Thrower classics, though obviously not quite as good a job as Bolt Thrower themselves!

MP3 at 256Kbps via HTTP from Rapidshare.com

Metal Factory Records at Myspace

Hesper Payne - Titans Of The Northsea

This EP comes from the mighty Hesper Payne of Newcastle. Proper heavy stuff, nice bit of doom mixed with some death metal, sludge and all sorts. Seems they've had some struggles along the way, but this EP is freakin' awesome. Go download it now, and indeed buy a copy off them if you like it. Apparently they have another EP/demo that was available for download at some point but I really can't find it on their Myspace page. Ah well...

192Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Rapidshare.com

Hesper Payne at Myspace

Monsterworks - Spacial Operations

Monsterworks are a metal band originally from Palmerston North/Wellington, New Zealand and formed in 1996 and reformed in London in 2003. They mix a number of metal styles to form a highly technical breed of progressive metal, including elements of thrash, death and power metal. Information on them seems to be quite sparse, though their Encyclopaedia Metallum page discography lists 5 full length albums they have under their belts!

Spacial Operations is their 2007 offering, available for free from their website http://www.supermetal.net. It is one of those rare concept albums that has a sci-fi theme rather than fantasy, improves its standing in my eyes no end, even before listening to it! I've always been more of a sci-fi fan than fantasy, though most metallers seem to feel the other way. Having only found a few examples of sci-fi themed metal (Fear Factory's Obsolete and Iron Savior amongst others), I am always eager to discover more.

If you like any kind of metal, I'd thoroughly recommend downloading Spacial Operations. It's quite a varied album with some great riffs and beautiful guitar work, and of course it's free!

160Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Supermetal.net

Monsterworks Official Site
Monsterworks at Myspace