STONEBURNER Drop Another Track, 'An Apology To A Friend In Need' From Their Forthcoming Second Album

The focused sludge rage of STONEBURNER is again revealed this week as Metal Hammer premiere another track fromtheir forthcoming second full-length, Life Drawing.

'An Apology To A Friend In Need' is a seething concentrate of bold leads and restless riffs, annihilatory fuzz and total destruction kept at bay only by the spot-on groove the Portland sludge crew excel at, throwing their monumental weight around with deadly accuracy. You can stream all 8 minutes of it here...

Direct link:
https://soundcloud.com/neurotrecordings/stoneburner-an-apology-to-a/s-VPaWY

About the track, the band remark..."This song is one of our favorite pieces to play. Riding the line between the crunchy, aggressive riffs and the more subdued, fragile sections gets us high as hell. Lyrically, “An Apology…” is just that. It’s a reflection on those times when it takes everything you've got just to get out of bed, with no room left for others. The dark times when you turn your back on a loved ones pain, because all you've got to give is the poison of your own shitty problems."

You can also listen to the sonic severity of “Some Can”, premiered last week,  and now streaming at The Portland Mercury HERE.

The follow-up to their 2012 debut, Sickness Will Pass, features nine rumbling odes of bottom-heavy hostility, diseased rhythms and emotional decay as well as an array of talented guest vocalists including Krysta Martinez (Transient/Landmine Marathon), Benjamin Caragol (Burials/Hang the Old Year) and Joshua Greene (Bastard Feast, Ephemeros). Recorded, mixed and produced by Fester at Haywire Studios, mastered by Adam Gonsalves at Telegraph Mastering – both in Portland — and swathed in the visually abrasive cover art of J.J. Shirey, Life Drawing promises to hurl STONEBURNER’s habitually chest-caving sludge mantras to entirely new realms of earth-deteriorating heaviness.

STONEBURNER’s musical ancestry winds through Buried At Sea, Buried Blood, Heathen Shrine and others. Named after a subterranean weapon from the novel Dune, STONEBURNER deliver a wholly organic orchestration of captivating, crusty doom metal, their torrid hymns bathed in internal agony, anguish and despair.

Life Drawing will be released in UK/EU on April 14th
and in the US on April 15th, via Neurot Recordings

"Churning elements of sludge, doom and crust in a charred and emotionally charged study of turmoil, fearless self-examination and a determined drive to wring some genuine human essence from the modern-day vale of tears, Life Drawing is a daunting yet ultimately exhilarating album for anyone who believes that music should be as challenging and potentially transformative as life itself." - METAL HAMMER

“At times quite spooky, at others downright teeth-grinding, Life Drawing is rough and seething. Repeated thrusts of your face into the soft moss of a dying log somehow protect you from the obvious: Hope and promise aren't merely stained. They've been properly diluted and washed out with thick piss. The truest of sludge deliveries opens a rusty door, but STONEBURNER have invited us into our own nightmare. The deceptive lounges hardly provide comfort, and you're better off just cooperating when the rhythms crash. Get in the van and stop with the fucking questions. Yes, there IS a world this ugly.” - HeavyPlanet

"Their aggressive, sludgy take on the world remains something fresh and simply crushing...their second album sees them broadening their material to include some prolonged fragile passages. But don't worry, when it's heavy, it's heavier than ever." - 8/10 BIG CHEESE

AMENRA Collaborates With Willy Vanderperre For Humbling Video; European Tour Nears

Neurot Recordings act, AMENRA, has just released a stunningly personal thirteen-minute-long video for their epic track, “À Mon Âme.”

AMENRA teamed up with top fashion photographer, Willy Vanderperre, and director of photography, Nicolas Karakatsanis, the visual masterminds behind the reins of a video which features the band stripped of all but their own selves. Vanderperre has worked with a startling array of individuals, from Kate Moss to Kanye West, but his encounter with AMENRA sees both parties break formation to form a hesitant, powerful and revealing union. The video, set to “À Mon Âme,” from their most recent LP, Mass V, may not be what you have come to expect from the cult crafters of discordance, but what are AMENRA if not masters of defying expectation?

Sink into “À Mon Âme” via Nowness AT THIS LOCATION.

Says AMENRA’s CHVE of the collaboration; ”It is not at all like the sort of visuals we usually present; it is more a case study, or a visual interpretation of the band, a little piece of concept art, if you will. The idea they [Willy Vanderperre and director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis] had was stripping us of everything we had – ‘what if we took it all away from them?’, ‘what if we took them from their comfort zone?’. No shadows or darkness to hide in, dark imagery, props or metaphors or symbols to use.”

He continues…”Compare it to what we sometimes or mostly do with our music – stick to the mere necessary, take a minimalistic approach of a whole. What do we really need? To create a certain ‘feeling’ of emotion. For us, it was an extremely interesting cooperation. We normally keep our guard extremely high, never give something out of our hands, to keep it as close to our skin as humanly possible – that’s exactly what they did as well, literally…It was awkward, uneasy, and very confronting for us to see, yet one of the most interesting things we did lately, and an honor for us to be working with such talented and inspiring people. ‘Under a watchtower of punishing light.’”

AMENRA will be hitting the road again, beginning next month and including plenty of festivals; including Bristol’s Temples and London’s Beyond the Redshift festivals in the UK. Watch the trailer for the Church of Ra European tour here. Mass V can be ordered at THIS LOCATION.

AMENRA Tour Dates:

4/11/2014 106 Club – Rouen, France

4/12/2014 Jubez – Karlsruhe Germany

4/13/2014 La Maroquinerie – Paris, France

4/14/2014 Confort Moderne – Poitiers, France

4/15/2014 La Dynamo – Toulouse, France

4/16/2014 Sonora – Bilbao, Spain

4/17/2014 Hard Club – Porto, Portugal

4/18/2014 Shoko – Madrid, Spain

4/19/2014 Razz3 – Barcelona, Spain

4/20/2014 Impetus Fest – Belfort, France

4/21/2014 P.M.K. – Innsbruck, Austria

4/22/2014 Posthof – Linz, Austria

4/23/2014 Lido – Berlin, Germany

4/24/2014 Proxima – Warsaw, Poland

4/25/2014 Ut Connewitz – Leipzig, Germany

4/26/2014 Young Team Fest – Metz, France

5/03/2014 Temples Festival – Bristol UK w/ Neurosis

5/10/2014 BTR Festival – London, UK w/ Cult Of Luna

6/08/2014 Vooruit – Gent, Belgium w// Cor

6/19/2014 Ekko – Utrecht, Netherlands

6/20/2014 Nieuwe Nor – Heerlen, Netherlands

6/21/2014 Neudegg Alm – Abtenau, Austria

6/22/2014 Feierwerk – Munchen, Germany

6/28/2014 Graspop – Dessel, Belgium

9/27/2014 AB – Brussels, Belgium – Afterlife Acoustic

AMENRA is also gearing up for two split releases on Consouling Sound, due for release this Summer. Each album will present an incarnation of the band, together with a sometimes surprising, but always compelling counterpart band. For a split 10″ album with Eleanora, AMENRA is offering “À mon Âme (live)” and for a split 10″ album with Treha Sektori, AMENRA decided to re-interpret “À mon Âme” and create an atmospheric ambient piece called “Trahn.” Additionally, My Proud Mountain is gearing up to release Live II — AMENRA’s second live CD and first live 2xLP — featuring live audio from their Mass V release show last year, mixed and mastered by Billy Anderson.

More news from AMENRA shall emerge in the coming months so do stay tuned.

“The band’s focus on the inherent and desolate beauty that’s found in life imbued with a painful ambience not often found within their doomed sludge style…in the clashing of tender and serene passages with intense screams and walls of noise that touch upon the actuality of life. It will hurt and terrify, but there can be salvation. 9/10″ – Metal Hammer

“Ethereal hardcore/sludge band Amenra touches on black metal, gothic folk and post-rock in the most organic of ways.” – BrooklynVegan

“The dynamics of Mass V are simply staggering.” – Rock A Rolla

“An elephantine beast of a record, whose greyness of hue is matched by its thunderous assault…Mass V portrays a band with grim gravitas that’s all their own.” – Terrorizer

“On Mass V to say they’ve surpassed themselves is an understatement. Thanks in no small part to the anguished squalls of Colin Van Eekhout’s vocals there is a truly uncomfortable and palpable sense of fear and distress, like being forced into the ominous blackness that adorns the album’s cover.” – The Quietus

“…an insurmountable peak of despair, and amongst the horror, enlightenment. Mass V was the sound of this tribe of Neurot finally marching defiantly beside those who have journeyed through silver in blood before them.” – PopMatters

“…an utterly brilliant album that not only stands as Amenra’s finest work, but that undoubtedly would (and probably does) make Scott Kelly, Steve Von Till, and Co. proud to have these fine young Belgians on their roster. 5/5″ – Sputnik Music

“…a dynamically powerful return-to-form.” – Ultimate Guitar


http://www.churchofra.com
http://www.ritualofra.com
http://www.facebook.com/churchofra

CORRECTIONS HOUSE: Debut London Show Announced, April 12th

Following the release of their debut full-length recording, Last City Zero via Neurot Recordings, we’re happy to announce that Corrections House, the collective musical extractions of Mike IX Williams (Eyehategod), Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), Sanford Parker (Minsk) and their minister of propaganda, Seward Fairbury, will be coming to the UK on April 12th for a single London show after their appearance at Roadburn Festival.

Tickets for the show, which will be taking place at 

Dalston’s Birthdays, are available here.

Corrections House themselves will be preaching the end-time message with apocalyptical zeal from their righteous pulpit atop the main stage of the 013 venue in Tilburg, at Roadburn Festival 2014, on Thursday April 10th, hoaxing the system and smashing out selections from Last City Zero.

The individual members will play a second show on Friday, April 11th at Het Patronaat, and for this show, Scott Kelly, Mike IX Williams, Sanford Parker and Bruce Lamont will each perform solo material, aided and abetted by a selection of the others as they see fit.

Corrections House is a meeting of minds and ideologies that sees all four members incorporating their obvious individual talents and voices but simultaneously carving paths away from the sounds for which they are usually known. On Last City Zero, they traverse tectonic plate-shifting doom and the downcast gloom of Kelly's usual ouevre into mutated industrial hissing and clanging EBM beats from Parker, squalls and drones of oblique saxophone from Lamont and Williams' familiar phlegm-drenched fire-spitting ire and all points in-between.

Check out the sounds of “Bullets and Graves” - the planet-rupturing sound of steel fallingfrom the sky , the mournful tide of “Run Through The Night,” currently streaming at Vice/Noisey (Germany) as well as opening track, “Serve or Survive,” at Pitchfork.

LAST CITY ZERO

“Whether it’s Mike IX Williams’ grim spoken word poetry or Scott’s coarse, monotone groan overlaying the clangorous soundscapes, it’s the utter bleakness that binds.” – METAL HAMMER

"It sounds very little like anything else the four men have ever been involved with. It sounds, in fact, very little like anything else, period - an overall pitch-dark neofolk atmosphere permeates the entire record but in a very decadent, urban sort of way...A record that oozes danger and menace - and genius - out of reach of its many shady corners." – ROCK A ROLLA

“Last City Zero takes a leaf from the Swans book of misery and abjection, but its elegantly spun shadowplay of apocalyptic folk, pummelling industrial and end-times beat poetry seeks, and sometimes succeeds, in locating beauty in decay.” - UNCUT

"A concise, sharp and very focused collection of eclectic songs. It's as if this surreally talented collection of people didn't know (or didn't want to know) where exactly they were heading, but knew very well how to get there anyway...Face Last City Zero as an experience as you would a trip into the darkest corners of both your mind and your city, with senses alert and aware of the imminent danger. How long has it been since a record made you feel like that?" – TERRORIZER ALBUM OF THE MONTH

“Not only are these men masters of their own individual sounds, they have managed to create something together that is bigger than themselves. And that is a “supergroup” that gets it right.” –GHOST CULT

“This is a record of revolt, of standing up and fighting back, a fist to the face, a flag to truly get behind! A calling to this international nation of the oppressed. This is musically superior, a slow determined march of beats that infiltrates your being and pumps your heart just that little bit faster!” – DESTRUCTIVE MUSIC

https://www.facebook.com/CorrectionsHouse

STONEBURNER Premieres New Psalm Via Portland Mercury; Release Of Life Drawing Draws Near

Today, the sludge conjurors in STONEBURNER are pleased to slash your face with their newest psalm of sonic severity, “Some Can.” The menacing new number, now streaming at The Portland Mercury, comes by way of the band’s forthcoming new full-length, Life Drawing.

Elaborates drummer/vocalist Jesse McKinnon, “‘Some Can’ is the first song on the album and a pretty fair hint of what’s to come later. The song is about being completely aware of what you need to do in order to better your life and yourself, but sometimes that’s just not in the cards you’re dealt. To push the feel of raging frustration to an even higher level we were thrilled to have our sister Krysta [Martinez], from Transient and Landmine Marathon come in and throw the fuck down on the heavy vocals. It’s not nihilism, it’s realism. Eeyore knows what’s up…”

_______________________

Feel the burn, courtesy of The Portland Mercury, at THIS LOCATION.
________________

The follow-up to their 2012 debut, Sickness Will Pass, which The Sludgelord appropriately crowned “an ugly, visceral and truly terrifying beast of an album,” features nine rumbling odes of bottom-heavy hostility, diseased rhythms and emotional decay as well as an array of talented guest vocalists including Krysta Martinez (Transient/Landmine Marathon), Benjamin Caragol (Burials/Hang the Old Year) and Joshua Greene (Bastard Feast, Ephemeros). Recorded, mixed and produced by Fester at Haywire Studios, mastered by Adam Gonsalves at Telegraph Mastering – both in Portland — and swathed in the visually abrasive cover art of J.J. Shirey, Life Drawing promises to hurl STONEBURNER’s habitually chest-caving sludge mantras to entirely new realms of earth-deteriorating heaviness.

STONEBURNER’s musical ancestry winds through Buried At Sea, Buried Blood, Heathen Shrine and others. Named after a subterranean weapon from the novel Dune, STONEBURNER deliver a wholly organic orchestration of captivating, crustified doom metal, their torrid hymns bathed in internal agony, anguish and despair. To define STONEBURNER, one need only look to the list of bands with whom they’ve shared the stage: Yob, Sleep, Eyehategod, Neurosis, Buzzov-en, Weedeater, Saint Vitus, Watain, Tragedy, Noothgrush, Graves At Sea, Lord Dying, Drop Dead, Whitehorse, Wind Hand, Bastard Noise…

Life Drawing will be unveiled in North America via Neurot Recordings
on April 15, 2014 (April 14 in the UK/EU).

“At times quite spooky, at others downright teeth-grinding, Life Drawing is rough and seething. Repeated thrusts of your face into the soft moss of a dying log somehow protect you from the obvious: Hope and promise aren't merely stained. They've been properly diluted and washed out with thick piss. The truest of sludge deliveries opens a rusty door, but STONEBURNER have invited us into our own nightmare. The deceptive lounges hardly provide comfort, and you're better off just cooperating when the rhythms crash. Get in the van and stop with the fucking questions. Yes, there IS a world this ugly.” -- HeavyPlanet

http://www.facebook.com/Stoneburner.PDX

NEUROSIS to Perform Two Shows in the UK this May

Neurosis to perform two shows in the UK this May, including Temples Festival in Bristol and a Leeds show

May 3rd - Temples Festival, Bristol

May 4th - Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds

June 28th - GRASPOP Festival, Bessel, Belgium

June 29th - Tuska Open Air Metal Festival, Helsinki, Finland

NEUROSIS have locked down new performances in their ongoing, sporadic live ceremonies in support of the album, Honor Found In Decay.

Since 1985, NEUROSIS surpassed the boundaries of any genre, never ceasing to mutate and progress their songwriting and sonic delivery, and never failing to mesmerize audiences both in the studio and onstage. In 2012 NEUROSIS returned with the monumental release of their tenth studio album, Honor Found In Decay which went on to receive countless plaudits from the press on a global scale, and was positioned highly in end of year polls – reaffirming why NEUROSIS remain one of the most important heavy acts in existence.

Their journey continues with these UK and European shows in support of this vital album, and long do we hope their voyage continues into the future…

As a reminder and a taste of what is to come, watch and share this immense live footage performing ‘At The Well’ live in Oakland. 

NATE HALL: Ode To Townes Van Zandt Available For Free Download; Songs Of Townes Van Zandt Vol II Tribute Out Now

The second installment of tribute albums to late American singer/songwriter, Songs Of Townes Van Zandt Vol II, has been released this week, as today, March 7th, marks the hero's birthday.

Songs Of Townes Van Zandt Vol II was released internationally by My Proud Mountain, with Neurot Recordings handling the album for North America. The second album in this homage series praising the works of the celebrated American country/folk legend, the album bears nine new covers featuring proud contributions provided by a wide cast of musicians. The prime collaborators for the album are Mike Scheidt (YOB, VHÖL), John Baizley (Baroness) and Nate Hall (USX), with additional contributions from Katie Jones, Stevie Floyd (Dark Castle, Taurus) and Dorthia Cottrell (Windhand).

In commemoration of this new chapter of homage to the celebrated artist, all are invited to listen to Nate Hall's solo rendition of TVZ's somber classic, "Waitin Around To Die," -- a version not available on the album -- now available for free download AT THIS LOCATION.

Also hear the previously unleashed covers of "To Live Is To Fly" by Mike Scheidt playing at Stereogum HERE, and the album's closing anthem, "If I Needed You," as performed by John Baizley and Katie Jones, playing at Noisey, HERE.

In North America, order Songs Of Townes Van Zandt Vol II direct from Neurot HERE.