On April 26th it all went down at our 2nd Anniversary show that featured some of the most amazing bands in California. Honestly, the event was a huge success with truck loads of positive energy. All of the bands performed to the highest levels of gnarlyness and you could hear their passion in every note! Just as important as the bands that took the stage, CVLT Nation would like to salute everyone who came out and showed support. We would like to shout out Gehenna, Seven Sisters of Sleep, Youth Code, Children of God, Stoic Violence, Whip Hand and Unit B for an awesome fucking night. The night’s festivities were caught on film by our comrade in photography Adam Murray – good looking out homie! Without Crash the Clubs and Lace Pickups we would not have been able to pull this off, thank you for you support and hard work. It was cool to be able to connect with people outside of the internet. That being said, we really appreciate everyone who makes this webzine a destination every day! Now it’s time for the pictures to do the talking – check out these unreal flicks from CVLT Nation’s 2nd Anniversary and SSOS record release party (they fucking killed it – make sure to check them out on their upcoming tour with Full of Hell).

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It’s no secret that we at CVLT Nation are huge fans of CHILDREN OF GOD. Their debut album We Set Fire To The Sky was one of the best releases so far this year. Seeing CHILDREN OF GOD live will make you realize how special this band is. Today it is our honor to be premiering their new video for “Unrelenting Storm” – this visual is intense as fuck!

Have you ever felt old for one reason or another? Maybe you’re out running adult-type errands and everywhere you turn, there’s someone living life to the fullest while you wait in line at the post office. Perhaps you go to a show and a band that still has yet to reach high school blows your ass out of the water. If this terrifies you, maybe it’s best that you avoid Baltimore death metal band Noisem. With the age of its members ranging from 15 to 20 years old, Noisem (initially signed to A389 Records under the name Necropsy) comes right out of the gate with the debut LP, Agony Defined.

This record moves with such a sense of urgency that it seems to be on the downside of modern metal. There’s no occasional slow song that chugs along or despair-ridden ballad about being born just to die. Noisem rips through these nine tracks and aims to fuck you up. The first track, “Voices In The Morgue,” sets the siege off right, with circle pit-inducing fast parts that endure the majority of the track, paired with gnarly vocals and wailing solos driven more by the whammy bar than actual notes (a good thing for a metal band, indeed). The song actually slows down after about two minutes of pummeling into submission, but kicks right back in with a blistering solo that would make Kerry King weep. Noisem keeps the album going at full speed with “Birthing The Bestial,” which keeps up the intense tornado of noise-drenched metal. “Desire And Disgust” changes it up a bit, leaning on a heavy Cannibal Corpse influence, especially in the drums. The song goes for quality instead of quantity, ending the track at 77 seconds, the shortest of the album. The fourth song on Agony Defined, “Mortuary,” calls to memory the lyrical content of metal legends Death, spinning a tale of the title’s creepy atmosphere. “Mortuary” also features the first slower passage on the album so far which fits nicely with the lyrical content. Thrash heads take note: it took Noisem four tracks to play one slow part!
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CVLT Nation is stoked to bring you the soundtrack for today’s moments of desperation…if you need a furious, raging pick me up, we have it for you: two tracks off the upcoming Old Wounds // Trenchfoot split 7″ which will be breaking down your door on June 18th via Melotov Records. These songs will tear your eardrums a new one! Old Wounds and Trenchfoot will be doing a 6 day tour of the Northeast from June 18th-24th supporting the 7″, alongside Snakes from Michigan. So press play below and get your ass out to one of their shows – stay tuned for the full tour info!

Lo! Tour Diary Part 1 by Adrian Shapiro

Howdy, Lo! here checking in from Europe. We’re 12 shows into the tour and currently driving to Rome, Italy for our show tonight. Here’s a bit of a breakdown of the last few days and our journey through to this point.

Day 1.
We arrive in Zurich after that fun flight from Sydney, got through customs and were met by a chap from the van company to give us our van for the next month and all our backline. We then jumped in the van and headed off to La Chaux De Fond where we’re setting up for the next couple of days to rehearse and catch up before we start playing. Driving on the wrong side of the road in a manual definitely took a bit of time to get used to. Four hours later and a nice drive through some snowy areas and we’re there. We’re staying with a couple of the guys from The Ocean so we headed back to theirs and crashed for the night. We toured with The Ocean in Australia in 2012 and it was great to see the guys.

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Well folks, Nudes are an attention grabber.

I say that in the best possible way, as their Skin EP is one of the more pissed EPs I’ve heard this year. That’s not to say other, angrier music hasn’t come out… but still. Do yourself a favor and cop this six song hellfuck and blast it in your car. In terms of sound, you can expect a pretty jarring exemplification of punk tendencies. Nudes are not so different than the crops of burn-out punk bands that have been popping up all across the globe and blogosphere. The distinctly thin production quality and guitar riffs orient the listener to more of a traditional, rapid era of punk. Really though, this is the perfect platform for Nudes to be broadcasting from, as it is a demographic they’ll surely appease and be well-liked by.

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Brisbane’s Idylls play fast and surprisingly gloomy metallic punk. “Indian Circle”  is a solid offering of four equally solid tracks, each a raging, visceral suckerpunch. Rooted in its metallic roots, Idylls bend their genre to their will, flip-flopping and otherwise morphing from outright aggression to a bad trip made physical. While this release may not push the genre, it without doubt has manic fun with it.

The specialty here is bringing the listener utmost existential discomfort . Rather successfully, one might add. The first track, “Concord Prison,” invites with its tortured echoes, snap-punk musicianship and borderline psychadelia. The most foreboding piece on “Indian Circles,” “Concord Prison” executes its sounds with graphic precision. The artwork, a simple picture of discarded pill packages, reflects the nature of excess and abuse worn upon the body. “Indian Circle” at times plays like a swansong to damaged youth and the inescapable truths that leaving adolescence unveils. This is most prevalent on the second track, “Pay with Youth,” an intense, abrasive ode to addiction and the slavery it brings. The imagery it conjures is moving: drugs like a savior, the addict pressed to corrupted feet for solace.

Track three is a well-done Lubricated Goat cover, “Beyond the Grave.” The track permeates with sinister vibes, a full-frontal scream for vengeance and apathy. The sound here is of pure delirium and faraway, a ghostly oasis in desert of nuclear ash. Final track, “Blood Ambient,” continues the beleaguered tone of “Beyond the Grave,” a trudging barrage of mood and burgeoning aggression. The words haunt in the background, forging a shaking foundation on which the sound maintains prominence until the final fade away.

“Indian Circle” is a quality and entertaining release from Idylls, where many an eye should be aimed at their horizon.
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England’s CORRUPT MORAL ALTAR are about to unleash another slap of totally fucked up Grind/Sludge/Death Metal madness upon their willing disciples in the embodiment of a 7″ titled Whiskey Sierra. Just as the name professes I assume all of the material was created under the influence of quite some booze and probably a bunch of other substances as well. And this shows not only in the naming but also in the headache provoking music that is taking only the heaviest, sickest bits of every genre that is already extreme in itself.

By doing so CMA perfectly pursue what they also did on the previous (and excellent) Luciferian Deathcult EP, except that these four obviously very angry men became even tighter and heavier, making Whiskey Sierra an absolutely convincing release that should please the ’83 Napalm Death shirt sporting 40-something guy as much as the 15 year old dude who only recently got introduced to Spazz by his older brother.

The four songs of Whiskey Sierra get straight to the point, hit you in the face, kick the shit out of you and disappear as fast as they came, leaving you as a bloody wreck begging for more. In about ten and a half minutes CMA do really everything it takes to tear your shiny happy world apart. The down-tempo’ish, sludgy parts are wisely placed and mostly leave you only a few seconds to breathe before one of these really ridiculous fast blast-beats bevels your skullcap or a 10.000 ton breakdown beats your head onto the concrete floor. If you still don’t have enough, the dual vocal assault makes sure you feel completely fucked. The high screams ultimately sound like a buch of rusty nails onto a blackboard. Nice eh?

What’s really remarkable about this unhealthy mixture is that CMA have in down like not too many other bands to make all this sound very coherent. At no point you have the feeling that Whiskey Sierra sounds put on or strangely constructed. It’s more like CMA found a way to melt down over 30 years of extreme music and turn it into a merciless, unforgiving sonic mayhem. Try this at your own risk.

This 7″ EP is up for pre-order via Dead Chemist Records.

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Dallas crossover thrash titans Power Trip has been making a name for themselves since the release of their 2008 demo tape. The band has toured nonstop, recently completing a tour with Expire and Xibalba and making appearances at festivals such as The Rumble and New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. Five years since its debut, the band has unleashed something that the blast doors just couldn’t contain: Mainfest Decimation. Recorded by War Hungry guitarist Arthur Rizk and Daniel Schmuck, and featuring art from Italy’s Paolo “Madman” Girardi, Manifest Decimation barges its way through your speakers and stomps a mud hole in your soul.

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This split comprises the best material either band has put forth thus far. Period. Two examples of monstrous, pristine blends of punk and metal wreak havoc on this split. Withdrawal roar under the Holy Terror banner, spewing their thrash-laden hardcore with chilling malcontent. Charlotte’s Young and in the Way succeed at breaking your ear-drumheads with their grim blitzkrieg-marriage of crust and black metal. Their split is all indulgence, one of those wholesome sacrificial offerings that begs to simply be raged to.

Young and in the Way‘s contribution brings us two tracks, the first of which being the assault called “Psychopathy.” Much blacker than past material, “Psychopathy” is a song that makes bounds in showcasing Young and in the Way’s mastery of their craft. The spells and smells of rotten cowheads have summoned, successfully, into this world, one of the band’s best tracks to date. The riffs sweep like winds over barren snow drifts, Nordic ice chipping-off as the chords are ran blood bare. “Psychopathy” snarls its malevolence, a berserk creature, focused on the blast-beat blizzard at hand. “Vaticide” opens like scream translated into music, surrounding the listener, consuming them and carrying them on rising church fires. Young and in the Way amazes in the capturing of their roots; “Vaticide” has horns that gleam in candlelight and is dirtier than late January sleet. Of greatest substance is that this split continues the band’s recent tradition of upping their own ante.

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