Soup wrote this:

Since I just posted a review of a Velvet Cacoon album, I figured I should review something on the exact opposite end of the black metal spectrum. Unlike the drugged-out droning of Velvet Cacoon, this band plays fast, melodic black metal with a strong folk-ish slant.

Darkestrah, proud owners of one of the most hilariously awful band names ever (sorry, but I simply can't let that one slide), are a black metal band hailing from, of all places, Kyrgyzstan, and currently based out of Germany.

Despite the really weak band name, this band plays some of the best pagan black metal I've heard in a long time. The band combines a black metal sound with the use of a number of highly uncommon folk instruments and techniques (especially for black metal) including the kyl-kyjak (a type of fiddle), the temir komuz (also known as a Jew's harp), and the use of sygyt (a style of throat singing), among others.

And speaking of things that are unusual in black metal bands, this is one of the rare female-fronted black metal bands. The singer, going by the name of Kriegtalith holds her own with the best metal vocalists out there. There is nothing for people who like fake metal bands with whiny mallgoth girls fronting them (you know who I'm talking about) here, and for that, I am incredibly thankful. Honestly, she sounds more or less androgynous to me. I wouldn't have even known if I hadn't been told. The point is, she makes Dani Filth sound like a eunuch.

Of course, all of that wouldn't mean much of anything if the music was bad, and the unusual elements sounded cheesy and tacked on, but the standard guitars, drums, bass, and vocals are all here, and there is lots of suitably brutal drumming and awesome enough riffs and melodies to silence all doubters, and the folk instruments are not only well-integrated into the band's arrangements (along with a number of other instruments that unfortunately were unnamed in the press kit), but they're also an essential melodic part of them. This is a well-composed black metal album that will not only satisfy the hordes that are already out there, but might even be tolerable to people who've never listened to a black metal album in their life.

More information can be found at their official website.

Wrote by Soup

Receiving a copy of Genevieve by Velvet Cacoon from Southern Lord was somewhat of a surprise to me. I've had the vinyl edition for almost a year, I'd guess, and to be honest, I just assumed the CD version had been out for about as long.

I'm not complaining, though. Writing about a band (the names Josh and Angela are the only clues given as to who they actually are – and there's speculation that Angela doesn't exist) as utterly absurd as Velvet Cacoon is something I've wanted to do for quite a while, and honestly, I was actually considering just writing a review of it earlier based on the vinyl edition. For those who don't know the story, Velvet Cacoon is a Portland based ambient black metal band that extols the virtues of DXM, the active ingredient in Robitussin. They made a name for themselves spreading rumors about the band's supposed ecofascist activism, the death of a band member in the Cascades, and accounts of incredibly violent live shows. On the album I'm reviewing now, they allegedly used a homemade invention called a “diesel harp” - a guitar with diesel-powered pickups amplified through aquariums. Of course, all of these things were later revealed to probably be completely untrue (except the diesel harp thing; in case your common sense hadn't tipped you off as you were reading it, Josh openly admitted it was after the album's release). Eventually they put recordings of Portland-based dream pop artist, Korouva (listen to this stuff; it's good) on their MySpace page as their own and faced further controversy after the plagiarism accusations. The band's response: to admit that everything about them is a joke, that they're horrible people and an excellent example of what too many drugs will do to a person, and announce a still-unreleased new album. Of course, this presented a hell of a lot more questions than it answered, and the band's intentions are even more unclear at this point than they were before.

Recently, Southern Lord picked up a couple of the recordings that were theirs to reissue. Northsuite, an earlier recording, and Genevieve, which is their actual debut album. And for a “joke” band, this is a really great, really powerful album.

At the core of the sound here is fuzzed-out, noisy black metal. Droning ambient passages hide surprising melodies and drugged out, distant vocals. A thick, distorted haze surrounds everything, from the drugged out lullabies presented on “P.S. Nautical” and “Avalon Polo” to the sleepy clockwork guitars of “Laudanum” that fade out for a vocal break and then again for an ambient passage toward the end of the track. The title track probably sounds the most like traditional black metal, with fast drumming and buzzsaw guitars providing the backdrop for tortured raspy vocals and subtle keyboard holding down the melody. The last track, “Bete Noir” takes up a good third of the playing time of the album. This track is the album's comedown, a slowly building ambient track that exercises considerable restraint, consisting mostly of ambient noise and layered keyboard melodies, all hanging in the background for 17 minutes, getting noticeably louder and then disappearing completely in the last 30 seconds.

As for finding further information on this band, you're essentially limited to what Wikipedia and Google searches turn up. They haven't really maintained an official website (their current site features nothing more than an e-mail link and a picture of a lady on a bike) in quite some time, and they will probably never tour. Still, they're responsible for some of the most oddly atmospheric black metal in recent memory, and I have to highly recommend it to anyone who's into that sort of thing.

Bully With a Badge/Someone I Used to Know

Voetsek

So I figure since my stack of CD's to review is kind of piling up, and I've been pretty lazy, of late, I would start combining reviews in logical ways. By genre, label, release date, etc. So today, I'm talking about some good old fashioned thrash played by some bands that I think get the idea better than most other bands playing this style of music now-a-days.

On the more hardcore end of things is the new album, Infernal Command, by the bay area's Voetsek. Ami Lawless's vocals range from hoarse shouts to high pitched screeches that bring to mind Nausea's Amy Miret. The band is about as thrash as it gets. Speed is the key here. But while the rhythm section is mostly punk, the guitars stray into metal territory quite often with killer leads wherever possible. Double-bass is used tastefully, which is nice to hear in a band like this. This band thrashes through 17 tracks in about 21 minutes, so this thing isn't for the feint of heart.

Lyrics range from dystopian (“Frozen Heart”) to social (“Self Righteous Fuckdom”) to political (“Bully With a Badge/Somone I Used to Know”) to just straight up goofy (“What Would Lemmy Do?”). I'd recommend this as highly for people who are into things like Municipal Waste, Septic Death, Man is the Bastard, Nausea, XBRAINIAX, or Hummingbird of Death as I would for people who are just into old-school 80's thrash.

They've got a few shows lined up, and they all look like complete “burn down the house” sorts of deals. Lack of Interest and Mind of Asian in particular are sick as hell. Here are the dates, and stay tuned to their MySpace page for more:

Nov 21 2008 LACK OF INTEREST, MIND OF ASIAN (Japan), VOETSEK, CALIFORNIA LOVE + more @ Gilman Berkeley, CA
Nov 22 2008 LACK OF INTEREST, VOETSEK, MIND OF ASIAN (Japan), SMD, SUMERIAN AXE, TERRORISM in SoCal Boyle Heights, CA
Nov 23 2008 GHOUL, MIND OF ASIAN, VOETSEK, I WILL KILL YOU FUCKER, DR. KILL ’EM ALL @ Burnt Ramen Richmond, CA
Nov 24 2008 VOETSEK & MIND OF ASIAN in Portland @ Plan B Portland, OR
Nov 25 2008 VOETSEK & MIND OF ASIAN in Seattle @ the Rendezvous Seattle, WA
Nov 26 2008 VOETSEK & MIND OF ASIAN in Eugene, OR Eugene, OR

Now onto the second band of this article!

Insanity

Guillotine

I wish Sweden's Guillotine had sent me a little more info because I know almost nothing about them. But I'll work with what I can dig up! It'll be okay, I promise. They're on Singapore's Pulverised Records now, a label that I pretty consistently dig. They have one other album out. It came out ten years ago. Their sound is relentless, fast-ass thrash metal. Much more of a straight-up 80's thrash metal sound than the Voetsek album, and definitely rooted squarely in metal rather than punk. I'm not sure I get what these guys are all about, since, unfortunately, they didn't include any lyrics, but their sound is great.

The lead guitar work here is refreshingly creative for this kind of metal, with just enough of a classic sound to be familiar, but with some definite influence taken from Swedish melodic death metal (a style I generally don't like, but it works well here). The drumming is classic thrash all the way through, with a little bit of punk influence, but unmistakably metal overall. The songs here are a bit longer, with 12 tracks stretching over 41 minutes, but not one of them wears out its welcome.

And in true thrash metal tradition, this thing includes cover art by legendary thrash metal artist, Ed Repka (who has also worked with such classic bands as Venom, Death, Atheist, and Megadeth). I'd say it's worthy. You might agree. Anyone who digs things like Kreator will probably be into this. So check it out!

I don't see any tour dates for these guys on the internet, unfortunately, but I'm sure they're good and nasty live. So keep an eye on their MySpace page for some new dates.

Microcastle is one of those albums it took me a while to figure out how to actually review, which means it's a good thing they gave us an absurd amount of lead time on it, and I've had it to listen to all summer (this thing has seriously been on my iPod for about the past two months or so). Deerhunter's last full-length, Cryptograms, explored noise and ambient music in a pop context, largely pushing the more pop tracks into the second LP. The vinyl edition came with the next EP, Fluorescent Grey, a largely pop affair, on the D-side, and they ran quite nicely into each other.

Microcastle picks up about where they left off and sort of comes back around full circle. After a short instrumental intro, they're in full-on pop song territory with “Agorophobia,” which might be one of the most explicitly sexual indie rock songs ever written. Blending a new wavey bass driven sound with sunny pop melodies seems to be what this album (or, at least, its A-side; I'll explain this shortly) is all about. “Never Stop” takes the pop element even farther, with a bigger guitar sound drenched in reverb and feedbacking all over the place with everything building into an ecstatic outro sort of reminiscent of The Arcade Fire, if they were too stoned to be excited about much. “Little Kids” slows things down a bit, drowns the vocals in reverb and lowers them in the mix, and then proceeds to drown everything else out into a strange noisy pop drone. The title track, “Microcastle,” seems like a strange contrast to this, with its sparse arrangement and relatively untouched (aside from a little reverb) vocal sound. It's not until the last minute or so the distortion kicks in and then the whole thing abruptly grinds to a halt. “Calvary Scars” is more a straight-up ambient thing that serves as a really nice lead-in to the Sigur Rós-styled piano of “Green Jacket,” a song that is almost staggering in both its sparse expansiveness and its brevity. The last third of this sandwich is “Activa,” which brings to mind the “swamp of noise” (because it sounds to me like someone writing songs around a bunch of sounds they recorded at some sketchy looking house in a swamp somewhere) sound of their last album. I get the feeling these tracks are probably intended to make the listener sort of uncomfortable in preparation for the album's first single, “Nothing Ever Happened” bringing the band back into full on pop song territory. This track is about as straight-up “indie rock” as these guys get. It reminds me a little bit of Yo La Tengo with its extended, sort of “jammy” instrumental outro, which takes up about half the time devoted to the song. “Saved by Old Times” is written around a bluesy guitar line and the actual song gives way to goofy samples of people yelling at each other incoherently played forward and backwards. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but the song itself is great and turns into a weird ambient post-punk thing at the end. The next track, “Neither of Us, Uncertainly,” is more an ambient thing with lots of reverb and a nice hypnotic melody. The outro leads into “Twilight at Carbon Lake,” which sort of reminds me of Built to Spill with its expansive sound and melancholy pop vocal melody, as well as its use of guitar interplay. Even Bradford Cox sort of channels Doug Martsch with his vocal style on this one. The biggest difference is that where Built to Spill would turn the song into an epic jam session, Deerhunter drowns it, bludgeons it, and destroys it with layers upon layer of guitars and feedback with equally majestic results.

So basically, this album is good. I like it about as much as I liked Cryptograms, but for different reasons. The last album was more about ambient strangeness. This album is pretty much the closest thing to a pop album they've written so far. It's really good and I recommend it highly.

These guys are headed out on tour with Times New Viking (who are also awesome in their own way). More info can be found at the band's MySpace page, and also at the blog where Bradford Cox posts a lot of song downloads, mostly for his other band, Atlas Sound.

It's pretty rare that I get something sent to me by a band I've never heard of that I like enough to order on vinyl immediately after listening to it (despite having a full CD copy already). Life's Trade by Samothrace (of Lawrence, Kansas) is an album I just couldn't resist (especially that nice gold vinyl they've got up at 20 Buck Spin's website in very limited quantities - 150 copies). Combining the best parts of old-school and new-school doom sounds, this is probably one of the more original records to come out of a genre that, frankly, was starting to feel frustratingly stagnant despite the glaringly unexplored possibilities.

So onto the sound. It's slow. It's got a bit of a drone thing going on. But there are riffs. There's interplay. There's lead guitar! There are guitar solos! The vocals serve almost more as ambience than they do as anything explicitly lyrical (although the lyrics are great, especially by metal standards), most of the time mixed down just below the point of clarity. There's a sort of post-rock-y sense of song structure, with songs building to crescendos rather than choruses. These things come together to make Samothrace one of the most exciting doom bands I've heard in a long time.

One thing I'm really thankful for is that this band has a good sense of when to break down into a quiet section. And they do this really tastefully. Despite being pretty clearly influenced by Agalloch and their contemporaries, there are no corny cleanly sung vocals or any of that junk (no disrespect intended to Agalloch, who are awesome, by the way). Just a quiet, contemplative moment in the song.

Also, the guitar solos here are surprisingly competent and bring to mind a more classic doom metal sound. While I've always gotten the feeling that a lot of bands playing doom metal recently were... uh... less than stellar musicians, I don't get that feeling at all, here. The guitar solos are tastefully executed, and yet show a degree of musicianship that many bands in the genre are sorely lacking.

Here's one I wasn't expecting! The new Outlaw Order album, Dragging Down the Enforcer, came out yesterday, but I just got it in the mail from Season of Mist today. Outlaw Order (abbreviated 00%) is a side project in the loosest sense of the word. Eyehategod guitarist, Jimmy Bower was busy playing drums in Down, and the rest of the band, all being on probation (in fact, since their first 7”, Legalize Crime, their original bassist went to prison), decided to play up the “outlaw” theme with this band. This time, bassist, Marc Schultz has been replaced (for obvious reasons), and really, they don't sound any worse for it because Justin Grisoli (also the only guy in the band who's never been in Eyehategod) does a damn fine job filling his shoes.

After a “declaration of a state of war,” the band is out the gates like a raging drunken bull. “Relive the Crime” is a really awesome track with some good sludge going on. Stoned, off-time playing, with drunken, almost punk rock vocals. I guess I'm stating the obvious when I say it sounds a hell of a lot like Eyehategod. A stoned drum-based dirge opens “Safety Off.” Slowly, the bass starts coming in, followed by buzzsaw guitars. They speed up into Sabbathy riffing with some angry drunken vocals. “Double Barrel Solves Everything” sounds like a hardcore song (in fact, I keep thinking it sounds sort of like a Minor Threat song, ironically, but I can't put my finger on which one). Pissed off vocals, economical, brutal guitar playing and drumming, and a nice sludgy bass assault make this track for me. “Alcohol Tobacco Firearms” starts out sounding a little like Sleep, and then throws that out to go into full-on old-school hardcore territory with the most speed displayed so far on the album. They stay fast and heavy for “Mercy Shot,” which has a nice crusty edge to it that reminds me a little bit of Asbestosdeath or Nausea. “Narco-Terrorists” has some really Sabbathy lead guitar going on. “Siege Mentality” goes even farther into that territory. More of the track is instrumental than not. Crushingly heavy, too! “Walking Papers” has a really cool ascending and descending lead guitar. You can smell the whiskey coming off of it. The last real song, the title track, has this cool juxtaposition of slow vocals and fast instrumentals. The drumming in particular is brutal as all hell.

This is a really solid album. I'd recommend it for fans of Down, Superjoint Ritual, Eyehategod, Asbestosdeath, Sleep, Electric Wizard... basically anyone who takes their metal slow and heavy. These guys only have one upcoming show scheduled. They're playing the Howlin' Wolf's “Raise the Dead” Festival in New Orleans. Maybe they can't leave town due to their probation? I don't know, but if you're in the area, check it out! Since their official website appears to be no longer owned by the band, more info can be found at their MySpace page.

Soup wrote this:

Nov 11 2008 8:00P Empty Bottle Chicago, Illinois

Nov 12 2008 8:00P Skull Alley Louisville, Kentucky

Nov 13 2008 8:00P Hi Tone, with Silver Apples Memphis, Tennessee

Nov 14 2008 9:00P Caledonia, with Silver Apples Athens, Georgia

Nov 15 2008 8:00P Drunken Unicorn, with Silver Apples Altanta, Georgia

Nov 16 2008 8:00P Emerald Lounge, with Silver Apples Asheville, North Carolina

Nov 18 2008 8:00P Local 506, with Silver Apples Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Nov 19 2008 8:00P Ottobar, with Silver Apples Baltimore, Maryland

Nov 20 2008 8:00P Bard College Poughkeepsie, New York

Nov 21 2008 8:00P Union Pool Brooklyn, New York

Nov 22 2008 9:00P Knitting Factory Manhattan, New York

The Shaky Hands, from Portland, Oregon, might be one of the more interesting bands playing this kind of indie rock. Their new album, Lunglight, came out earlier this month on Kill Rock Stars, and it's pretty good, I'd say. Kind of has the feel of 1960's British garage rock and late-70's/early-80's post-punk all with a distinctly American edge and thankfully, enough originality to stand out at least a bit in a pretty crowded genre.

What I dig in particular are the tracks where they break this mold. For example, the off-beat guitar with the butt rock fills and stomping drums on “Loosen Up” are really cool, and the kitchen sink percussion and clean, trem-picked guitars of “Air Better Come” are really cool. The chorus of “We Are Young” completely and unexpectedly changes the mood of the song, and I like that effect. “Neighbors” adopts more of a post-punk sound with heavy percussion and discordant guitars, and leads seamlessly into “World's Gone Mad,” which reminds me a lot of early Arcade Fire, with harmonized vocals and a pretty similar melodic sensibility. “No Say” is a quieter song until it's interrupted by a chaotic burst of guitar noise that turns into a catchy post-punk lead flourish that gives the whole thing a new sense of urgency. The driving percussion of “Settle On” makes the song for me. In fact, the best tracks on this album are the ones where the drummer steals the show, like he does on “Love All Of,” with its awesome almost-reggae percussion backbone and snaking guitar lines. Unfortunately, this song goes on way longer than it should, considering it doesn't really go anywhere. And, unfortunately, the laid-back folk rock of “Wake the Breathing Light,” while likeable at first, wears thin long before the end of the song, and the build-up at the end is just kind of too little, too late. I kind of wish these two songs weren't placed back to back because they definitely drag the second half of the album down, and I'd imagine a lot of listeners are just going to be skipping these songs after repeated listens. Luckily, the last track, “Oh No,” picks up the slack a bit. The violin and piano and the change-up in the bridge save this one, despite it being just as long as the last two songs. It's a great song to go out on, and a great song either way.

Anyway, more information can be found at the band's official MySpace page. Also, they're heading out on tour in October. They sound like they'd be pretty fun live. So here are the dates:

16 Oct 2008 20:00 Doug Fir w/ The Acorn Portland, Oregon

17 Oct 2008 20:00 Tractor w/ The Acorn Seattle, Washington

19 Oct 2008 20:00 Sam Bond’s Garage w/ The Acorn Eugene, Oregon

21 Oct 2008 20:00 Hemlock w/ The Acorn San Francisco, California

22 Oct 2008 20:00 Crepe Place w/ The Acorn Santa Cruz, California

24 Oct 2008 20:00 Spaceland w/ The Acorn Los Angeles, California

25 Oct 2008 20:00 Modified w/ The Acorn Phoenix, Arizona

28 Oct 2008 20:00 Hi Dive w/ The Acorn Denver, Colorado

29 Oct 2008 20:00 Slowdown w/ The Acorn Omaha, Nebraska

30 Oct 2008 20:00 7th Street Eatery w/ The Acorn Minneapolis

31 Oct 2008 20:00 Café Montmartre w/ The Acorn Madison, Wisconsin

1 Nov 2008 20:00 Schuba’s w/ The Acorn Chicago, Illinois

4 Nov 2008 20:00 Middle East, Cambridge, Massachusetts

6 Nov 2008 20:00 Johnny Brendas Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

8 Nov 2008 20:00 Mercury Lounge new york, New York

10 Nov 2008 20:00 local 506 Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Soup was not raised by wolves.

I always love getting Sensory Records releases for review. None of them really should be my cup of tea, and they seem to be built around taking everything I personally dislike in metal and making entire albums out of those things. And for some reason I always like them! So I'm going to talk about the two I recently got: When Time Fades by Suspyre (the more “ordinary” of the two), and the soundtrack a Norwegian band, Xystus', new rock opera, Equilibrio. Yes, they sent me the soundtrack to a rock opera. I'm stoked!

Lighted Endrhyme

Suspyre

I'll talk about the Suspyre release first, since it's the more straightforward of the two. These guys hail from New Jersey, and they definitely have a classically influenced thing going on. I'm not talking just adding some strings or something on a couple songs like some bands do, but this could almost be a classical piece structurally, and really, a lot of the musicianship here has nothing to do with any form of popular or folk music. The musicianship here, as on pretty much all Sensory releases I've heard, is mindblowing. Lots of speed, every note crystal clear and cleanly played. Singer Clay Barton sounds great, with both great range and the ability to sound emotive when he needs to.

There's also a lot of stylistic variation going on here. From straight up power metal, to classically influenced prog metal, from thrashy sections to prog-rock off-time sections, from straight-up clean vocals to robot voices. Pretty much any time signature you could imagine is played in here, and almost anything goes. This is a pretty great release. Fans of bands like Dream Theater or Blind Guardian will probably be into it.

Also, these dudes have a few shows coming up. They're playing ProgPower 2008 in Baarlo, Netherlands. Then they're playing on the Prog Palace radio show in Gaithersburg, Maryland on October 11^th. A little farther out, there's the Hellstock Music Festival in Palmetto, Florida, on January 17^th of next year. And a little farther out than that, they're playing the Upper East Side Music Festival in New York City on February 28^th.

Now onto the next release! It's a collaboration between Norwegian prog rockers, Xystus, and the US Concert Orchestra. As, quite literally, a rock opera, Equilibrio seems awfully elaborate for something by a band I've never heard of. I can't help wondering just how much it cost to put this thing on. This thing sounds like something only the richest bands could have afforded. But then, I really don't know much about putting on theater productions in Norway, and I really have no idea how popular Xystus are outside of the US (they said 4,000 people attended the shows in the liner notes, so they must be at least somewhat popular), so I'm probably dead wrong. The liner notes have pictures of the cast of the production in costume, a group picture of the “over... 130 people” who participated in its making, lyrics, and a picture of the band. So, of course, I'm going into this expecting something completely epic. Like over the top! And, well, these guys deliver!

The opening orchestral section of “Equilibrio Overture” sounds like something from one of the best fantasy video game soundtracks ever. The band themselves come in about halfway through, and really don't do much more than augment what's already there with rock instrumentation. Surprisingly tasteful, and yet, still incredibly over the top.

Of course, the next track, “Act 1, Sc. 1: My Song of Creation” features one of the actors (Simone Simons as the character, Lady Sophia) on vocals over an orchestral backdrop that sounds like something out of the Lord of the Rings movies.

Act 1 Sc. 3: The Traveller

Xystus

“Act 1, Sc. 3: The Traveller” (sic) starts out by bringing back the theme from the overture, but with a more pronounced rock backing. The vocals this time are courtesy of the band's singer, Bas Dolmans, as Diegu the Traveller.

This leads into “Act 1, Sc. 5: Last Breath” on the album (I guess it should be noted that a lot of scenes appear to have not been included on the CD). This one is more of a rock track. A little more of a chaotic edge is present. The track is a dialog between Diegu and Death (George Oosthoek). Appropriately, Death's vocals are represented by, you guessed it, death growls! And he's pretty good at it, too.

The album kind of goes on like this. I mean, it's a rock opera, that's kind of to be expected. The next track, “Act 1, Sc. 6: Divided We Stand” (yeah, I cringed a bit when I read that title, too) is a dialog between Aveline (Michelle Splietelhof) and Primos (John Vooijs).

Really, I'm pretty sure everyone gets the idea here. This is as much an opera as it is rock, and although the vocal styles are definitely more slanted toward heavy metal styles, and the song structures probably take a lot more from rock, the way the instruments are used – both those of the band and the orchestra they're collaborating with - is both tasteful and yet completely over the top at the same time.

One thing I kind of wish had been included is a story synopsis. Just listening to this, I can get a vague idea of what's going on in any given scene, but the big picture is really unclear from the music alone. I'm sure it would be a lot clearer watching it onstage, but I'm just not getting it here. Regardless, the musicianship is top notch, all the vocalists are quite talented, and at the very least, what you're getting here is a pretty enjoyable listening experience that won't be lost on you if you're into this kind of music.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they're actually performing this anymore, and apparently they've just had a backing vocalist onstage to cover all the parts the band can't for smaller scale shows. The next scheduled show for them is a DVD release party, though, at Verkade Fabriek & W2 Concertzaal in North Brabant, Netherlands on January 11^th of next year. So if you're in the area, keep a look out for that, 'cause it might be pretty awesome.

And more information about both bands can be found at their official websites, of course:

http://www.suspyre.com/

http://www.xystus.nl/