What do Smaragos and Immersed have in common? Well, I’ve written about both them before (Smaragos here, Immersed here), and they’re both death metal bands, and they both have new albums, and, uh, that’s about it. But I’m lumping them together to make two news items into one. My apologies to all parties involved.

But, for reals, check this shit out:

• Smaragos’ self-titled EP is now available for purchase on both CD Baby and iTunes! This is an awesome, spastic-y tech band features Son of Aurelius’ Max Zigman, and the EP has a guest guitar solo by Ivan Munguia of Brain Drill and Arkaik fame. I’ve posted one song, “Scaphist,” above, but you can — and should — also check out more music here or here.
• Immersed have just moved from the “Awesome Unsigned Bands” category to the “Awesome Signed Bands” category — Unique Leader has scooped ‘em up for a multi-album deal, and will reissue last year’s In the Ire of Creation on August 2. You can check out some tunes here. It’s almost impossible for me to imagine that there could be death metal fans who wouldn’t enjoy this — it’s no-bullshit, totally bludgeoning DM. Hopefully the band will go on tour soon so we can finally check ‘em out live.

-AR

I’m on a big death metal kick lately. Old school, brutal, tech-death, progressive death, it don’t matter — if it’s dark, groovy and growly I’m diggin’ it (unless it’s deathcore… but even a track like Suicide Silence’s “Wake Up” can be a winner).

Today’s piece de resistance is a tech-death entry courtesy of the recently re-jiggered Santa Cruz, CA quarter Brain Drill. Brain Drill just released a video for the track “Beyond Bludgeoned” — a Class-A death metal song name if ever there was one — over at Bloody Disgusting. It’s full of lotsa “weedily weedily” shred and beyond bludgeoningly brutal blasts of riffs; it’s exactly what you want Brain Drill to be. The video was filmed in the San Jaoquin valley of California. I just had the opportunity to drive through this area on tour with Revocation and The Binary Code, and literally hundreds of miles of rich orchards of all kinds have been allowed to die en masse due to a bizarre piece of water re-routing legislation. It was like passing through an area completely devoid of life from nuclear fallout. Fucking freaky, but the perfect place for some brutal death metal.

The track comes from their forthcoming album Quantum Catastrophe, which Metal Blade will release on May 11th.

-VN

I’ve never been into Brain Drill before. Not because I actively disliked them or wasn’t interested, but because no one ever sat me down and said, “DUDE, you HAVE to listen to Brain Drill!” But this morning I clicked the linky-dink in a press release announcing the new Brain Drill track “Monumental Failure” currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page, and I’m wondering why the 1′s and 0′s of their 2008 debut Apocalyptic Feasting weren’t nestled neatly betwixt my Obscura and Origin mp3s in the tech death section of my iTunes library. I guess it’s because there are a helluvalotta tech death bands on the radar these days, but Brain Drill fucking kill and are highly worthy of a listen, as I just learned today.

The band limped through some well-documented lineup drama last year (I’m not even sure who’s in the above photo), but they’re currently working on their sophomore effort with a new lineup surrounding bassist Ivan Munguia and drummer Ron Casey. Let’s hope the new record hits by year’s end.

-VN

 
Lambgoat reports that death metallers Brain Drill have reformed. A statement from the band reads as follows:

“Brain Drill will be carrying on despite all the recent rumors of break ups. The band is currently looking for a new drummer and more information will be made available shortly for those interested in trying out for the spot.”

I want to say that I am in no way, shape, or form judging the band’s musical abilities when I say that, clearly, these dudes are all still smoking lots and lots of ganja. As Lambgoat points out, calling the stories of the band’s demise “rumors” is ricockulous  when one considers that it was guitarist Dylan Ruskin who announced the band’s break-up in the first place.

Whatevs. At least they got someone with a third grade education to do their spelling for them this time.

-AR

Brain Drill have broken up, and, according to a posting by guitarist (he refers to himself as “Creator of Brain Drill”) Dylan Ruskin on the band’s MySpace page, weed is the culprit that led to the group’s demise:

“3 of the 4 members of brain drill being steve, marco and jeff all have huge weed smoking habbits if you hadn’t already noticed. I dylan do not and couln’t be more aggainst smoking weed i don’t have a problem if you do it but just be smart about it. Before we left for this tour with the black dahlia murder and animosity I told them a million times not to bring weed, pipes or papers with them in the van… And of course they don’t listen to a word i say and go ahead and bring pipes weed, papers and jeff even brought an ounce of mushrooms. Sure enough we get pulled over rite outside of salt lake city utah. Emediatley after the 3 of them had just smoked a blunt. So needless to say the car completely smelled like weed. So the cop comes up to the window and the first thing he says is ‘i smell pot’, so sure enough they take us out of the car and they completely search the entire van.”

The band miraculously got away clean, but later, when the band accidentally drove to the Canadian border, they were searched again, this time more, uh, thoroughly:

“For whatever reason steve and jeff start to flip out on the border patrol cops and start cursing and saying ‘this is bullshit, this is the first and last time i’m ever coming to canada’ etc. The cops asked ‘why are you guys making this such a big deal??’ they responded ‘because this is bullshit’ etc. The cop then responded ‘well since you think it’s bullshit we are now going to give all of you FULL BODY CAVITY SEARCHES’. So I was the first one to get searched. They completely stripped me naked had me lift my ballsack up so they could check underneath it, and then they had me bend over and spread my asscheaks apart so they could look inside my asshole.”

Geez. No wonder Dylan is pissed. All the second hand smoke has made him too stoopid to spell correctly.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Vince and I are gonna go smoke a joint.

-AR