Waterline

High Water Media is proud to announce the at-long-last release of Flaming Tusk’s first full-length album: Old, Blackened Century.

HWM is offering this album as a pay-what-you-will download to acknowledge that digital music has become an essentially uncontrolled, infinitely available commodity, and to highlight that this is an entirely independent production financed solely by the band. Supporters of independent music know what they must do; support it.

This widget will allow the curious to stream the album in its entirety:

Catch Flaming Tusk at any number of live shows coming up over the remainder of this winter and into the spring.

High Water Media will release Flaming Tusk’s first full-length album Old, Blackened Century via the band’s official website at music.flamingtusk.com on Tuesday, January 19th 2010 as catalog number HWM003.

The tracks will be available in a wide variety of digital formats, and the band will be asking visitors to “pay what you will” in order to download the songs.

The track listing of the album as follows:

1. Anathema
2. Cilleighfaern
3. No Smiles
4. I Nap In Blood
5. Ichor
6. Instability
7. My Red Sun
8. Icy River

Recording engineer Tom Beaujour took to his Nuthouse Recording blog recently to describe the “punishing task” of tracking the forthcoming Flaming Tusk full length:

“The absolutely massively named Flaming Tusk and their debut album was up next. Crazy-ass extreme underground metal. A smarter, more well-read bunch of guys you have never met. They are obsessed with bizarre spirits (of the alcoholic, not supernatural type) and had bottles of some of the weirdest shit I have ever seen (artichoke liqueur, anyone?) at the ready at all times.”

Read more about Tom’s further adventures recording Five Finger Death Punch, Mutiny Within and Upon A Burning Body here.

The new Flaming Tusk full-length will be out Januaryish.

Flaming Tusk have survived eight brutal days in the studio at Nuthouse Recording under the whip of Tom Beaujour.

The as-yet untilted full length album will probably be released in late fall or early winter, 2009, following mastering, the finishing of artwork and laying down the infrastructure necessary for worldwide dissemination.

Flaming Tusk posted a notice on their website today announcing that they begin recording their followup to the Abigail EP this month, with producer / engineer Tom Beaujour behind the glass.

Beaujour is known for many things, such as engineering Nada Surf’s Weight Is A Gift, producing and recording Scale The Summit’s Carving Desert Canyons, and being the editor-in-chief of Revolver Magazine. The band is, reportedly, quite excited to get to work.

Tracking begins on September 11, and the album should be ready for release by early winter.

High Water Media affiliates Flaming Tusk have received a brief mention in the April 2009 issue of Decibel magazine.

Music critic Cosmo Lee of Decibel, Pitchfork, PopMatters, Stylus Magazine, and metal mp3 blog Invisible Oranges had this to say in the print edition of the magazine:

Astoria’s Flaming Tusk wins the odd bird award here. I have no idea what to call this. You Fail Me-era Converge, but sludgier, proggier and with black metal rasps? It’s messy, but melodic and strangely compelling. You can download it for free at the band’s site. Try or die!

The April 2009 issue, featuring Brutal Truth on the cover, is available on newsstands and at Decibel’s website.

Flaming Tusk has been interviewed by Canadian headbanger webjournal Metal-Rules.com. The interview was published yesterday, and can be read here (with pictures!).

An excerpt:

Q: ‘I Nap In Blood’ and ’26 Legions’ offer some other lyrical themes, namely gore and Satanism. Any thoughts on either?
A: 1) Gore is cool and 2) Satan is real. They’re two more classic metal tropes, and as a band we delight in the classic themes and aesthetics of metal… Musical grossness is perhaps an infinite frontier.

http://www.metal-rules.com/zine/content/view/1542/74/

Friends of HWM Flaming Tusk have had two tracks from their EP Abigail included in Dark Sky Records‘ twelfth “Underground Rising” podcast.
Also in the lineup are other unsigned bands M-16, Asylum, Gravehaven, and No Other Way.

The Canadian gourmands of metal at Metal-Rules.com have reviewed the Abigail EP, rating it 3 out of 5 (which translates to “recommended for serious fans” on their scale).

Metal-Rules says:

This five piece band from Astoria, New York plays an eclectic mix of death, black and thrash metal that draws as much musical influence from The Doors and Black Sabbath as Immortal, via Emperor and Deicide and Testament… Singer Stolas Trephinator mixes up tortured gurgles and screams with death roars to great effect, and the fact that I’m reminded of Schmier, Zetro Souza, Abbath and Glen Benton can only be a good thing. And it’s well worth you to taking the time to read their twisted lyrics, seeing as how ABIGAIL was inspired by the true story of Abigail Taylor (I won’t spoil it for you here but you can look it up on Wikipedia)… With the jagged, doom-ish riffing and the black/death vocals, ABIGAIL is a great debut effort. With the inevitable improvement on later albums in the lyrics department as the band matures, Flaming Tusk will be one to keep an eye out for.

Read the full review by clicking here

Download the Abigail EP.

Friends of High Water Media Flaming Tusk have had their debut EP Abigail reviewed by Chronicles Of Chaos.

CoC is a well-respected webzine venerated within the metal scene for its forward-looking criticism. Since 1995 they’ve broken metal acts like Dimmu Borgir and Strapping Young Lad into internet consciousness, and the site continues listening to and reviewing demos by up and coming bands.

Staff writer Paul Williams, who has also critiqued Dragonforce’s Ultra Beatdown and Nervecell’s Human Chaos for the site, rated Abigail a 3.5 out of 5 and had, generally, quite positive things to say about the record:

The debut EP _Ab[i]gail_ from NYC metal-heads Flaming Tusk seems to be a solid piece of music, incorporating, with ease, musical styles from a wide range of metal genres, from dashes of hardcore through to some gloomy doom. A particular stand out track is the closer song “26 Legions”, a great show of all the influences the band have, in a single song, and just over nine minutes. All three of the other songs show some quality heavy metal. With great but not overdone production, the band delivers some catchy riffs…

Paul Williams, Chronicles of Chaos, 10/24/08

Flaming Tusk’s Abigail EP is available as a free download in a variety of digital formats. Visit flamingtusk.com.