A load line mark in the rising tide
High Water Media is proud to announce the physical release of catalog number HWM003. Flaming Tusk’s debut full length Old, Blackened Century is now available as a CD via the band’s website. The four-panel digipak features liner notes and a selection of lyrics rendered in a mysterious scribal notation.
Old, Blackened Century can be had in physical form or downloaded from music.flamingtusk.com.
High Water Media’s hellbound bastard children Flaming Tusk are generating praise from the world of press beyond the internet (if there is such a thing).
Revolver magazine has included Flaming Tusk as a Quick Fix in the May/June 2010 “Golden Gods” issue. Turn to page 48, where the band is described as sounding like
‘High on Fire and Immortal mud-wrestling in a blackened sludge pit full of blood, bile, lava and more blood.’ -Revolver, May/June 2010 p. 48
Free New York City weekly NY Press devoted half a page in their May 12-18 issue to a profile of the band.
‘I HEAR FLAMING TUSK from three houses down, which is good since Astoria is a foreign country to me. I stand in front of the porch in the rain and listen to the band blast through “Ichor,” a song off the new album Old, Blackened Century. The singer sounds like the meanest motherfucker in the world, scratching out lyrics about the horror of Vietnam including the line that’s been stuck in my head for weeks: “Ho Chi Minh Kissinger!” The guitars seamlessly alternate between doom riffs and classic death metal with a solo that’s best described as Fast Eddie Clarke from Motorhead. The sidewalk shakes. I’m in the right place.’ -Adam Wisnieski, NY Press, 5.12.10 p. 18
They’ve posted the entire article to the Music Features section of nypress.com.
Flaming Tusk appears live next at Lit Lounge on May 17th, headlining that night’s Precious Metal showcase (with: Dick Kicker and Komondor).
The praise is trickling in for HWM affiliates Flaming Tusk and their new album Old, Blackened Century.
First out of the gate was Atanamar at Sunyata: Mindful of Metal who awarded the album an 86/100 and had the following to say:
I get the same satisfying sense of weirdness that emerged the first time I listened to Mardraum. Those feelings of curiosity, groundlessness and amazement are rarely invoked for me by metal these days. Old, Blackened Century has violently appropriated my attention, much like Cobalt’s Gin did last year.
The songwriting is superlative and certainly one of Flaming Tusk’s greatest assets…. Old, Blackened Century is sparse, raw and just what I need at the moment. Most new bands these days sound like poorly stitched Frankenstein monsters of metal methodology. Flaming Tusk are a fully evolved beast with a distinct and appealing sound. This shit just rocks. Old, Blackened Century is definitely worth checking out.
Atanamar has also posted a blackly glowing review of a live Flaming Tusk gig.
Metal blog No Clean Singing is super down with Old, Blackened Century too, saying (in a remarkably comprehensive review):
When we listen to Flaming Tusk, we’re reminded at different times of Cobalt, Tombs, Hull, Ludicra, Coalesce, early Mastodon, and — well, you get the idea. Like we said, hard to classify. They don’t really sound exactly like any of those bands, and we certainly don’t mean to suggest they’re intentionally modeling themselves on any of them, but drawing those comparisons is one feeble way of giving you an idea of what Old, Blackened Century brings to mind.
Maybe it’s enough to say that if you’re starting to get bored with the metal you’ve been cranking recently, and you’re after something out of the box, you should go listen to Flaming Tusk’s horrifyingly enjoyable opus. (But really, be forewarned about the last song on the album — “Icy River”, which clocks in at nearly 10 minutes — it’s like the sonic equivalent of being tied naked to your bed with a dozen giant, oily black centipedes slowly crawling toward your face.)
Old, Blackened Century is available as a pay-what-you-will download from flamingtusk.com.
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:
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.
Download Old, Blackened Century. Pay what you will. And YOU WILL.
or the Amazon.com MP3 Store. PayPal purchase through Water Baron.