NEW AUDIO ROUND-UP: WITCHCRAFT, GIRLFIGHT AND CHALLENGER

Lotsa new music today. Let’s start with Witchcraft — Nuclear Blast’s hedge in the Vest Metal game — who’ve posted a new song at their Facebook page. Based on this one and the song the band posted a few weeks back I’d wager that the slick production is going to turn off most Vest Metal fans from the get-go, which is really too bad because these guys are pretty good. They’re kinda like proggy Vest Metal, if such a thing is allowed to exist. They kinda remind me of that band Bigelf that toured the U.S. with Dream Theater and Opeth a few years ago. New album Legend is due September 21.

At first I was all “ohhh cool!” when I read that a new band called Challenger features a member of Black Sheep Wall, master writers of one of my favorite albums of 2012 so far. Then I clicked play and my boner was instantly deflated. Emocore? Early Thrice without balls? Not really sure what to call this other than “suck.” Sorry, dudez.

Lastly we’ve got a surprise new track by Girlfight, Periphery mastermind Misha Mansoor’s death metal side-project. I say “surprise” because the band is on Summer Slaughter right now; maybe this was a tour bus creation? Periphery vocalist Spencer Sotelo lends his voice to the track, and might I add sounds quite manly and death metal-y. The song is called “Fucking Fuck” and sounds like these dudes are just messing around for the fun of it. Stream:

-VN