RAVENOUS!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Oct 242010
 

We just discovered video of Arch Enemy‘s performance on Oct 22 at The Waerdse Tempel in Heerhugowaard, The Netherlands. We had to watch those clips, because Arch Enemy is an NCS favorite and because the band’s live performances in Seattle have been some of the best shows we’ve ever seen.

These are fan-filmed clips, but the video quality is very high and the audio quality is above-average, too. So, they’re worth sharing with you. Besides, featuring Arch Enemy is in keeping with the female-centric nature of our previous post today. As far as we know, Angela Gossow doesn’t swallow swords (or running jackhammers) and hasn’t married herself, but man, can she command a stage.

Here’s the clip of Arch Enemy performing “Ravenous”, which is just a cool fucking song to begin with.

(more clips after the jump . . .)

Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (No. 19): THE BABES WITH BLADES AND BACKWASH EDITION (and a new definition of monogamy)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  24 Responses »
Oct 242010
 

We don’t surf the internet much. It’s not like we’re morally opposed to the practice. Just not enough fucking time. About the only time we do it is when we go on the hunt for news items for THAT’S METAL!, and even then we usually stick to news sites. But for today’s post we made an exception, and did some actual web-surfing.

It was a reminder of how much shit there is out there, and the cosmically wide variety of weird interests people have. (And no, extreme metal is not a weird interest. It’s good, wholesome fun.) You should see some of the whacked-out, asylum-quality crap we skipped over in looking for THAT’s METAL! material. Actually, you shouldn’t, at least not on our time.

So, here we go. Three items that made us say “That’s Metal!”, even though it wasn’t music.

FIRST ITEM

Our first item is a video involving a little minx called Baroness Mischa. It’s possible that Baroness Mischa isn’t really a baroness. But she can swallow three-foot long swords. She also contributes percussion and vocals, under the name “Hemlock Hex”, for an Australian “mechano-erotic” industrial band called Psych Carni. She swallows swords for them, too.

She’s also a contortionist. Who contorts herself while swallowing swords. Yes, we do believe this is fucking metal.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 16

 MISCELLANY  23 Responses »
Oct 232010
 

Time again to brachiate out into the arboreal ether of metalness, swinging randomly from limb to limb in search of new music we’ve not heard before, and hoping we don’t face-plant into the edged bark of an ugly tree.

Yes, it’s another edition of MISCELLANY, in which we randomly check out music from bands we’ve not heard before. We go, we listen, we record our thoughts, we lay it out for you as we heard it, regardless of the outcome. It’s a tour into the unknown, a somewhat reckless exploration, swinging from vine to vine, venturing deeper into the metallic jungle, sometimes throwing our feces at unsuspecting ground-dwellers below.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, MISCELLANY. So, we keep our running list of bands that look interesting, and then we see if the music pans out. Yesterday, I checked out three diverse bands from distant shores: Evocation (Sweden), Amberian Dawn (Finland), and Metal Safari (Japan). And here’s what I found:

EVOCATION

We recorded the name of this Gothenburg band (pictured above) on our list based on a Blabbermouth report about the impending release of their third album, Apocalyptic, on Cyclone Empire Records (it will issue in Europe on October 29 and in North America on November 9).

To be brutally honest, we put them on our MISCELLANY list mainly because of the album cover, by an artist named Xaay, who has created covers for Behemoth, Nile, and Vader. If you know those bands, you’ll recognize the style of the art . . . which you can see after the jump. Continue reading »

MALIAN RICHES AWAIT!

 IQ Subtraction, Off Topic  15 Responses »
Oct 222010
 

What a fucking disappointment. Correspondence with my pen-pals from Nigeria and Ghana — those dual douchebags Robert Scott Dewar and John Morgan from the British High Commission in Abuja, and Mr. Kwaku Boafoh Agyeman — have petered out. My dreams of Grolsch-filled swimming pools and Roman forays to hear Fleshgod Apocalypse in person have dried up like desert flowers in the summer heat.

In other words, none of those duplicitous motherfuckers has seen fit to answer my latest e-mails. Sadly, it appears there will be no Chapter 3 to the saga of NIGERIAN RICHES AWAIT. (If none of this makes any sense to you, read this.)

But all is not lost! I have received new messages — heart-rending messages — from two women (one from Mali and one from Burkina Faso) whose personal catastrophes may yet yield for me riches beyond the dreams of avarice. There is still hope for the eleemosynary institution I plan to establish for deserving metal bands. There is still hope for the beer pool and for having FA provide the live metallic accompaniment to my daily existence. There is still hope!

Read for yourselves, and weep, at the tragic stories I received, and the ways in which I may profit from tragedy, and I will also share with you my answers to these two women.  (more dementia after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SKULL-CORING THURSDAY: A BRITISH PHOENIX RISES AGAIN AND TERRIBLE DEATH IS UNLEASHED FROM INDIA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Oct 212010
 

The last 24 hours has brought us good news from two bands we’ve written about in the past — the UK’s Detrimentum and India’s Bhayanak Maut. We like good news. We like to share good news. And this good news involves new music that will blast away all the cares cluttering your brains (and perhaps your brains, too) and leave you feeling energized and ready to spit in the eye of anyone who tries to fuck with you today. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

DETRIMENTUM

Last January we ran a multi-part feature called UK DEATH METAL IN REVIEW, in which we looked back at 2009 and some of the extreme UK metal bands that we listened to a lot in the old year. One of the bands whose praises we sang was Detrimentum (see our post about them here), based on their album Embracing the Deformity. We called the music “complex, ultra-fast, technical, brutal death metal that periodically gives way to sweeping black-metal influenced melodic guitar passages and blistering solos.” We noted that the “overall tone is dark, ominous, and overpoweringly intense.”

Unfortunately, we learned not long after writing that post, via a message from one of the band’s founders, guitarist Jon Butlin, that only he and guitarist Paul Wilkinson still remained from the line-up that recorded Embracing the Deformity. On the other hand, he explained that the jaw-dropping Steve Powell of Anaal Nathrakh fame would be joining the band as its drummer, and that the group intended to finish recording an album of new songs as soon as the line-up could be sorted out. (That post is here.)  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SVART CROWN

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Oct 202010
 

“Svart” is the Norwegian and Swedish word for black. Svart Crown is the name of a black/death-metal band from France. Formed in 2005 by guitarist/vocalist J.B Le Bail, the band released a debut album called Ages of Decay in early 2008. They’ve now completed their second album, which is scheduled for release by Listenable Records on November 1. It’s called Witnessing the Fall, and we took advantage of the chance to hear it before the official release.

Witnessing the Fall is, above all else, an extreme musical tribute to the wonders of the electric guitar. Le Bail and Clément Flandrois exploit that instrument for all its worth, extracting from its inert mechanical potential a wide array of energized sonic weaponry. Layering the tracks with a multitude of picking and riffing styles, they splash the musical canvass with a pastiche of swirling, dark colors and shifting images of disturbing power. Listening to what they’ve accomplished is a completely engrossing experience.

As a matter of genre classification, the album is a mixture of black- and death metal stylings — like a joint venture between Immortal and Immolation — but with black metal as the dominant partner. However, rather than persistently using cascading waves of tremolo picking and fused blast-beats to create cold atmospherics, Svart Crown more often than not rampages like an unpredictable, marauding beast.  (more after the jump, including a song to hear . . .) Continue reading »

DREAMING DEAD: OVERLORD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 192010
 

Dreaming Dead is a death metal band from Los Angeles that incorporates a multitude of styles into their music. They also have the distinction, whether they want this kind of attention or not, of being one of those few, good extreme metal bands with a female vocalist (Elizabeth Schall) — who is also an inventively killer guitarist.

We really enjoyed the band’s 2009 debut, Within One, and we’ve been looking forward to the release of their follow-on album, Midnightmares, which it appears the band has recorded as a three-piece, while continuing to hunt for a second guitarist (who Schall wants to be a woman). We haven’t seen any definitive release date, and the band may be holding that up in an effort to find a label who would distribute it.

However, yestrday, Dreaming Dead released an official video for a song called “Overlord” from that forthcoming album. The video itself is fairly no frills — just the band playing in a dark club setting, with lights intermittently revealing the band members as they hammer out the song, and rapid cutting from one shot to the next.

And then there’s the song itself — it’s fucking great: a fascinating piece of modern death metal with driving rhythms, technical musicianship, catchy hooks, and an unexpected instrumental diversion near the end. And Schall is a magnetic presence even on video, with a blend of Nordic rasps and bestial growls to accompany her creative guitar leads.  Check out the video after the jump. We’re pretty sure you’ll like it  . . . Continue reading »

WE WANT TO SIN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 192010
 

The pervasive influence of Meshuggah on the evolution of metal has been on my mind the last several days. Partly, I’ve been thinking about some comments we got on a post about Gojira written by my all-too-infrequent collaborator IntoTheDarkness. Partly, I’ve been thinking about a Meshuggah-influenced band from the Philippines called SIN that NCS reader Jaime Abellar introduced to me just a couple days ago. And because all three of these bands are stupendously good, I thought it might entertain you to share my thought processes.

Of course, it might also reduce your IQ so that it becomes closer to my own. This is the risk you take by visiting NCS.

To begin at the beginning: IntoTheDarkness wrote a post proclaiming and explaining his opinion that Gojira is the best metal band in the world. That was almost three months ago, and yet we’re still getting comments about it, one of which, from a reader whose a/k/a is Ox Drum, said this about a week ago:

If you enjoyed The Art of Dying that much, I’d suggest checking out a badass Swedish metal band that’s been around since the early 90’s called MESHUGGAH! The influence is especially obvious on Esoteric Surgery off of The Way of All Flesh (one of the riffs is exactly based off of the riff in the Meshuggah song ‘Bleed’). Both are great bands and I love them each in different ways.

Anyways, yeah, Gojira is most def one of the best metal bands out there right now (and have been since Terra Incognita actually :P ) Being a drummer myself, Mario is a huge inspiration! In fact, I’m inspired by the band as a whole; even the guitarists!

(lots more after the jump, including a bunch of tracks to hear . . .)

Continue reading »

THE STENCH OF NEKROGOBLIKON

 Album Reviews  19 Responses »
Oct 182010
 

We like collective nouns — those sometimes strange, often evocative, often humorous names for groups of things, like animals, birds, insects, and sea creatures. Examples: A pride of lions, a pack of dogs, a troop of baboons, a litter of kittens, a flock of gulls, a brood of hens, a murder of crows, an exaltation of larks, a parliament of owls, a swarm of bees, a plague of locusts, a school of fish, a bed of clams, a shoal of bass, a pod of orcas.

But what do you call a collective of goblins? Since we’re fans of alliteration, we thought about “a gaggle of goblins”. But a collective of geese (on the ground) is called a gaggle, and geese don’t seem too bright. Goblins, on the other hand, are fiendishly clever. So gaggle is out.  (btw, did you know that a collective of geese in flight are called a “skein”?) A “gathering” of goblins might work, but it doesn’t adequately convey the devilish menace or the barely contained chaos that we imagine would ensue.

No, what you call a collective of goblins bent on mischief and mayhem is Nekrogoblikon. And that sulphurous smell in your nostrils? Why, that’s the aroma of the hell-storm unleashed on the band’s forthcoming new album entitled, of course, Stench. Because we have ingratiated ourselves with the goblin hordes, we have been gifted with the opportunity to absorb the miasma of Stench before less-favored humans. In a word, Stench is brilliant, from beginning to end.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (No. 18)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  9 Responses »
Oct 172010
 

We’ve been running these “THAT’S METAL!” posts since January, and we’re moderately proud of our ability to find attention-grabbing news items and images that make us exclaim “That’s Metal!”, even though it’s not music. But we have been humbled by our brutal brethren at the Netherlands-based metal blog, Death Metal Baboon. In one fell swoop (or, as the Dutch say, in one swell foop), DMB has found something that puts all our previous efforts to shame.

As explained in a recent DMB post, a religious event called The Vegetarian Festival is now in full swing on the island of Phuket in southern Thailand. (We believe that name is pronounced poo-ket, but fuckit, the pronunciation doesn’t really matter for our purposes.) This festival involves some unusual forms of religious observation. As explained in this article on one of the Phuket web sites:

The Phuket Vegetarian Festival and its rituals are thought by many to bring good fortune to religious followers. Phuket residents of Chinese ancestry, called Hokkien Chinese, follow a strict vegan or vegetarian diet for 10 days for the purposes of merit-making and spiritual cleansing. This is accompanied by sacred rituals at Chinese temples and shrines around the island. Stalls of vegan food are set up throughout Phuket City, and even non-vegans will be suitably impressed by the delicious selection.

Perhaps the most visual of these rituals are the displays of extreme body piercings with large objects that can range from knives to umbrellas. Devotees, called ma song, may even partake in walking over hot coals barefoot or climbing up ladders that have rungs made of knife blades. Visitors can see the ma song walking in their trances during long parades through the streets on every day of the festival.

As DMB further explained, festival-goers also set off thousands of fireworks — and apparently stand as close as they can when the explosions go off, apparently because impaling your cheeks with large objects isn’t painful enough and needs to be accompanied by bleeding eardrums and third-degree burns.

What can we say? This is fucking metal — in a completely demented, self-mutilating way.  DMB displayed a large collection of stomach-turning photos from the festival — but there are more, and we have them, because we know you really would like to have your stomach turned, because why else are you still reading this post after seeing the photo at the top?

So, grab yourself a bucket in case you feel the urge to spew a little, and follow along with us after the jump, as we add our own special narrative travelogue to the pics . . . Continue reading »

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