MONDAY IS VICIOUS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 282011
 

Almost no one likes Mondays. What you have to do is usually so much worse than what you did on the weekend. But almost no one likes to hear you complain about Mondays either. They’re suffering, too, and hearing you bitch doesn’t make it better. Still, something must be done. Complaining doesn’t help, but suffering in silence is still suffering.

You could just gut up, accept your fate, and soldier on, but fuck that stoic, stiff-upper-lip mentality. Let’s try an alternative: wallow in your suffering, but don’t do it in silence. Instead, do it with musical accompaniment that’s just as vicious as you feel. In fact, let’s kick our Monday squarely in the gonads with some music by a band that’s just perfectly named for the occasion — Vicious Art. And then let’s follow that up with some Sumerian thrashing black metal, as inflicted (viciously) by Melechesh in a brand new video.

Are you ready? But of course you are — why else would you be here? So let’s get to it.

VICIOUS ART

The members of this Swedish band paid their dues playing in the likes of Grave, Entombed, Dark Funeral, and Obscurity. We’ll save the rest of the background info about Vicious Art for just a few minutes, just long enough to get you in a properly vicious frame of mind, with this brand new song called “Chaos Confirmed”:

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Vicious_art_chaosconfirmed.mp3|titles=Vicious Art: Chaos Confirmed]

Of course, there is more after the jump . . . Continue reading »

TROLLS COME OUT TO PLAY!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 272011
 

It’s a well-known fact that trolls live under bridges, and in caves, and in your basement if you’re not careful. But we now have actual video evidence that trolls come out to play every now and then.

These are Norwegian trolls and they play metal, too. They call themselves Trollfest. We wrote about them last July (see this post) when they released a single from an album they were then starting to shop around to labels. The song is called “Die Verdammte Hungersnot”. The official NCS translation of the song title is “Hungersnot, Dammit!” However, it actually seems to mean “the damned craving” or “the damned hunger”. Kick-ass song, whatever the title means.

Because we’re lazy, we’ll use the description of the music we concocted for that previous post: “speed metal plus oompa music plus Balkan folk tunes plus middle eastern melodies plus Converge-style hardcore shrieking plus more speed metal plus beer and vodka plus more speed metal.”

That was then, this is now. And in the here and now, Trollfest has found a label (NoiseArt Records), and that album (En Kvest For Den Hellige Gral) will finally be released on April 29. To help promote the release, the band are uploading weekly videos between now and the release date. The first one just went up. It’s a “tour diary” of a German tour that Trollfest did last December with fellow Norwegians Pantheon I and Germany’s Finterforst.

The video is shocking, I tell you, simply shocking: It appears that there is snow in Germany during the winter! And European airlines don’t work any better than U.S. ones. And it appears that Norwegian bands never stop drinking, ever. It also appears that they know how to fucken party, both on and off-stage. Check out the video after the jump, plus music, plus other shit, including a picture of a snot otter . . . Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 32)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  6 Responses »
Mar 272011
 


We could call this installment “The Phro Edition” of THAT’S METAL!, because he contributed our lead item for today — and it doesn’t even involve tentacle porn. But it’s still nasty.

For any newcomers in the audience, this series of posts focuses on random things out in the non-metallic world that we think are metal, despite the fact that they’re not music. We run these posts on an irregular basis primarily because we don’t enjoy venturing out into the non-metallic world any more than absolutely necessary. We find that world, more often than not, to be depressing, needlessly cruel, and often astoundingly stupid, even by our own primitive standards of intelligence. To be clear, we’re talking about the human non-metallic world, which perhaps explains why so many of out THAT’S METAL! items involve the non-human world.

Today, we have four items for you: slaughter on an epic scale by creatures that are beyond moral judgment (unlike humans who engage in slaughter on an epic scale); images from the artistic tradition of memento mori (new and old); two girls and a box (uh huh); and a breathtaking slideshow which proves that maybe human beings aren’t complete wastes of oxygen.

ITEM ONE

Th Phro contribution we’re featuring is a video of 30 giant Japanese hornets slaughtering 30,000 European bees in the space of 3 hours. You’ll see at the end why they did this. It’s fucking brutal — made even more brutal by the verbiage in the narration. (follow along after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THANKFULLY, SCUM WILL RISE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Mar 262011
 

Okay, I’m fully awake now. I was getting there rapidly after listening to that new song from Tombs (see immediately previous post today). And then I saw this new video from California’s Nails, and that brought me to a state of full alertness, or at least as alert as I ever get, which come to think of it is only about as alert as a pupa in a chrysalis.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the new video from Nails. It’s for the song called “Conform/Scum Will Rise” from their killer album Unsilent Death on Southern Lord. It’s about a minute-and-a-half of rancid grindcore with a nice little change of pace at the end. It will tear the skin from your face. What a nice way to wake up (thank you Metal Injection).

TOMBS: VERMILLION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 262011
 

I’m still barely awake after a very late night at Seattle’s El Corazon partaking of Rotting Christ‘s current headlining tour of the U.S. I have a very sore neck, in addition to still being half-asleep. If I ever fully wake up, I will put up some photos of that show.

In the meantime, I did perk up when I saw the news that within the last 24 hours, Tombs began streaming a new track from their next album, Path of Totality, which is scheduled for release by Relapse Records on June 7. This is the follow-up to the Brooklyn trio’s February 2009 album, Winter Hours, which I thought was a fucking killer — a virtually non-stop vortex of grim, hateful, teeth-chattering, blackened doom.

The new song is called “Vermillion”. From the beginning, it crashes over you in a surging wave of tremolo guitar and not-quite-what-you-expect drum progressions — and it doesn’t let up. As on Winter Hours, all the hostility is leavened with ringing guitar melodies, but it’s mainly heavy as fuck, and Mike Hill is in prime, roaring, vocal form. My only complaint? This jam could easily have gone on for twice its actual length without losing one whit of interest. Jump past the jump and listen to “Vermillion”. I feel more awake already. Continue reading »

THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMIN’: SONS OF AEON AND ANOTHER NEW ONE FROM ALTAR OF PLAGUES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 262011
 

Seems like everywhere I turn these days, I run into more good metal. I ran into the music in this post yesterday and was just too damn busy to get it up on the site on a same-day basis.

Taking my enthusiasm with a grain of salt, which of course you should do because I seem to get enthusiastic so often, I will still tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed what I’m about to dish up. The first offering is music from a Finnish band of veteran musicians called Sons of Aeon. The second is yet another debut track from the forthcoming album by Ireland’s Altar of Plagues. It’s an unusually long song, but a stunning one.

SONS OF AEON

Sons of Aeon (pictured above) is a fairly new metal collective based in Jyväskylä, Finland. It includes former Swallow the Sun drummer Pasi Pasanen, plus two members of Ghost Brigade (guitarist Wille Naukkarinen and  Ghost Brigade guitarist Tommi Kiviniemi on bass), vocalist Tony Kaikkonen from Code for Silence, and guitarist Tapio Vartiainen.

They have a 3-song EP in circulation that’s available for free download — and things this good don’t usually come as gifts.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

AGALLOCH: LIVE FILMAGE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 252011
 

Agalloch – Into The Painted Grey / In The Shadow Of Our Pale Companion from (((unartig))) on Vimeo.

I finally got to see Agalloch play a live show in Seattle on the Winter Solstice last December. I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I frothed all over the place in an NCS post. Among other frothy things, I wrote: “I’ll say it briefly, but from the heart: I’ve never heard live metal better than Agalloch’s performance. A very few shows I’ve seen are in the same league, but none has been better. It was a long set — one that began at midnight and lasted almost an hour and a half, but I still wasn’t ready for it to end. I was dazed for long after the show ended.”

If you haven’t had the chance to see this band yet, you can at least watch some very high-quality footage of their show on March 22, 2011, at the Poisson Rouge in NYC. This clip includes two long jams, “Into the Painted Grey” and “In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion”. The clip is more than 20 minutes long. Worth every minute.

NEGURĂ BUNGET: NEW MUSIC

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 252011
 

In the spring of 2009, undisclosed disagreements led to the departure of two of the three members of Romanian black metal band Negură Bunget. But although founding member Hupogrammos and Sol Faur were on their way out the door, they finished working with co-founder Negru on a re-recording of the band’s 2000 album, Măiastru Sfetnic. The new work, called Măiestrit, was released last year, and as we wrote in our review, it’s a remarkably impressive work.

With Hupogrammos and Sol Faur gone, drummer Negru set about recruiting a new line-up, including a guitarist and vocalist called Corb and a guitarist called Spin. In all, the new Negură Bunget is a six-piece band constructed to give even more attention to traditional folk instruments. And the new line-up also released its debut album last year — Vîrstele Pămîntului. We reviewed that one, too (here), and found that it was “a passionate and entrancing combination of extreme metal and traditional folk melodies and instruments.” It also appeared on several of our guest contributors’ Best of 2010 lists.

With that background, we’re very fucking pleased to report that Negură Bunget is set to release an EP (MCD) of new music on April 25 via code666 Records. The name of the EP is Poartă de dincolo (which means “a gate from the above” or “carrying from the other side”). To whet our appetites, the band have just released a wonderful preview track from the EP. You can hear it after the jump . . . Continue reading »

TODAY’S ACRONYMS: END. AND TNOTB

 Metal News  16 Responses »
Mar 252011
 

In this post, we’re really just showing our support for some metal bro’s who we care about, but we’re tossing in some music, too.

ERYN NON DAE. (END.)

Last year, we published no fewer than four posts about this band from Toulouse, France. Those posts included a review of the band’s 2009 album Hydra Lernaïa, an interview with the band, and two updates that included videos of live performances. The last post, from June 2010, includes links to all the others. We paid so much attention to them because the music was such a head-scrambling rush. To repeat yet again what we said in the review:

“Alternating between brutal headbanging heaviness and shrieking turbulent intricacy, the music has a very experimental, discordant, anarchic vibe. It’s dense, intense, grim, sharply angled, and often surreal. . . .Hydra Lernaïa is an adventure in the unexpected. It’s obviously the product of considerable thought, extensive work, and a high level of technical proficiency in the playing — nothing less could have succeeded in realizing on such an ambitious game-plan. This is dark math metal with brains as well as brawn, and emotional power as well as rigorous complexity.”

When we think of current bands that are pushing the envelope of metal, this is one that immediately comes to mind. Given our attraction, it was only natural to follow the band’s news, whenever there was news to be had. We haven’t had much for a while, but yesterday we learned that END. is now in the throes of creating music for their next album.

Still untitled at this point, we’ve learned that the subject of the new music will be metamorphosis. Song titles include “Chrysalis”, “The Great Downfall”, “Black Obsidian Pyre”, and “Scarlet Rising”. In August, the band will be ensconcing themselves in Mobo’s Conkrete Studio to record the successor  to Hydra Lernaïa. We be excite with anticipation. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

A MISHMASH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  21 Responses »
Mar 242011
 

The word “mishmash” popped into my head when I was thinking about a title for this post. I thought I knew what it meant, but to be sure, I checked the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. It defined “mishmash” as “hodgepodge, jumble”. That was really fucking helpful. I hate it when a dictionary defines one word by using other words that are just as opaque.

The same source explained that the word could have derived from the combination of two Middle English words (mysse and masche) or perhaps from the “reduplication” of the Yiddish word mishn, meaning “to mix”. That made me wonder what the difference is between “duplication” and “reduplication”. REduplication sounds REdundant, but what do I know.

Anyway, I gave up on Merriam-Webster and tried another dictionary, which proved more helpful. It defined “mishmash” as: “A messy or confused mixture of different things.” Which explained why the word popped into my head, since my head is itself a messy and confused mixture of things. That definition did confirm that I’d come up with the right post title, because the music I’m serving up today is definitely a messy and confused collection. It could also be a hodgepodge and a jumble, but I’ve lost patience looking up word definitions at the moment, so I don’t know for sure.

Today I won’t make you guess about the music. The songs on offer are from Torture Division (Sweden), Hellen (Arizona) (pictured above), and Vile (California). I recommend them. They are a mishmash of innervating metal. They will also turn the organ you think with into a mishmash. You may even be reduplicated. (songs after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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