Feb 112012
 

A video I saw about some difficulties Apple is experiencing with its Siri speech-recognition software gave me the idea for this post. It don’t seem to do too well with the Scots dialect (or at least the Glaswegian variant of it). I wonder how it would do with lyric recognition when voiced by Scottish extreme metal bands. Probably not to fukkin well. And running some bagpipe metal through the thing would probably cause it to melt down.

First, here’s the video. HIGH-larious. (And to see a translation of what’s being said, along with an explanation by the creator of the video, go here.)

As for Scottish (and Scottish-themed) metal, the line-up after the jump is a mix of new, newish, and older music from three Glasgow bands (Man Must Die, Cerebral Bore, and Achren), one from Edinburgh (Zillah),  and Haggis and Bong (okay, they’re from South Africa, but how can we write about Scottish metal without including some new bagpipe shred?).

MAN MUST DIE

This band has been an NCS favorite going back to the early months of our existence in 2009; type the band’s name into the NCS search box and you’ll see the history of our MMD coverage. I was greedily expecting a new album from these death metal brutes last year. Unfortunately — and completely inexplicably — they have had difficulty finding an interested label, and so we don’t have a new album. What we do have is a demo version of a new song called “Hiding In Plain Sight”, which the band uploaded to SoundCloud last October and was on YouTube even before that.

I have no idea why I missed this, but I at least I’ve found it now.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/25438925″ iframe=”true” /]
 

CEREBRAL BORE

Here’s another band we’ve written about frequently at NCS. As I write this now, Cerebral Bore is in Foel Studios in Wales recording new material. As evidence, we have this photo from last Thursday of their attention-grabbing vocalist Som recording some vocals:

From press reports, it appears this recording session is dedicated to just one new track rather than a full album. It’s highly likely we’ll be posting the new music here whenever it emerges.

Also, beginning February 19, Cerebral Bore will be joining Goatwhore, Hate Eternal, and Fallujah on a U.S. tour that runs into March. No doubt, that will be a slaughterrific show. Here’s the schedule:

Feb. 19 – Houston, TX – Warehouse Live
Feb. 20 – El Paso, TX – House Of Rock
Feb. 21 – Tempe, AZ – Clubhouse
Feb. 22 – Hollywood, CA – Whisky A Go Go
Feb. 23 – Santa Cruz, CA – The Catalyst Atrium
Feb. 24 – Portland, OR – Branx
Feb. 25 – Seattle, WA – Studio Seven
Feb. 26 – Boise, ID – The Venue
Feb. 27 – Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue
Feb. 28 – Colorado Springs, CO – Black Sheep
Feb. 29 – Kansas City, MO – Beaumont Club
Mar. 01 – St Paul, MN – Station 4
Mar. 02 – Des Moines, IA – House Of Bricks
Mar. 03 – Chicago, IL – Reggie’s Rock Club*
Mar. 05 – Toronto, ON – Hard Luck**
Mar. 06 – Ottawa, ON – Maverick’s**
Mar. 07 – Montreal, QC – Les Foufounes Electriques**
Mar. 08 – Clifton, NJ – Dingbatz**
Mar. 09 – Brooklyn, NY – Saint Vitus**

* No GOATWHORE
** HATE ETERNAL and CEREBRAL BORE only

Now, music:


 

ACHREN

Yet another band we’ve written about before. Their 2011 debut album The Forgotten King has racked up a stack of very positive reviews, and last year they played their fair share of big dates, including appearances at Wacken and Bloodstock. Here’s a track from The Forgotten King, which captures pretty well their powerful fusion of black metal and death metal.

“Pestilence”

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/10-Pestilence.mp3|titles=Achren – Pestilence]
 

ZILLAH

We discovered this Edinburgh-based band not too long ago – last November. What hooked my interest was a new track they had just released called “Not All of Me Shall Die / Man Son of Swine”. Allow me to quote myself from that November post: “This is crazy-ass, badass music — brutal, technical, schizophrenic, experimental-sounding, granite-heavy, squalling, swirling, demented, beautifully played. It’s some kind of smoking merengue of tech-death, prog, grind, and influenza. If you like it (which I certainly do), it’s available for free download at Bandcamp HERE.”

The song is still available for free download via that link, and the rest of the band’s discography is up there, too. In fact, I like the song so much, I’m just going to play it again. I also couldn’t resist featuring the artwork for the band’s new t-shirt, which can be ordered here. It’s by an Edinburgh graphic artist named Sam Hayles. I likee.


 

HAGGIS AND BONG

Last, but CERTAINLY not least, I’m proud to present a new song from South Africa’s Haggis and Bong.

The band’s new album, with that stunning cover art up there, which we’ve previously featured, is scheduled to hit the pavement on February 21. Two days ago, the band uploaded a track from the album called “Revelation of the Gods”, and one of our readers was nice enough to send me the link.

The drums begin to pound, the bass begins to drone, and then the pipes begin to skirl. Three things jumped out at me about this song. First, I hear a guitar in the mix, for the first time in a Haggis and Bong song. In fact, the song includes a sweet guitar solo. Second, this isn’t the kind of balls-out bagpipe reel the band have typically produced — it’s musically much more complex, and there’s a kind of darkness in it, too.

And third, it’s a much more conventionally fleshed out metal song than the band have ever done before, with a full metal ensemble (bass, drums, and guitar) strongly accented by the bagpipes, rather than the bagpipes and drums dominating the sound. Much as I like pipe music, I think the band has been at risk of being viewed as simply a novelty act. If this song is representative of the album, I think those days are about to end. Let me know what you think:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/36053285″ iframe=”true” /]
 

UPDATE: There’s now a Part 2 of this post, with more Scottish metal, which you can access via THIS LINK. If you have eggshell skull syndrome, you best not go there.

  30 Responses to “SCOTS WHA HAE”

  1. Just for you, some Corvus Corax:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIXV2NhLb_0

    You’re welcome.

  2. Also, Canadian Scots punks ‘The Real McKenzies’ with, yes, ‘Scots Wha Hae’.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYU67AX4xDY

    You’re still welcome.

  3. Get digging deeper, man!!!

    There’s hordes of decent bands up here!!!

    Well done for firing up the article.

    Here’s some fodder to keep you going

    http://thresholdsicks.bandcamp.com/

    http://www.facebook.com/nerruskor?sk=app_2405167945

    http://www.zombiemilitia.co.uk/media.php

  4. I’ve become a big fan of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Craig has a thick Scottish accent… not only that but last night Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre were mentioned on the show last night. That was pretty cool in my opinion… but I’m a philosophy buff, so that’s kind of expected I suppose.

    Now for something related to the music: NEW CEREBRAL BORE! GO SOM!

    • Also, I like bagpipes, and I’ve known of Haggis and Bong, but I haven’t really been tempted to listen to them knowing there wasn’t a guitar in the mix, but now that I’ve listened I can say that I like their sound. Although, I’d like it more if they added a vocalist. Not sure if I’m gonna’ pick up the album, but they certainly make some cool music.

    • I have one of Craig Ferguson’s stand up albums (A wee bit o’revolution), and I highly recommend it.

      I haven’t really seen his TV show, though I’d like too.

      And Woooooooooooooo! For more cerebral bore! Imma gonna take my panties off and rub my crotch on the computer screen.

  5. Jammie Dodgers FTW

  6. Semi-related to this and the previous post: whenever I try to get Siri to play “Tulimyrsky” she keeps saying “I found three restaurants nearby whose reviews mention tuna and biscuits”…

  7. You know..if Haggis and Bong are going to play awesome music like that, they need a name change. I would have completely skipped this band based on that dumb name, and this is freaking amazing

    • Such a quandary. On the one hand, I love their name. It puts a dopey grin on my face every time I think about it. On the other hand, you’re right that their goof of a name is now at risk of sending an inaccurate message, given the direction in which their music seems to be evolving.

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.