Feb 282012
 

BadWolf introduced me and many of you to Death Grips through the first installment of a series in which he spotlights the music of non-metal bands (here) — though I think most listeners would agree that there’s a helluva lot about Death Grips that’s metal. Because of BadWolf’s post, I got interested and starting following the band’s news. Early this month we reported that they intended to release two albums this year, including a song called “Blackjack”, which I included in that earlier post.

More news surfaced yesterday, and it kinda blows my mind: Death Grips has signed a record deal with Epic, the major label owned by Sony whose stable includes artists such as Fiona Apple, Natasha Bedingfield, and Brandy. Okay, to be fair, Epic is also home to Lamb of God, Ozzy Osbourne, and Judas Priest. As well as George Michael and Jennifer Lopez. And Mudvayne.

I hear the distant rumble of a throaty “What the fuck?!?” Or maybe that’s just my throat. I mean, Death Grips isn’t exactly a natural fit with the Epic roster, and I do wonder by what logic Epic saw this as a money-making signing, because this band is definitely out there. Or under there (“I am below / so far below / the bottom line”). Maybe Epic is trying to put some edge on their image.

As for Death Grips, I’m happy they get some label backing regardless of where it comes from; I certainly don’t expect that this group is going to “sell out”. I’m also now waiting for the J-Lo cover of “Beware” — “Dismiss this life / worship death / Cold blood night of serpent’s breath”. Fuck yeah. And I’m also happy that to celebrate the signing news, the band released another new song called “Get Got”. More details about the two albums plus the song are after the jump.

Continue reading »

Feb 272012
 

Anyone who thinks Job For A Cowboy is still a deathcore band didn’t hear the band’s 2011 EP, Gloom. You can simulate listening to it by reading Andy Synn’s NCS review (here). Or you can check out a song from JFAC’s forthcoming album, Demonocracy, because that’s what we have for you in this post.

The new, 9-track album, produced by Jason Suecof, is scheduled for release on April 10 by Metal Blade, who is accepting pre-orders for it now (here). It catches the eye with an album cover by Brent Elliott White, and it includes the return of two musicians who made their first JFAC appearance on Gloom — guitarist Tony Sannicandro and Cephalic Carnage bassist Nick Schendzielos, who replaced Brent Riggs last year.

Gloom revealed a band who were unabashedly leaving their deathcore roots behind and instead connecting with their death metal forebears, and even incorporating elements of black metal and doom on certain songs. What then does Demonocracy hold in store? Continue reading »

Feb 272012
 

(DemiGodRaven reviews the new album by Lamb of God.)

I know this is probably the case for quite a few people, but Lamb of God were one of the groups responsible for getting me into really heavy music. I had always enjoyed heavy metal in general, but I was one of those people who didn’t like screaming. Then I listened to New American Gospel at a friend’s house and for some reason just loved it, despite the horrendous drum production on that disc. After that, all bets were off, and I basically descended into the troll cave from which I write now.

Lamb Of God have always been just crushingly consistent. Ever since Ashes Of The Wake, they haven’t really felt the need to make a massive shift in sound and instead have iterated upon it in the same way I imagine artists will continually add more and more detail to their sculptures despite already being confident about where they are in their work. Sometimes this works really well. I thought Sacrament was a great release and listened to that disc so much that I can’t listen to it anymore. I acknowledge that it is an excellent CD, but I spun that thing into the fucking ground. The reception which greeted that one was always really weird. I always got the sense that the band didn’t really enjoy it and felt like it was more of a lateral jump from Ashes Of The Wake than a move forward.

Wrath was supposed to be a tremendously huge release for them, but it didn’t quite click for me. It was the first time I had ever thought, “Yep, this is just another Lamb Of God disc”. Nothing really stuck for me. Strangely, I found the bonus tracks, “Shoulder Of Your God” and “Condemning The Hive”, to be the best things they accomplished.

Then there was the in between “Hit The Wall”, which came out for the Iron Man 2 video game, and while the game itself was fucking garbage, the song was a pretty good tease as to where Lamb Of God might be looking for the future. Continue reading »

Feb 272012
 

(Gaia [ex-TNOTB] returns to our site with a review of the 2011 EP by Sacramento’s Giant Squid )

Cenotes – EP
Giant Squid
[Translation Loss]

Tracklist:
1. Tongue Stones (Megaptera Megachasmacarcharias)
2. Mating Scars (Isurus Metridium)
3. Snakehead (Channidae Erectus)
4. Figura Serpentinata (Pycnopodia Sapien)
5. Cenotes (Troglocambarus Maclanei)

35 minutes

Giant Squid’s music is as strange and rare and phenomenal as their namesake. Their works are subtle and nuanced, a delicate orchestration of oceanic sounds dancing lithely with the guitar’s heavy-handed jig. The band’s ecological philosophy deserts their urban surroundings of hometown Sacramento, California; you’ll be more likely to find them roaming a nature reserve or peering into rock pools by the sea.

It is that natural curiosity that shines through their body of work, most noticeably on 2009’s full length The Ichthyologist, where multiple guests leant their instrumentation to Giant Squid’s complex orchestration. Flutes, banjos, violins, cellos, trumpets, oboes, all additions that were explored to their limits and bent to main songwriter Aaron Gregory’s will. The Ichthyologist got them signed; it was that good.

Now Giant Squid return with the EP Cenotes (suh-noh-tees), a comparatively simpler record, the grandiose composition stripped away and no guests are involved. This is Giant Squid spouting their own black and inky concoctions. Continue reading »

Feb 272012
 

(BadWolf brings us another installment in his not-metal music series.)

I find myself  jubilant at the response from the first article in this column. You guys loved Death Grips — and I can’t blame you. However, many of those overwhelmingly positive pieces of feedback held a question: Do I only plan on covering new music? The answer is no. I spend too much effort on exploring metal’s cutting edge to give the same depth to other genres. I also spend next-to-no time scouting non-metal blogospheres, simply because I am acquainted with many wonderful music aficionados in real life who have no interest in heavy metal: consequentially I can basically order up excellent Indie and Hip Hop albums a-la carte. Frequently I find excellent non-metal albums years after the fact.

Case-in-point, quite possibly the most-loved contemporary album among my real-life friends: Brand New’s 2009 opus, Daisy.

Continue reading »

Feb 262012
 

For some reason, That Word leaped to mind twice this morning, prompted by the music in this post. I’m sure I’m leaving myself open to vicious assault by Meshuggah purists for using it in their case, since they came first and That Word came later. But I kind of view it as a form of homage to The Masters, even though I still have no clue what it means.

And speaking of The Masters, what I have for you is a fan-filmed video of Meshuggah performing one of the new songs from KOLOSS — “Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion” — at the Soundwave festival in Brisbane, Australia, yesterday. But first, I have to share a new discovery I made this morning via a status from a Facebook friend (thanks Talae).

TOWN PORTAL

This Danish three-man band is relatively new, and their six-song debut EP, Vacuum Horror, is available on Bandcamp for a “name your price” download. That Word came to mind when I listened to the EP this morning because it’s loaded with Meshuggah-esque groove, and it has that phat low-end tone that I now tend to associate with That Word. The band do acknowledge the Meshuggah influence, but it’s only one part of what makes their music click. I would not, for example, classify them as a djent band despite the often massive, head-snapping rhythmic structures.

The sound is probably closer to a metalicized math-rock. Along with all the low-end convulsion, head-swimming guitar melodies abound. There’s no singing on the EP, but that simply makes room for a group of very skilled instrumentalists to spin a kaleidoscope of musical colors. The swirling guitar leads are creative, the arrangements are beautifully constructed, and the production quality of the recording is excellent. Listen to two songs from Vacuum Horror after the jump. Continue reading »

Feb 262012
 

We’re masquerading as Also, Wolves in this post, except we won’t fool anyone because this won’t be as funny or as clever as Trollfiend’s prose. But as he would say, Behold the Trollfinger!

So, the music of Russia’s Troll Bends Fir won’t bubble your skin from the heat or cause you to pee out your bunghole from fright like much of what we feature here, but it might still capture you like a mink in a trap, particularly the song we’re eventually coming to in this post.

We featured the music of this band once before last October. Then, the music was humppa, which was in keeping both with the band’s own description of its music as “beer folk” and and also with the prominent appearance of “troll” in their name. Fun-loving, toe-tapping, humppa-folk-metal is a big smile, particularly if you’re beered-up to your eyebrows. But it turns out that Troll Bends Fir are more multi-faceted than I suspected.

The band’s latest album, a compilation released last September called Братья Во Хмелю (Brothers in Drinks), includes more than beer-folk-rock-metal. It includes a song called “Ave Celia!”, which is the only song on the album that doesn’t have a Russian title in the original. And “Ave Celia!” is the subject of a new official video that’s well worth watching . . . and hearing. Continue reading »

Feb 262012
 

(DemiGodRaven wrote this review. In a moment of weakness, I decided to post it.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that that is either the chemical compound for meth or caffeine. Either way, don’t trust it.

I understand this isn’t the most timely of reviews. I am easily distracted, much like a moth to a flame. Can you believe that I still have a review for Lamb of God’s Resolution in the works? Maybe I’ll save that one for when I have kids and the band have long since broken up.

Look, I know a lot of you guys have very high opinions of me and I appreciate it, I really do. I’m saying this up front because I know that a lot of you are going to turn on me over the course of this review, after some of the revelations about me that will come out. That’s fine, ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do’, and all that jazz. That said, the reason you’re staring at the cover art for the recently released Lacuna Coil disc, Dark Adrenaline, on our fine No Clean Singing site is because this album actually ain’t half bad.

I was one of the long-time fans who found themselves turning up their noses at the group’s previous release, Shallow Life, for focusing too much on being mainstream radio rock and just in general containing some really bad songwriting. Dark Adrenaline actually isn’t dramatically different, but the band have started to meld the darker, more bass-heavy sound they found on Karmacode with Shallow Life to create what is a pretty solid, guilty-pleasure rock disc. Continue reading »

Feb 252012
 

Last August, NCS writer Andy Synn introduced us to Iceland’s Atrum through a justifiably enthusiastic review of their debut EP, Opus Victim. To quote from Andy’s write-up: “This extreme metal quartet’s music blurs the line between black and death metal, melding them with inspirations and aspirations drawn from classical music, to craft an epic blizzard of blackened fury and ground-shaking death metal heft that recalls a more deathly Keep Of Kalessin wrapped in a cold and venomous shroud of despondency.” In the ensuing Comments, TheMadIsraeli and I added our hearty endorsements. Suffice to say, NO CLEAN SINGING backs Atrum to the hilt.

Last week, as a tune-up for the Wacken Metal Battle 2012 festival in Iceland on the 3rd of next month, Atrum performed on Icelandic national TV, and the song they performed is a new one — “Peasant” — which is destined to appear on the band’s first full-length album, which is in the works.

Atrum won the Icelandic Wacken competition last year, which gave them a slot at the giant Wacken Open Air fest in Europe last summer. They’ll be appearing at this year’s Metal Battle show with the remarkable Solstafir, among other bands.

“Peasant” is a vivid reminder of just how good this band is. It thunders like an avalanche. Get buried by it after the jump. Continue reading »

Feb 252012
 

According to the National Park Service, Florida’s Everglades swamp is “the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States.” It’s home to a wide variety of rare and endangered species, many of whom you would not want to meet up close and personal, including alligators, crocodiles, cottonmouths, Boa constrictors, Burmese pythons, rattlesnakes, and poisonous toads.

But there are other, far more menacing creatures in Florida and they’re crawling out of the abysmal swamps to eat your face.

I’m referring to the metal bands whose music is collected in a killer comp that’s available for free download on Bandcamp. Naturally, it’s called Swamp Abyss Sorcery, and it was packaged up by Satanik Recordings (who also released that Prostitute album we praised not long ago). The comp includes music by a few bands we already knew about and liked here at NCS, including the tar-choked, grungy, inexorable sludge metal of Shroud Eater and the crusty blackened thrash of Hot Graves. But man, they’re just part of the nasty menagerie of slavering  creatures crawling and flying out of this download.

I’ve embedded the Bandcamp player after the jump so you can sample the sounds. Seriously, there’s some mighty fine shit to be had here. To do the download, go HERE. Continue reading »