My, how time flies. Another month is in the history books. However much time you have on earth, you now have 31 days less of it since since the last installment of this post. Drink up!

But have no fear. You’re headed for a better place. That’s right, basically the same existence you had a month ago, but with more new metal ahead of you. Drink up!

And all those physical processes that are inexorably decaying your bodies on the rocky road to your demise, they’re still there and they’re still working on you like termites that have found a rotting log. But hey, you can still bang your head, so . . . Drink up!

Yes, we’re now a full seven months into 2010, and so it’s time for another monthly update to the list of forthcoming new albums we first posted on January 1. (All the other updates can be found via the “Forthcoming Albums” category link on the right side of our pages.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases we didn’t know about at the time of our previous updates, or updated info about some of the previously noted releases.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Perhaps needless to say, these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site — the kind that would like to tear your head off.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted items from various sources since our last update about forthcoming new releases. Look for the bands you like and put reminders on your calendar. Or if you’re like us, just stick post-it notes on your forehead. Of course, if your foreheads are the low, sloping kind, you may only have room for a few, so be choosy.

My tastes in music have grown more extreme since I first heard Dagoba’s album What Hell Is About in 2006. You know, the musical equivalent of the well-known progression that beer leads to hard liquor, which leads to weed, which leads to coke, which leads to heroin, which leads to death (metal).

But despite the increasing extremity of my tastes, I still like Dagoba, even though I was a bit disappointed in the next album, Face the Colossus, because it featured more clean singing and a less extreme sound overall. I certainly still like them well enough to be interested in the album they’ve got coming out on August 30 — Poseidon.

Besides, they’re from France. Maybe not as foolproof a recommendation as if they were from Finland, but French metal is pretty fucking good these days.

But as interested as I am, I obviously haven’t been on my toes, because I didn’t know until a few minutes ago that they’ve already officially released one song from the album (“Black Smoker”) and that a second song (“Waves of Doom”) has been leaked onto YouTube.  (“Thank-you” to the more-on-his-toes deseee at the most excellent The Number of the Blog for posting about these two tracks.)

Of the two, I much prefer the leaked song, because, well, it’s more extreme. But “Black Smoker” is decent, too. Both songs are after the jump, plus more of the amazing artwork created for the new album . . .

Fucking Death Metal!   Death Fucking Metal!   Metal Fucking Death!

The Crown is back.

Knew they had re-formed. Knew they’ve made a new album. Coming out on September 27. On Century Media.

Didn’t know they’ve put up a brand new song from the album. Happened two days ago. Called “Blood O.D.”

Now I know. Just listened to it. More than once. Kinda out of breath now.

Will be more coherent after the jump. Also after the jump is the new song.

Fucking death metal. Ass-kicking music. Trying to take deeper breaths.

We seem to have fallen into a video kick this week, which is unusual for us. But the one we saw for the first time today is far and away the best of the lot. Actually, it’s the best of the lot by a few light years.

It’s a video for the song “Combat” off the new album Invictus by Heaven Shall Burn (which we reviewed here). “Combat” is about child soldiers, which explains in part why the song is so full of fury. It’s a harrowing, slashing, anguished, bone-rattling piece of music, but it also includes a beautiful keyboard melody and some surprising electro-beats.

The video is an animation created by Animaatiokopla from Finland and was premiered by Amnesty International Germany. It’s visually arresting, and it enhances the emotional power of the song. In carefully selected places, something happens in the video — like the stitching of machine-gun bullets across a muraled wall — that’s in sync with a burst of rhythm or a riff in the song.

But this isn’t one of those videos that’s full of strobing imagery set to the frenetic pulse of the music’s beat. Like the song, it’s about the ripping away of innocence, and in the main, it uses slow-moving childlike graphics to tell the tale as the music scorches with anger. Do check it out (after the jump).

Before I started trying to put something together for this NCS blog every day (while also dealing with my day job and the rest of my life), I used to spend quality time browsing other metal blogs. Hell, doing that is what inspired me and my two sometimes co-authors to start this thing.

Nowadays, I don’t spend nearly as much time as I’d like on other sites, because I just don’t fucking have the time. The consequence is that when I come across a long piece on another blog, I tend to just wince, make a mental note to come back “when I have time”, and move on to something that’s shorter. (Knowing this you’d think I would be less verbose on the stuff I write for NCS. Yes, you might think that, but then you have to remember that I have a brain the size of a plum that’s been drying in the sun too long.)

Usually, when I make one of those mental notes, I never go back to read the long piece I skipped over.  Today, I actually did. I went back to MetalSucks and I read a July 19 posting of an e-mail that MS received from Ryan McKenney, the vocalist for a band that constantly blows me away, Trap Them. He was responding to an earlier post by one of MetalSucks’ more-or-less regular columnists, Sacha Dunable (of the band Intronaut) on the subject of whether corporate-sponsored metal shows are killing the live concert market.

You don’t have to read Dunable’s post to understand McKenney’s. I could just put up a link to McKenney’s post, urge you to go read it (here’s the link), and move on. But that’s really not good enough. For all sorts of reasons, it just fucking blew me away. I think it will hit you pretty fucking hard too. So, after the jump, I’m taking the liberty of just re-printing the whole bleak, brilliant, passionate, eye-opening, thing.

Shit, we might as well just surrender the day to deathcore (not counting my goofy MYSPAZZ post). As punishing breakdowns go, that clip we put up earlier today from Thy Art Is Murder is pretty satisfying, if you can get past the foam-at-the-mouth-and-belch-blood vid accompaniment — or maybe you’ll greet that as a plus factor.

But now we’ve just stumbled across a newly minted, almost freshly unwrapped official goodie from our Seattle homeboys I Declare War performing “Federal Death Alliance” from their new album Malevolence — which my man IntoTheDarkness gushed about in our review here.

And no, we still don’t have any more light to shed on the rumored departure of IDW’s frontman Jonathan Huber, except it definitely is true that he’s not playing with the band on the current tour and Molotov Solution’s Nick Arthur is standing in. We’re still hoping for more news.  The vid is after the jump. It’s murderous . . .

Our resident deathcore aficionado IntoTheDarkness insisted I listen to a song called “Soldiers of Immortality” from the new album by Australia’s Thy Art Is Murder. The album is called The Adversary and it was released on July 16 (now available on iTunes and elsewhere).

IntoTheDarkness proclaimed that the album features “some of the heaviest breakdowns I’ve heard” — and he should know. His musical library includes more breakdowns than could be counted in a normal human lifetime. He’s snapped his neck to so many breakdowns it’s a wonder any ligaments are still attached. He particularly favors the kind that detonate on impact.

Now I like me some breakdowns too, the more explosive the better. So I checked out the song, which happens to be the subject of a new Thy Art Is Murder video. And it do have a nasty extended breakdown. The rest of the song ain’t bad either, with better than average instrumental work for this subgenre (which may not be saying a lot, given how much mediocrity is to be found in the current deathcore universe).

I haven’t listened to the rest of The Adversary yet, but I like this song enough to take a deep breath and dive in all the way. As for the video, well, see the title of this post.  And see the video after the jump.

Our sometimes NCS collaborator IntoTheDarkness just alerted me to this piece of news on Lambgoat:

I Declare War (Artery/Razor & Tie) vocalist Jonathan Huber has reportedly left the group, though nothing official has been announced thus far. The band just kicked off a tour with For The Fallen Dreams and Legend and have been using a fill-in singer (apparently Nick Arthur of Molotov Solution).

To which all we can say is, What The Fuck?

We’ve been following these hometown deathcore favorites for a while, and no one was more stoked to learn earlier this year that they’d been signed by a label (as we reported here). We were even happier to discover that their recently released second album, Malevolent, kicked massive amounts of ass (as IntoTheDarkness reported here). And with that release and the label backing, the dudes started hitting the road and building their fanbase.

Now this? It really don’t make sense. We’ve got no explanation at the moment. Maybe it’s all just a baseless rumor. When we find out more, we’ll put it up here for you IDW fans in the audience.

It seems like every week we read about the reunion of one band or another that we had long thought dead, with plans for new recordings, new tours, new hairdo’s. Sometimes, it’s good news. Sometimes, it’s just kinda sad. Sometimes, it’s funny (and sad).

Usually, we refrain from commenting on such developments. But we’re behind on what we had planned for today’s post, so we’re making an exception. To be brutally honest (which is the only kind of honest we know how to be here at NCS), this is filler.

Think of it as a rain delay. Your ticket will still be good tomorrow. But, if you would like a refund because all you’re getting today is filler, please send us a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and we will gladly refund every dime you paid us for the right to access this site.

From a “news” item we saw this morning on Blabbermouth:

“Cadence”, the new studio album from the reunited melodic hard rock band BANGALORE CHOIR, will be released on September 24 via Metal Heaven Records.

It has been 18 years since BANGALORE CHOIR’s only release, “On Target”, on Giant Records in 1992, which came out on the same day as NIRVANA’s “Nevermind”. Shortly after, BANGALORE CHOIR disbanded after being released from the label.

Really, we’re not making this up (and there’s more juice like this to come).  So, to start, everyone out there who remembers Bangalore Choir, raise your hands!  (more after the jump, including a video and a palate cleanser, which you will need if you make it to the end of this filler . . .)

Almost two weeks ago, we tried out something new here at NCS, kind of like what some people do with their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts when they tell you hour-by-hour (or minute-by-minute) what they’re doing — except we limited our disclosures to metal and hoped it would be more interesting than a lot of the social networking blather.

To be more precise, I posted a log of exactly what I listened to or watched on that particular morning, whether it turned out to be good, bad, or indifferent. I got enough encouragement from readers that I decided to continue doing it.

In the interests of complete candor, I should say that it takes very little encouragement for me to do anything, unless it involves actual work, in which case it takes a great deal of encouragement, plus threats of being pistol-whipped.

So, here we go again — a log of exactly what I heard or saw in one of my recent sessions of poking around for new music to check out, and what I found, for better or for worse.  (after the jump, of course . . .)