“She Destroys Again” is a song from Sólstafir’s Köld album, which was released in February 2009 by Spikefarm Records. When the band’s official video for the song originally went up on YouTube in 2010, it was taken down, presumably because of the full frontal female nudity. Later, it was re-uploaded and has been age-restricted on YouTube since then.
I suppose in some sort of jousting match with YouTube, it has been uploaded again today without the age restriction. I’m sure that won’t last long.
It’s a cool song and a cool video, which I was reminded about by the new upload. The video is just a montage of still photos compiled by the band’s drummer Guðmundur Óli Pálmason using Final Cut, without any digital post-processing; he says all the visual effects were manually created. It’s interesting to watch.
I’ll embed the non-restricted version after the jump. When it eventually gets blocked, you can go HERE to see the age-restricted cut, if you’re of age.
True story: I tried to roller skate once. It didn’t end well. I kind of careened all over the place, totally out of control, veering in one direction and then another. Eventually I came to rest — on my ass, with a severely sprained ankle. It was a hell of an adrenaline rush, followed by a fuckton of pain.
The point of this post is to throw some music your way to help you skid into the weekend ahead, to get some adrenaline pumping, and to bring the pain.
YELLOWGOAT
We know Joel Grind can thrash. He’s the driving force behind Portland’s one-man wrecking machine, Toxic Holocaust, a “band” that quite effectively churns out a holocaust of punk/thrash mayhem. Now we can hear a slightly different side of Mr. Grind.
He has a one-man side project called Yellowgoat and has finished recording a 9-track album under that name. Yesterday he put up on the Tube of You an 8-minute preview of the album, with excerpts from the songs. Based on those previews, I’d describe the music as a nasty, fuzzed-out fusion of black thrash, d-beat, and punk — a throwback to the early days of black metal. It makes sense that he picked a name that pretty obviously came from the cover of Bathory’s first album.
The music is vicious, raw, and thoroughly energizing. So get this skate show on the road by rockin’ out to the Yellowgoat album preview right after the jump, and after that you’ll see some of Joel’s comments about this project.
There may be other metal bands somewhere in the world whose musical journey has been as long, as varied, and as successful as that of Norway’s Enslaved, but there surely can’t be many.
They began life under the name Phobia, playing Autopsy-style doomy death metal, but they made their mark as a pioneering black metal band. They adopted their current name from the Immortal demo cut “Enslaved to Rot”. They shared a split with Emperor in 1993. And then they made a big impact with their 1994 debut album Frost. Their 1997 album Eld appears in the No. 8 position on the well-regarded list of black metal’s Top 100 albums at the Norsksvartmetall site.
But musically, Enslaved have been in almost constant motion, evolving in progressive directions. They have now finished recording their as-yet unnamed newest album, which is projected for release by the band’s new label Nuclear Blast in October. Today, the Lydverket web site (affiliated with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK) published an interview of the band by Totto Mjelde, which was conducted in the studio as the band were putting the finishing touches on the recording before sending it to Fascination Street Studios in Sweden for mixing.
We’ve written about NRK’s coverage of Norwegian metal in the past, and Totto was nice enough to tip us to this piece — which is in English and is definitely worth reading, not least because it includes a report about the music on Enslaved’s new album, an audio excerpt from one of the songs, and some nice photos from the studio.
After the jump, I’ve included a couple of highlights from the interview and Totto’s description of this first taste of music from Enslaved’s new album.
Marduk’s new album, Serpent Sermon, will be released by Century Media on June 1. I hear through the grapevine that our man Andy Synn will have a review in the near future. Today, the band debuted the official music video for a track called “Souls For Belial”.
There are black metal posers in the world. Marduk are not among them. With the exception of a well-timed, reduced-pace segment past the half-way point, “Souls For Belial” is a bestial, bile-drenched, soul-scraping, take-no-prisoners attack that flies fast and hard. The well-made video by Håkan Sjödin fits the music. The imagery, both of the band and of imagined creatures, exudes occult vitriol.
The next time someone pokes fun at black metal by linking to one of those lol-some Immortal videos, show them this one. Watch it after the jump.
Well, this sure as hell snuck up on me silently and quickly and pounced from behind without warning. Season of Mist has begun taking pre-orders for a new EP titled Drought by Deathspell Omega that’s scheduled for release on June 22. The pre-order page (HERE) says that artwork will be revealed soon, but the image above appears right alongside the order info, and it looks like artwork to me.
Deathspell Omega have no official web site or social media pages, and they don’t talk much, so I suppose that explains why this arrived unheralded and without fanfare. But I have no doubt word will spread quickly. Here’s the verbiage that accompanies the order info at the Season of Mist e-shop:
“Drought has the sour taste of the inexorable; it is a musical journey through the last moments before disaster hits. This recording displays some of the most lethal song writing ever witnessed from the band while retaining their unmistakable sound.”
My first exposure to the band was their 2010 album Paracletus, which made me an immediate fan. I suspect we have more than a few equally devoted fans among the readers of this site. This post, therefore, should make your fucking day. And since Deathspell Omega is now uppermost in my mind, I think I’ll play a song for you after the jump. I picked this one because, for those of you not familiar with the band, it happens that Season of Mist is still offering it for free download HERE. Also after the jump is the track list for Drought.
Last year, the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour promoters came up with the clever idea of sponsoring a fan vote for the tour’s opening band and then organizing a second tour for the bands on the ballot who lost the election. This year, they’ve done it again, giving metal consumers two tours instead of one.
This year’s SLAUGHTER SURVIVORS tour is headlined by Pathology and includes Enfold Darkness, Fallujah, Fit For An Autopsy, and Aegaeon. We’ve complimented the music of all these bands in previous NCS posts (if you don’t believe me, type their names in the search box), and this should make a worthwhile show for those who live in the right U.S. cities.
Speaking of which, the schedule is after the jump.
(BadWolf is sacrificing what’s left of his peace of mind for the greater good of NCS, beyond which there is no greater good.)
HAILS!!!
Dear loyal readers, haters, and bad skaters
It has come to my attention that many of you out there do not receive nearly enough furious metal nerdrage delivered instantly to your mobile devices.
To this end, I have joined twitter.
For my first act as future Alpha Male of the instant-communication inforverse, I declare that I will follow every single metal-related twitter user that you readers insist I follow, in order to filter out the filler and relay to you killer bits of inane, digitized NOTHING!
Follow me at @BadWolfNCS and leave me suggestions as for who to follow in the comment thread below. Here’s the profile link: https://twitter.com/#!/BadWolfNCS
BARK AT THE MOON!!!
“Titillating”: pleasantly stimulating or exciting; also: erotic.
That’s the definition of the word provided by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. It looks like the Spanish translation of the word would be “excitar, estimular placenteramente”. It’s a great word, because it sort of sounds like what it means, at least to me. But that may be because it begins with “tits”, as in “this is the tits”. Speaking of which, THIS is the tits, and it’s also titillating:
Costa Rica-based metal band Sight of Emptiness have finished recording their third album, to be released later this year, and it features a line-up of guest appearances that will make you look twice. If you’ve been a regular NCS reader, you already know about this talented band because we’ve written about them frequently and even helped them premiere a new song and video. If you don’t know about them yet, check this out.
Now, let’s start with the name-dropping: First, the album was recorded at SoloHits Studios in San José, Costa Rica by Swedish producer Thomas “Plec” Johansson (Scar Symmetry, Watain, Solution .45, Miseration), who traveled all the way to Costa Rica to work with the band for 22 days. Johansson will also handle the mixing and mastering at Panic Room Studios in Skara, Sweden.
Second, here’s the list of guest appearances:
Glen Drover (King Diamond & Megadeth)
Christian Älvestam (Scar Symmetry, Miseration, Solution .45
Whitfield Crane (Ugly Kid Joe, Another Animal
Ralph Santolla (Deicide, Iced Earth, Obituary)
Ole Halvard Sveen (Extol, Mantric, Lengsel)
and last but not least . . .
(Andy Synn provides this update about two bands he previously featured in his SYNN REPORT series.)
Today saw the release of two pieces of news regarding two former Synn Report luminaries, both of whom happen to be amongst my all-time favourite bands. One piece of news is very bad, whilst the other one is potentially very good.
First and foremost:
AVERSE SEFIRA
“As we write the names, the stars go out…”
Sadly, the US black metal titans have officially disbanded. An official press release has been issued by Clawhammer PR stating:
“American black metal titans Averse Sefira has officially disbanded. The band formed in 1996, and went on to make their mark through Europe and the Americas, performing with other notable black metal groups like Dark Funeral, Gorgoroth, Watain, Marduk, 1349, Absu, Antaeus, and Secrets of the Moon.
“The band gained a respectable following despite a fiercely independent stance that garnered them a complex reputation in the underground. They achieved wider exposure with their signing to Candlelight Records in 2007 and the release of their highly-rated fourth LP, Advent Parallax, the following year. Over the last decade, they also appeared in multiple documentaries and books examining metal culture.
When it comes to Washington State metal bands, my objectivity could be questioned, because I live in the Seattle area. But that’s only because you don’t know me well enough. Fact is, when it comes to the metal, I don’t think about the music of Seattle or Tacoma bands any differently than I do bands from California or New York or India or Europe or anywhere else. Yes, I have a chance to see them perform live more often than bands from elsewhere, but I won’t change my rule: I only want to write about bands I feel I can honestly recommend.
And I’m not bending the rule when it comes to 7 Horns 7 Eyes or Stealing Axion. They are extremely talented bands making music that ought to be heard far and wide. So, from my perspective, it’s extremely cool that these two bands have managed to arrange a tour together, sponsored by Guitar World. It’s called the DUAL DESTRUCTION TOUR, and I expect that’s what they’ll bring — destruction.
We’ve reviewed both of these bands’ most recent releases (7E7H here and Stealing Axion here), and in fact we got the privilege of streaming the new 7H7E album. But we have two more things to throw your way today, besides the tour schedule, which is still being expanded (see the current schedule after the jump).
First, we have one pair of tickets to give away, courtesy of Century Media, in a market of the winner’s choice. I’m going to make this contest really simple. Send me your name via e-mail to islander@nocleansinging.com. I will put each name on a slip of paper and put all the paper slips in a bowl. Rather than smoking all the slips, I will instead ask my non-metalhead wife to pick one of the slips from the bowl, and her pick will be the winner. I will then smoke all the rest of the slips. This contest will end at midnight, Pacific Time, on May 11, 2012
True story: this ticket offer came my way from Century Media minutes AFTER I wrote the balance of this post. If that’s not a freakishly felicitous coincidence, I don’t know what is.
Second, I have for you a play-through video by Stealing Axion drummer Blake Ferris. Watching and listening to this video brings to mind a question I have about skilled metal drummers every time I get a bird’s-eye view of their performances: How they do this?
