(We’re delighted to bring you a special guest post today from New Zealand’s Steff Metal, who among many other activities is the creator of the wonderful STEFF METAL blog. She has a special list for us from down under.)

After reading all the end-of-year lists posted on NCS, and writing my own (Top Ten Metal Albums of 2011), I realised that – despite a few notable exceptions – these lists were once again dominated by the metal powerhouses of the US and Europe. Sure, we don’t exactly have a down-under equivalent to Fleshgod Apocalypse or Origin, but NZ and Australian bands are putting out more and more decent metal albums every year.

I’ve been trying to focus more on reviewing and promoting local metal acts, and what better way to do this than to pick some of the best Kiwi and Aussie releases of 2011?

1. Ulcerate – The Destroyers of All (Willowtip Records, New Zealand)

There’s nothing I can say about The Destroyers of All that hasn’t been said by a zillion other writers who’ve placed this in their top albums for 2011 – simply a stunning piece of experimental death metal. Flawless drumming, dissonant riffs, jarring, doom-laden vocals – the personification of extreme metal perfection. I’ve been going to Ulcerate shows for the better part of 8 years now, and I reckon you’d be thick to miss them on their upcoming tour.

2. Heresiarch – Hammer of Intransigence (Dark Descent Records, New Zealand)

Loud, barbaric and blasphemous – this is Conqueror worship at it’s violent best. You won’t find Heresiarch bringing anything new to the black/death sound, but Hammer of Intransigence is a tight, ritualistic ear-raping, and it delivers it with gusto. The stand-out song for me is the closer “Intransigent”, which mixes slower, doomy passages in with the barbaric slaughter. And, not that it has any effect on their sound, but the album art alone is worth buying this album for.

3. Mournful Congregation – The Book of Kings (20 Buck Spin, Australia)

Good funeral doom can be hard to find these days, as many bands seem to lose themselves in the style without focusing on the emotion behind the music. But the four tracks of The Book of Kings break this unfortunate mould: they build melancholy without melodrama, extolling suffering with a glimmer of hope. The elegant compositions comprise layer after layer of harrowing sorrow and contemplative misery. The sparse vocals never overwhelm, and the guitar tone and riffs bear an uncommon warmth.

4. Woods of Desolation – Torn Beyond Reason (Northern Silence Productions, Australia)

Far removed from the scathing war metal of Heresiarch’s EP above, Torn Beyond Reason has a dreamlike quality – this is the kind of contemplative black metal I really love. Richly layered instrumentation and sweeping compositions combined with blistering riffs make this an album that constantly surprises you. Formed by members of the BM band Austere, Torn Beyond Reason shows a natural progression of that band’s sound.

5. Lamort – A Cold Godless Machine (independent, Australia)

Named after the Death card in the tarot deck, Lamort’s sound could best be described as symphonic extreme metal. A Cold Godless Machine combines fast, heavy riffs, growls, screams and operatic vocals, choirs and orchestral sections, and some seriously wicked drumming. Lamort toured NZ in late 2011 and have been building a loyal following in Melbourne for the last couple of years. They are currently working on their first full length to be released in 2012, and I reckon they’re heading for big things.

6. The House of Capricorn – In the Devil’s Days (Swamps of One Tree Hill, New Zealand)

I reviewed In The Devil’s Days on my blog earlier this year, and, being a doom album, it falls into that reviled category of “clean singing”. However, the groovy riffs and deep, rich bass of “All Hail to the Netherworld” and “To Carry the Lantern” wouldn’t exactly work with black metal gargling. I’m not much of a fan of the slower tracks on this record, but the fuzzy atmosphere of the faster stoner rock tracks more than make up for it.

7. Voyager – The Meaning of I (Sensory, Australia)

I reviewed The Meaning of I earlier this year and concluded it’s progressive metal without the wankery. This is an album stuffed to bursting with melodic, catchy songs that don’t stray from their purpose. The vocals, while clean, have a rough edge and an odd tone that gives Voyager a truly unique sound. The standout track is definitely “Iron Dream”, a tribute to Type O Negative’s Peter Steele featuring a singer who mimics his voice perfectly.

8. Demolition – Kill Zone (Rock Star Records, Australia)

Thrash metal with a heavy, prominent bass sound and some seriously wicked riffs. Dual guitars lay down a heavy melodic foundation for some of the best speed drumming I’ve heard in a thrash album this year. While Kill Zone isn’t exactly anything new, it’s a solid, well-produced records and if you like your thrash in the vein of Testament, Evile, and Voivod, you will not be disappointed with Demolition.

9. Orpheus – Bleed the Way (Rock Star Records, Australia)

Listening to Bleed the Way, you wouldn’t expect to discover that this is the debut album of a Melbourne band. Orpheus’ meaty riffs, pounding bass, and symphonic keyboard melody place their sound alongside the popular Euro-melo-death bands. Tracks like “Unscathed” and the slower and more rhythmic “A Thousand Times” show off this band’s talent for atmosphere and composition. Orpheus will definitely be a band to watch on our side of the world.

10. In Dread Response – Embers in the Spiritless Void (Dead Boy Records, New Zealand)

Aggressive death metal with overarching melody and faultless musicianship, In Dread Response have been building a steady following in New Zealand since the release of their debut album in 2008. Songs like “Through Chasms” demonstrate their attention to details – lyrics that weave graven images in your mind, relentless double kick and layers of riffs that create drama and tension, and almost classical solos that deliver exactly what they promise.

(Man, time does fly. Last June we featured a guest post from New Zealand metal blogger extraordinaire Steff Metal introducing us to six NZ metal bands. Steff saw my appeal for guest posts a couple of weeks ago and, awesome woman that she is, she responded with today’s feature on still more metal from her beautiful homeland.)

After writing about NZ Metal Bands for NCS, I made a promise to Islander and a few other people that I would share a list of some of my favourite underground New Zealand metal bands. Possibly this was a year ago – times passes, I have steamtrains to drive, mad Scottish pirates to interview, and sheep to perform unspeakable acts upon.

While our more popular metal bands – 8 Foot Sativa, Just One Fix, Tainted, Sinate – etc, bear a striking resemblance to many popular US bands, our metal underground takes inspiration from all over the world. With a population of just 4 million, a young, rugged countryside of jagged cliffs and blackened shores, and an indigenous culture with a history of brutality and cannibalism, it’s no surprise our metal tends toward the brutal side.

SVARTALVHEIM

If you forced me to name my favourite bands with dirty/growly/unclean vocals, you’d find they all fit under the “symphonic death metal” umbrella, as Svartalvheim do – although they throw in a bit of black and doom, for good measure. This song comes from their self-titled 2009 EP.

http://www.myspace.com/svartalfheimnz

EXORDIUM MORS

Black metal in its purest, vilest, most chaotic form. Exordium Mors remain one of the few black metal bands I’ve seen live repeatedly, and actually enjoy. From their 2007 Serva ad Mors album (limited to just 500, in true kvlt fashion) this is a punishing track.

http://www.myspace.com/exordiummors

EMENDA

Emenda are one of those bands who’s bio talks predominantly about how they’re “no longer bound by the constraints of specific genres”, and how the members wanted to “dive into the realms of the infinite and discover a unique style that has never been tried before”. But if you ignore all that wankery, and IF you manage to find any of their tracks online, you will be pleasantly surprised at this avante-garde instrumental metal act.

FRACTURED

A groove metal band with death metal aspirations, Fractured’s 2009 demo No Fear of Consequence combined aggressive riffs with an old-school groove, which comes through particularly on the drums.

DIOCLETIAN

With several successful European tours under their belts and something like 10,000 sales of their albums in Germany alone, Diocletian are a bit of an underground success. Their style can only be described as “chaotic”, and if you’re a fan of Revenge or Blasphemy, you’ll wet your fucking pants over this dense, rumbling cacophony of intricate disorder.

On their 2010 release War Of All Against All, you’ll also hear a bit of old school Morbid Angel on the mid-tempo sections, but mostly, you’ll hear that thick, distorted chaos, rich with blastbeats and malevolence.

METAL TOWER

Originally of Gisbourne, (you don’t even know where that IS, do you?) Metal Tower (http://www.myspace.com/metaltower) have been playing gigs around the country since 2004. I first became aware of these guys after my old guitar teacher came back from a gig in Hamilton raving about them, and dragged the lot of us down to see them the following week.

Described as “progressive death/black metal by metal archives, and “progressive CoreCore, a subgenre of EverythingCore, closely related to Technical StuffCore” by themselves (this is why you never ask a band what genre they are), Metal Tower manage to combine melodic riffs and progressive structures with pisstake lyrics reminiscent of Christchurch metallers Human.

This song, “Gory Glory”, appears on their full length 2008 release Ology.

I know I’ve missed a few – there is no need to introduce NCS readers to Ulcerate, of course – so if anyone has any more favourites from New Zealand, shout out in the comments.

(Today, the half-wits who usually write for this site are stepping aside to make way for another post from our occasional guest contributor, the awesome Steff Metal. You can see Steff’s other NCS contributions via the Category link on the right called Steff’s Posts, and you can (and should) visit her own site at SteffMetal.com.)

New Zealand. Land of hobbits, sheep, bare-breasted hippies, shoddy public transport and an abundance of lame indie bands. Barring ten months I spent exploring the world, I’ve lived in New Zealand my entire life, and – despite the sheep and the hippies – it’s a wicked place to live. Cheap as chips, an abundance of wilderness and a generally laid-back attitude.

Probably due to the laid-back attitude (and the hippies) New Zealand is not known for our metal. Our remoteness from the two major world metal scenes – Europe and the US – means our metal tends to mimic trends 6-12 months old.

Nevertheless, metal bands we have, and a decent variety, too. If I had to define a NZ sound, it would be “Pantera with a few more sheep jokes.” I’m not saying that’s exactly a bad thing.

Here are a few New Zealand metal bands for you to check out. (brave souls should continue reading after the jump . . .)

Skuldom – Orgiastic Blasphemies

NZ’s longest-running black metal band. Skuldom’s first demo hit the streets in 1998, and their reign of terror hasn’t stopped since. Female-vocalist “Femons” is famed for wearing a meatbra onstage, and they generally perform caked in blood and gore. At one particularly infamous Satanfest show, Skuldom member Faeces threw scalpels into the crowd and then carved an inverted cross onto his chest. After the show, he passed out from blood loss and had to be rushed to hospital, where he received 60 stitches and a telling off from the nurse.

At another show, the stench of rotting sheep heads was so vile most of the audience fled the venue.

From their 2003 album Nativity in Brown, “Orgiastic Blasphemy” was loosely based on the crimes of Ed Gein.

Cripple Mr. Onion – Six Days of Silence

Originally from Christchurch but now residing in my city – Auckland – Cripple Mr. Onion is one of NZ’s only progressive metal bands and, in my opinion, one of the most talented bands playing in this country at the moment. Their name is taken from a board game played by characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, and they have the author’s permission to use the name (although he’s quoted as saying he doesn’t care much for the music). This video was made years ago – you can hear some of their songs in better quality and order their Antigravity album through their Myspace page.

Human – Bludgeoned to Death with a Blunt Excrement

Another Christchurch band and a stalwart on the NZ metal scene, having being around nearly as long as I’ve been alive, Human win the award for most fucking brutal song titles ever. Their latest album, Cadaver Academy, contains such gems as “Centrifugal Skin Removal”, “Outhouse Snipe”, “Blasting Through the Foreheads of the Dead”, and the track I’ve posted below. I’ve seen Human open for Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation and Dragonforce, and they always put on a great show.

Sinate – One Step Closer

Sinate departed our shores last year to pursue the metal dream in Europe, and they’re touring with Marduk and Vader, so they’re not doing too bad. Check out the Sinate MySpace for updates and more songs.

8 Foot Sativa – Seasons for Assault

Considered by some the best NZ metal band and by the rest of us an annoyance with a bunch of teeny-bopper fans who hog all the pit space, 8 Foot broke up a few years ago, but not after achieving some modicum of national success and recording a few albums, and playing tours around the world. Bastards.

Dawn of Azazel – The Road to Babalon

Dawn of Azazel made headlines across New Zealand a few years ago when it was revealed to the public with shock and horror that an upstanding member of our law enforcement team was actually the frontman for a brutal, extreme metal band. The scandal! The disgrace! The outrage! Why, you can just imagine!

But all press is good press for Dawn of Azazel, a blistering extreme metal assault with serious chops. They’ve been promoting like mad and have toured throughout the US with Vital Remains and Incantation, Europe with Immolation and Grave, and Australia and New Zealand with Disgorge, Motorhead, Korn (you wouldn’t believe the flack they got for that), Behemoth, Megadeth, Suffocation, Necrophagist, Dying Fetus, Morbid Angel and Slayer.

So there you have a sampling on NZ metal. I’ve chosen some of our more well-known bands (none of which anyone will know) but I shall later compile a second list of underground-down-under. Does anyone out there have a favorite band from the antipodes?

[Today, we're pleased to feature a post from our occasional guest contributor from the Antipodes, Steff Metal (whose usual site you can find here). We wish we had at least thought up the wicked title to this post, but that was hers, too. And the rest of post is also pretty damned wicked. Prepare yourself to be entertained, and to discover some new music in the process.]

I went to a Cripple Mr. Onion gig. During setup I was nursing my bourbon and cola at the bar when I overheard a couple of dudes discussing Arch Enemy.

“She’s alright to look at,” one said, “but she can’t growl for shit.”

“Yeah,” his friend agreed. “Chicks can’t do extreme metal. Every extreme metal band with a chick vocalist is crap.” Therein followed a heated discussion of what chicks should be doing instead of playing extreme metal, which I’ve omitted due to the rules of common decency.

Resisting the urge to punch them both in the face, I drained my glass and wondered if I could prove his claim false. Surely there must be extreme metal bands with decent female vocals?

It’s a long-held belief among metalheads that girls can’t do extreme metal. Extreme Metal is probably the most aggressive, angry, violent form of music there is, and every study ascertains its audience as overwhelmingly male. There’s a kind of “lost boys club” surrounding extreme metal, a sort of grymm forest treehouse with a badly handwritten sign on the door: NO GIRLS ALLOWED.

I think the lack of decent female extreme metal musicians has more to do with simple maths. Hardly any girls listen to extreme metal, and of those that do, hardly any play instruments. There are hundreds of thousands of men playing in metal bands and about twenty-two girls (seriously, I counted), and if 80% of all metal is crap, then that’s only … 4.2 decent female extreme metal musicians.

No I just have to find them.  (and find them she did — read on after the jump . . .)

Exhibit A: Opera IX

I’ve never thought of Italy as a hotseat of black metal, much less black metal fronted by extremely pissed-off, growly chicks, but here’s Opera IX to prove the Italians are better at more than just clogging up the Alpine passes with suicidal drivers.

Here they are black metalling it with “Born in the Grave”:

I also found this video of Opera IX covering “Rhime of the Ancient Mariner”. This is actually really cool (the non-growly vocals are from Cadavaria, their former vocalist).

Exhibit B: Cadaveria

Cadaveria was the original vocalist of Opera IX, and having listened to some of their older, more Cradle of Filth sounding stuff, I prefer their new vocalist, but Cadaveria’s got her own band now: the vocals are quite raw, but it’s clear she can also sing.

From the album In Your Blood, “AnagraM”. I’m actually really digging this.

Exhibit C: Severed Heaven

I saw these lasses on an atrocious reality TV show “Singing with the Enemy” a couple of weeks ago, where they had to record a collaboration with a cock rock band. Although the cock rock / death metal song sounded like shit, Lauren’s vocals impressed me.

Exhibit D: Enter Chaos

There’s Polish death metal, there’s female vocals. The vocalist is quite cute, too. It’s all good.

Exhibit E: Adorior

I love a Myspace page that begins with: “Spawned of slut and abattoir semen in the festering pits of the UK”. Adorior spew forth an orgy of deranged intensity. I love the production on these tracks, which really allows you to hear Melissa’s vocals.

Exhibit F: Merlin

Mary, the vocalist from Russian death metal outfit Merlin, has a rare vocal range from contralto to soprano, which might have let her into the famous Moscow Conservatoire without need of sitting the entrance examinations had she not decided to form a brutal death metal band. She borrows heavily from John Tardy’s vocal style:

Exhibit G: Thorr’s Hammer

I think these are some of the best vocals I’ve heard. Ever. Thorr’s Hammer are death / doom from Washington, DC, but their vocalist, Runhild, is a tr00 Norwegian lass. They only released one demo, and they broke up in 1995, which is the saddest thing I’ve heard while researching this article (and I heard Black Thorn).

Yes, that is a female vocalist. She’d have Angela Gossow running for the hills.

Of the above tracks, I dig the Opera IX and Cadaveria songs the most, and I think Runhild from Thorr’s Hammer has the best vocals. I think all of these bands have merit, and I do believe I’ve proved that girls don’t suck at no clean singing.

For metal fans – who demand the utmost in honesty from their music – the true question is, how can you tell if a band is good in the truest musical sense, as opposed to a band you simply pay more attention to because they’re doing something different. Can we ignore the un-male-ness of these musicians and dissect their songs with the same rigor we apply to male musicians? Should we? Or is their womenliness part of their performance, part of the overall effect of the music? Should we stop saying “she’s pretty good, for a chick” and start saying “she fucking slays.” As a friend and lead singer of an all-female metal band once said. “Fuck, girls get angry too.”

So, I leave the verdict in your hands. Do we girls growl, rasp, screech and howls as good as you blokes?

Steff Metal

One of our favorite metal bloggers, whose base of operations happens to be in New Zealand, is Steff Metal. Every week we find unusual stuff on her site that we don’t come across anywhere else. This week she decided to create a mix-tape of her favorite pirate metal (and non-metal pirate) songs, most with video accompaniment and each with her own witty introduction.

A lot of extreme metal is angry, grim, violent, and cathartic — which is exactly why we eat it up here at NCS. Doesn’t mean it can’t be fun at the same time. In fact, we think most of the angry, grim, violent, and cathartic metal is also shitloads of fun.

But when it comes to fun, pirate metal may take the cake — as Steff Metal’s audio-video montage proves quite nicely. She’s obviously more a student of pirate metal than we are, and her collection includes some bands we’ve never heard of — but they can sure swash their buckles and haul their keels. (read on after the jump, mateys . . .)

We’re still not quite sure there’s a definitive set of criteria for classifying a band as pirate metal. According to Steff, all it really takes is to sing about pirates. Blow me down, that makes sense! On the other hand, as she notes in her post, some songs just sound “pirattey” even when you can’t understand the words (e.g., they’re in Swedish). I’ll drink to that!

So, go to Steff Metal’s site and have yourself a good yo ho ho! We recommend you first have a coupla tankards of grog before indulging, or at least a six-pack of PBR (which stands for Pirate Brain Readjustment). This pirate metal shit just sounds so much better in a drunken haze. Even better if you can lay hands on a cutlass after getting a good buzz on.

To supplement Steff’s festivities, here’s a video of “Keelhauled” by True Scottish Pirate Metal band Alestorm (pictured at the top of this post).  This song was our first exposure to pirate metal, and the video is a blast to watch and listen to. I’ll excuse myself now. Gotta go find a wench to molest.

On December 15, the New York Times ran a story about an academic symposium held in Brooklyn called “Hideous Gnosis,” which explored intellectual aspects of black metal. We posted some generally disrespectful commentary about the event, and got some thought-provoking reactions. We posted a follow-up piece earlier this week about one of the papers delivered at “Hideous Gnosis,” which analyzed whether it’s even possible for someone who buys into a black-metal worldview to talk about black metal.  Today we’re continuing the discussion – but this time with a surprise contributor.

NCS welcomes, as our first guest writer, our favorite metal blogger from New Zealand — Steff from STEFF METAL. We’ve already written about her blog, which you owe it to yourself to check out, and she kindly accepted our invitation to add her wit and wisdom to NCS (because we could definitely use more of both). And unlike your NCS Authors, Steff is a black metal maven.

To set the stage, we got this comment on our original rant about “Hideous Gnosis” from a writer named Shinjuku Thief:

“I would disagree with your assertion that metal, particularly black metal, is about expressing emotion. What characterises a lot of BM, for me, is the absence of emotion . . . . I think although you scoff at anything remotely ‘intellectual’ you’re espousing a theory of your own . . . . That is the contradiction of metal, it claims to be primal, atavistic, earthy, of the body, but in reality it is so controlled, has so many codes, rules and boundaries that the fans in a supposedly unthinking manner enforce at every level. . . . [I]ts not spontaneous or relying on our innermost urges, its a well honed aesthetic and conscious action that is very much thought about.”

So, with that intro, here are Steff’s thoughts (after the jump):

NO CLEAN SINGING is doing an awful lot of talking about Black Metal, and it’s good.

You can talk about black metal. In fact, black metallers LOVE to talk about black metal. Trust me, I’ve been trapped in the corner of a bakery for forty five minutes furiously trying to get a word in edgewise while a skinny dude ranted about the Great Hunt and Christianity and how much he wanted to learn Orcish. All because I was wearing a Summoning shirt.

Look, I’m a huge black metal fan, and I can categorically say that most black metal is shit. The only reason people listen to it is that a) they like the idea of black metal more than the actual music, b) they have no eardrums and c) the 2% that is NOT shit, is fucking amazing. It’s beautiful. It’s magical. It’s otherworldly. It’s the soundtrack for the end of the world. Black metal is pure fucking Armageddon.

Many people point out the contradiction in black metal, (an observation lobbed at the Gothic subculture for the last twenty years), that while it seeks to be a chaotic force of disorder, it actually creates it’s own rules, therefore contradicting it’s supposed chaos. It’s a valid statement, but when you separate black metal music from black metal subculture, the contradiction doesn’t actually exist. Whether you should separate the two is an entirely different discussion.

Black Metal is exactly as it claims to be: base, primal, atavistic, of the body, bleak. It speaks of harsh landscapes, forgotten gods and battle-hardened warriors. There are emotions present: dissolusion, anger, revenge, lust, hatred, loyalty and above all, pride. Without emotion, I don’t think black metal – good black metal – would grab us in quite the way it does.

But this sort of music creates a subculture, mainly because it’s so anti-mainstream that those who listen to it are active in seeking out others who share their views. The emotions that make black metal appeal to us also make us want to find others – other warriors, other barbarians – to drink beer and listen to Deathcrush with. More and more people come together, and you have bands and concerts and a subculture, and you have rules. Rules about what to wear, what to say, which bands are good, which aren’t. There have to be rules, because there is a them and an us, and we have to be able to recognize our own. We have to know what side you’re on.

Black Metal society is barbarian society. It’s a Viking horde, a warrior code and a legion of the damned. The rules are different, but they still exist. I wrote about this a little in Your Inner Barbarian and Why Metalheads Wear Black. The rules are different, but they still exist, and as rules go, they’re pretty fucking sweet.

So, we could sit around, and talk about Black Metal, or we could listen to some Black Metal. I know which one I’d rather do. [editor's note: Steff picked the song below for your streaming pleasure -- so listen dammit!]

BATHORY: Blood Fire Death

P.S. Your NCS editor lifted the photos at the top of this post from Steff’s blogsite.  She found them from a 2008 shoot done by Antonella Arismendi for D magazine, aptly titled “Black Metal Barbies.”