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.

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS: “Candlelight Records today confirms September 28 as the North American release date for In the Absence of Light, the second full-length album from black metallers Abigail Williams. Recorded at Conquistador Studios in Cleveland, Ohio, the album was mixed by Peter Tagtgren (Dimmu Borgir, Immortal, Celtic Frost) and features artwork by Farron Kerzner (Nachtmystium, Lightning Swords of Death). In The Absence of Light is true to the rules of black metal. . . .”

ARCKANUM: “Swedish black metallers ARCKANUM will release their new album, Sviga Læ, later in the year via Regain Records. . . . Commented Shamaatae (all instruments): ‘The new ARCKANUM album, Sviga Læ, is a dedication to Surtr; Giant and Ruler of the world of flames Múspellzheimr, and Loki; the Flaming Giant and Archenemy of the worlds. Sviga Læ is a manifestation of the blazing Chaos and the burning of the gods.’”

AS BLOOD RUNS BLACK: “A full 4 years after their deathcore masterpiece, Allegience, As Blood Runs Black are finishing up work on their sophomore album. . . . A statement from the band reads: ‘Our first single for our new album is finally being mixed!! Sounds fucking awesome!! Can’t wait to put it up. “Instinct” COMING SOON.’ The album is expected to drop before the end of the year.”

AUTOPSY: “U.S. gore legends AUTOPSY have completed the recording of their first tracks since officially reforming last year. The Tomb Within consists of five new tunes of gore and depravity and will be released on September 13 through Peaceville Records on CD and 12-inch vinyl, with general release set for September 27. Cover art is supplied by renowned fantasy/horror artist Matt Cavotta.”

THE AUTUMN OFFERING: “A seven-minute trailer/teaser for THE AUTUMN OFFERING’s new, self-titled album [has been released]. Due on August 31 via Victory Records, the new CD is ‘the band’s most crushing release to date’ and is ‘chock-full of blast beats and twin guitar wizardry’ while ‘vocalist Matt McChesney sounds as if he is being burned at the stake,’ according to a press release.”

BAD RELIGION: “Celebrating three decades of influential, thought-provoking and groundbreaking punk rock, BAD RELIGION will release its fifteenth studio album, The Dissent Of Man, on September 28.”

BENEATH THE MASSACRE: “Montreal masters of tech death brutality, Beneath The Massacre, have announced they will be releasing an EP, featuring five brand new tracks, in the coming months. This will be the band’s first release since 2008’s Dystopia.”

CITY OF FIRE: “CITY OF FIRE, the new band featuring vocalist Burton C. Bell, bassist Byron Stroud, guitarist Terry Murray, guitarist Ian White, and drummer Bob Wagner, made a surprise live appearance last weekend opening for FEAR FACTORY at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver. The performance marked the first live appearance for the band this year as they ready themselves for the anticipated release of their self-titled debut album on August 24.”

THE CROWN: “‘Blood O.D.’, a brand new song from the reunited Swedish death/thrash metal act THE CROWN, is available for streaming on the band’s MySpace page. The track comes off the group’s new album, Doomsday King, which is scheduled for release on September 27 via Century Media Records.”

DAGOBA: “‘Black Smokers’, a brand new song from French metallers DAGOBA, can be streamed on the band’s MySpace page. The track comes off the group’s fourth album, “Poseidon”, which will be released on August 30 via the French label XIII Bis Records. The CD was recorded at Hyperion Studioin Marseille, France with ‘Brew’ Varea and was mixed by Dave Chang at Philia Studio in the U.K.”

DEMIURG: “DEMIURG — the Sweden-based band featuring Rogga Johansson (RIBSPREADER, PAGANIZER) on vocals and guitars, Johan Berglund (THIS HAVEN) on bass, Ed Warby (GOREFEST, AYREON, HAIL OF BULLETS) on drums and Dan Swanö (EDGE OF SANITY, NIGHTINGALE, BLOODBATH) on lead guitar and keyboards — will release its third album, Slakthus Gamleby, on July 30 via Cyclone Empire Records.”

DEVILDRIVER: “DEVILDRIVER recently finished recording its fifth album at Sonic Ranch studios in Tornillo, Texas with producer Mark Lewis (TRIVIUM,CHIMAIRA, ALL THAT REMAINS) for a tentative early 2011 release through Roadrunner Records. According to drummer John Boecklin, acclaimed British producer Andy Sneap (MEGADETH, EXODUS, MACHINE HEAD, NEVERMORE, ARCH ENEMY) will mix the effort in late July at Andy’s Backstage studio in Derbyshire, England.”

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA: “The Devil Wears Prada will release their previously announced EP on August 24th via Ferret Music [entitled] Zombie . . . .  Both a teaser and a track (“Outnumbered”) from the EP can be found via www.tdwpslays.com.”

DEVOID/ALBATROSS: “Demonstealer Records has announced the signing of two of India’s most promising young bands: DEVOID (MySpace page), a thrash metal act from Mumbai, and ALBATROSS (MySpace page), a group that likes to mix horror and metal. Both bands’ debut efforts — ALBATROSS‘ Dinner Is You EP and DEVOID’s A God’s Lie album — are scheduled for a worldwide release in September. ALBATROSS‘ Dinner Is You EP was mastered by acclaimed Swedish producer Andy La Rocque (KING DIAMOND, DEATH, ILLWILL, X-WORLD/5).”

ENSLAVED: “Norwegian psychedelic post-black metal band ENSLAVED will release its new album, Axioma Ethica Odini, in Europe on September 27 and in North America on September 28. The CD’s cover artwork was created by the Norwegian artist Truls Espedal, who has painted every ENSLAVED album cover since 2001’s Monumension.”

GHOST MACHINERY: “Finnish melodic metallers GHOST MACHINERY will release their second album, Out For Blood, in Europe on August 27 and in North America on October 5 via Germany’s Limb Music.”

GOAT THE HEAD: “Norwegian death metallers GOAT THE HEAD will release their second full-length album, Doppelgängers, on September 13 via Aftermath Music. The CD was mixed and mastered by Tue Madsen (HALFORD, BEHEMOTH,KATAKLYSM, THE HAUNTED) at his Antfarm Studio in Århus , Denmark and it ‘boasts 10 furious tracks exerting about every color of the metal palette,’ according to a press release.”

GRAVE DIGGER: “German power metallers GRAVE DIGGER have set The Clans Will Rise Again as the title of their new album, due in Europe on October 1 via Napalm Records. . . .The Clans Will Rise Again is a loose sequel of the Tunes Of War album, but this time not a concept album about the Scottish history, rather a work about Scotland, its mysticism and its people.”

IMMORTAL: “The Seventh Date Of Blashyrkh, the band’s first official live DVD and live CD release in the history of their existence, features songs that span IMMORTAL’s timeless discography and includes three back-to-back-to-back selections from their most acclaimed release to date. The leather and spikes, the “war paint,” the bursting pyrotechnics, the essential anthems, Abbath’s on-stage acrobatics, and an audience that drew upwards of 70,000 people… the magic’s all there, ready to be absorbed into your consciousness. . . .  The Seventh Date Of Blashyrkh will be released in Europe on August 6 and in North America on September 14 via Nuclear Blast.”

INFERNAEON: ““Ziasudra”, a brand new song from Floridian extreme metallers INFERNAEON, is available for streaming on the band’s MySpace page. According to a press release, the track tells the story of the Sumerian king of the same name from which the story of Noah is derived. “Ziasudra” comes off INFERNAEON’s new album, Genesis To Nemesis, which is scheduled for release on August 31 via Prosthetic Records. The CD was recorded at Erik Rutan’s Mana Recording Studios (GOATWHORE, CANNIBAL CORPSE, HATE ETERNAL) in St. Petersburg, Florida with producer Brian Elliott.”

IRON MAIDEN: “IRON MAIDEN’s 15th studio LP, The Final Frontier, will be released in North America on August 17 (one day earlier internationally) via Universal Music Enterprises (UMe). The band reunited with long-time MAIDEN producer Kevin “Caveman” Shirley in early 2010 at Compass Point Studios, Nassau to record the album and then moved to The Cave Studios in Malibu, California to finish the recording and do the mixing.”

THE MAN-EATING TREE: “THE MAN-EATING TREE — the new atmospheric metal band featuring former SENTENCED drummer Vesa Ranta alongside current/former members of POISONBLACK, REFLEXION and EMBRAZE — will release its debut album, Vine, in Finland on September 22 via Cobra Records and in other territories through Century Media Records. The CD was recorded at Mastervox Studio in Oulu, Finland with producer Hiili Hiilesmaa (HIM, SENTENCED, AMORPHIS).”

MUSHROOMHEAD: “Ohio’s MUSHROOMHEAD has changed the title of its new album to Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children from the previously announced Slaughterhouse Road. Due on September 28 via Filthy Hands/Megaforce Records, the CD was mastered by Roger Lian at Masterdisk in New York City.”

NEAERA: “The first in a series of webisodes featuring behind-the-scenes footage from the recording sessions for Forging The Eclipse, the fifth album from German extreme metallers NEAERA, [have been released]. Forging The Eclipse is scheduled for an October 22 release via Metal Blade Records. . . . The mixing/mastering will be handled by Tue Madsen (HEAVEN SHALL BURN, DARK TRANQUILLITY, MOONSPELL).”

NIGHTFALL: “The cover artwork for Astron Black And The Thirty Tyrants, the new album from reformed Greek metallers NIGHTFALL — featuring frontman and lyricist Efthimis Karadimas alongside Evan Hensley on guitar, Stathis Kassios on keyboards and Jörg Uken on drums — [has been released]. The CD is scheduled for release on August 31 (one day earlier internationally) via Metal Blade Records. The cover artwork was created by Travis Smith (OPETH, DEATH, NEVERMORE, KATATONIA).”

OBSCURA: “Progressive death metal act OBSCURA has entered Woodshed Studio in southern Germany with engineer V. Santura (TRIPTYKON, DARK FORTRESS) to begin recording its new album for an early 2011 release via Relapse Records.”

ONE MAN ARMY AND THE UNDEAD QUARTET: “ONE MAN ARMY AND THE UNDEAD QUARTET, the Swedish band featuring former THE CROWN vocalist Johan Lindstrand, is currently writing material for its fourth album, tentatively due in early 2011.Lindstrand states, ‘We will enter Black Lounge studio in October and together with Jonas Kjellgren we will try to create the best possible ARMYalbum ever. If we succeed or not is up to you to judge, but all I can say is that for the first time all songs feels like keepers.’”

PANTERA: “PANTERA found its growl and groove on Cowboys From Hell, a landmark album whose bone-powdering intensity, razor-sharp riffing and pummeling rhythmic assault represented a turning point in modern metal when it was released in 1990. . . . To celebrate the 20-year anniversary of Cowboys From Hell, Rhino rounds up a three-disc “Ultimate Edition,” a three-disc “Deluxe Edition,” and a two-disc “Expanded Edition.” All three editions include a newly remastered version of the original album along with unreleased and rare live performances from the “Cowboys From Hell” tour. The “Ultimate” and “Deluxe” editions will also feature a disc of unreleased demos for nearly every album track, plus, “The Will To Survive”, a previously unreleased song recorded during the album’s sessions.The “Deluxe” and “Expanded” editions of “Cowboys From Hell” will be released September 14 at all retail outlets, including www.pantera.com and www.rhino.com .”

PRO-PAIN: “Absolute Power, the thirteenth full-length album from PRO-PAIN, will be released in North America on August 10 via Regain Records. According to a press release, the CD ‘explores several sides to the tried-and-true American unit’s somewhat patented sound. While a vast chunk of the album immediately recalls standard PRO-PAIN New York City-style metal/hardcore crossover attacks, many elements at play on Absolute Power infiltrate totally new ground for the band.’”

THE SHOWDOWN: “‘Heavy Lies The Crown’, a brand new song from the Tennessee’s riff-tastic southern metal outfit THE SHOWDOWN, can be streamed on the band’s MySpace page. The track comes off the group’s fourth album, Blood in the Gears, which is scheduled for release on August 24 via Solid State Records.”

THERION: “THERION will release its new album, Sitra Ahra, in North America on October 26 via Nuclear Blast Records. The CD was mixed at the legendary Polar Studios in Stockholm by Lennart Östlund (LED ZEPPELIN, ABBA). The cover artwork was created by Thomas Ewerhard, who worked on all of the band’s most recent releases in addition to collaborating with EDGUY,AVANTASIA, RAGE and HAMMERFALL, among others.”

WINDS OF PLAGUE: “Los Angeles metallers WINDS OF PLAGUE will enter the studio later this summer with producer Matt Hyde (SLAYER, HATEBREED) to begin recording their third album for an early 2011 release via Century Media Records.”

WITHIN THE RUINS: “Western Massachusetts own Within The Ruins prepares for the release of their second full-length album Invade, follow-up of the band’s 2009 release Creature. Invade is set to hit stores officially on August 31st through Victory Records.”

In recent years, people have written books with the intent of dispelling various so-called “myths” about wolves. I haven’t read any of them, but they’re probably trying to tell us that wolves are actually warm, loving creatures who are good parents and self-sacrificng friends.

I haven’t read those books because I’d rather continue to think of wolves as vicious, red-eyed pack animals that would just as soon rip out your jugular as look at you. Life is too civilized as it is without having someone domesticate my mental image of the wolf.

Besides, that would detract from the awesomeness of Wolvhammer as a metal-band name. It would turn it into something like Puppyhammer. Or Puppyhummer. Or something equally tame. And Wolvhammer is anything but tame.

We first heard about Wolvhammer’s debut album, Black Marketeers of World War III,  via a feature in the current issue of DECIBEL magazine, which punched many of our buttons — so much so that we ran out and bought the album fast. And we are so glad we did.  (more after the jump, including a mixtape of music inspired by Wolvhammer . . .)

Black Marketeers is a dark-roasted brew of stripped-down black metal, mid-tempo punk rock, death ‘n roll, and grinding stoner sludge. It’s raw and feral, and very much like its namesake — the predatory wolf in all its aspects.

More often that not on this site, we write about rip-roaring, cathartic music that rattles your cage fast enough to unmoor your mind. That’s not what Wolvhammer is about. But it’s no less gripping, and no less capable of plugging into the primitive coil that heats the predator within you.

The wolfpack slinks through a dark forest, stalking its prey, their red eyes gleaming like coals — and Wolvhammer sets the mood with slow, post-metal crunches, down-tuned and massively pounding.

The prey senses its peril and begins to run — and the pack begins to lope ahead, faster and faster — and Wolvhammer segues from those slow, ominous intros into faster-paced, tremolo-picked chords, rapid-fire drumming, and high-pitched shrieking.

The prey pauses, knowing it will not outrun the pack, and wondering what it can possibly do to evade the onslaught — and the pack slows with it, as Wolvhammer glides back down to a slow rhythm, with death ‘n roll chords and methodical, head-snapping drums.

The prey makes one last, frenzied attempt to find freedom — and Wolvhammer’s pack charges again as the band shifts back to black-metal picking and machine-gun drumming.

But in fact, there is no hope, and the music yields none either. There is rending and tearing and unleashed mayhem at the end — and we do mean the end, of the last, longest song on the album, “Monolith”, when a cacophony of feedback, berserker chords, throbbing pulses, and all manner of other dark, distorted, frying electric noise erupts and then fades out of existence.

Many of the songs on the album are organized around infectious, recurring punk riffs — riffs that connect the shifts in rhythm and musical style. But that raw punk sensibility doesn’t change the dominant motif — which is one of menace and doom, the loss of the race, the ending of existence.

Wolvhammer’s particular blend of styles vividly puts us in mind of Darkthrone, just as it did DECIBEL’s reviewer — a similar combination of nasty, slow, down-tuned menace, raw punk chords and rock rhythms, and black-metal influence in the vocals and tremolo-picked leads.

We’re reminded of other bands as well — bands like early Entombed and more recent juggernauts like The Helm and Gaza.

Wolvhammer certainly stands on their own, regardless of influences. We’re just sayin’ they put us in a certain frame of mind — and this music is more about mood than anything else. So we thought we’d share with you the path of musical progression that we followed after Wolvhammer set us on our way.  Hope you like it as much as we did.

Wolvhammer: Das Kult

Darkthrone: Sacrificing To the God of Doubt

Entombed: Eyemaster

The Helm: Because We Can

Gaza: Windowless House

Wolvhammer’s debut album is available at iTunes, Amazon, and elsewhere, and the band is still making its two EPs available for free download at their blog (here).

Soilwork is in the midst of a headlining tour in support of its recent album The Panic Broadcast, and the three perpetrators of NO CLEAN SINGING were in the audience when the tour blew through El Corazon in Seattle on July 27.

The bands on this tour are an interesting mix. No two of them play the same style of metal. We had Soilwork’s melodic metalcore, Death Angel’s supercharged thrash, hyper-technical death metal from Augury, Mutiny Within’s aggressive power metal, Swashbuckle’s pirate thrash, and melodic death metal from Seattle’s Deathmocracy.

It was also a long night, and those (like us) who were there from start to finish got their money’s worth: Deathmocracy took the stage at about 7 p.m., and Soilwork finished a 90-minute set at 12:30 in the morning. In a nutshell, we got thoroughly deep-fried in a vat of molten metal.

In this post, we’ll give you some brief notes on the performances and a collection of our reliably half-assed photos of each band — after the jump.

DEATHMOCRACY

We hadn’t seen this Seattle band before, and they had the typical disadvantage of playing to a small early crowd at the beginning of a long night. They played ramped-up melodic death metal and had some decent technical chops. But my favorite song was one that began with a slow, melodic instrumental and then built up to a headbanging romp.

On the downside, the band sounded out-of-step with each other in too many places — not nearly as tight as we’d like. Here are a few shots of their set:

SWASHBUCKLE

Hell yeah! New Jersey pirate metal in all its glory! These dudes thrashed the hell out of their set (and the crowd), and Admiral Nobeard (the lead vocalist with the big beard) was a fuckin’ hoot with his ‘tween-song banter.

These dudes are definitely all about having fun, and they charged up the crowd with a punk-thrash onslaught that got the pit going without invitation. The phrase “rum, sodomy, and the lash” kept flitting through my head. (If you’re not familiar with the phrase, google it.)  Here are your photos:

MUTINY WITHIN

These dudes are touring machines. This is the third time we’ve seen them in Seattle over about the last 12 months — which is pretty amazing, given that Seattle is way off in the fucking corner of the country — and they always seem to hitch a ride on tours with some pretty awesome veteran bands at the top of the bill.

We’ve had a tough time warming up to them, mainly because of Chris Clancy’s vocals. The rest of the band are a tight, accomplished group of instrumentalists who can really get you moving, and the songs are catchy. But Clancy — who undoubtedly has a great set of pipes — has had troubles hitting his clean notes in a live setting every time we’ve seen him. Too many of them are flat, which is a big distraction, because most of the singing is of the clean variety.

Having heard these songs now for the third time, they’re starting to grow on me, but selfishly, I wish Clancy would pour on more of the harsh vocals, because the dude has got a great paint-blistering howl when he uses it. Photos:

AUGURY

This was the second time we’d seen this Montreal band, and they blew me away again. The songs are extraordinarily intricate, with rapid time-signature shifts and counterpoint rhythms. All the band members play complex lines of their own that must be precisely in sync for this kind of music to work — and they pulled it off flawlessly. Pretty fucking amazing to watch.

Frontman and co-lead guitarist Patrick Loisel is just as seemingly insane as he was the first time we saw Augury. He’s just over 40 and in his day job, he teaches history and science. We sure never had any teachers like this. Here are a few of our Augury pics:

DEATH ANGEL

Holeeee shit! I’ve found my new favorite thrash band!

Death Angel has been around a looooong time, though they experienced a 10-year hiatus between 1991 and 2001 and underwent massive line-up changes since the founding in 1982. But the current line-up is just fucking amazing. I’m not sure it’s possible to play faster and still maintain the kind of neck-snapping groove these dudes generate.

They stepped on the accelerator so hard, the temperature went up 20 degrees, paint began to peel, lead melted, the yolk started seeping from eyeballs, and we’re pretty sure some people had spontaneous orgasms. They put an Old Sparky kind of charge into the crowd.

What made this music so convulsively powerful to me, and so interesting, was the band’s use of dynamic tempo changes within songs, even while  playing at about 1000 mph. The instrumental work was technically demanding and perfectly executed — and Rob Cavestany’s lead guitar playing was an old-school, heavy-metal dream.

Major props to Mark Osegueda’s vocals, too. The dude has got an amazingly powerful, blistering voice and he’s a real showman in front of a crowd. I was pretty blown away. How ’bout some pics?

SOILWORK

This is who we came to see. The first time we saw this band, in this same venue, was a powerful experience that puts a big smile on our faces every time we talk about it — and this set was even better.

Soilwork didn’t begin to play until 11 p.m., but as hot and rung out as we were by that point, we weren’t ready for them to stop an hour and a half later. They served up a greatest-hits version of their discography, along with “Deliverance Is Mine” and “Two Lives Worth of Reckoning” from the new album, and it was a headbanger’s delight.

Speed Strid was absolutely at the top of his game. His cleanly sung choruses were powerful and pitch-perfect, and his rough howls were fucking fierce.

Dirk Verbeuren was a wonder to behold behind the kit. His playing is so controlled, so inventive, and so seemingly effortless, and his drum solo in the middle of “Rejection Role” lit up the crowd like a Roman candle.

But what made this show even better than the last one we saw was the return of that shaven-headed guitar dynamo, Peter Wichers. His technical skills are superb, but there’s no flash-for-the-sake-of-flash. He plays with great feel for the songs and a lot of soul, and his leads and solos make these very catchy songs come even more vibrantly alive.

Very tough to pick a favorite song in this set, but the encore performance of “Stabbing the Drama” was about all that was needed to take a an exhilarated crowd and push them right over the top. Very hot shit.

Yes, your worst fears have been realized. No metal news today, no album or concert reviews, no interviews. Just another edition of this feature, where we share with you recent news stories that made us say: “Fuck! That’s Metal!” — even though it’s got nothing to do with music — along with our tasteless editorial observations.

Writing these “That’s Metal!” posts isn’t easy. We actually have to browse the hard news to find this stuff. We have to wade through the stories that actually make headlines in newspapers, which is pretty fucking depressing. We don’t like being depressed, which is why writing this ongoing feature is pretty much the only reason we read the news anymore. We do it all for you.

We don’t do this on any regular schedule. It just depends on how long it takes to build up the fortitude necessary to go back to the real world long enough to find this shit. All the stories featured in today’s post came from news reports we saw on a single day (yesterday), and as usual, most of the them came from the crack investigative journalism available in our local paper, The Seattle Times.

There’s a theme to today’s round-up: Survival. Well, all except the story that’s associated with the photo at the top of this post. That one we included just because we needed an image that would catch your eye right off the bat. The story is pretty fucking funny, and there’s a video that goes with it. But you’ll have to wade through the Survival stories to get to it.

Oh yeah, we picked some smokin’ musical accompaniment for today’s features, just so’s you don’t get bored, cuz we know you have short attention spans, just like we do.  Follow along with us (after the jump).

FALLING

Our first entry comes to us courtesy of The New Zealand Herald, which reported as follows:

July 26, 2010 – A teenager miraculously survived with minor injuries after falling 16 storeys from his family’s Manukau City apartment through a carpark roof on to a concrete floor.

The boy dropped 14 storeys from the apartment balcony on the corner of the complex. After a fall of three seconds, he hit the steel roof of the carpark below at an estimated 100km/h. He smashed through the carpark roof, cladding and metal webbing before dropping another two storeys to a concrete floor.

He is believed to have suffered only a broken wrist, a broken rib, a gouged leg and internal injuries. Medical experts are amazed he was not killed.

A New York doctor who had dealt with a high number of falls said in 2008 that the death rate from a three-storey fall was about 50 per cent, but people who had fallen more than 10 storeys almost never survived.

We’re pretty fucking amazed too. There must be titanium in the Manukau water supply. All we had in our water supply growing up was fluoride. And trace amounts of fecal coliform. Wonder if anyone saw this happen?

One tenant was smoking on his apartment balcony at 9.30pm on Thursday when the teenager fell in front of him. The tenant raised the alarm immediately.

Bet he did. Wonder what the first words out of his mouth were? “Fuck! It’s raining wankers!”

An intensive care medicine expert said yesterday that it was rare for someone to live if they plunged from more than five storeys, and “freakish” if they survived a fall from 16 storeys.

Neil Thomson, associate professor at the University of Otago’s physics department, spelled out the unlikely escape from more serious injury or death.

He said a person falling from 45 to 50 metres would reach a speed of 100km/h by the time they struck the ground.

Coming to rest over 5 metres mean the person’s force of impact would have been approximately 10 g – twice as strong as slamming on the brakes in a Formula One car at full speed.

Y’know, our advice to this young dude is that the next time he wants to build up a good head of steam, he should just listen to some grindcore. Yes, that hurts too, but the “coming to rest” part isn’t quite as traumatic. Wonder if there’s any practical information we can take away from this story?

The key to the Manukau teenager’s survival may have been that he avoided falling head-first. An American study of 200 falls showed a person is just as likely to survive a five-storey fall landing feet-first as they are a one-storey fall headfirst.

So keep that in mind the next time you find yourselves in free-fall from a high place. Feet-first is the way to go. Doesn’t matter how much of a metalhead you are, heads don’t seem to hold up as well when they “come to rest” on concrete as feet do.  Here’s your musical accompaniment:

Swallow the Sun: Falling World

PLASTIKI

Next up is a story about a sailing expedition organized by well-meaning but clearly insane people. This could have had — probably should have had — a bad end, but it didn’t. Another tale of survival that made us say “That’s Metal!”.

SYDNEY – A sailboat largely constructed from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles has completed a 4-month journey across the Pacific Ocean meant to raise awareness about the perils of plastic waste.

The Plastiki, a 60-foot (18-meter) catamaran, and its six crew weathered fierce ocean storms during its 8,000 nautical miles at sea. It left San Francisco on March 20, stopping along the way at various South Pacific island nations including Kiribati and Samoa. It docked Monday in Sydney Harbour.

Holy fuck! We might be convinced to get on a boat made of plastic bottles if it was, like, floating in a shallow swimming pool. But using it to cross 8,000 miles of open ocean? They should have named that boat “The Death Wish”.

“The journey of the Plastiki is a journey from trash to triumph,” said Jeffrey Bleich, the U.S. ambassador to Australia, who greeted the team after they docked.

Expedition leader David De Rothschild, 31, said the idea for the journey came to him after he read a United Nations report in 2006 that said pollution “and particularly plastic waste” was seriously threatening the world’s oceans.

He figured a good way to prove that trash can be effectively reused was to use some of it to build a boat.

Well, that was an obvious conclusion, wasn’t it? You think about garbage. You think about the importance of recycling. And you decide to build a boat out of garbage. Happens all the time. From trash to triumph (for a minute there, we though the ambassador was talking about Lady Gaga.)  Wonder how they held all those plastic bottles together?

The boat is almost entirely made up of bottles, which are held together with an organic glue made of sugar cane and cashews . . . .

You’re shitting me. This can’t be true, can it? Doesn’t sugar dissolve in water? On the plus side, if they ran out of food, they could just eat the glue.

During their 128-day journey, the six crew lived in a cabin of just 20 feet by 15 feet (6 meters by 4.5 meters), took saltwater showers, and survived on a diet of dehydrated and canned food, supplemented with the occasional vegetable from their small on-board garden.

Skipper Jo Royle also had the particular challenge of being the only woman on board.

Now that’s fucking metal. That poor chick spent 128 days living out of a 20 x 15 foot cabin with five dudes in broiling heat who had to shower exclusively in saltwater. That must have been irreparably traumatizing. She may have survived the journey, but the inside of her nose must be permanently raw. That sounds worse that touring by van with a metal band (just barely).

Although the team had originally hoped to recycle the Plastiki, de Rothschild said they are now thinking of keeping it intact, and using it as a way of enlightening people to the power of recycling.

So, it turns out, after all, that the message isn’t “Recycle!” It’s something like, “build shit out of garbage and keep it in your backyard!” Guess that’s one way to keep plastic bottles out of landfills, but it might be better to come up with a publicity stunt that convinces people to quit using the things in the first place. Here’s your musical accompaniment:

Gojira: Toxic Garbage Island

FACE TRANSPLANT

If you happen to shoot yourself in the face with a gun, take heart. All is not lost.

MADRID – A Spanish man who underwent the world’s first full face transplant appeared before TV cameras Monday for the first time since his surgery, thanking his doctors and the family of the donor.

During the 24-hour surgery, doctors lifted an entire face, including jaw, nose, cheekbones, muscles, teeth and eyelids, and placed it masklike onto the man. He has been described as a farmer who was unable to breathe or eat on his own after accidentally shooting himself in the face five years ago.

Shit. If this isn’t metal, we don’t know what is. There’s a lot to be amazed about here, but to be honest, we’re fixated on this question: How do you find a face donor? “Hey bro, if you’re not using that face, could I buy it from you?” Or, “Hey bro, your face is uglier than my rectum. How ’bout a trade-in?”

A younger woman identified as his sister, whose name was not given to protect the family’s privacy, said her brother looks forward to leading a normal life.

He is eager to enjoy “little things, like walking down the street without anyone looking at him, or sitting down for a meal with his family. Doing things that all of us do on a normal day,” the woman said.

“Walking down the street without anyone looking at him”? Uh, hate to break it to you sis, but that ain’t gonna happen.

Dude looks like he just listened to the latest Attack! Attack! release.  Anyway, how ’bout some musical accompaniment? We came close to picking “Face Area Solution” by The Red Chord, but settled on this one instead:

Dethklok: Face Fisted

GNARLY BEER COZIES

And now back to our top story, courtesy of The Boise Weekly:

Beer bottles sold by the Scottish Brewery BrewDog are seen inside the bodies of stuffed animals. The strongest and most expensive beer ever created sold out within hours Friday, BrewDog said as they courted controversy by packaging the bottles inside animal receptacles.

BrewDog, a microbrewery out of Scotland created the world’s strongest beer at 55 percent alcohol. And while that was sure to raise a few eyebrows, the company decided to go a step further and place the limited edition of 12 bottles inside the taxidermined bodies of squirrels, stoats and a hare.

The bottles—which cost roughly 500 pounds, or more than $700 each—sold out in less than four hours, although the controversy they are raising is sure to last as long as the preserved bodies of the beer-cozies.

Hey, what’s controversial about that? The squirrels, stoats, and hares don’t mind. They’re fucking dead!

Mind you, we wouldn’t wanna drink our brew out of one of those things. Those little beady eyes would be looking right into yours as you poured that shit down your throat.

And after the second or third of those 55%-alcohol brewskis, we might start imagining that those little fuckers are starting to move again. If that happened in mid-swallow, we’d get the chance to see if this beer tastes as good coming back up as it does going down.

We promised you a video, and we don’t lie. Check out the guys from BrewDog explaining how they came up with this lunatic — but very metal — idea. Personally, we think they’ve been hittin’ their own stockpile of brew a bit too hard.

The video is pretty funny, assuming you can decipher the Scottish accents, but if you’re German, you may be offended.

The subject of today’s post is an interview of Jesse Zuretti, the guitarist and co-creator of the musical juggernaut that is The Binary Code (whose new EP we reviewed here).

If you’re like me, when you see the word “interview” on a metal site, you sub-vocalize the words “Fuck that shit” and click away as fast as your fast-twitch muscle fibers will allow your finger to work. Why is that? If you’re like me, there are two reasons:

First, most interview questions are stupifyingly inane. Even when the interviewer actually has a functioning brain, many of them are just fucking lazy. So they ask questions that involve no thought or effort, and they get repaid in kind with the answers.

Seriously, if I were a musician and had to answer one thoughtless, cliched, repetitive, dull-as-dishwater question after another, year after year, I’d be sorely tempted to pull an Ernest Hemingway and put a 12-gauge Boss shotgun in my mouth.

Second, a person can be an extraordinarily talented artist but still be inarticulate or simply uninteresting as a conversationalist — even when the questions are halfway decent. Being really good at one thing doesn’t mean you’re really good at everything else.  To step outside the realm of music, when’s the last time you read an interview of a pro athlete or a movie star that you actually found interesting, that made you think, that opened your eyes to a new idea?

That’s not intended as a put-down. It’s just a fact. Being a talented artist doesn’t automatically make you an innovative thinker or a fascinating raconteur, just as being a diehard metal fan doesn’t make you an adept interviewer. Many people who train and work hard as professional reporters still don’t make the grade as good interviewers, so why should we expect that just being a devoted fan is enough?

Why, then, should you read this interview? Is it because I’m an extraordinarily good interviewer? Well, fuck no. All I can tell you is that I tried to think of questions that weren’t the usual dreck. Whether or not I succeeded is something you should judge for yourselves.

No, the main reason you should read this interview is because of Jesse Zuretti. He’s one of those rare people in the metal scene (a) who is a naturally gifted musician and songwriter, (b) who listens to lots of music and thinks seriously about it , (c) who thinks a lot about things other than music, (d) whose opinions and ideas are unorthodox for this scene, and (d) who can express what he thinks in words that are worth reading — and that make you think. Also, even when my questions were retarded, he was patient and serious in his answers.

Well, at least that’s my opinion.  You can judge all that for yourselves too — but you really shouldn’t miss this. Naturally, we start by talking about the new EP, but things go off in other directions after that.   (after the jump. . . .)

INTERVIEW

NCS:  Hey Jess, thanks for carving out some time to answer our questions. The Priest EP is in the front of my head right now, so let’s start with that. A lot of time passed between the recording of “Suspension of Disbelief” back in November 2008 and “Priest”.  Lots of time I suspect you and Umar [Fahim, The Binary Code's drummer] spent listening, thinking, and playing. I’m curious about how you would characterize your musical progression between the two releases (if that’s not too broad or vague a question)?

JZ:  The progression from the Suspension album and the Priest EP took place before the release of Suspension. We had a majority of the song “Priest” written before tour with Revocation back in January of this year. We actually played half of the song on that tour (we opened with it). Since we recorded Suspension in 2008 and released it in 2009, there was plenty of time to grow during the interim.

When we got home from tour, we said we’d start writing as soon as we came back from a mere week-long break from playing. Two weeks after being home from the road, we finished up the song “Priest” and started work on “Encircled”. “Encircled” was actually written in about a day and a half worth of work. “Ocean of Light” was written before tour.

At this point, we’re already another new EP deep, and then some. I would say we’re not progressing in the same way you do when you learn something in school, but more so in a branching out kind of way. We keep digging into our influences more than anything. That’ll become more and more prevalent as the years go by.

NCS:  Compared to the creative process behind Suspension, was the songwriting process or approach that you and Umar followed for the songs on Priest different?  And did you find that the process was easier or faster, with more experience behind you?

JZ:  The process of coming up with riffs and ideas is always easy. We can come up with a songs worth of riffs in a matter of one session. The writing process takes a while. We have a way of doing things, and it works for us, so I don’t see us every straying from that approach.

NCS:  Did anyone else contribute to the songwriting/creating process besides the two of you?

JZ:  For the most part, Umar and I write everything. The lyrics are a collective effort sometimes. When we were getting the newer songs ready for the tour with Revocation, Todd [Stern] (played rhythm guitar on tour with us), and Brett [Bamberger (East of the Wall] helped with the structure of a few parts in “Priest” and “Ocean of Light”.

NCS:  For people who are familiar with Suspension of Disbelief, the biggest surprise on the EP is likely to be “Ocean of Light”.  You guys backed off the pace on that one, and it’s got a crushing, moody, “post-rock” sound.  Sounds like atypical guitar-tuning for you, too. What turned your heads in that direction?

JZ: I’m a HUGE fan of Cult of Luna and many of the other post-metal/rock bands out there. You’d actually find me looking for doom, post-metal/rock bands to check out before you’d find me looking for death metal or thrash or something. I respect a lot of the bands getting a majority of the spotlight shown on them, but I’m really not a huge fan of death metal or anything in the extreme realm. When I do find a band playing death metal or something extreme, it’s usually something with a lot of musical enthusiasm, so to speak. Like new Defeated Sanity or the most recent Suffocation album. I’d expect plenty more “Ocean of Light” style songs from us, with more detail and structure. We already have a few new tracks in the works similar to that style.

NCS: The EP’s title track is as technical as anything on Suspension, if not more so, but I also thought it was catchy as hell, and both your playing and Umar’s sound almost improvisational.  I suspect you guys are capable of playing just about any style of music you put your minds to (as I think “Ocean of Light” shows), but when you wrote and selected the songs for Priest, did you have in mind trying to solidify a “signature” sound for The Binary Code (which I would characterize as a blend of tech-death, prog, and improv)?

JZ:  We based “Priest” off of the opening riff. It pretty much demanded that we write the rest of the song by flowing from one riff into the other, one by one. It ended up being our new “Ghost Planet”, so to speak. “Ghost Planet” had the same turn out, in my opinion. Improvisation didn’t really have anything to do with it. We are very calculated in our attack when we write a song and record it. The only thing that ever ends up being moderately improvisational are solos or leads.

NCS:  While we’re talking about “Priest” (the song), I have to say I nearly busted my gut laughing when I first heard the “Nintendo version” of the song at the end of the EP.  It really does sound like the “tunes” on the first Mario Bros. game on that 8-bit Nintendo console.  What in the world put the idea in your heads to create that Nintendo version of the song?

JZ:  It was actually an idea conceived by our manager, Ben. He thought it was a cool idea to have something extra for people.

NCS:  Although I laughed the first time I heard the “8-bit” version, the more I listened to it, the more I realized that it’s almost a note-for-note replica of all the instrumental tracks on the original version of the song – including little retro electronic versions of Umar’s double-kicks and blast-beats and cymbals.  Who transcribed and transformed the original song into that 8-bit version and how the hell was it done?

JZ:  Whenever we finish writing a song, I always transcribe everything I can to the best of my abilities using a tabbing program, like Guitar Pro 5 or Tabit. It helps me get to know the riffs and the numerical aspect much more when I do this.

I’m a frequent poster on the SMNnews forums (been a member since 2004). I’m actually a “moderator” on the Between the Buried and Me forums (where the majority of my posting takes place). There are a lot of really in-the-know dudes on there posting super sweet stuff, ranging from movie recommendations, music recommendations, and other cool stuff, like…the program to transfer MIDI to an 8-bit sound. A dude named Pwnsauce on the forums posted a link to download the program, I believe. That’s how I remember it at least!

All of those guys collectively rule, as lame as it may sound to be so into a forum. They are always supportive of what we’re doing (as a band), and even me as an individual. I wouldn’t recommend passing off the opportunity to get involved with a forum filled with people with a lot of similar interests in just about everything.

NCS:  Do you think 8-bit mixes of metal songs have a future?

JZ:  I doubt it. I hope not! I think it’s a cool thing to do if you can, but not as a tool to market your band. I’m not sure how I feel, actually. HAHA

NCS:  The third song on the album, “Encircled”, is different again from the other two, though in its style it reminded me of parts of “Suspension of Disbelief (Part II)”. It has the same kind of swirling guitar lead that eventually kicks in – I don’t mean the same melody but the same technique – plus on “Encircled” it’s joined by a second guitar track that I can only call an anthem. Since I know almost nothing about guitar technique, could you describe what the hell you did on this song to generate all the diverse sounds?

JZ:  To be honest, since I’m not exactly sure as to what you mean by “swirling guitar lead”, I don’t think I can actually answer that to my fullest potential. If you’re referring to the tapping part of the song towards the end, I can try and explain it.

Essentially, I start the tapping part of the near ending of the song on the lowest string of the guitar (we’re tuned DADGBE, so on the low D string). I’m tapping triplet groupings of notes, middle finger on the picking hand, pointer & pinky on the fretting hand. Tapping in a series of triplets, grouped three notes per repetition.

Towards the very end of the song where the lead guitar kicks in, I am tapping the triplet patterns on three strings, one string into the next highest string, into the final higher string of the progression, and back down. Those strings would be, again, the low D, the A, and 4th string, the other D (in the middle of the string order). It’s a pretty common technique, as far as I know.

NCS:  The solitary piano melody that rounds off the ending to “Encircled” fits the rest of the song, at least to my ears, though it’s not an obvious way to end at all. Who is playing the piano? Who wrote the melody? And, if you remember, how did you guys conceive of finishing the song in this way?

JZ:  I played the piano parts. I wrote the melody as well. I felt the song should end that way. I wrote the original progression with all of the tapping based around the chord progression first. So the progression actually came last. I felt the vibe of the song ending without some sort of dynamic change would be selling the song short. We’re really happy with how it ended. Has a… “less cool” Faith No More vibe to it, I think. Certainly not influenced by them for that particular part, but it has a similar sound to it, I guess.

NCS:  You mixed and mastered Priest yourself.  Would you do that again?  Was it fun or a big fucking headache? Do you see any advantages in doing it yourself (apart from saving the money you’d have to pay someone else to do it)?

JZ:  It was not my favorite thing to do, that’s for sure. I also can’t take full credit, because Paul Cutri did a lot of the early mixing. I kind of worked with him to get to the middle point, and then I just finished up after a month or so away from the songs. I had to stop listening to them in order to refresh my ear from the fatigue you can undergo from listening too much. I highly doubt this will happen again the future, unless it’s a personal recording done by myself outside of Binary Code.

There are plenty of advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is the money aspect. And you also get to personalize what you hear. The disadvantage is most certainly the bias you create. You need to be able to objectively hear your music. I see it as a disadvantage more than anything.

We’ve been recording ourselves with Paul’s assistance and generosity for a few years now. I think we’ll be outsourcing next time around. I’m completely unschooled when it comes to recording and mixing. I don’t own gear, and I don’t work for a studio. I simply learned what I know from recording numerous times over the course of 7 years. That’s all I have to offer, haha.

NCS:  I’ve read more than once that you guys count Genesis as an influence. I think the Genesis albums that were made before Peter Gabriel left the band are just amazing (the ones after aren’t bad either, but they weren’t as revolutionary as the ones before).  I must have listened to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway a hundred times – in a row.  Do both you and Umar count Genesis as an influence, or is it just one of you, and why do you count that band as an influence?

JZ:  I’m mostly a fan of Duke, which is post-Gabriel. That’s not to say the pre-Gabriel stuff was not amazing. I’m a huge fan of what those guys had to offer. Duke is an amazing exploration in experimentation, in my opinion.

Phil Collins is a very talented guy, with amazing song-writing abilities. I can sing pretty much everything on that album, front to back. I’m not that sweet with lyrics usually, but the music demanded I memorize the words. Umar, from what I can tell, has no interest in Genesis. I haven’t discussed them with him before, and we discuss music more than anything.

NCS:  Now a couple questions that are a bit off-topic.  I follow what you write on Facebook.  You said in one recent comment that there aren’t many metal bands in your Top 10 list of albums for the year so far, with Defeated Sanity being an exception.  (I would sure as hell agree that Defeated Sanity is a massive kick in the head.)  I don’t want to put you on the spot and ask you to fill out the entire balance of your list, but tell us two other albums you would put in your Top 10 of the year so far and why.

JZ:  I love the handful of metal bands that I do actually make a point to listen to, but I’m not the biggest metal fan out there, by leaps and bounds. I find myself searching for music outside of extreme, heavy, and fast music. But I still do fancy myself some death metal when the band is right.

It took me a while to understand what the big deal was about Defeated Sanity, but it certainly kicked in hard this year with their newest release.

My Top 10 Contenders (in the heavy realm, save for Jaga Jazzist, which is a sure top spot): East of the Wall – Ressentiment; Jaga Jazzist – One Armed Bandit; Ihsahn – After; Mantric – the Descent; Yakuza – Of Seismic Consequence; Kruger – For Death, Glory, and the End of the World; Xasthur — 2005 Demo; and Castevet — Mounds of Ash. Maybe Ion Dissonance or The Acacia Strain.

I almost wish I could go back to 2009 and add Blood Oath by Suffocation to my top 10. That album RULES!!!

NCS:  One more question I have to ask based on your Facebook posts. You seem to have a fairly poor opinion of humankind in general, even fantasizing about making human existence cease to exist.  Where does that outlook come from?  And do you think it enters into the music you create?

JZ:  I absolutely hate human beings. It’s undebatable, and completely worthless to ever try and change my perspective. Unless something extroardinary happens that proves me wrong, I’m adamant in my disposition.

I simply understand that life is what it is, and I have to deal with how society has made things for us. I would not invest a single ounce of confidence in the human race, from the beginning of time to the day it all comes to an end for us (if it does). I’m an all-or-none kind of guy when it comes to this perspective.

I don’t want a handful of people to suffer, only for other humans to continue existing. If we need a social climate change, I would prefer it to be every single one of us. I include every man, woman, and child into this equation.

I have no compassion for humans as a whole. As we all do, I find there to be certain humans worth  investments. As I age, this number will probably plummet. But for the most part, I am very pleased with the humans I keep in my life right now.

I plan on living my life through my own eyes. I’m a happy guy, but I’m also very angry about a lot of things. I’m very happy to be alive, and to  experience life for what it is, but I feel it’s all at the convenience of innocent organisms trying to exist peacefully without tyranny brought on by selfish, materialistic, dogged humans.

My intention is to continue my life to the best of my abilities, and deal with it. This won’t stop me from expressing my feelings, and hopefully opening some eyes. I’m not very good at hiding my feelings about this towards most humans. I think we’re an infection, and I really don’t want to hear otherwise for that matter, until it’s proven to me that we serve more of a purpose beyond human-benefit. I plan to write more about my philosophies on the matter at some point.

NCS:  I know you think beyond the next week or even the next six months.  So let me ask you one of the really nasty questions of the hour, which I’ve been thinking about a lot since I read Ryan McKenney’s post on MetalSucks earlier this week:  How do you see being able to continue
doing what you’re doing, when most of the people who hear your music don’t pay for it, when touring may — I say may – only generate enough scratch to pay the expenses, and when the kind of day job that accommodates the unpredictable life of a touring musician pays peanuts?

JZ:  Honestly, if you can’t deal without having the “finer things in life”, don’t try music as a profession. I’m a pretty bare-bones guy at this point. I’ve had my bouts of materialism and frivolous tendencies, but those days are long gone.

I loved being on tour, and I’m willing to live like a homeless person if I have to do so in order to continue doing that. If it ever gets to the point where it’s more comfortable to tour, that’s just a bonus. But for the most part, you can be a successful band when it comes to touring.

East of the Wall should write a fucking book on that. Those guys are the most professional bunch of musicians I know personally. Brett [Bamberger] is one of the best people I’ve ever met in my life, and he lives life to the fullest, whilst maintaining a job, paying mommy & daddy-sized bills, and touring the country almost 75% of the year. If you can find a band like East of the Wall to model your business aspect of your band after, you’ll be fine.

********

The Binary Code’s new EP Priest will be officially released by the band on August 10. You can pre-order Priest here as a digital download, or as a download and t-shirt package.

Earlier today we posted an album review without naming the band or any of the songs. Standing alone, that was a pretty useless act. What good is a review if readers don’t know who the fuck we’re talking about? But we did have a reason.

The band whose album we reviewed is Impending Doom, and some people tend to love them or dismiss them not because of the music but because they’re a Christian metal band — not just a band whose members happen to be Christians, but a band whose songs are inspired by their faith and who tour in order to spread the message.

The consequence is that you can’t read a review of their music without half the review being about the fact that they’re an unabashed Christian metal band — which is probably just fine with them.

But here at NCS, we don’t love em or detest ‘em because of that fact. We focus on the music and the performances, and we happen to dig both. So we thought, just for the hell of it, we’d see what kind of reactions you had from our review without having those reactions influenced by the fact that this is Impending Doom.

Now that the mystery has been resolved, we’ll run our review again with all the camouflage removed. If you read the earlier review with the identity concealed and aren’t interested in reading it again, even with some details revealed, we’ve added something new at the end of the post (after the jump) under the heading “NEW STUFF”.  As always, feel free to flame or praise or yawn in the comments . . .

The three perpetrators of this site first saw Impending Doom as the headline act in a small, crappy little club in Portland that hadn’t been cleaned since Ronald Reagan was president. The whole place was scarred, and every surface was sticky. It was pretty full, which didn’t take a lot. There was hardly any room to move. That night, Impending Doom owned the place. The performance was explosive, and the performers had magnetic stage presence.

We saw ‘em again on another national tour the next year in Seattle at a much larger, nicer club where they weren’t the headline act. They played again with explosive energy, just blew the crowd away. The other bands (August Burns Red and The Acacia Strain) were bigger names, but Impending Doom damn-near stole the show. It was like some big muscle car going full-throttle, with the tachometer in the red zone.

They’ve just released a new album, There Will Be Violence — their third, and it’s a step ahead, and a slight step sideways, from the band’s previous work. It’s brutal, it’s catchy, it’s unusually melodic, and most of it is a flat-out headbanging barrage of full-force fury.

Somewhere along the way, Impending Doom got tagged by some people with the “deathcore” label. The label wasn’t entirely unfair, because (particularly on the last album) the band has been partial to massively down-tuned, clanging riffs, large doses of double-bass, and the general rhythmic pattern of deathcore, including mammoth breakdowns.

But the band’s two previous releases have also included some unexpected variation from the pattern, and a healthy dose of honest, straight-ahead death metal.

Fans familiar with the band’s previous albums will certainly recognize the third one. It’s still loaded with down-tuned, jackhammer riffing, frenetic drumwork full-forward in the mix, and an assortment of roof-collapsing breakdowns (there’s a doozy on “The Great Fear”).

But changes are also in evidence. The band’s distinctive vocalist Brook Reeves has shifted to a much more pronounced hardcore style of testosterone-injected howling, reminiscent (at least to us) of Darkest Hour’s vocalist, John Henry. The deep gutturals aren’t gone, but they’re used more sparingly.

The band’s music has always been a fusion of hardcore and death metal with a healthy dose of thrash, but perhaps as a result of the altered vocal style, several of the songs on this album have a more pronounced hardcore vibe than we remember from the previous albums (particularly “The Son Is Mine” and “Children of Wrath”).

As compared to previous efforts, the songs on the new album also reflect greater tempo dynamics and more frequent use of melodic guitar leads and solos, and indeed, the tracks that work best are those that change course in unexpected ways, whether it be the slower-paced instrumental in the middle of “The Great Fear” or the swirling guitar leads that carry the mid-tempo “Sweating Blood” or the start-stop, techie hammering that infuses “Peace Illusion”.

The album also includes a haunting instrumental (“Love Has Risen”) that starts with an almost sludgy opening riff and includes an almost bluesy dual guitar lead in the middle (with the drumming backed down), and a soaring guitar anthem at the end.

Two well-known frontmen from other bands — Tim Lambesis (As I Lay Dying) and Vincent Bennett (The Acacia Strain) make guest appearances on two songs (“Orphans” and “The Great Fear”, respectively) and they add some new colors in their contributions.

But what pervades all the tracks except for that instrumental is a flood of passionate fury — the same kind of emotional onslaught that made those live performances we saw so riveting. These dudes aren’t posers. They’re invested heart and soul in what they’re doing, and that passion enlivens the music.

Here’s a track from the new album for you to stream:

Impending Doom: Peace Illusion

NEW STUFF

More thoughts on why we hid the ball in our first review:

Ideas, beliefs, and feelings — whether wise or foolish, profound or mundane, malicious or beneficial — have inspired the creation of music since pre-history. Frankly, we’d rather listen to music that has its genesis in strongly held feelings of any kind than in a soulless calculation of how to generate cash or achieve popular notoriety.

But in the end, it’s the music that must stand or fall on its merits, regardless of where it came from. That’s why we tried in our first review to take all the controversy that surrounds Impending Doom in the metal community right out of the equation. We could have done that with many other bands. Just didn’t occur to us until now.

You can catch Impending Doom on this summer’s THRASH AND BURN tour (which has been the subject of a spirited debate in the comments on our original post about the tour at this location).

And now here’s a an official performance video of “More Than Conquerors”, a song from the band’s last album. It will give you an idea of the intensity that Impending Doom brings to a live show, from start to finish. IOHO, the song is hot shit too:

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 . . .

The art is pretty hot, huh?  It’s by Cecil Kim.  For you gamers out there, he did the concept art for God of War III.

The first piece of music by Dagoba that we’re putting up from the new album is the leaked song. It was included on a sampler distributed by Metallian magazine not long ago, and that’s probably where the file came from. It’s good shit. As desee helpfully pointed out in his post, the song loops twice on this YouTube clip, so you can stop at about the 4:30 mark if you don’t want to hear it twice.

And here’s the official promo piece from the new album, which is the song “Black Smoker”. I’m not as crazy about this one because it’s mainly clean singing (see the name of this blog) — but I have to admit, the vocalist (Shawter) has got good metal pipes.

The three perpetrators of this site first saw this band as the headline act in a small, crappy little club in Portland that hadn’t been cleaned since Ronald Reagan was president. The whole place was scarred, and every surface was sticky. It was pretty full, which didn’t take a lot. There was hardly any room to move. That night, this band owned the place. The performance was explosive, and the performers had magnetic stage presence.

We saw ‘em again on another national tour the next year in Seattle at a much larger, nicer club where they weren’t the headline act. They played again with explosive energy, just blew the crowd away. The other bands were bigger names, but this one damn-near stole the show. It was like some big muscle car going full-throttle, with the tachometer in the red zone.

They’ve just released a new album, their third. We thought we’d review it without naming the band — at least not today. We’ll do that tomorrow. Yeah, there’s a reason why we’re being so mysterious. We’ll explain tomorrow.

Some of you may recognize the music we’re going to put up from the album for you to hear. If you don’t, feel free to make some guesses in the comments, and in any event, let us know whether you like it or don’t. We do. Maybe we like it partly because we have such strong memories of those two obliteratingly powerful live shows. But that’s only part of the reason.  (more after the jump, including a track to stream . . .)

Somewhere along the way, this band got tagged by some people with the “deathcore” label. The label wasn’t entirely unfair, because (particularly on the last album) the band has been partial to massively down-tuned, clanging riffs, large doses of double-bass, and the general rhythmic pattern of deathcore, including mammoth breakdowns.

But the band’s two previous releases have also included some unexpected variation from the pattern, and a healthy dose of honest, straight-ahead death metal.

Fans familiar with the band’s previous albums will certainly recognize the third one. It’s still loaded with down-tuned, jackhammer riffing, frenetic drumwork full-forward in the mix, and an assortment of roof-collapsing breakdowns (there’s a doozy on track 5).

But changes are also in evidence. The band’s distinctive vocalist has shifted to a much more pronounced hardcore style of testosterone-injected howling, reminiscent (at least to us) of Darkest Hour’s vocalist, John Henry. The deep gutturals aren’t gone, but they’re used more sparingly.

The band’s music has always been a fusion of hardcore and death metal with a healthy dose of thrash, but perhaps as a result of the altered vocal style, several of the songs on this album have a more pronounced hardcore vibe than we remember from the previous albums (particularly tracks 8 and 9).

As compared to previous efforts, the songs on the new album also reflect greater tempo dynamics and more frequent use of melodic guitar leads and solos, and indeed, the tracks that work best are those that change course in unexpected ways, whether it be the slower-paced instrumental in the middle of track 5 or the swirling guitar leads that carry the mid-tempo track 10 or the start-stop, techie hammering that infuses track 4.

The album also includes a haunting instrumental (track 7) that starts with an almost sludgy opening riff and includes an almost bluesy dual guitar lead in the middle (with the drumming backed down), and a soaring guitar anthem at the end.

Two well-known frontmen from other bands make guest appearances on two songs (tracks 3 and 5, respectively)

But what pervades all the tracks except for that instrumental is a flood of passionate fury — the same kind of emotional onslaught that made those live performances we saw so riveting. These dudes aren’t posers. They’re invested heart and soul in what they’re doing, and that passion enlivens the music.

Here’s a track from the new album for you to stream:

Mystery Band: Track 4

Answers to the riddles tomorrow — who this is, and why we decided to run this review with the identities concealed.

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.

Okay, I’m a little better now.

About The Crown: The band was founded in 1990 in Trollhättan, Sweden, under the name Crown Of Thorns but had to change their name to The Crown in 1998.

They put out their first album in 1999, called Hell Is Here. The second one, Deathrace King, was released the next year, and included guest vocals by Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates) on “Devil Gate Ride”. Lindberg then replaced original vocalist Johan Lindstrand on Crowned In Terror (2002), the band’s third album.

Lindstrom returned to the band for the fourth album, 2003’s Possessed 13. And the band also decided to re-record Crowned In Terror with Lindstrom on vocals, and released the revised album in 2004 under the name Crowned Unholy. The same year, the band broke up. Lindstrom then started a band called One Man Army and the Undead Quartet (which btw has put out some awesome music and has a new album on the way).

In 2008, the entire line-up other than Lindstrom formed a new band with Andreas Bergh (Swordmaster) called Dobermann. Vocalist Jonas Stålhammar (God Macabre) later replaced Bergh, and in December 2009 they changed the name of the project to The Crown.

So, if you’re keeping a scorecard, the current line-up is now Stålhammar (vocals), Marko Tervonen (guitar), Marcus Sunesson (guitar), Magnus Olsfelt (bass), and Janne Saarenpää (drums).

Okay, enough data for all the true metalhead geeks out there. The salient point is this: Possessed 13 was, in our humble opinion, a landmark album in the discography of Swedish death metal. Seven years later, it still sounds awesome.

So we are stoked about the fact that The Crown is back and are on the verge of releasing a new album. Will it be as good as Possessed 13? We’ll see.

But two days ago the band put up a new song from that album, and it’s solid. It’s more than solid. It’s Metal Fucking Death.

Uh, Death Fucking Metal.   Fucking Death Metal.   All that shit.   Listen:

P.S. Fucking Metal Death!  Death Metal Fucking!  Metal Death Fucking!  (Thank you Elvis).

Time for another installment of this Twitter-ish log in which I presume you’re interested in how I spent my morning, skipping over such vital details as what I ate for breakfast, what I’m wearing, and where my cat is licking himself right now.

Have no fear, this is just a log of the metal I listened to and watched in my latest internet browsing session — following up on press releases, MySpace add requests, and e-mail recommendations, and just some general fucking around. In all cases (with one exception), I had no previous exposure to the bands, and so no real clue whether what I found would be good, bad, or indifferent.

So, here’s what I did, in order of doing it, with no filtering and no guarantees that any of this will be worth your time — though I’m guessing most of what I found will be as new to you as it was to me. The bands I checked out are: Hellish Outcast (Norway); Citi (California); Episode 13 (Turkey); Darkness Dynamite (France); The Forrest Gump Mile High Marathon (Mars); and the one exception mentioned above, Bloodbath (Sweden).

HELLISH OUTCAST

I started off by exploring the music of Hellish Outcast, which is from that historical hot-bed of black metal, Bergen, Norway. We’d received a press release announcing the news that Thebon, frontman for the awesome Keep of Kalessin, would be joining Hellish Outcast as its new vocalist. (Have no fear KOK fans, Thebon hasn’t left that band, he’s just pulling double-duty). And then I found out that one of Hellish Outcast’s founders and its current drummer is Mads Lillevedt, who’s a member of the also-awesome Bergen band Byfrost. (We reviewed the latest albums by KOK and Byfrost here and here.)

That was more than enough incentive to visit the band’s MySpace page (here) and listen to some tunes from their 2008 EP, with the inviting title, Raping – Killing – Murder. And I’ll tell you what I thought — after the jump.

Still here? Well, I thought this was some killer music. I listened to two songs, “Possessed” and “Rapid Eye Movement”. “Possessed” is a slab of death-thrash with a mighty catchy thundering riff that will wake you the fuck up, and some heavy industrial-strength chugging. And then halfway through, everything slows down with dreamy, clanging arpeggios — until those hammering riffs reassert their dominance. Then, before the song is finished,  you’re inundated with a swirling, wah-wah pedaled solo that will cross your eyes.

Speaking of eyes, “Rapid Eye Movement” is even more thrash-influenced — with a blazing, darting, saw-like lead, physically compulsive drumming, and another one of those wah-wah screaming solos. But even with the thrash-metal pacing, this is still death metal — the grinding weight of it is tangible.

The production quality on these songs is first-rate — you can hear every instrument, including the bass, and all these dudes can really play. I had trouble tearing myself away from this music in order to continue my browsing, but I’m definitely going back to the EP to finish getting my brain scrambled.

According to the press release I read, Thebon is already rehearsing with Hellish Outcast and laying down the vocals for the band’s upcoming album, to be called Your God Will Bleed.  His first live appearance with the band will be at this year’s Hole in the Sky Festival in Bergen on August 28. I liked the vocals on the EP, but with Thebon on board, I’m now especially interested in the forthcoming album.

If you’d like to check out the tracks on Raping – Killing – Murder, here’s the band’s ReverbNation widget, which includes all of the EP’s songs — and each of them is available for free download through the widget.

CITI

My next stop was a band called Citi. I checked them out at random because we got a MySpace “add” request from the band — and I was immediately hooked. After I finished this browsing session, I went back and listened to the band’s entire debut album and decided to write a post about Citi (already up at this location), and so I won’t write more about them here.

EPISODE 13

At this point, I was feeling pretty lucky since both Hellish Outcast and Citi checked out so well. From Citi, I decided to move on to a black-metal band from Turkey called Episode 13. I’d received a press release announcing that Episode 13 had debuted two tracks from their forthcoming third album, Death Reclaims the Earth. Didn’t know anything about them except for the fact they were from Turkey — but of course that peaked my interest, since here at NCS we’ve got such a soft spot for metal bands from places that aren’t exactly known for their extreme metal scene.

And come to think of it, I’ve never heard any metal from Turkey. So, I thought, time to take the plunge and get wet!

Episode 13’s last release is an album called Pitch Black. The player on their MySpace page (here) features those two new songs, “Physical Comatose & Mental Overdose” and “Ars Moriendi”, plus two from Pitch Black. I listened to the two new ones plus the title track from the last album.

“Pitch Black” is a real headbanging motherfucker. For most of this up-tempo song, an absolutely killer death-metal riff occupies the verse while the chorus is a traditional black-metal passage of fused blast-beats and tremolo-picking that’s equally infectious — and in the middle there’s a throat-ripping guitar solo. Some vicious wolf-like vocals, too, though that vocalist will be replaced on the new album by the return of founding member Ozan Akyol. I thought the song was excellent.

“Ars Moriendi” is a much slower, atmospheric piece that features Akyol’s evil vocals and a memorable, dark melody. Another cool song.

The other new song, “Physical Comatose”, has a more dynamic tempo, shifting between slow melodies with densely layered tremolo chords and more up-tempo hammering, and a very cool finish. And did I mention that Akyol’s vocals are really, really evil?

According to the press release I got about Episode 13, they played Norway’s Inferno Festival and the UK’s Infernal Damnation Festival after releasing Pitch Black, and have toured in Russia, Finland, and Denmark, so they’re getting some exposure outside Turkey. They’re currently looking for a label outside Turkey to release Death Reclaims The Earth.

Here’s the band’s ReverbNation widget, which includes one of the two new tracks plus that ass-kicker, “Pitch Black”, and some other songs from either Pitch Black or the band’s first album, Tabula Rasa, that I haven’t heard yet.

DARKNESS DYNAMITE

After checking out Episode 13, I decided to catch up on the latest news over at Blabbermouth and ran across a new video from a French metal band called Darkness Dynamite for the song, “Supernatural”. The song comes off the band’s debut album, The Astonishing Fury Of Mankind, which was released in June 2009 via Metal Blade Records .

I’d never heard of these guys, but I’ve had pretty good luck with metal bands from France, so I figured, what the fuck. So I watched and listened.

I thought the song was decent, though not enough by itself to send me scampering after the rest of the album. It’s metalcore, with a to-be-expected combination of punishment and melody. At least on this track, the singer stops short of an outright burst of clean singing, though he comes close. I liked the instrumental work, particularly the guitars, and the melody is catchy.

As for the video, the photography is high-end quality, but it’s yet another one of those inexplicable metal videos that mixes performance shots with something else that seems utterly random. The something else seems to be an attempt to tell a story, though what the story is and what it has to do with the song (if anything) is a mystery. See for yourself. And if the music happens to hit your sweet spot, the band’s MySpace page is here.

THE FORREST GUMP MILE HIGH MARATHON

This band is from Long Island, though I believe they spend part of their time on Mars.

I got a message from the band asking us to check ‘em out, and really, with a name like this, how could I resist?  But it’s not just the name of the band. They’re the first band I’ve come across that actually builds their songs — all of them, as far as I can tell — around samples from the movie Forrest Gump. I think it’s a safe bet they’ve got a lock on the gumpcore sub-genre.

I listened to two songs on the band’s MySpace, “Lt. Dan, Ice Cream” and “Smart Man”. The music is slam metal — a genre I’m only starting to get into, though’s it’s growing on me (like a particularly nasty subdermal fungus). The first song is a grinding, mid-tempo bruiser with a head-snapping slam breakdown (after you get past the sample of Tom Hanks explaining the one good thing about getting shot in the buttocks).

The second song also proceeds at a lumbering pace with hammer-to-the-head riffs and guitar squeals and short bursts of speed sprinkled here and there. The vocals on both songs are of the guttural-mixed-with-pig-squeal variety.

The music has got some decent grooves mixed with all the brootality, but I don’t know about the Forrest Gump samples. See for yourself. The album is available on iTunes.

Forrest Gump Mile High Marathon: Lt. Dan, Ice Cream

BLOODBATH

After leaving the land of Forrest Gump, I went back to Blabbermouth and found a video of Bloodbath playing at Hellfest 2010 (June 18-20 in Clisson, France). I love Bloodbath. I love the fact that the exceptionally talented Mikael Åkerfeldt can be the creative force behind a band like Opeth and at the same time front a band like Bloodbath.

After an amusing introduction by Åkerfeldt, in which he notes (among other things) that Hellfest was only Bloodbath’s fifth live performance ever, the band launches into a song called ”Process of Disillumination” off the last album, The Fathomless Mastery (2008).   Really good video quality, only average sound quality. But fuck, it’s still Bloodbath.

Well, that was the end of my metal browsing session, and it’s the end of this post. Until we meet again . . . keep bangin yo head.