So, yesterday we threw together a hodge-podge of new music and videos that proved very diverting to us, and maybe to you, too. And then, in an awesome display of synchronicity — or serendipity, or kismet, or some other word that’s supposed to signify things that are coincidental but maybe were meant to happen — more new music appeared on our NCS radar screen, as if sent from an all-knowing über-mind that tracks and understands the strange and twisted paths of our neural connectivity.

Here’s how this happened. One of the bands we included in yesterday’s post was Outcast, from France, and their new song “Elements”. The music put us in mind of some other bands, one of which (as we said) was Tardive Dyskinesia — a Greek band whose music we’ve been hooked on for a while. And then the next thing we knew, we got an e-mail from none other than Tardive Dyskinesia giving us (and everyone else in the world) an entire live album to download for nothing, nada, bupkis.  Fuck.

And that was just the start. We then got another e-mail telling us that one of our grindcore gods, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, had put up two new songs from a split they’ve done with a band called Despise You. Fuck.

And then we got another e-mail from Misha, the vocalist/guitarist for Akelei (a Dutch band whose very impressive 2010 debut album we reviewed here) asking us to check out Carceri, a death-metal band in which Misha’s brother Josha is the drummer, and in which Misha also used to play. In his e-mail, he used words like “fast”, “brutal”, “technical”, and made reference to “twisted lyrics”. Fuck. That pushed all the right buttons for me. And there you have the story of how today’s post took shape.  (more after the jump . . .)

Scott Hull is a fascinating dude. He’s the guitarist and producer for the blazingly awesome Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed. He’s an incredibly knowledgeable observer of the most remote corners of the underground metal scene. He’s smart as a whip and very articulate. He works as an IT specialist when he isn’t creating furious, brain-scrambling music. He’s a father and he lives in a nice suburban home in the D.C. area.

If you’ve got more time to burn after you finish this post, you oughta read the feature on Hull, Pig Destroyer, and the grind scene that was published, of all places, in The Washington Post‘s Sunday magazine last August. It’s fascinating to read a non-metalhead reporter’s peak inside the world of a band like Pig Destroyer, trying to describe the experience for the kind of people who read The Washington Post (i.e., people unlike you and me) (“As the band ripped into the first song, I had the sensation of standing under a bridge as it was being torn apart.”)  It’s long, but worth reading through to the very end. Check it out here.

In 2008, Hull pulled together a collection of music from multiple underground bands and brilliantly named it This Comp Kills Fascists. It featured material from acts like Insect Warfare, Magrudergrind, Weekend Nachos, and Kill the Client, as well as the first new music in more than a decade from legendary grind militia Brutal Truth. It served as something of a launching pad for the careers of all those bands and more. It included 51 tracks of music from 14 collectives.

Now, Hull has done it again, with This Comp Kills Fascists 2 — except more so. The new compilation is set for a June 28 release on Relapse Records and is available for pre-order at this location. It’s an international grab-bag of brain-coring grindcore, powerviolence, hardcore, and metal from bands you’ve probably never heard of — 19 of them to be precise, playing 74 tracks of music. That video at the top of this post is a trailer for the album, and after the jump, we’ve got more news about the project — and a widget that will allow you to stream the whole ear-bleeding thing right here.

Are you having one of those days when it seems like the whole world is made out of sharp edges? Where all the people you encounter just seem pointed and cutting? Where even the light feels like daggers in your eyes? Where you begin to think your skull itself is filled with razor blades? Well, my friends, what you need is a little industrial strength grind action.

No, no, no, we don’t mean that kind of grind action.  Get your nasty minds out of the gutter! We’re talking about something that will grind all those sharp edges down to a nice smooth finish that you can slide right over. We’re talking about the kind of grind that Brutal Truth delivers. (More after the jump.)