THIS AND THAT: SOILWORK, TOMAHAWK, BYZANTINE, SOM PLUIJMERS, AND FREDRIK WIDIGS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Dec 012012
 

In here: A few things I noticed this morning.

SOILWORK

Soilwork’s ninth studio album The Living Infinite, which will be a two-disc release, is now scheduled for release by Nuclear Blast on March 1 in Europe, and March 5 in North America. Late yesterday, the cover art was unveiled. The artist is Mnemic’s Mircea Eftemie Gabriel. He also created the artwork for Soilwork’s Stabbing The Drama album seven years ago. It’s a change from the style of the band’s last few covers, and I’m liking it. It seems to have a nautical theme; I don’t know how that connects to the music, but we’ll find out.

Nuclear Blast also released the album’s track list: There are a total of 20 songs. I’m sure there will be some catchy melodic ones in there, but I’m hoping for some old-school Soilwork head-wreckers, too.

TOMAHAWK

This morning I also saw four new music videos. The first one isn’t metal. It’s for a song named “Stone Letter” by Tomahawk, who we last featured here. Tomahawk consists of Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle) plus a bunch of other interesting musicians: Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard, Unsemble), Trevor Dunn (Fantomas, Melvins Lite), and John Stanier (Battles, Helmet). Five years have passed since their last release, but they’ve got a new album coming in January called Oddfellows. Continue reading »

SOM PLUIJMERS LEAVES CEREBRAL BORE

 Metal News  15 Responses »
Nov 252012
 

Vocalist Som Pluijmers has left Scotland-based brutal death metal band Cerebral Bore.

As you may have noticed if you’ve been visiting NO CLEAN SINGING for more than a week or two, we spend very little time reporting on band drama. Musicians leave bands and join bands every day, and honestly, I’d rather be writing about the music. About the only time it matters is if a changing line-up has altered the music of a noteworthy band in some significant way, and that’s unlikely to happen in this instance — so far as I know, Som was not involved in writing Cerebral Bore’s music.

So why am I making an exception here? I’ll tell you in a minute. But first, the details. Here’s a statement that appeared on Cerebral Bore’s Facebook page about 5 hours ago:

“Som walked out on us less than 24 hours before the US tour, and we were forced to either cancel or go ahead with it as an instrumental if need be. We didn’t want to let our US fans down, so we went ahead with our buddy Shawn Whitaker on vocals for the tour. Show us your support and make Shawn feel at home, he saved us from a disaster.”

Cerebral Bore began a U.S. tour on November 24 in support of Dying Fetus, Cattle Decapitation, and Malignancy. It’s scheduled to run through December 23. The Shawn Whitaker referenced in that statement is the sole member of a Houston band named Insidious Decrepancy. And now here’s Som’s response to the statement quoted above: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DYING FETUS, GOD SEED, VILDHJARTA, PIG DESTROYER ON PIANO, AND A BAND OF ORCS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Sep 262012
 

Yours truly is on the road again, and by “road” I mean in airports and on airplanes and therefore spending hours of tedium separated from the internet. As a result, the postings between now and Monday are going to be scattered and probably fewer than normal. I did have time last night and this morning to survey what’s been happening over the last 24 hours and found the following nuggets of interest.

ITEM ONE: DYING FETUS, ET AL – “THE BLOOD OF POWER TOUR”

I started posting about this tour when there was no official announcement and just a few dates had surfaced, because I was so fuckin’ excited about it. Yesterday it became official. I saw on Metal Sucks (which is co-sponsoring the tour) that Dying Fetus, Cattle Decapitation, and Cerebral Bore will indeed be touring the U.S. in November and December.

But this official announcement has revealed something I didn’t know: Malignancy will be taking the place of Cattle Decapitation during the last week of the tour. The two bands are very different, of course, but they’re both just excellent at what they do. If you want a taste of Malignancy’s forthcoming album (which is amazing), check out this post. Tour dates are right after the jump. Continue reading »

DYING FETUS, CATTLE DECAPITATION, CEREBRAL BORE TOUR DATES

 Metal News  10 Responses »
Sep 222012
 

A week ago we reported the early hints that Dying Fetus, Cattle Decapitation, and Scotland’s Cerebral Bore would be embarking on a U.S. tour later this fall. We still haven’t seen an official press release, but a more complete schedule of dates has surfaced on the PRP, and most of these dates also now appear on the Tour page of the Dying Fetus Facebook site.

Looking at these dates, I see a gap at the end of the tour between the Dec 13 date in Boise and the Dec 22 date in Baltimore which suggests that the schedule might not be complete, and that could explain why we don’t have an official announcement yet. Swinging through cities in the northern tier of the country would make sense since the bands have to get from Idaho to Maryland and they’ll be crossing the southern tier on the front part of the tour.

My heart also rose when I saw that the tour would include a Seattle appearance, and then it fell when I saw the date: 12-12-12. That happens to be my wife’s birthday, in addition to being the day the world ends. So, for either reason, I’ll be missing this show. However, some people think that according to the Mayan calendars the 13th Baktun will end on Dec 21, 2012 instead of Dec 12, so if you make this show, you might still have time to let me know how skull-fuckingly great it was before everything goes kablooie.

The schedule is after the jump. Continue reading »

TOURISM: NEW TOURS HEADLINED BY NACHTMYSTIUM, REVOCATION, AND DYING FETUS

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Sep 142012
 

One last post for this Friday, with a focus on recently announced U.S./Canada tours.

First, it was announced today that Nachtmystium will be headlining the Dawn Over the Ruins of America tour, which also includes Jarboe (featuring Baleyyg) and Canada’s Weapon. All of the dates have not yet been released, but the ones that have are after the jump. Also, although I know Jarboe used to be in Swans, that’s about the extent of my knowledge about her work, and I know zip about Baleyyg. So if anyone has any insights, leave a comment. Nachtmystium and Weapon, of course, are must-see bands for yours truly. (Thanks to Utmu and Vonlughlio for the tip about this one.)

Second, Boston’s mighty Revocation will be headlining a tour, and A Life Once Lost and KEN Mode will be along for that ride. I’ve almost lost count of how many times I’ve seen Revocation, because they tour like there’s no tomorrow, and every damned show has been killer. And if you saw tomorrow’s earlier post about ALOL, well, you know how I feel about them. KEN Mode is another band I am very interested in seeing. Those dates are also after the jump.

Third, Lambgoat is reporting that Dying Fetus will be touring late this year with Cattle Decapitation and Cerebral Bore in tow. There’s been no official announcement, but Lambgoat has ferreted out three venues where this line-up has been announced so far. I’ll just sum up my thoughts about this tour as follows: HELLS FUCKING YEAH! Continue reading »

SUFFOCATION / CATTLE DECAPITATION / BLOOD RED THRONE / SADIST / CEREBRAL BORE / CARCERI – THE OLD BELL, DERBY, 14/03/12

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Mar 302012
 

(Andy Synn witnessed the Derby, England stop of the Reborn of Death Tour and apparently was so skull-rattled by the experience that he thought he was at the movies.)

What a line-up, am I right? It’s like a 6-round pummelling before that final knock-out blow. Each band softening you up for another vicious beating by the next. So, still feeling a little punch drunk from the experience, how am I going to manage to review the show for you fine folks?

Through the works of one Mr Sylvester Stallone.

Chronologically speaking, Carceri are the Rocky Balboa (Rocky 6, for those not in the know) of the evening. Definitely the newest act on the block, with a large legacy to live up to. Thankfully, much like their filmic counterpart, they manage to take familiar elements and give them just enough of a modern shine to justify their position. Playing cuts from their new album The Good Must Suffer The Wicked, with a backdrop of dizzying, morbid imagery scrolling and warping behind them, the group deliver an electrifying blend of punchy, mechanical riffage, bone-rattling blast-beats and massive death growls that deftly bears up under the weight of their Oscar-winning legacy.

Unfortunately, the position of Rocky 5 is occupied by Cerebral Bore tonight, as their brain-mangling death-grind has all the familiar elements and hits all the expected story-beats, but somehow lacks the inherent character and heart in its delivery. The vocals are utterly monstrous, but the drums have an overly-triggered sound that robs them of their brutality, and the bass and guitar never fully lock in correctly. The actors are all present, but something about the story is lacking. Close to the end of the set, however, the band debut a new song that shows real promise, picking up the pace in time for the closing credits. Continue reading »

THE FRIDAY FINISH (Part 2): BRAND NEW CEREBRAL BORE SONG!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  21 Responses »
Feb 172012
 

I’m not claiming that we were the first metal blog to climb up on the Cerebral Bore bandwagon before it was a bandwagon, but we were pretty fucking early. Thanks to a hot tip from our buddy Phro, we published a lengthy feature about them back in November 2010, when certain people were still doubting whether Som Pluijmers really recorded the vocals on the band’s Maniacal Miscreation album.

In that first post about the band (the first of many), we included a video from another early Cerebral Bore adopter — Amsterdam’s THE INFIDEL (Ed Veter) — as proof that Som really did record the vocals. All those early suspicions have of course fully evaporated by now, and Som has become known far and wide, helping to rocket Cerebral Bore to international popularity (at least in certain carnivorous circles).

THE INFIDEL remains an ardent supporter, and today he was given the privilege of debuting a brand new Cerebral Bore song — “Horrendous Acts of Iniquity”. It went up on the Tube of You about a half hour ago, and it will be available for download from iTunes beginning on Monday. Check it out after the jump. Oh, the grindy slamming blistering blowtorch death metal brutality! Oh, the gurgling gutturality of the Som! Get some!

(Thanks to NCS reader Utmu for tipping me that this song debut was coming and how to find it.) Continue reading »

SCOTS WHA HAE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  30 Responses »
Feb 112012
 

A video I saw about some difficulties Apple is experiencing with its Siri speech-recognition software gave me the idea for this post. It don’t seem to do too well with the Scots dialect (or at least the Glaswegian variant of it). I wonder how it would do with lyric recognition when voiced by Scottish extreme metal bands. Probably not to fukkin well. And running some bagpipe metal through the thing would probably cause it to melt down.

First, here’s the video. HIGH-larious. (And to see a translation of what’s being said, along with an explanation by the creator of the video, go here.)

As for Scottish (and Scottish-themed) metal, the line-up after the jump is a mix of new, newish, and older music from three Glasgow bands (Man Must Die, Cerebral Bore, and Achren), one from Edinburgh (Zillah),  and Haggis and Bong (okay, they’re from South Africa, but how can we write about Scottish metal without including some new bagpipe shred?). Continue reading »

THIS HELPS KICK THE SHIT OUT OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Jan 062012
 

Yesterday, I was whining about the INFERNO Metal Festival in Oslo Norway this April — exciting line-up of bands, too fucking far away for me to see. One of the comments on that post, from Kazz, pretty much summed up my feelings about the matter:  “Sometimes the Atlantic Ocean just pisses me off.” To which I responded, “Damned ocean. If it were only smaller, we could kick the shit out of it.”

But look! Now we have help with the shit-kicking! This morning I saw the announcement about the tour featured in that flyer up there. Now THAT is going to be one skull-fucking abomination of a musical extravaganza. It will be particularly sweet because the tour starts only four days after GOATWHORE releases their new album on February 14, which was recorded by Erik Rutan at his Mana Recording Studio in Florida.

And speaking of Erik Rutan . . . HATE ETERNAL! Hells yeah. No one puts the power drill to your cranium quite like Hate Eternal in a live setting.

Oh, and speaking of boring holes in your skull . . . CEREBRAL BORE, all the way from Scotland! And fucking FALLUJAH on top of that!

I’m not saying this is better than Inferno Fest, I’m not saying that we’ve found the secret to subjugation of the Atlantic Ocean, but it do make me feel a damned sight better than I did when I was whining yesterday — because this death metal juggernaut will be stopping in Seattle, which involves no Atlantic Ocean crossing for me to reach. Maybe it will make a stop somewhere near you, too. The full schedule is after the jump. And because these four bands are now on my mind, I’ve got videos from each of them after the jump, too. Continue reading »

CEREBRAL BORE MANIACALLY MISCREATES A NEW VIDEO

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
Apr 112011
 

Last November we happily discovered a band from Glasgow, Scotland called Cerebral Bore and their then-self-released debut album Maniacal Miscreation. In our typically eloquent fashion, we described the music as “the kind of metallic extremity that shoves egg-beaters through the skullbone and proceeds to whip the gray matter into a fluffy merengue” — as the kind of “cerebral drill job” that left our brains “satisfyingly disassembled and chopped up into the consistency of dog food”. A bit more from that review:

The music is on the brutal side of death metal. It’s almost unrelentingly fast — which suits us just fine. The guitar riffing is adrenaline-charged, finger-fast, and reliably hammer-stroked with big slams. We particularly liked the start-stop attack of the drums and the quite audible bass rhythms that unerringly root down deep into the part of the brain that acts without thinking and sends irresistible electrical impulses into the buried pleasure centers.

Barreling along in an unconstrained rampage is plenty of fun for the listener, but the icing on the cake are the passages in the songs when Cerebral Bore skid into a completely irresistible beat.

Since last November, it’s fair to say that Cerebral Bore’s global popularity has increased significantly and is now on the verge of erupting. They signed to Earache Records in December, which will be giving Maniacal Miscreation wider distribution (beginning with a European release yesterday and a NorthAm release on June 7), they’re scheduled to tour basically the whole fucking world in 2011, including dates in the U.S., and today they’ve released a new video for the album’s title track “Maniacal Miscreation”, which you can witness after the jump . . . Continue reading »

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