Jan 242021
 

 

We had a rare day with no posts yesterday. I spent most of my free time clawing through the hundreds of mostly un-read e-mails that had piled up in our in-box last week, and made a gigantic list of new music to check out, and then attempted to do the checking. I didn’t finish listening to everything because the list was so long. But of the new stuff I heard, the following collection kind of assembled itself.

I don’t think any of these bands require an introduction. All of their names are prominent. And all the songs until the last one have a pronounced old school death metal flavor. They’re also all heavy on the chugs, and the death metal tracks include uniformly ferocious vocals. Melvins obviously aren’t a death metal band, but their new song is also heavy on the chugs, and there’s also another reason why it fits in an “old school” round-up.

P.S. If you came here today expecting to find a SHADES OF BLACK column, be patient. It’s coming.

ASPHYX

As mentioned above, there are a lot of powerhouse vocalists in this collection I’ve assembled, beginning with the inimitable Martin van Drunen (a lot of people do try to imitate him, and to be honest, some do so with some success, but there still ain’t nothing like the original). Continue reading »

Mar 152015
 

 

(In this post Austin Weber updates us with news of forthcoming metal tours.)

Metal Injections Presents: Cryptopsy/Soreption/Erimha US Tour

It’s been several years since Cryptopsy have toured the United States, but now they’re coming back, and they’re bringing along some sick support acts to sweeten the deal. Soreption is definitely a favorite around here at NCS. Their sleek combination of mechanical grooves and technical death metal is incredible, and last year’s Engineering The Void was an amazing effort by the band. US Death metal act Disgorge and Montreal-based black/death group Erimha round out the tour bill. Continue reading »

Oct 152013
 

I’ll be straight with you: I have about 500 new albums I want to review, a few hundred more I’d like to hear, a couple of interviews I said I would do, and instead I’m sitting here surfing the interhole, looking for new things, with so many tabs now open on my computer that it’s too bogged down to stream the music I’m looking for.  Time passes, and I fall farther and farther behind. But I might as well put up a batch things I’ve seen and heard today so I can close some of those tabs. Here you go:

THE MELVINS

I saw an interview, published today, that Buzz Osborne of the Melvins gave to Noisey. He talked about the new Melvins album, Tres Cabrones (three dumbasses), which features the band’s original drummer Mike Dillard returning for the first time since 1983 and the band’s long-time drummer Dale Crover moving over to bass. The interview also included a bunch of other subjects, including these (which made me chuckle):

So you’ve been around for a while, what’s the biggest change in the music industry that’s impacted you as a band?
Nothing’s changed, really. Honestly, I don’t think there’s really any golden era of music. I like about as much new music now as I ever did, which isn’t much.

You were talking about new music earlier. At Noisey, we’re constantly dominated by news of Drake and Miley Cyrus. Curious if you had opinions on either.
Well, I don’t know who Drake is, first off. Continue reading »

Aug 182013
 

(photo credit: Jessie Rose)

I read a couple of things recently that I thought were worth passing on. One is funny, one is thought-provoking and a bit surprising. One is about a band who unexpectedly broke up, one is about a band who just keep going and going. We’ll start with the latter one first.

MELVINS

This piece is the funny one. Melvins were formed way back in 1983 by guitarist/vocalist Buzz Osborne, bass-player Matt Lukin, and drummer Mike Dillard, who were all schoolmates in Montesano, Washington. Dale Crover came on board in place of Mike Dillard in ’84, though Dillard came back to the band more than 20 years later and he will be appearing on their 30th anniversary album Tres Cabrones, which is due in November (with Crover moving over to bass for that record).

The band have had a changing cast of bass players. I count six since the band performed, with Jared Warren being the most recent, and that’s not counting about six more who have toured with the band but weren’t present on recordings. Yet with Osborne and Crover in place for nearly 30 years, Melvins are one of those rare bands who’ve stayed the course through life’s ups and downs.

A few days ago Dale Crover revealed the secrets of Melvins’ longevity for a Portland (Oregon) publication called Willamette Week. “Top Five Tips For Keeping A Band Together 30 Years” is a short read, so I’m going to paste it right here: Continue reading »

Aug 092013
 

Well, this was just too damn cool not to share.

It’s a new video produced by The Onion’s AV Club of Melvins covering a song by Butthole Surfers in Chicago’s Humboldt Park. Joining in on the song was the Surfers bassist Jeff Pinkus in place of Jared Warren. Behind them is an ice cream truck.

According to the AV Club, the ice cream truck was basically there as a prop. But then Buzz Osborne had the bright idea of yelling “free ice cream!”, and before you know it the band had an enthusiastic audience. The fact that the audience consisted of a bunch of kids didn’t stop the band from playing “Graveyard”, or from causing the song to collapse into a squall of bass-driven feedback while Osborne tossed ice cream into the crowd and Melvins drummers Dale Crover, and Coady Willis beat the shit out of their kits.

“You lie in the graveyard / Well, you’re rotting away / When I talk to you daily / You’ve got nothing to say”. Such wholesome lyrics. Such a heart-warming sight. Watch the video after the jump.

Continue reading »

Jun 012010
 

We’re now five months into 2010, and 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. Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs 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 old school like us, just get ’em tattooed someplace you can see without a mirror (because reading stuff backwards is hard).

THE ACACIA STRAIN: “Western Massachusetts’ chuggernauts The Acacia Strain, have completed work on their new album, which will be released July 20th in North American and August 2nd in Europe via Prosthetic Records.”

ATHEIST: “Reactivated seminal technical metal pioneers ATHEIST will enter LedBelly studios in Atlanta, Georgia on July 5 to begin recording their long-awaited, as-yet-untitled fourth album. Engineering the session will be Matt Washburn. Additionally, the band has secured the services of one of metal’s most significant talents of the past decade, Jason Suecof (TRIVIUM, CHIMAIRA, DEVILDRIVER), to handle the mixing of what promises to be a modern classic from the pioneers of technical metal. . . . ATHEIST‘s forthcoming album is tentatively scheduled for a late 2010 release and will be followed by a world tour in 2011.”   (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »