Damn, I’m finally able to go outside without shivering and being beaten about the head and shoulders with high winds and rain blowing sideways. That must mean it’s June in Seattle!  And so it is. A largely dismal May is behind us, the Seattle Mariners are astonishingly only a game and a half out of first place in their division (that’s baseball for you outlanders), and the summer lies ahead.

What else lies ahead? A bunch of new metal, of course. And because it’s the beginning of a new month, we’re bringing you another installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, in which we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — this isn’t a cumulative list. If we found out about a new album during April or preceding months, we wrote about them in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones.

Doesn’t it seem like whenever you see the word “metalcore” in commentary about new music these days, the word “generic” isn’t far away? The metalcore genre has now been with us so long that, at least in the eyes of metal “elitists” (so-called by, uh, fans of metalcore), it has become stagnant, stuck in the template that was hammered out more than a decade ago, recycling its familiar tropes and only rarely venturing into the realm of originality.

To be honest, that “generic” label could be applied to bands and albums in every genre of metal. Is it really more often true of new metalcore releases than, say, new death metal albums? And do we really need a band to break new ground in a familiar genre in order to find the music worthwhile? Or is it sufficient that a band know what they’re doing and do it well, even if there are no surprises in store?

Before “metalcore” became a dirty word in many metal circles, before the genre became saturated with formulaic music, there was Unearth. In our opinion, their albums have stood out from the burgeoning crowd, thanks to their talent for creating memorable hooks and melodies (and breakdowns) while preserving all that hardcore grit and aggression. It doesn’t hurt that they put on a head-busting live show — one of those bands we turn out to see whenever they get close to The Emerald City.

Unearth will be releasing their fifth album (Darkness In the Light) via Metal Blade on July 4, their first in two and a half years. Adam Dutkiewicz (Killswitch Engage) produced it, and KsE’s Justin Foley laid down the drum tracks. Last night, as a warm-up to the release, Unearth uploaded a song called “Eyes of Black” to YouTube. After the jump, we have the song and a few more words . . .

What the hell is that big yellow thing up in the sky? It looks vaguely familiar, but it’s appeared so rarely here in The Emerald City over the last six months that we’re having trouble placing the name. Well, maybe the name will come to us. The great wheel of the seasons surely must continue to turn someplace, but in Seattle it seems to have been stuck on Winter since, like, forever. In some parts of the world, April showers bring May flowers, but here, April showers will probably bring . . . May showers.

Okay, enough whining. At least we don’t get tornados dropping from the sky like atom bombs and wiping whole towns off the map. And even though the weather hasn’t been our friend, we have metal to make up for the cold shoulder — and there’s a bunch of new metal headed our way.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones.

November is now in our rear-view mirror. December lies ahead of us: A perfectly good stretch of road marred by the speed bumps of the cataclysm that is Christmas. And on the other side of those speed bumps is the end of the year – the roadkill that is New Year’s Eve. And you know what the run-up to year-end brings — year-end lists. It’s already started, but the coming weeks will bring us a slew of Best of 2010 album lists. We’ll probably do our own Best of 2010 list — not the best albums of the year, but, as we did last year, the most infectious extreme metal songs of the year.

But we’re not quite ready to launch that list. Instead, we’re looking off into the future, not backward at the music that’s rattled our skulls over the past year. Yes, it’s time for another monthly installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, in which we cobble together a list of forthcoming new albums, cribbing like rag-gatherers and lint-pickers from PR releases and metal news sites like Blabbermouth in order to construct a line-up of new music that we’re interested in hearing.

All of our previous monthly updates can be found via the “Forthcoming Albums” category link on the right side of our pages, and because we’re not keeping a cumulative list, you might want to check the last couple months of these posts if you want to get a full picture of what’s coming. The list that follows, in alphabetical order, are albums we didn’t know about at the time of our last installment, or updated info about albums we’d previously heard were on the way. After the jump, of course . . .

Man, have we got some breaking news for those of you who occasionally enjoy the sensation of leaving the caves where you live and spending a night in a different kind of cave — one that’s filled with really loud, skull-splattering metal and other cave-dwellers like yourselves.

We’ve just gotten confirmed dates for two new tours that make us gleeful with anticipation. Bet you can’t guess which ones.

Oh, wait. I guess you can guess which ones.

Well, bet you can’t guess the dates and places where these two tours will descend in order to lay waste to paying cave-dwellers. S’okay, you don’t have to guess, because both tour schedules are laid out in all their glory after the jump.

In our humble opinion, these will be two of the fall’s best tours. Not that it matters to you, but we’re particularly stoked because they’re both coming to a cave near us — way the fuck up here in the Northwest corner of the U.S. And there are Canadian dates on one of them, too.

(check it out after the jump . . .)

The following video was filmed at the 2010 Download festival in England about a week ago. The camera is fixed, and the point of view is from behind the stage looking out at the 50,000+ audience. The band is Unearth, playing “Sanctity of Brothers”.

The sound quality isn’t great, but this is a cool thing to watch, for at least three reasons:  (1) It’s Unearth; (2) the massive fucking circle pit in action from the beginning (and again at the end); and (3) the sight of thousands of arms flashing skyward when Trevor Phipps begins leading the chant near the end.

Assuming the embed works OK, take this one to full-screen mode. Looks like it was an awesome party.

Early Graves is a Bay-area band we hadn’t heard of until yesterday. But a combination of cool cover art for their forthcoming second album (above) plus the following verbiage from their press release grabbed our attention:

San Francisco’s Early Graves have completed the follow up to their 2008 debut We: The Guillotine. Their new record, simply entitled Goner, is a ragged, pissed off amalgamation of heavy self-medication, year long blackouts and all the depression of a thousand yard stare.

Combining the best elements of Hellacopters/Turbonegro rock n’ roll with Black Flag’s and Bad Brains’ inspired hardcore with a crushing balance of both Morbid Angel’s heaviness and the raw intensity of power violence pioneers Dropdead and Masskontroll, Early Graves have set the bar for complete, unhinged self destruction.

“I don’t know…” states vocalist Makh Daniels, “…I guess the record is about alcoholism… and all the bullshit that comes with it. All the ‘why’s?’ and ‘How come’s?’ and our stupid fucking excuses for it. I can’t say that this will be the heaviest record you’ve ever heard or the best recording or the most musically precise but I can say that at least, it’s fucking honest.”

Yeah, so all that plus the cover art got our attention — certainly enough to lead us over to Early Graves’ MySpace page for a listen. (more after the jump . . .)

Just saw some bittersweet news. First, the good part. The line-up, dates, and places have just been released for the Atticus Metal Tour II — with NCS favorite UNEARTH as the headline act. And it gets better. Check out the line-up of other bands on the bill:  Stick To Your Guns, Veil of Maya, The Ghost Inside, and Carnifex — with Darkest Hour, Stray From The Path, and, Your Demise joining the party on select dates.  (Those dates and other details will be released here as they become available.)

Now for the bittersweet news (selfishly speaking): the closest the tour gets to the Pacific Northwest is Utah. Life ain’t fucking fair!  What else is new. Anyway, check out the full list of dates and places after the jump.

Your NCS Authors are big Unearth fans, and fans of Pantera too. You may have heard that to commemorate the 5th anniversary of Dime’s death, Metal Hammer magazine brought together a group of well-known artists to record covers of Pantera songs for a CD that ships with the mag. Unearth was enlisted to cover “Sandblasted Skin,” and the band has just now put that song up on their MySpace site for public consumption. “Sandblasted Skin” captures a lot of what Pantera was all about, and Unearth’s cover does it complete justice. Don’t know about the rest of the covers on the Metal Hammer collection, but this one slays.

So, down below, after the photo of Dime, check out a 1996 live Pantera performance of “Sandblasted Skin” and then run over to Unearth’s site and listen to what they do with the song.

So you all have probably read some things by the author islander, but there’s a new girl in town! I’ll be writing about the music I love and things I’m passionate about. Here is the music I love