TRYPTOPHAN COMA

 Band Name Fodder, Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Dec 252009
 

I’ve taken some shit for the photo of the slit-throat turkey I used in our posts on both Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. So this time, I picked the handsome specimens above. Still metal, and still alive (at least temporarily).

I’ve been thinking about turkey because, having finished Christmas Day dinner, my body is now about 75% turkey and I’m in a tryptophan-induced coma. I got into a debate with one of my NCS Co-Authors about whether the common wisdom is correct that turkey contains high doses of tryptophan and causes drowsiness when consumed in mass quantities. IntoTheDarkness insisted that was B.S. I insisted it was true. To resolve the dispute, I consulted The Font of All Human Knowledge. Turns out the answer is sort-of yes and sort-of no.  I know you’re dying to find out the facts. Details after the jump. Continue reading »

CHRISTMAS DAY RECAP

 Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 252009
 

Yesterday was a banner day at NCS. More posts in a single day than we’ve managed before. In the category of listmania, we reported about Decibel‘s list of The Top 25 Most Anticipated Records of 2009 and Revolver‘s list of The 20 Best Albums of 2009, and we added the 9th entry to our own list of The Ten Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs of 2009. We gave you a Brutal Truth update, the latest burning-goat news from Gavle, Sweden, and a little something to make you nervous on Christmas Eve. Just goes to show what we can accomplish when we get a break from the day jobs. Maybe you now wish we’d get fewer vacation days.

Today your NCS Authors are resting from our labors — except for arguing about which song should be our tenth and final entry on the Most Infectious list. Assuming we can sort that out and there’s still one of us alive to post the result, we’ll do that tomorrow.

In the meantime, the turkey awaits, and he’s looking kinda nervous.

Hope all of you have a peaceful day. Come see us again tomorrow.

“HE KNOWS WHEN YOU’VE BEEN BAD OR GOOD” (we’re all hosed)

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Dec 242009
 

Yes, Christmas Eve is upon us again. Unless you’re very lucky, you’ve already heard during this holiday season a rendition of “Santa Clause Is Coming to Town” by one or more of the thousand douchebags who’ve recorded it.  First performed in November 1934 on Eddie Cantor’s radio show, and the fucking thing just won’t go away. The song has been inflicted on generations of kids, basically as a way of scaring them into being “good.” You know the lyrics:

He sees you when you’re sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake.

Seriously, that’s some nasty shit.  And you, gentle readers — that song can’t make you feel very cozy. If you’re reading this site, then you can’t possibly have been very good — and as the perpetrators of an extreme metal site, it goes without saying that we hope you’ve been very, very bad.

Of course, that means your home won’t be visited tonight by the jolly old elf with the rosy cheeks and the “Ho! Ho! Ho!” You’ll be visited by the nasty looking orc up at the top of this post who’s decided your liver would taste yummy with a nice chianti and a side of fava beans. When he shrieks “Ho! Ho! Ho!”, it’s an accusation.

Santa Claus appears to have his roots in pre-Christian pagan traditions prevalent in Northern Europe. (See, e.g., our post earlier today about burning the goat.) So if even the jolly Santa is fundamentally a pagan figure, just imagine how brootally pagan Evil Santa is. No doubt the soundtrack accompanying his grisly visit to your abode tonight will sound something like this:

Marduk: Into Utter Madness

And in case you have trouble deciphering the lyrics from Evil Santa’s aforesaid theme song, here’s a taste:

Ever faithful — to unfaithfulness
Endlessly truthful — to untruthfulness
[We’re skipping this line to, uh, protect the children]
Thus my Ascension bound — to boundlessness

Nighty night! Don’t let the bed bugs bite.

BURNING THE GOAT

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Dec 242009
 

The charred remains of a Christmas straw goat stands in the town center of Gavle, Northern Sweden, on Wednesday Dec. 23, 2009.

We couldn’t make up stuff like this if we tried. We’ll just quote the whole Reuters story verbatim. It’s pretty fucking funny from beginning to end. This is definitely metal.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Arsonists set fire early on Wednesday to a giant straw statue of the Swedish Yule goat, a forerunner to Santa Claus in Sweden, defying security measures for a third year in a row.

Police in Gavle, north of Stockholm, said an unknown number of attackers had torched the goat in the early morning hours, leaving a blackened skeleton standing in the town square.

“It’s a tradition to burn it down,” Lofberg said. “It’s happened an untold number of times since the 1960s … it’s been burned down more years than it’s survived.”

Burning the goat has been a popular, and illegal, tradition in Gavle since the 1960s when an advertising executive first came up with the idea to endow the city with a giant replica of the goat, a Christmas decoration common in many Swedish homes.

There were no witnesses, but a bottle of lighter fluid was found near the goat’s frame, which stood about 12 meters tall at the apex of its horns, police told Reuters.

“We have some leads,” said Stefan Lofberg, who is leading the investigation for the Gavle police.

Police have tried a range of tactics to stop would-be arsonists, including posting guards near the straw goat, coating it with flame retardant and training security cameras on it.

But vandals have usually found a way around the foils and their assaults have become more elaborate: in recent years the goat has been run over, dragged into a river and attacked by arsonists dressed as Santa Claus and the Ginger Bread Man.

Flame retardant coating thwarted attempts to burn the goat in 2006, but the group sponsoring it then stopped flame-proofing it because of the ugly, brownish tinge its straw took on.

Goats have special meaning in Swedish Christmas tradition. Before Santa Claus became ubiquitous at the turn of the 20th century, men would dress up as goats and hand out presents to well-behaved children. Bad children received lumps of coal.

THE TEN MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS OF 2009 (Part 9)

 Album Reviews, Listmania  No Responses »
Dec 242009
 

Here at NCS, we’re putting a different spin on year-end listmania. Ours isn’t a list of the best metal full-lengths of the year. It’s not even necessarily our list of the best individual extreme metal songs of the year. Ours is a list of the most infectious extreme metal songs we’ve heard this year. We’re talking about songs that produce involuntary physical movement and worm their way into your brain to such an extent you can’t get ’em out (and wouldn’t want to).

We’re not ranking our list from #10 to #1 because that would be too much fucking work (and your co-Authors would still be arguing about it this time next year). So, our list is in no particular order. We’re also dribbling the songs out one at a time because your lazy Authors are still debating what belongs in the remaining slots. (Yes, still.) Our list heretofore:

1. Asphyx: Sorbutics

2. Mastodon: Crack the Skye

3. Amorphis: Silver Bride

4. Goatwhore: Apocalyptic Havoc

5. August Burns Red: Meridian

6. Pelican: Ephemeral

7. Scale the Summit: Age of the Tide

8. Daath:  Wilting On the Vine

And to see our ninth entry on the list, continue reading after the jump. Continue reading »

BRUTAL TRUTH UPDATE

 Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 242009
 

On December 23, in an act of complete randomness, we posted a piece on Brutal Truth and its 2009 release Evolution Through Revolution. It was completely random because the album came out in April, and we were only getting around to saying how much we dug it here in December. But it turns out there was some actual hot-off-the-presses Brutal Truth news we could have used as an excuse to blog about the band — except we didn’t hear about it until today. We’re clearly just a bunch of fucking slackers.

Anyway, the news is this:  on December 22 (the day before our post), Brutal Truth released Evolution In One Take: For Grindfreaks Only! Volume 2. Evolution In One Take…is the band playing Evolution Through Revolution from start to finish, in one live take at Mark It Zero studios with engineer Dan O’Hare. Per the band’s label (Relapse),  Evolution In One Take… comes with a limited edition patch and is strictly limited to 2,000 copies worldwide. Additional release details can be found here.

Not sure there’s a point to this — an album that consists of the band playing the same songs released 8 months ago, except in one take instead of with engineering. But we’re so hot for Brutal Truth (in a strictly Platonic way) that we’ll listen to it and let you know. In any event, we’re now up to date. So there.

LISTMANIA (Part 5,357)

 Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 242009
 

So you thought we had finally reached the end of year-end “best of” lists for 2009, right? Nope. Yesterday was metal mag day here at NCS. Not only did we find the new issue of Decibel in the mailbox (see the post before this one), but cuddled right next to it was the new issue of Revolver, which includes Revolver‘s list of “The Top 20 Albums of 2009.” Like the new issue of Decibel, this copy of Revolver boasts a cover date from the future (Jan/Feb 2010), which is further proof that Revolver has access to the same quantum wormhole used by the rest of the magazine industry to send copy back in time. If only they’d told me something potentially remunerative, like who won the Super Bowl.

Lots of bands on Revolver‘s list are exactly what you’d expect. But there are some peculiar choices too. For example: Rammstein.  Best of 2009? Really?

To see Revolver‘s list of “The Top 20 Albums of 2009,” continue reading after the jump. And because we had fun in the preceding post showing you the demographic data Decibel uses in selling ads, we might as well show you the same kind of data Revolver uses to describe its audience. Continue reading »

DECIBEL SEES THE FUTURE

 Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 242009
 

Those gun-jumpers at Decibel magazine are at it again. Not content to select their list of the Top 40 albums of 2009 in about October (see our previous post about that), the issue that just hit my mailbox (optimistically dated February 2010) includes a feature called “The Top 25 Most Anticipated Records of 2010.” At least Decibel‘s writers poke fun at themselves in the intro that precedes their many following pages of prognostications:

“Decibel‘s always been about more than more past and present: Our powers of clairvoyance increase exponentially with each new day.  Hell, our grip on the future is such that we’re thinking about covering the coming decade’s 100 best metal albums before summer, just to get them out of the way.  As for the list below, remember this: We’ve heard — and utterly endorse — everything on it . . . including the stuff not yet written.”

To be honest, we were thinking of putting together our own list of bands whose new albums we’re stoked to see in 2010.  Might still do that if holiday laziness doesn’t completely gobsmack us. And we really do enjoy reading Decibel every month. But still, just can’t resist poking a little fun.

And in the poking-fun vein, we also came across Decibel‘s 2010 Media Kit. This is the sales piece that the mag provides advertisers to convince them how much folding green metalheads have to spend (yeah, right) and how all you gotta do to collect it is advertise in Decibel. Lot’s of amusing stuff in there, which you can peruse here. There’s a page of demographic data about Decibel‘s audience that’s especially juicy.

So, after the jump, we’ll show you the bands that Decibel has pegged for the The Top 25 Most Anticipated Releases of 2010. We’ll highlight the ones that prompted us to say “Fuckin’ A!” Our reactions to the rest are some combination of “maybe,” “huh?”, and “Uh, no.” And just for kicks we’ll show you that page from Decibel‘s 2010 Media Kit that provides potential advertisers with demographic data about Decibel‘s readers. Enjoy. Continue reading »

THE TEN MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS OF 2009 (Part 8)

 Listmania  No Responses »
Dec 232009
 

Here at NCS, we’re putting a different spin on year-end listmania. Ours isn’t a list of the best metal full-lengths of the year. It’s not even necessarily our list of the best individual extreme metal songs of the year. Ours is a list of the most infectious extreme metal songs we’ve heard this year. We’re talking about songs that produce involuntary physical movement and worm their way into your brain to such an extent you can’t get ’em out (and wouldn’t want to).

We’re not ranking our list from #10 to #1 because that would be too much fucking work (and your co-Authors would still be arguing about it this time next year). So, our list is in no particular order. We’re also dribbling the songs out one at a time because your lazy Authors are still debating what belongs in the remaining slots. (Yes, still.) Our list heretofore:

1.  Asphyx:  Sorbutics

2.  Mastodon:  Crack the Skye

3.  Amorphis:  Silver Bride

4.  Goatwhore: Apocalyptic Havoc

5.  August Burns Red:  Meridian

6.  Pelican:  Ephemeral

7.  Scale the Summit: Age of the Tide

And to see our eighth entry on the list, continue reading after the jump. Continue reading »

MESHUGGAH

 Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 232009
 

This is turning into video day at NCS. Not like that was our purpose when we rolled out of bed this morning. Just happened. We saw the new video released yesterday by Living Sacrifice and put that up. We put up a piece on Brutal Truth and decided, what the hell, maybe some of you haven’t seen the vid of “Sugar Daddy,” so that’s up too. And then we saw that today the almighty Meshuggah had released a video trailer for their forthcoming DVD/CD combo, Live, which is set for U.S. release on February 9. And you know, as short teasers go, it does the trick — if you’re a Meshuggah fan (as we are) it will get you hot and bothered. So watch it after the jump, along with the other videos with which we’re filling up the page today, and then come back a little later and see our eighth entry on the Ten Most Infectious list. Continue reading »

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