A REMINDER (OTHERWISE KNOWN AS “NAGGING”)

 Uncategorized  4 Responses »
Nov 082010
 

As previously reported, I am leaving on vacation tomorrow. I will not be blogging while I’m gone. To help prevent NCS from going dark until I get back, I put out an open invitation last week for guest blog submissions. I’ve gotten a good response from readers and even a few band members — we will have some interesting shit for you to read while I’m away.

But there’s still room for more — with a catch. If you intend to send me something that we could post while I’m away, please send it to me by tonight. Given how much shit I still need to do before we leave for the airport tomorrow afternoon, tomorrow morning will probably be too late.

HOWEVER — if you’re writing something but you can’t get it to me by tonight, send it anyway. We’ll run everything we get, when I return — as long as it otherwise conforms to the conditions we outlined in last week’s invitation for posts (which you can read at this location.)

Now please enjoy today’s regular, non-nagging post immediately below this one. That is all.

DAN DANKMEYER

 Album Reviews  12 Responses »
Nov 082010
 

My experience with one-man bands — the subgenre I’ve seen referred to (pretty loosely) as “bedroom djent” — is damned narrow. About a week ago, it was limited to a universe of one: Cloudkicker. I had ignored some positive references to Cloudkicker on other metal blogs because I just stupidly assumed it wouldn’t be my thing. Then my NCS co-founder IntoTheDarkness insisted I listen to Cloudkicker and I relented. Damned good thing I did, because (as I wrote here) I thought Cloudkicker’s music was excellent.

Then I got this further e-mail from IntoTheDarkness: “ok so i know how much i raved about cloudkicker but i just found someone who outdoes him. and his name is dan dankmeyer. FUCKING AMAZING. HOLY SHIT. I can’t rly describe how good he is. just check him out.” As you can see, ITD doesn’t believe in capitalization, except for emphasis.

IntoTheDarkness and I don’t always see eye to eye, but I always check out the music he recommends (and that goes for the other co-founder of this site, Alexis). So I checked out Dan Dankmeyer, denizen of Frederick, Maryland, despite having read a mixed review of his latest release by Niek on one of my favorite places for discovering new metal, Death Metal Baboon (though he did give it a 7.5 out of 10 rating).

And once again, I’m glad I listened to ITD, because I’m diggin’ the shit out of Mr. Dankmeyer’s latest album, X, despite the fact that it omits the kind of larynx-shredding vocals I usually enjoy. If I had to classify the style, it would be guitar-driven Northern European instrumental melodic death metal, with a dash of prog thrown in for good measure. Whatever you call it, it’s damned good — and it’s free.  (more after the jump, including a couple songs to hear . . .) Continue reading »

MISCELLANY (NO. 17)

 MISCELLANY  14 Responses »
Nov 072010
 

I’ve been accumulating the names of more and more bands whose music I don’t know but who look interesting for one reason or another. Yesterday, I decided it was again time to pick a few names at random off the list and see what I might find. That, of course, is what this MISCELLANY series is all about. With the internet at my fingertips, I go exploring and I record in this post who and what I heard, not really knowing in advance whether the music will be worthwhile.

For each of the bands whose names I pick, I listen to one song, and only one song — those are the rules I set for myself when we started this series. Yes, it’s pretty random and runs the risk of not giving the music a fair chance, but I think it’s better than nothing, and over time it has proven to be a useful vehicle for exposing myself (and you) to bands we might not have discovered in any other way.

In this particular installment of MISCELLANY, I checked out three bands: Fejd (Sweden), Praetorian (U.S.), and Forsaken (U.S.)

FEJD

My first stop in this edition of the MISCELLANY tour was to watch a new video from a Swedish folk-metal band called Fejd. I saw a press item on Blabbermouth about them, which picqued my interest (though I can’t really explain why). Fejd was formed in 2001 by two brothers, Patrik Rimmerfors and Niklas Rimmerfors, who had been playing in a folk music band called — fittingly — Rimmerfors. To create Feyd, they joined together with some childhood friends from a metal band called Pathos. As they explain, the resulting music features “the weight of heavy metal in symbiosis with the typical melodic language and sadness of the Nordic folk music.”  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

RANDOM VIDZ

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Nov 062010
 

I’ve got a shitload of stuff to do in advance of my impending vacation, including advance work on this blog in an effort to keep it from going dark between November 10 and November 20. So what am I doing instead this morning? I’m fucking off, watching metal videos. Typical.

But it’s a hell of a lot more fun than doing all the crap I need to be doing. This is procrastination in action. Actually, I guess procrastination is the opposite of action. Whatever it is, I’m enjoying it, and I thought you might enjoy it, too. In case you feel like procrastinating, I’ve got five videos for you. That’s a lot of procrastinating material, but you can pick and choose if you don’t want to fuck off as much as I’ve been fucking off. The first four are live performances, with very good sound quality (and varying video quality).

WATAIN

The first offering is some quality fan-filmed video footage of WATAIN‘s October 27, 2010 performance of the song “Malfeitor” from Lawless Darkness at a club called the Baroeg in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. That Lawless Darkness album is stunningly good, and getting to watch Watain perform their evil music on stage is cool. Maybe someday I’ll get to see them in person.

(and after the jump, videos from God Dethroned, Asphyx, Pestilence, and The Browning . . .)

Continue reading »

CEREBRAL BORE

 Album Reviews  28 Responses »
Nov 062010
 

For the last week we’ve gone off the NCS rails, focusing on long songs with either no singing at all or nothing but clean singing, plus offerings of “bedroom djent” and post-rock/post-metal (whatever the hell that means). And we’re not through. We have at least one more band that’s out-of-the-NCS box to write about before we disappear on that non-blogging vacation we wrote about earlier this week.

(Speaking of which, don’t forget our open invitation to send us your own blog posts so we won’t have to let NCS go dark during the hiatus.  We’ve received three so far, plus promises that more will be coming — but don’t wait too much longer if you want to do this. Details are here.)

But, as much fun as we’ve had exploring metal that’s not our usual fare, we do miss the kind of metallic extremity that shoves egg-beaters through the skullbone and proceeds to whip the gray matter into a fluffy merengue. So, we decided to take a little break from our adventures outside of NCS land and come back home for a helping of mind-fuckery.

The devilish cooks we found are a band from Glasgow, Scotland called Cerebral Bore (apparently named after a weapon in a video game) and their recently released debut album, Maniacal Miscreation. Oh yes, this is just the kind of cerebral drill-job we were looking for. Our brains are now satisfying disassembled and chopped up into the consistency of dog food. Awesome.  (more after the jump, including a song and a video . . .) Continue reading »

LONG SONGS: RADIANCE

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Nov 052010
 

[Following our posts on Akelei, Agalloth, and Hull, this is the fourth installment of our mini-series on longer-than-average songs from recent releases by some über-talented musicians.]

In the minds of the three co-founders of this site, Necrophagist occupies a golden throne in the pantheon of technical death metal. On our metallic island, we regularly sacrifice annoying children in their name while ritually reciting Beowulf passages from The Nowell Codex.

Among Necrophagist worshippers, the blazing technicality of frontman Muhammed Suiçmez is usually the center of attention. But he’s not the only guitar wizard in Necrophagist. Sami Raatikainen, the Finnish guitarist who joined the band in 2006 following the departure of Christian Muenzner (Obscura), is also a dextrous 7-string wonder to behold.

The extent of Necrophagist’s global following is amazing, given that the band has only produced two albums in the last 11 years, and that six years have elapsed since the second one (2004’s Epitaph). At one point, a new album was scheduled for release in the spring of this year, but that turned out to be a false hope, and there’s no current timetable for release of the third album.

Sami Raatikainen joined the band after Epitaph and therefore hasn’t added his name to the Necrophagist discography. But that doesn’t mean he’s been sitting around twiddling his thumbs since 2006. Far from it. In addition to touring with Necrophagist and working on the band’s own version of Chinese Democracy, Raatikainen has been putting in the weeks, the months, the years on his own side project, called Radiance.

The debut album from Radiance is now available. It’s called The Burning Sun. It sounds nothing like Necrophagist. It’s also one long song — 49 minutes worth of song. Part Iron Maiden, part Dream Theater, part Meshuggah, and almost all Sami, it’s a beautifully constructed, superbly executed work that’s worth the time required to hear it straight through.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (No. 20): THE SPUNK, SNUFF, CATCH, AND BLOW EDITION (and a slap at the end)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  26 Responses »
Nov 042010
 

Yesterday, we crept forth from our carefully maintained informational coccoon in search of news items that might make us exclaim“That’s Metal!”, even though it’s not music. We did that with a lot of trepidation, since we knew we would immediately be swamped with a flood-tide of bloviating, pontificating, and punditry about the results of Tuesday’s elections. Avoiding that kind of thing is why we prefer to limit our intake of news to metal.

But, we’re hard as nails, and so we plugged our ears against the cacophony and waded out into the muck, because we love every last one of you. And why do we love you, even though we don’t know you, and even though you may be a low form of life we would try desperately to escape if we did know you? Because you are here, reading what we write. You see, our love can be bought cheaply.

Where were we?  Oh yeah, we waded out into the world of hard news — and we struck gold. We found four news items that fit the criteria for THAT’S METAL!, plus one video to cap off this post. This stuff is so juicy that this post will be a long one. As usual, it includes our tasteless commentary along with the reports.

And our first item involves spunk. Specifically, it involves recipes for the eating of spunk.  (more after the jump — and this first item isn’t even the strangest one we’ve got for you . . .) Continue reading »

LONG SONGS: AKELEI

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 032010
 

Late last week we started a mini-series of posts on long songs, because coincidentally we came across a group of metal bands with recent releases of music that included longer-than-average songs. And of course it doesn’t take much to launch us off on a tangent.

So far, we’ve featured long songs by Brooklyn’s Hull and Oregon’s Agalloch. Today, we’re venturing overseas with a post about an unsigned Dutch band called Akelei.

The music of Akelei is doom. As you will know if you’re a regular NCS reader, doom metal isn’t a genre we spend much time covering. That’s because we’re not big fans of doom. And since we’re not big fans, we’re pretty ignorant about the genre. Or, to be precise, we’re even more ignorant than we are about everything else.

Akelei have been in existence since 2006, and in that time have produced a 2008 demo, a 2010 single called “Dwaaluur”, and, as of about 3 days ago, a debut full-length album called De Zwaarte Van Het Doorstane, which is Dutch for . . . something.  Google Translate says it means “The Gravity of Weathered”, but we’re pretty sure something got lost in that translation.

What we do know is that the album is almost 55 minutes long — and includes only five songs. In many ways, it’s the opposite of what we usually like — but man, have we been hypnotized by this music.  (more after the jump, including a long song to hear . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2010 SICKNESS (Part 10)

 Forthcoming Albums  12 Responses »
Nov 022010
 

Another month has passed. Another Halloween has come and gone. Here in Seattle, we are looking forward to what is supposed to be an especially wet, dark, cold, sucktastic winter — which is really saying something, given that all Seattle winters are wet, dark, cold, and sucktastic. If they weren’t, we would have the population of Los Angeles, so there’s a silver lining to that massively dark cloud.

Yes, the seasons come and they go, the great wheel of life rolls forward, and we are all one month closer to our end, whatever it may be. But as time inexorably passes, new things happen. In particular, we find out about new metal gestating in studios around the world, struggling and kicking and yearning to erupt into the air, screaming like a banshee.

And that brings us to 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 at least we’re interested in hearing, even if no one else is.

What we do in this series of posts is update 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.) After the jump, in alphabetical order, is a list of still more projected new releases we didn’t know about at the time of our previous updates, or new info about some of the previously noted releases. Continue reading »

IMPENDING PROBABLE HIATUS

 Uncategorized  33 Responses »
Nov 012010
 

No, “Impending Probable Hiatus” is not the name of a metal band, though it could be. Instead, it’s an announcement that the year-long streak of at least one post per day on NCS is probably about to come to an end. I’m about to embark on a vacation — from November 10 through November 20 — and the odds that I’ll be able to continue adding daily posts to this site while I’m away are vanishingly small. Here’s why:

1.  I will be vacationing with my adamantly non-metalhead wife. She (barely) tolerates all the time I spend on this blog when I’m at home, and if I try to continue doing that on this vacation, I will probably suffer the fate of John Wayne Bobbitt.

2.  I’ve been leaning on my two NCS co-founders to write something while I’m gone, but lately they function more as muses than actual creators, and I’m not getting my hopes up.

3.  I know from previous experience that the place where we’re going has sketchy internet access, and when it’s available, it’s slooooooowwww. So even if I could deceive my wife into thinking I’m doing something other than blogging, I doubt I’ll have the patience for it.

But I do have an idea about how to keep NO CLEAN SINGING from going completely dark during that 11-day stretch, and it involves you — because what I want to do is invite you to submit something for publication on this site while I’m gone. (more after the jump . . . including music, of course) Continue reading »

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