MISCELLANY (NO. 8)

 MISCELLANY  7 Responses »
Aug 292010
 

Sunday mornings really aren’t any better than Saturday mornings, but we’ve run that riff already, so no more NCS prescriptions about how to get your ass in gear (at least today). Instead, this is just another installment of MISCELLANY.

We did one of these earlier in the week, but we’re still catching up, so we’re doing another one. May have to do even one more before next weekend, because the list of things to check out has grown to ginormous proportions.

To remind you of the ground rules: I randomly check out music I haven’t heard or videos I haven’t seen, trying to stick with bands I’ve never heard before, and keeping my fingers crossed that it will be worth the time. I make a list during the week of things that come our way and then go exploring without much rhyme or reason.

It would be like throwing darts at the list, except I’m not allowed any sharp implements. So I just imagine I’m throwing darts. In my mind, I’ve only put out someone’s eye once.

What’s fun about this game is that I don’t know what I’m gonna find, or whether it will be worth a shit, except (usually) I know it will be metal. Here’s what I heard or saw, in the order of doing it, for this installment of the series: Mytra (Hungary), A Life Once Lost (U.S.), Vulture Industries (Norway), SiC (Faroe Islands), and Loading Data (France?).

Yes, this is a long list, but it’s fucking Sunday. What else are you gonna do today? You can hear and watch what I heard and saw, after the jump . . . Continue reading »

METAL FOOD = FOOD COMA

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  8 Responses »
Aug 282010
 

One of the many things we like about the comments on this site is that you never know where they’re going. They can start on one subject and finish in an entirely different place. Usually, they stay within the bounds of music, but not always.

Yesterday provided a good example. One string of comments started with Goatwhore and finished with a burger recipe. No shit.

And not just any burger recipe. This one came by way of Dutch metal blogger Niek, and included cheese-onion rolls, fried egg, bacon, gouda cheese, and a pineapple slice. And here’s what Niek’s finished product looked like:

Well, that just looked and sounded so fucking good that I had to try and duplicate it, right down to the Grolsch beer in Niek’s photo. Our results are at the top of this post, and the story is after the jump, along with suitable musical accompaniment. Continue reading »

FUCKING SATURDAY MORNING: IMMERSED IN BASS DROPS AND APOCALYPTIC HAVOC

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  21 Responses »
Aug 282010
 

Saturday mornings have to be the least memorable mornings of the week. If you remember anything about Saturday mornings, it’s usually just the fallout of whatever you did on Friday night, and the fallout usually isn’t worth remembering. In fact, sometimes all you want to do is forget.

If you’re like me on a Saturday morning, your ass is dragging and your brain feels like it’s swimming through a pool of rapidly cooling tar. All you want is to be left alone until you recover your senses in the fullness of time.

Well, fuck that shit. You may think that’s what you need, but your friends here at NCS are trained medical professionals, and we know better. We have a prescription for what ails you on this Saturday morning. We think what you need is the aural equivalent of a stun gun to the back of the head. Y’know, something that will jolt you into the world of the living.

Of course, if you really outdid yourself partying last night, this prescription could seriously fuck you up. That’s why we’re taking a page from the playbook of the pharmaceutical companies that run those obnoxious TV ads for drugs you don’t need: We’re giving you a warning:

In rare cases, people who listen to the music you’re about to hear on a Saturday morning will bleed from the ears and nose, develop uncontrollable convulsions, experience explosive diarrhea, and/or fall into irreversible comas. If you’re pregnant, listening to this music may lead to spontaneous abortions or cause your child to come into the world with its eyes permanently crossed. Do not listen to this music while driving, or while sitting, standing up, or laying down. If you are in the middle of a vicious hangover, you should induce vomiting now, in the privacy of your own bathroom, instead of risking a spew down the front of your shirt once the music begins.

By clicking past the jump to listen to the music that follows, you and your heirs and assigns agree to irrevocably release and hold harmless NO CLEAN SINGING from all resulting claims of damage, past, present, or future, whether currently known or unknown, anticipated or unanticipated, minor or fatal, and you assume all risk of paralysis, impotence, rectal bleeding, facial boils, hair loss, necrotizing fasciitis, seeping mouth ulcers, and chronic ventricular dysrhythmia.

Continue reading »

GUERRA

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 272010
 

Imagine that Dr. Frankenstein woke up after a bender one morning and decided to stitch together pieces of Lamb of God, Exodus, Atheist, Black Dahlia Murder, and maybe the pancreas from Hatebreed. Throwing the switch to charge his creation with life-giving power, the good doctor would then stand back in amazement as the powerful creature climbed off the operating table and began to rage. And it would sound something like a Connecticut band called Guerra.

Guerra released its debut album, Transmissions Through Oil and Blood, back in April, but we only discovered it recently. That debut release was preceded by hard years of playing live shows, including opening for some heavyweight names, and working on the songs that have now been collected on that album.

We could have picked a different collection of bands for our Frankenstein metaphor, and to be clear, we’re not saying Guerra is yet in the same league as the bands we mentioned.

What we were trying to convey is this: Guerra succeeds in pulling together a diverse range of metal styles, and doing it in a way that seems natural and unforced, to produce music that’s both engrossing and massively ass-kicking.  Needless to say, we do like it, a lot.  (more after the jump, including Guerra music to hear . . .) Continue reading »

MISCELLANY (NO. 7)

 MISCELLANY  5 Responses »
Aug 262010
 

Because of our trip to Portland last weekend to take in the awesomeness of the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour (for the second time), I didn’t have time for my usual weekly foray into the interwebs looking for new metal.  I’ve been catching up since then and I’ve made enough headway to warrant another installment of this MISCELLANY series.

For new readers, here’s how this thing works: I randomly follow up on e-mails we get here at NCS, or MySpace “friend” requests, or demos that come in the mail, or tips we get from readers, or blurbs that catch my eye on metal sites like Blabbermouth — and I listen to the music or watch a video. Most of the time, I don’t know in advance what the music will be like, or whether it will be good, bad, or just meh.

And then, in this post, I dutifully write up what I found, without filtering out anything. I’m usually pretty lucky in finding new music that’s worthwhile, but there are no guarantees, for me or for you if you choose to read along.

Today’s grab-bag of listening and watching included offerings from Enos (UK), Nightfall (Greece), Anachronaeon (Sweden), Against the Plagues (multinational), and Shades of Dusk (Canada). It’s kind of a long post, but here’s a top-level hint — the music is divergent in style, but everything I heard was very sweet. No filler, all killer. So stay with me.  (explanations, music to hear, and videos to watch, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FREE, LIVE, OPETH

 Metal News  No Responses »
Aug 252010
 

If you’re a fan of Opeth (and really, who isn’t?), then you probably know that the band is on the verge of releasing a DVD of their live performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall on April 5, 2010.

What you may not know is that to promote the forthcoming DVD (scheduled for release on September 21), Roadrunner Records is making available a free mp3 download of Opeth’s live performance of “Dirge for November” at that concert. 

Roadrunner says it’s “the full album version” and clocks in at almost 9 minutes, but the copy we downloaded stops short of 5 minutes and omits the acoustic guitar and clean singing at the beginning of the song.  That’s disappointing, but regardless, the song is great.

The price you pay for the download is providing an e-mail address and a name.  You’ve then got to go to the e-mail account you provide in order to get the download link.  If you’re game, click this link.

CANOPY: MENHIR

 Album Reviews  35 Responses »
Aug 252010
 

Ten days ago, we included some extended comments in one of our MISCELLANY posts about a Swedish band called Canopy, and we also put up a video of a Canopy song off the band’s 2009 album, Will and Perception.

We also found out that the day before we put up those posts, Canopy had released a new album called Menhir. We were so taken with the songs we heard from Will and Perception that we immediately got Menhir and we’ve been listening to it off and on since then.

It constantly amazes us how many talented bands are turning out excellent metal in Europe (and elsewhere in the world, for that matter) but are virtual unknowns in North America. Canopy is a perfect example.

We hope that Menhir changes that picture, because it’s packed with memorable music — a very strong follow-up to Will and Perception, which is itself an album worth tracking down. (our review of the album, plus a track for you to hear, plus links for free downloads — all that, and more, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE SUMMER SLAUGHTER TOUR SLAUGHTERS SEATTLE AND PORTLAND – PART 2

 Concert Reviews  4 Responses »
Aug 242010
 

This is the second part of a two-part post about the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour’s performances in Seattle and Portland on August 20 and 21. In Part 1, we gave our impressions about the music and posted photos of about half the bands performing in Seattle.

Today, we have a random assortment of observations about our two days of metal in the Pacific Northwest, plus photos of all the bands at the show in Portland.

None of us here at NCS know what the fuck we’re doing with a camera. We like to justify our ineptitude by telling ourselves it’s just like the DIY ethic of underground metal. We also like to make excuses that divert attention from our complete lack of training, such as the constantly changing or almost non-existent light, the non-stop motion on stage, the distance from which we’re taking the photos, and — most important — the fact that we go to shows to listen to the fucking music, not to take photos, so there’s a limit to how much time we’re going to spend snapping away like a fucking tourist.

But, despite our manifold shortcomings as photojournalists, we think these pics are just barely good enough to share, so we’re sharing them — a lot of them, since 11 bands played in Portland and we didn’t miss out on any of them.  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE SUMMER SLAUGHTER TOUR SLAUGHTERS SEATTLE AND PORTLAND – PART 1

 Concert Reviews  13 Responses »
Aug 232010
 

This year’s edition of THE SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour was a celebration of death metal in some of its more brutal and technical flavors — and one out-of-place wild card that stole the show. In this case, “stealing the show” is a relative term, because the line-up of bands was so strong.

In fact, with allowances for the extremity of our musical tastes here at NCS, this was as consistently solid a line-up, from start to finish, as any tour in recent memory: Vital Remains, Animals As Leaders, Carnifex, Decrepit Birth, Cephalic Carnage, Veil of Maya, The Red Chord, All Shall Perish, The Faceless, and Decapitated.

In fact, we were so stoked about this tour that we decided to see it both in Seattle last Friday and again in Portland the next day. The tour’s last show is in San Francisco tonight, so we were catching the bands near the end of a long summer haul that no doubt wore them out. But you couldn’t tell that from the way they played. If we didn’t have day jobs and were closer to SF, we’d be tempted to take in a third performance — it was that good.

As usual, we took a crapload of photos at both performances. And in fact, most of them are crap. But we’ve been painstakingly sorting through them to find the least crappy ones that we wouldn’t be too embarrassed to share.

So, today, we’ve got some high-level reactions to what we heard from all the bands, plus photos from the Seattle tour stop. Tomorrow (now at this location), we’ll have some random observations about the scene and the crowds and a few other thoughts that aren’t really in the nature of a review, plus the best photos from the Portland show (which are a bit better than the ones we’re posting today).  (continue after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SLAUGHTERED

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 222010
 

Really a slow start here at NCS today. The three of us who put this thing together piled into a van at the crack of dawn yesterday and drove from Seattle to Portland, got settled in to the place where we were staying, and showed up early for the start of the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour.

About 9 1/2 hours later, we stumbled out of The Roseland Theater with aching body parts and heads filled with a complete deluge of metal. By the time we got something to eat and made it back to where we were staying, it was a really late night. And now it’s a really late morning.

The show was stupendously good, with no real weak spots in the performances from start to finish and lots of high points. We took a gazillion photos that will take some time to sort through and edit. We’ll put up the best of the bunch as soon as we can, along with photos we took when this same tour was in Seattle two nights ago.

For now, The Faceless is on my mind. I thought their performance and Animals As Leaders’ were the best of a very strong night. So, until we get our shit better together and put up a more complete post for today, there’s some Faceless music after the jump and a few more photos of the band performing last night in Portland. Continue reading »

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