“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (No. 12): THE BULL, BOOBS, and BEER EDITION

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  4 Responses »
Aug 212010
 

A mental chime reminded me that it was about time for another edition of “THAT’S METAL!“. Or it could have been the microwave announcing the readiness of another gourmet meal. Or possibly the sound of a beer can hitting a stack of empties.

Anyway, I decided it was time to venture timidly forth from my carefully maintained informational cocoon into the fearsome world of, gulp, hard news, to see if there might be something that would cause me to exclaim, “Shit! That’s metal!”, even though it’s not about music.

Sure enough, I found a few items — even though I had to wade through some typically depressing news about shit like wars, unemployment, environmental catastrophe, legislative stalemate, and crime, to get there. I try hard to remain ignorant about current events because it’s so fucking depressing/nauseating. But duty to our readers trumps depression and nausea every time!

I did find some nuggets in the cesspool of current events though. They involve a bull leaping a wall and rampaging through seated fans at a bullfight, new ways in which boobs can be used to score some quick cash, and driving without a license — and without a tire.

And of course, we include our usual tasteless commentary plus musical accompaniment  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

P.S.

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 212010
 

SUMMER SLAUGHTER was in Seattle last night. I went with one of my NCS cohorts (Alexis) but left after Cephalic Carnage. Why? Because all the perpetrators of this site are  leaving at the crack of dawn to drive to Portland today. Why? To see SUMMER SLAUGHTER in Portland. Why? Don’t ask.

So, I’ll get to see the first 5 bands twice. For now, three words:

Animals. As. Leaders.

More words:

Cephalic. Carnage.

ARKHUM

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 202010
 

We first stumbled across an unsigned Oregon band called Arkhum about six weeks ago. We were intrigued by the striking cover art for a yet-to-be-released album and included the band in one of our occasional EYE-CATCHERS features (here). At that time, the only music we had available to us were rough mixes of two songs for the forthcoming album and an earlier 2009 track. But those three songs certainly grabbed our attention in  a big way.

Much has happened to Arkhum in those six weeks. Today, the band officially releases its debut album, Anno Universum, and we can now report that they have been signed by the Vendlus Records label (home to such talented bands as Agalloch and Wolves in the Throne Room), which will begin distributing the album worldwide later this fall.

Arkhum was kind enough to give us an advance copy of the eight songs on Anno Universum and we’re happy to report that our earlier instincts about the band have proven to be correct: Anno Universum is stunning — one of the best debuts we’ve heard in 2010.

We got so excited about the music that we pestered Arkhum for an interview, and brothers Stephen and Kenneth Parker patiently answered our meandering questions. In the post immediately below this one, you can read that interview, which turned out to be pretty damned interesting.

In this post, we’ll try to explain why Anno Universum has made such a strong impression on us and why we think you’ll be hearing lots more about Arkhum in the months to come.  (more after the jump, including a song from the new album . . .) Continue reading »

ARKHUM: AN NCS INTERVIEW

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Aug 202010
 

Arkhum promo

ARKHUM (photo by Jessica Stover)

We were so excited about the just-released debut album by Oregon’s Arkhum — which we reviewed here — that after we got the chance for an advance listen, we asked if the band would subject itself to an e-mail interview.

Proving themselves to be kind-hearted as well as talented artists, guitarist Stephen Parker and his brother, vocalist and lyricist Kenneth Parker, agreed. They didn’t even try to back out after they saw our questions, which included such penetrating inquiries as what it’s like being in a band with your brother and whether they ever try to beat the hell out of each other.

In addition to getting the answer to that question, we also learned details about how Arkhum’s label-signing came about (which is breaking news all by itself), the science-fictional topics addressed in the album’s lyrics, Kenneth Parker’s recommendations about other bands, Arkhum’s future plans (including the next album), and more.

We thought the answers to our questions were interesting, and might be interesting to you, too. So, what follows after the jump is our interview of the brothers Parker from Arkhum. Continue reading »

PEACE, OR AT LEAST DISTRACTION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Aug 192010
 

Do you ever feel that you’re caught in some cosmic game of whack-a-mole? You’re in a dark place, maybe one you put yourself in, maybe one somebody else put you in. You’re trying to climb out, and just as you get your head into daylight, a big rubberized mallet whacks you in the skull, and down you go falling again.

You try to climb out another way, and just as you struggle above the edge of the chasm, wham! It happens again. And again. It continues to the point when all you can do is cry out to the deity of your choice, “How ’bout a little mercy for a brother?!”

If you’re caught in that game, take heart. Eventually the wielder of that cosmic mallet will get bored and move on down the carnival midway to torment some other poor schlub in some other game of chance. Unless of course you’re hammering yourself in the head — in which case you’re fucked until you figure out that you’re the one that needs to put down the mallet.

If you’re caught in that game at the moment — and it does happen to all of us with varying frequency — music can sometimes help bring a little peace, or at least a little distraction from that shooting pain in your head while you wait for the torment to pass.

Our distraction of choice is metal, and for those of you who are currently caught in a whack-a-mole loop, we’ve got offerings from two bands with new/recent releases: Equilibrium (pictured above) (Germany) and Nattsol (Norway).   (there’s music after the jump — that’s the point, ain’t it?) Continue reading »

PRISTINA: AN INTERVIEW

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 182010
 

The music comes first. The people who make the music come second. That’s just the way it is. But when the music strikes a chord, you want to know more about the people who make it, and how they make it, because sometimes, it opens a wider window into what you hear. And sometimes it doesn’t. Like we’ve said before, musical talent doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with being able to express yourself in other ways.

We got an advance listen to Connecticut-based Pristina‘s forthcoming album on Trendkill Recordings, The Drought (Ov Salt and Sorrow), and were blown away. We posted our review of the album yesterday. In connection with our review, we asked vocalist/bassist “Evil” Brendan Duff if he would answer a few questions, and he foolishly agreed.

What started as a small handful of e-mailed questions to fill in a few blanks in our review turned into a mini-interview, and as more questions occurred to us, Brendan continued to answer (instead of telling us, “fuck off already!”), and it became something more full-fledged.

More than that, it was one of those genuinely window-opening conversations. We learned, among other things, about how this stunning album came to be, about some unusual aspects of how it was recorded, about how Today Is The Day‘s Steve Austin can come to resemble the demented shark-hunter in Jaws, about how the lyrics emerged from Brendan’s struggle to get clean from heroin, and about where this band is headed in their future music. In other words, we had a few of those days that make creating this blog truly worthwhile.

Our interview with Brendan Duff follows the jump, along with a few more tidbits of information about the band and the music. Continue reading »

PRISTINA

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 172010
 

Pristina‘s first full-length album, The Drought (Ov Salt and Sorrow), is fascinating in its diversity. It crushes like a slab of granite dropped from a high place, and it’s also searing in its unbridled, hardcore ferocity. It’s salted with unnerving vocal samples and electronic noise, and it also delivers galvanizing riffs. It grinds like a lumbering, blood-drenched tank through a landscape of sludge, and it erupts like an out-of-control flamethrower.

The Drought is raw and uncompromising, and it’s one of the most riveting collections of music we’ve heard this year.

The album consists of only five songs. Four of them range in length from about 3 1/2 minutes to about 8 1/2 — and then there’s the closing title track. It’s a 23-minute piece of mind-bending inventiveness that overcame our instinctive trepidation about songs of that length: It neither drones nor drags nor bloats its length with instrumental wankery. It is instead an ingenious, multi-phased beast that’s worth every minute of attention it demands.

The opening track, “Moonshiner”, begins with an extended sample from one of Henry Rollins’ spoken word albums, accompanied by the repetition of crushing chords and a methodical drum rhythm. Following that bruising yet hypnotic intro, Pristina erupts with Brendan Duff’s acidic screams and shuddering jackhammer riffs. The crusty sludge of those opening minutes and the more febrile blasts that replaced it then alternate, with brief interludes of acoustic guitar sandwiched in between.

That opening track sets the stage for what follows. It’s drenched in fuzzed out distortion, anchored by a dominant rhythm section, and propelled by remarkably inventive, expertly executed drumming.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE SECRETS OF GROWLING AND SHRIEKING REVEALED!

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  8 Responses »
Aug 162010
 

You learn something new every day. You may not think you do, but you do.

Like on Friday, I learned that the German word for emptiness is “leere”. On Saturday, I learned that if you live in the Pacific Northwest and forgetfully leave your car window down overnight, spiders will move in and later drop on your arm while you’re driving, causing unexpected vehicular fun ‘n games. And yesterday, I learned the secrets of how extreme metal vocalists can shriek and growl really low without requiring hospitalization.

I’ve always wondered, and finally, after years of listening to non-clean singing, it now all becomes clear to me. It’s like some trade secret that finally leaked. And it turns out to be something that is easily duplicated. It just takes the right preparation and the right record producer (like Chris “Zeuss” Harris).

I’m not making this up. I learned it from a dude who ought to know — Adam Warren, who happens to be the frontman for deathcore heavyweights Oceano. It’s all in that video at the top of this post. It just takes sleeping ’til noon, some microwaved elixir, a little Lion King chord-stretching, and someone who can tell you which buttons to push.

Go ahead, see for yourself. The secrets are out. We won’t even charge you to watch. In the video, you can also see some spirited debate over whether “Contagion” is the kind of album title people will have to look up, as compared to a common street-word like, uh, “harbinger”.

Truly, Adam Warren is an engaging dude, and we can pretty much guarantee this thing will make you smile, even if you’re not an Oceano fan.  And while we’re on the subject of deathcore, word of a Whitechapel–Impending Doom–Miss May I–Oceano–I Declare War tour has leaked out. Details about that breaking news, plus an Oceano video, follow after the jump. Wonder what I’ll learn today? Continue reading »

THORNGOTH

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Aug 152010
 

With their just-released third album, entitled Leere, Germany’s Thorngoth has created an opus of searingly intense but hauntingly beautiful black music.

In English, the German word “leere” means emptiness, and in assorted German-language interviews the band’s principal creative force, Sorath, has explained that the album is intended to reflect aspects of our current time — in which much of human society experiences emotional emptiness in their daily lives and a depressive hollowness, devoid of meaning.

As a reflection of that concept, Leere is indeed filled with melancholy. The music creates an atmosphere that’s dark and brooding. Yet it’s also piercing and impassioned, charged with hammering rhythms and attention-grabbing bursts of technicality. Regardless of the underlying concept, the music itself is anything but empty. Listening to the whole album in a single sitting is a completely enveloping experience that’s both dreamlike and headbangingly intense.

With the exception of a short instrumental track, called “In der leere” (into the void), the songs on the album have no titles other than Roman numerals — “Leere I” through “Leere VIII”. So the titles don’t give many clues about the songs’ meaning. In addition, Thorngoth’s vocalist, Akhorahil, sings in German, and we’re not sure we could make out all the words even if he were singing in English.

But those Sorath interviews do give more clues to what’s going on lyrically.  (more after the jump, including a song to hear . . . ) Continue reading »

MISCELLANY (NO. 6)

 MISCELLANY  2 Responses »
Aug 142010
 

With apologies for the delay in finishing this post and getting it up on the site, here’s another installment of MISCELLANY. If this happens to be your first visit to NCS, here’s what MISCELLANY is:

About once a week I browse around the webz checking out music from metal bands I’ve not heard before. Picking them is mainly a random process, based on things like news items we’ve seen or e-mails we’ve received or MySpace friend requests that come our way or promos that show up in the mail. And in these MISCELLANY posts, I just describe what I heard and/or what I saw, pretty much as it happened, and provide the music or the videos for you to check out, just as I did.

Because I haven’t heard the music of the bands when I start browsing, I have no certain idea whether it will turn out to be good or just a waste of time. So, no guarantees for me — or for you. But most of the time, it turns out these explorations reveal at least a few gems. And that certainly happened today. Today’s finds, which once again have an international flavor: Canopy (Sweden), Purified in Blood (Norway), Man-Eating Tree (Finland), and Pristina (U.S.).

CANOPY

My first stop of the day was a Swedish band called Canopy (that’s their photo at the top of this post). Something of a convoluted story about how this band hit our radar screen: Earlier this week, we posted our review of the debut album by a kick-ass Montreal band called Incarnia. That album was released by a Montreal label called Panoptic. Panoptic and a sister label called Disconcert Music are run by a dude named Stéphane Paré (former vocalist for a Montreal melodic tech-death band called Quo Vadis).

I got an e-mail from M. Paré that led me to Disconcert’s web site, and there I found Canopy — and man, was that a good find.  (much more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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