MEGADICK (TO THE MAX)

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  10 Responses »
Jul 052010
 

Against my better judgment and most of my principles, two days ago I watched the video of the “Big Four” performing on stage together in Sofia, Bulgaria on June 22. In fairness to me, it’s not like I searched for it. I was just scrolling through the latest drivel on Blabbermouth, looking for the occasional item of interest that does occasionally lurk within the drivel, and there it was. All I had to do was click the “play” button.

Still, I paused.   A long time.   For one thing, although I still like Slayer (and “like” is about all the enthusiasm I can muster), Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax have no current relevance to me. The fact that they broke major ground once upon a time doesn’t mean it makes sense for me to listen to their music today, when there are so many other bands I’d rather hear. For another thing, I wasn’t a slobbering fan of most of those bands even when they were current.

And for a final thing, I’ve just grown sick to death of reading about this whole “Big Four” tour. For purposes of this NCS blog, I feel compelled to keep up with current events in metaldom, but to hunt for things that really do interest me, I’ve had to pass through a fecal waterfall of interviews, press releases, and blogger babble about this fucking tour. Enough already!

And for a final, final thing, I knew if I watched the damn video I’d have to see Dave Mustaine.

But I watched it anyway. And as jaded as I am about these bands and this tour, I did get a mild thrill out of seeing all four of them on stage playing together. Certainly not because of the music, because “Am I Evil?” is a forgettable song, and no one in this performance went out of their way to turn it into something better.

That was two days ago. And then yesterday came, and I saw a transcription of an interview Dave Mustaine gave on July 1 in Vienna, and I was vividly reminded all over again why that guy makes me wanna projectile vomit and why I should have passed right over that video without pressing play.    (unfortunately, there’s more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NOTHNEGAL

 Album Reviews, Metal News  7 Responses »
Jul 042010
 

Fair warning: This will be one extended session of spittle-flecked frothing at the mouth, because we haven’t been this blown away since stumbling into a full-fledged Seattle windstorm last winter. So get the safety glasses on and strap on sanitary masks if you got ’em.

The subject of our enthusiasm is Nothnegal. They’re a band from The Republic of the Maldives that now includes two non-Maldivian heavyweights — drummer Kevin Talley from Dååth and keyboardist Marco Sneck from those Finnish swamplords Kalmah. They’ve got a four-song EP to their credit called Antidote of Realism and they’ve just signed with Season of Mist for the release of their debut album early next year.

Oh yeah, they’re also playing with Arch Enemy this month and touring Europe in the fall with the likes of Rotting Christ, Samael, and Finntroll.

And we’d wager that most of you have never heard of them. Until earlier this week, we hadn’t either. But this band shows all the seismic signs of an impending Vesuvius-sized eruption onto the scene — and based on the band’s output to date, it would be well-deserved.

If you like technically immaculate, headbangingly compulsive, Scandinavian-style melodic death metal played at autobahn speed, stay with us after the jump. Among other things, we’ll stream all four tracks from that EP and we’ll show you how to download a cut from Nothnegal’s forthcoming debut album. Continue reading »

APOCALYPTICA: END OF ME

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News  2 Responses »
Jul 032010
 

This seems to be video day here at NO CLEAN SINGING. We didn’t plan it that way, but we just keep running across brand new videos from bands we like.  Here’s one more.

This one veers pretty far outside our usual stomping grounds. It’s another one of those radio-friendly hard-rock songs that Apocalyptica has been putting out with name-brand guest vocalists. This particular offering, “End of Me”, features Gavin Rossdale, former lead singer of Bush and current husband of Gwen Stefani.

So, the song isn’t metal, but it’s an Apocalyptica song, and your NCS co-authors have had way too much headbanging fun at their live shows in Seattle to ignore even a non-metal song like “End of Me”. So, we’re invoking our Exception to the Rule rule and posting the video. It’s a catchy song, it features a bunch of long-haired dudes rocking out on their cellos, and it ends with an ornately dressed woman fading into smoke.

If you’re in the mood for that kind of thing, you can watch the vid after the jump. And if not? Have a nice fucking day anyway. Continue reading »

SUICIDE SILENCE: DISENGAGE

 Metal News  1 Response »
Jul 032010
 

Suicide Silence is one of those lightning-rod bands. They came out of nowhere not so long, riding the new tide of internet-driven popularity to become one of the premier icons of deathcore. With their latest album, No Time To Bleed, they moved further into straight death-metal territory, but they’re still a lightning rod for fans/critics who get their shorts in a bunch over the tsunami-sized popularity of the band.

Most people who follow extreme metal will have an opinion about the band — you’ll either love ’em or hate ’em. We’re in the love ’em category, and we suspect the hate ’em crowd wouldn’t care nearly so much if they weren’t so fucking meteorically popular with the kids.

If you’re in the love ’em category with us, or if by chance you don’t even know what we’re talking about, the band has just released “Disengage”, a brand new video that was filmed on February 19 in the Los Angeles area with director Thomas Mignone (MUDVAYNE).

In our humble opinion, not only does the song kick the holy hell out of a placid Saturday, but the video is also a refreshingly straight-forward vehicle for the delivery of the music. There’s no stupid story line, no gratuitous T&A, no special effects — just a well-edited, multi-angled film of these dudes hammering the shit out of a good song against a pristine white background. Soak it up — or skip it — as your tastes may incline you.

And while we’re on the subject of “Disengage”, we recommend that you go back to a post we put up more than a month ago that featured the Cameron Argon (“Big Chocolate”) remix of this song. It makes a nice bookend to the original, with your squashed brain in the middle. Here’s the link.

TOO MANY HUMANS

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  8 Responses »
Jul 032010
 

We were big fans of the 2008 debut album from Montreal’s The Last Felony (called Aeon of Suffering). It was a brain-coring mash-up of technical death metal, deathcore, and hardcore styles, slightly blackened,  that we found ourselves coming back to whenever we wanted to just rock the fuck out.

We’re now greedily anticipating the August 17 release (in North America) of the band’s second effort, Too Many Humans, on Lifeforce Records. The album art up above would have warranted a test drive in our “Eye-Catchers” series, except we already knew about the band and its music, and the album title sits well with us, too. We pretty much have that thought on a daily basis, when we personally encounter or read about, uh, assholes. Just too damned many humans, and not enough emu’s.

Wholly apart from the strength of the band’s debut album, we’re psyched about the new one because of a few tastes of what’s to come. Three tastes, to be precise — and we’ll serve them up for you like delectable amuse-bouche while you wait for the main offering in August.

First, there’s a promo video for the album. We usually don’t even watch these things because so little effort goes into most of them — but this one is really well done.

Second, there’s a song from the new album (“Quandary”) that was included on the free compilation available for download from the Canadian label/distributor Sonic Unyon (the subject of a post you can find here).

And third, there’s another song from the new album that the band has recently put up for streaming, with the truly inspired title “We Are Future Housing Developements For Maggots”.

Figuratively wrap your mouth around all three tastes after the jump . . . Continue reading »

PIG DESTROYER, FOR THE FOURTH

 Off Topic  6 Responses »
Jul 022010
 

Those of us who live here in the U.S. of A. have a long 4th of July weekend ahead of us. Lots of flag-waving hoo-ha, beer-drenched barbeques, illegal fireworks, and general ignorance about the ridiculously insane, life-imperiling act that the holiday commemorates.

The self-satisfied flag-waving is something you can do when you come out on top, but I’d rather think back about what it must have been like on the original date in 1776 when all those dudes in the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence — and brought an immediate British death sentence on their heads for their revolutionary act of defiance.

Those dudes were pretty much the opposite of patriotic. They were basically yelling a full-throated “Fuck You!” across the Atlantic to the nation under whose flag they had lived and prospered, with no real plan about how to back it up when the British military machine would inevitably show up to squash them like annoying roaches.

To help get in that 1776 mood, which is kind of the opposite of patriotism, I’m gonna listen to some Pig Destroyer. Just in case you feel like a little fire-breathing metal for the Fourth, we’ve got four PD videos for you after the jump. We wish we could see your faces when you get to the fourth one. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS (Part 4)

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers  14 Responses »
Jul 022010
 

Yes, it’s time again for another installment in our irregular “Eye-Catchers” series. In case you’ve forgotten, this is both an ongoing experiment and a vehicle for discovering new music. The experiment is designed to test the completely illogical hypothesis that cool album art tends to correlate with cool music. There’s really no reason why the two should go together, but in our experience, they do go together more often than not.

Of course, our experience is completely random and anecdotal, with no statistical significance behind it at all, and undoubtedly the day will come when we’ll see a cool cover and then run for the vomitorium after we start listening to the tunes. But since we started this experiment back in April, most of our test cases have validated the hypothesis.

This experiment also provides a way for us to explore new music that we otherwise might not discover. We see eye-catching album art, and based on nothing but that, we go listen to the music.

As we explained in an earlier post, as a way of picking new music, it’s like throwing a dart at a dartboard or putting a quarter in a slot machine and pulling the handle. It makes no logical sense, except there’s so much new music from so many new bands out in the world that randomization sometimes seems as good a way as any to make choices.

Today we’ve got two test cases — two bands we had never heard before. The first one is a band from Poitiers, France, called Klone. They recently released their third full-length album, Black Days, on Season of Mist. The album cover is at the top of this post.

The second one is an unsigned band from Oregon called Arkhum, and they’re on the verge of releasing their first album, Anno Universum, in August.

How did these bands fare in our Eye-Catchers test? Read on after the jump to find out (and, for your trouble, we’ll have some music for you to hear . . .) Continue reading »

POSITIVE METAL ATTITUDE

 IQ Subtraction  10 Responses »
Jul 022010
 


Yesterday, for reasons unknown to me, our beloved bloggers at MetalSucks decided to have a “Be Nice Day” at their site and swore off their usual “dickishness” (their word, not ours). As part of that resolution, they suggested in one post (here) that readers take their favorite metal band names and spruce them up by removing references to death and negativity and turning them into names that would mesh with a Positive Mental Attitude.

I spent way too much time playing that game and making a few contributions. So did hundreds of other MS readers. My reactions to the best ones I saw ranged from subdued chuckles to coffee-through-the-nose eruptions of laughter.

For those of you who don’t read MetalSucks, or for those who do but don’t take time to wade through the comment section, I’ve collected here what I thought were the best band-name metamorphoses. Chuckle or erupt or yawn, as you see fit.

Nicemystium

Type O Positive

Cattle Appreciation

Goatherd

Bunnies in the Throne Room

Help the Client

3 Inches of Love

(lots more after the jump . . .)

Continue reading »

LMFAO: “SCIENTISTS TO STUDY THE ‘MODERN MIRACLE’ OF OZZY OSBOURNE’S SURVIVAL”

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  3 Responses »
Jul 012010
 

I don’t really have time right now to embellish this story with my own snarky comments, but it really doesn’t need much embellishment — it’s fucking hysterical all by itself.

In a nutshell, over-the-hill fruitcake Ozzy Osbourne is paying a research lab to map his genome. The lab he’s using specializes in identifying and interpreting the genetic code of particular individuals in order to find links to disease. Usually, fat cats pay them to do this because they’ve got concerns over their health.  But in Ozzy’s case, after decades of substance abuse, he’s trying to find out why he’s still alive, not what could kill him.

It’s kind of like donating your body to science, except while you’re still alive. And in Ozzy’s case, what kind of scientific advancement can we expect from the mapping of his genetic code? How to drink a fifth of vodka every day without turning your liver into Swiss cheese? Who knows? I guess we’ll find out.

Now, without further ado, here’s the gut-busting piece that reporter Georgina Gustin wrote for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (which we saw in today’s Seattle Times at this location). Your own snarky comments will be welcome.

ST. LOUIS — He is famous for many things. For his eerie scream. For his “Satan worship.” For biting the head off a dove. And a bat.

But Ozzy Osbourne mostly has become famous for indulging in decades of near-legendary substance abuse — the kind that would vanquish most — and surviving.

Scientists now may find out why.  (more hilarity after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE FREE MUSIC! (that doesn’t suck)

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jul 012010
 

Not too long ago, we told you about a Metal Blade summer sampler available as a free download on Amazon.com that includes a remarkably strong line-up of music. Unfortunately, we’ve heard that folks outside the U.S. can’t get the download from Amazon.com — though it’s probably already up on some download site if you look for it.

Yesterday, we found another free summer-oriented comp of music, this time from Canada — and it also includes some hot-shit music from some ass-kicking bands, including NCS favorites Neuraxis, Bloodshoteye, Odium, and The Last Felony, plus music from bands we don’t know but are curious to check out.

Most of the music is from previously released albums, but the comp does include a previously unreleased track from Drudgery and a song from The Last Felony‘s forthcoming new release.

The download is being made available by Sonic Unyon, a Canadian record label, distributor, and online retailer. After the jump, you can see the track listing for the album and info about how to get it (plus we’ll give you a couple tracks to stream right here, just to wet your whistle . . .) Continue reading »

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