ARES KINGDOM

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
May 132010
 

With damned few exceptions, we only write about bands we like. So if you come here often, you’re used to reading compliments about this band or that one. If we only give compliments — even when we really mean every one of them — maybe it starts to get difficult to make an impact with our praise. What do superlatives really mean when everything you say is a superlative?

Some people say that about us, but we really don’t fucking care. We ain’t changing our ways. Plus, we think we know how to make clear when a band really throws us out into an abyss of awesomeness that’s deep and wide — when a collective of musicians truly caves in our skulls in an irreparable way. Today is one of those days, the band is Ares Kingdom, and the album is aptly called Incendiary.

This is one of those instances when we feel especially challenged in our ability to accurately describe in words a sensation produced by powerful sounds. Obviously, we’re gonna try, but all we can hope to achieve is rough justice. You gotta listen for yourself to really understand what these dudes have pulled off.

How to sum this up? What’s striking about this band is their ability to connect deeply to the roots of thrash and death metal and make those sounds come alive with the same power and authenticity that have caused the genres to live as long as they have, but at the same time to create something new and amazing.  (continue reading after the jump, and listen to an awesome song from Ares Kingdom . . .) Continue reading »

NOT-SO-FUNNY SHIT (Hour of Penance Update)

 Metal News  No Responses »
May 122010
 

I guess this post is a bookend to the first one we put up today. It involves some sucky breaking news from Italian death-metal band Hour of Penance. Shit happens to all sorts of bands every day, and we usually don’t comment. But we really dig Hour of Penance — their new album Paradogma is one of our favorite releases of 2010 to date (see our review here) — and we know a lot of you dig the band, too.

So, here’s the story. Hour of Penance was on the tail end of a European tour, playing at a venue called “Coyote Ugly” in Alicante, Spain. Soon after taking the stage, it became apparent that the drummer Mauro Mercurio wasn’t able to play, and the band announced that it would have to cancel the set. Employees of the venue then began seizing the band’s equipment and other belongings, and the police were called in.

Turns out that before taking the stage, Mercurio had smashed a 50-inch flat-screen TV and done other unspecified damage to the venue. Mercurio was taken off to the police station and detained for 48 hours, at least in part because his ID had been taken by the venue’s employees. Eventually, all the band members were able to make it back home to Italy, but had to cancel the last 3 shows of the tour in Spain.

The band’s official statement on this incident, which we’ll reprint after the jump, refers to this as “what looks like to be our last tour with this line up.” Not good. Mauro Mercurio is one truly amazing drummer, but, reading between the lines, it appears he’s got a problem with intoxicants. We hope the dude is able to sort out his shit and get back on track. And we hope Hour of Penance can rebuild and move forward.  The band’s official statement, with more details about this incident, follows after the jump.

UPDATE: The news has gotten worse.  We’ve just learned that as a result of the incident in Alicante, Hour of Penance vocalist Francesco Paoli has left the band. You can read about those depressing details at this location.

FURTHER UPDATE: We’ve added an even more recent post with further details from Francesco, including the suggestion that Hour of Penance may not be dead after all. Check it out by following this link.

Continue reading »

FUNNY SHIT (and we do mean that literally)

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  4 Responses »
May 122010
 

The May/June issue of Revolver magazine arrived in our mailbox over the weekend. What we enjoyed the most was not the cover story about the 2010 “Revolver Golden Gods” awards show (which was largely irrelevant to what we care about in the current extreme metal scene). What we enjoyed the most was Revolver’s verbatim report of a conversation that took place at a dive bar in New York City between Adam Dutkiewicz and Mike D’Antonio of Killswitch Engage and frontman Mikael Stanne of Sweden’s Dark Tranquillity.

As you may know, KSE and DT toured together earlier this year. When Dutkiewicz and D’Antonio formed KSE back in 1999, one thing that united them was their love of Swedish melodic death metal, and Dark Tranquillity in particular. As they got to know Stanne better while touring, they discovered they had more in common than elements of their music. Like a mutual attraction to the Travel Channel (?) and (wait for it) . . . eating competitions.

And green shit.

So after this threesome did some Jack Daniels shots at that dive bar, the conversation eventually turned to the subject of eating competitions, and Revolver was there to record what they said. We thought it was pretty fucking funny.

Granted, our standards of humor here at NCS are pretty low. For example, as you’ll see, we laugh at anything that involves shit. Still, we thought you might find the conversation funny, too. After all, if you’re reading this site, your standards are also pretty low, by definition. So, after the jump, we’ll give you the best excerpts of that Dutkiewicz-D’Antonio-Stanne dialogue from Revolver. Continue reading »

THE RODEO IDIOT ENGINE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 112010
 

The Rodeo Idiot Engine is a metal band from the Basque Country (Euskall Herria) — that cultural region that spans the border between France and Spain on the Atlantic-coast side of the Pyrenees Mountains.

Man, you gotta love the name of this band. It describes so many human phenomena, and so many people. It metaphorically captures that device inside lots of homo sapiens (mainly the ones with testosterone) that makes them want to do ridiculous things like climb on red-eyed bulls and try to hang on for just a little while — and avoid getting stomped to death in the process — or play in extreme metal bands.

In addition to having an eye-catching, creatively freaked-out name, this band plays some ear-catching, creatively freaked-out metal.

They’ve just finished their debut EP, The First Fall — six songs of barely controlled mayhem clocking in at about 15 minutes total. The band’s influences shine through the music (at least as we hear it) — The Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, and Coalesce — except not even a hint of clean singing.

If you can wrap your mind around an amalgamation of those sounds, The First Fall is something you might want to check out. It’s an audio onslaught of mathcore tempo jaunts, insanely furious vocals, and a distorted, thud-heavy low end that sets up a harmonic vibration in your lower gut.  In two words, it’s fucking cool.  (more after the jump, including a song to stream . . .)

Continue reading »

THE OSEDAX

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  No Responses »
May 102010
 

We were hopping around the interwebz last night looking for metal news. We saw a blurb about a Virginia band called The Osedax that had just put up three new songs for streaming. Didn’t know anything about them. But sometimes we check out unfamiliar, unsigned bands for completely random reasons, like cool album cover art or an unusual name.

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.

So, in the case of The Osedax, it was the name that made us take the next step. There are lots of extreme metal bands with weird names. Some of them turn out to be completely made up, and The Osedax certainly had the ring of a made-up name. But it was weirdly interesting enough that we decided to find out more about the band, if for no other reason than to investigate where the name came from. And it turns out that Osedax is the name of an actual life form that’s a real mind-bender.

We’ll come back to that eventually, but to continue with the current story: A bit of web surfing took us to a page where we saw some artwork for the band, presumably created for their forthcoming EP (the band’s first release). And that turned out to be cool — and it became even more cool after we discovered the connection between the art and the source of the band name.

So, we had a new chance to test out our completely illogical theory that in the world of extreme metal, cool album art correlates more than you’d think with cool music. (We explored other test cases here and here.)

And whaddaya know? More confirmation for our theory — because we’re really digging the music of The Osedax. So, with apologies for this tedious wind-up, continue reading after the jump to see the pitch — more about the music, more album art, more info about what an Osedax really is, and a widget that will allow you to hear those three new songs. Continue reading »

ARMA GATHAS

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 092010
 

Arma Gathas is a riff machine. Seriously, we’ve seen it. It’s got these big slots where you feed in raw materials — guitar strings, fret boards, rusty nails, the severed claws of Black Forest wolves, barbed wire, well-oiled jackhammers, a hive of hornets that’s just been lit on fire, a gassed-up chainsaw — and on the other end are these giant fucking speakers, out of which come one blistering riff after another.

Actually, we saw the Arma Gathas riff machine in a dream. But we still think it was real, because we’ve got confirming evidence: the band’s debut album on Metal Blade, Dead To This World.

The members of Arma Gathas have honed their craft with some bands you’ve probably heard of. Guitarist and riff-genius-in-residence, Simon Fuellemann, was also a founding member of Cataract (among others). Vocalist Ché Snelting used to front Born From Pain. Lead guitarist Marc Niedersberg played with Machinemade God and Cornelius. And the resume of drummer Max van Winkelhof includes Disloyal.

You could draw a few correct inferences about the sound of Arma Gathas from the lineage of its members, but that wouldn’t give you the whole picture. To fill out those images of metal-infused hardcore, you’d need to sketch in some jolting guitar solos, some splashes of thrash and punk, a hailstorm of power grooves, some moody instrumentals, and even passages of melodic death metal.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

UTOPIUM

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 082010
 


If you visit this site for more than a few days, you’ll realize that our interest in extreme metal spans a pretty broad range. On any given day, if we happen to be writing about a style of metal that isn’t your cuppa tea, just wait a day or two, because we’ll have moved on to a band that plays in a very different genre.

But sometimes in the course of listening to new music we coincidentally find ourselves in a groove. This week, by random chance, we’ve stumbled across bands that play in the chaotic sandbox of grindcore. Yesterday we wrote about Early Graves, a Bay-area band whose music includes grind among its influences. Today our fixation is a band from Portugal called Utopium, and their sound is even more strongly rooted in grind — though they’ve also added some other elements to the mix (just as their name appears to be an amalgamation of Utopia and Opium).

We first heard Utopium a few months ago on a A Tribute to Nasum, a compilation of Nasum covers by bands from all over the world, including the likes of Coldworker, Misery Index, Leng Tch’e, Rotten Sound, Mumakil, and Total Fucking Destruction. Within the last month, Utopium self-released their first album, Conceptive Prescience, and they’ve just made it available for download on that marvelous Bandcamp platform that we wrote about here.

Conceptive Prescience has some rough edges — though some would say that’s exactly what grind is all about — but Utopium has definitely got enough raw talent on display that we’re going to watch their future trajectory with interest.  (more after the jump, including a song to hear and info about where you can download the album . . .) Continue reading »

EARLY GRAVES

 Metal News  No Responses »
May 072010
 

Early Graves is a Bay-area band we hadn’t heard of until yesterday. But a combination of cool cover art for their forthcoming second album (above) plus the following verbiage from their press release grabbed our attention:

San Francisco’s Early Graves have completed the follow up to their 2008 debut We: The Guillotine. Their new record, simply entitled Goner, is a ragged, pissed off amalgamation of heavy self-medication, year long blackouts and all the depression of a thousand yard stare.

Combining the best elements of Hellacopters/Turbonegro rock n’ roll with Black Flag’s and Bad Brains’ inspired hardcore with a crushing balance of both Morbid Angel’s heaviness and the raw intensity of power violence pioneers Dropdead and Masskontroll, Early Graves have set the bar for complete, unhinged self destruction.

“I don’t know…” states vocalist Makh Daniels, “…I guess the record is about alcoholism… and all the bullshit that comes with it. All the ‘why’s?’ and ‘How come’s?’ and our stupid fucking excuses for it. I can’t say that this will be the heaviest record you’ve ever heard or the best recording or the most musically precise but I can say that at least, it’s fucking honest.”

Yeah, so all that plus the cover art got our attention — certainly enough to lead us over to Early Graves’ MySpace page for a listen. (more after the jump . . .)

Continue reading »

APOCALYPTICA GETS THE GOJIRA TREATMENT

 Metal News  No Responses »
May 062010
 

Those chill cellists in Apocalyptica are set to release their seventh studio album 7th Symphony on August 23rd (August 20 if you live in Germany). Per a press release issued yesterday, the band will continue its relatively recent but oh-so-successful practice of including guest vocalists on some of the songs.

The first single, “End Of Me”, will feature Gavin Rossdale, best known as the vocalist of Bush. Another one, “Broken Pieces”, will include vocals by Flyleaf singer Lacey Sturm, and “Not Strong Enough” will be sung by Brent Smith (Shinedown).  Looks like we’re in for more hard rock from Apocalyptica.

We can’t honestly complain about this, because we’ve got a serious weakness for Apocalyptica, even though their music has drifted far beyond the boundaries of what we write about here at NCS.

But here’s the part of the press release that’s worth a mention on this site:

The album also features a number of other notable guest performances: Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo plays on “2010”, [and] “Bring Them To Light” features Joseph Duplantier, singer and guitarist of the French death metal band Gojira . . . .

Say what?!?  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SLACKER SUCKFEST

 Mosh Pit  5 Responses »
May 062010
 

I’m so fucking bummed I can hardly see straight, and if I don’t get it off my chest, I’m afraid my eyes will stay crossed permanently.

My day job took me and one of my co-workers (he uses the name Ullr when he comments on this site) to Oakland yesterday. We finished what we had to do and we had the whole night to kill before our return flight to Seattle this morning.

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we ate some awesome Central American food, including grilled, endorphin-inducing serrano peppers, and pounded down some tasty margaritas with chile salt at a place called Tamarindo, and then Ullr got on his iPhone to see if there was any live music we could hit up.

And what a fucking bonanza he found! The Evisceration Plague Tour was scheduled to play at Slim’s in San Francisco, with the doors opening at 7:00. If you don’t know about that tour, it’s a sick line-up: Cannibal Corpse, 1349, Skeletonwitch, and Lecherous Nocturne.  And it was only 6:30 when Ullr stumbled across that bonanza. What could possibly go wrong? Lots, as it turned out. (more of this suckfest saga after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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