RICHES FROM THE IVORY COAST AWAIT! (AND SCOTT DEWAR RAISES HIS DUPLICITOUS HEAD)

 IQ Subtraction  13 Responses »
Dec 082010
 

So, maybe you thought I’d lost interest in all the Africans trying to give me money? Or maybe you thought all those African would-be benefactors had lost interest in me? Maybe you thought I’d shelved my plans for the beer-filled Cube pool, the Grolsch vortex fountain, the Lorisarium filled with delectable slugs, Fleshgod Apocalypse at my personal beck and call, and all the other grand plans for my promised wealth, including at least a $500 contribution to US orphanages?

Well, perish all those thoughts. You haven’t seen more e-mail exchanges with those African philanthropists for the sole reason that I’ve been busy with other important shit, like listening to Finnish metal, venting about Christmas, and generally sitting on my ass day-dreaming.

But it’s time to pick up the thread. (And no, this doesn’t take the place of another installment in Finland Tribute Week — we’ll have that for you in another hour or two.)

Though discouraged by the lack of follow-through from some of the motherfuckers people who contacted me from places like Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, and Burkina Faso, I haven’t given up hope. Surely, the day will come when my dreams of avarice will become glorious reality. In fact, a new opportunity has presented itself, courtesy of a touching e-mail from a young woman in the Ivory Coast (officially known as The Republic of Côte d’Ivoire), a country in West Africa that borders the afore-mentioned nations of Ghana, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

Oh — I also got yet another e-mail from Robert Scott Dewar. You remember him, don’t you? He’s one of those cocksuckers officials at the British High Commission in Abuja, Nigeria, who first led me down the path that I now can’t get off of. If you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, and assuming you care to know, you can read about it here and here. And there’s even more of this nonsense available via the IQ Subtraction category link over on the right side of this page.

So, after the jump, my recent exchange with Ms. Rose Ture, plus my effort, once and finally, to put Mr. Dewar in his proper place (which would be about a yard up the hershey highway of a bull elephant). Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: BILL SKINS FIFTH AND MEDICATED

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Dec 072010
 

Thanks again to all the commenters who’ve sent us band suggestions for our ongoing tribute to Finnish metal — and by all means, keep those suggestions coming. We’re still calling this thing a “Tribute Week”, but we’re being really flexible in how we define “week”.

For today’s installment, we decided to focus on relative newcomers. We picked one band off the suggestion list in fairly random fashion — Medicated. And for our lead item, we’re focusing on a band with the attention-grabbing name of Bill Skins Fifth, who contacted us about their first EP in September. We listened to the EP’s opening song back then and got immediately addicted. But we still put the EP aside because of something else we were in the middle of, and our attention wandered, as it often does.

We’ve kept that EP on our list of music to check out more thoroughly, and now maybe it’s just as well we didn’t write about it earlier, because it’s a natural fit in this Tribute Week series.

If you like music that sticks in your brain and rattles the fuck out of it at the same time, we think you’re going to dig both of these outfits. So stay with us after the post to learn more and hear some tracks.

Continue reading »

GOD DETHRONED: UNDER THE SIGN OF THE IRON CROSS

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Dec 062010
 

In our oh so humble opinion, God Dethroned‘s Passiondale was one of the best albums of 2009 — even though, in our typically half-assed fashion, we didn’t get around to reviewing it until January 2010, nine months after its release (here). It was unusual in that it was a concept album about one of the most horrific battles of World War I, fought for control of the village of Passchendaele near the town of Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium.

In that battle, the British launched massive attacks, without any decisive success until the Canadian Corps took Passchendaele in November 1917. The result? The Allies had captured a mere 5 miles of new territory at a cost of 140,000 combat deaths — about two inches per dead soldier. And then five months later the Germans recaptured the ground they had lost, without resistance.

Passchendaele became a symbol of “grinding attrition warfare” and the heedless sacrifice of human life by inept military commanders. It would have remained a symbol of senseless sacrifice to this day, except with the passage of time, most people now know nothing about it. But God Dethroned resurrected the memories and constructed a masterful soundtrack to the horrors of that war.

But Passiondale did not exhaust Henri Sattler‘s interest in World War I. He and his bandmates in God Dethroned have now released the second concept album about “The War To End All Wars”. Under the Sign of the Iron Cross (the band’s 9th studio release) is, if anything, even more intense, more emotionally powerful than Passiondale, and it’s simply brilliant — a raw, ravaging assault on the senses that’s also loaded with infectious riffs and dark melodies. If we had the ambition to make our own list of 2010’s best albums, Under the Sign of the Iron Cross would be on it.  (more after the jump, including a track for you to hear . . .) Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: CHILDREN OF BODOM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Dec 062010
 

In this ongoing Finland metal tribute, we’ve been trying to focus on bands that are new to us, because we’re selfish like that. But really, how could we run a series on Finnish metal and not talk, at least briefly, about what is arguably the country’s most visible extreme metal export — Children of Bodom?

The three of us who started NCS have been diehard COB fans for many years. Whenever we get wind that they’re coming anywhere near Seattle on tour, we react like Pavlov’s dog at the dinner bell. For us, it’s hard to get enough of that speedy, hooky, identifiably COB brand of thrashy, flashy melodeath or Alexi Laiho’s shredtastic solos, and in just about every way you want, they put on a kickass live show.

These dudes have come a long way from their underground days. They’ve perfected a signature sound — you hear the first few bars of a COB song, and you know it’s them — and it’s a sound that causes shitloads of people all over the world to salivate.

Next year will bring more worldwide salivating, with the scheduled March 8 release of the band’s seventh studio album, Relentless Reckless Forever. The recording is done, and the band has even finished a music video for the first single, “Was It Worth It?”, which was filmed in Pennsylvania (?!?) and will feature two-time X Games gold medalist and two-time Thrasher Magazine “Skater of the Year” Chris Cole as well as pro skaters Jamie Thomas and Tom Asta. So it’s gonna be some kind of skate-thrash party song apparently.

With significant fan popularity and commercial success have come some questions: Has COB become so reliant on that signature sound that they’re starting to become formulaic in their song construction? Is their musical growth slowing? Are they losing that underground edge they used to have? Was 2008’s Blooddrunk album something of a let-down, despite the fact that it was the band’s biggest seller of all time?  (more after the jump . . ., including a bunch of COB music) Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: TYRANNY, COLOSSEUM, AND SKEPTICISM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Dec 052010
 

In today’s installment of our make-it-up-as-we-go tribute to Finnish metal, I’m doing something I probably shouldn’t do. I’m writing about a genre of metal about which I’m almost completely ignorant.

Wait a minute. Why did I just say I shouldn’t do that?  If I were to limit myself to subjects I know something about, this site would have folded long ago. Either that or I would have been forced to change the focus to NO CLEAN UNDERWEAR. I wonder what groverXIII would have come up with as a banner for that?

Anyway, since I’ve never let abject ignorance stand in the way of expressing my opinions, I’m forging ahead. And you can’t stop me! Today, the focus is on funeral doom, Finnish style. Since I know next to nothing about this genre, I’m being guided 100% by the suggestions we received when I solicited ideas for this ongoing tribute.

And speaking of ongoing, in an e-mail Andy Synn helpfully pointed us to the following passage in the quite hysterical Uncyclopedia:  “Earth’s orbit around the sun also contributes to it’s aging process. Each new orbit is considered one local year, which in universal terms of time is simply a standard galactic week. As you can imagine, the Earthlings don’t get much done within this massive waste of time.” And yes, this does put Finland Tribute Week in an whole new perspective.

The suggestions on which I relied came from what appear to be some very reliable sources. Misha Nuis, the vocalist/guitarist for Akelei (a Dutch band whose very impressive 2010 debut album we reviewed here) and self-professed doomster, pointed us in the direction of Tyranny, with these words: “This is crushing funeral doom at its best. If you put this album on and sit down while it plays, you’ll find it hard to get up again after it’s finished. That’s how heavy it is.”

Our second source, CarlSk, named two more Finnish funeral doom bands, one of which was Colosseum. And finally, Canopy‘s Fredrik Hultgren brought Skepticism to our attention, calling them “nothing short of amazing” and “mesmerizing” on stage. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

DECIBEL’S TOP 40 EXTREME ALBUMS OF 2010

 Listmania  25 Responses »
Dec 042010
 


The current issue of DECIBEL magazine — the only print metal mag we read any more here at NCS — has been sitting un-read for the last week.  I’ve been too busy listening to music and dealing with, y’know, life. But this issue does list the magazine’s choices for the Top 40 Extreme Albums of 2010, (despite the fact that more than a month was left in the year when this list was compiled). I’ve at least perused the list, and I have to say, I nearly fell out of my chair in pleasant surprise at the No. 1 and No. 2 albums of the year. Hell, I was pleasantly surprised at the list as a whole, and how many choices I thought were right on.

Of course, it’s missing albums I think should be listed (including the two quite recent releases by Evocation and God Dethroned), but there’s a lot of very heavy, very good music on this list.

We thought you might like to see the whole list if you’re not a subscriber and haven’t seen it elsewhere. Here you go, in rank order from bottom of the list to the top:

40. Darkthrone, Circle the Wagons
39. Lantlos, .Neon
38. Hail of Bullets, On Divine Winds
37. The Dillinger Escape Plan, Option Paralysis
36. Decrepit Birth, Polarity
35. Intronaut, Valley of Smoke
34. Early Graves, Goner
33. The Body, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood
32. Father Befouled, Morbid Destitution of Covenant
31. Deftones, Diamond Eyes
30. Nachtmstium, Addicts: Black Mettle Pt. II
29. Christian Mistress, Agony & Opium
28. Unearthly Trance, V
27. Fear Factory, Mechanize
26. Pivixki, Gravissima

(and the Top 25 follow after the jump . . .)

Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: DEMILICH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 042010
 

Fuck, but I do love the comments on this site. For a good long while after we started NCS, we didn’t get any, but eventually they grew like magic mushrooms. A big part of the magic, at least for me, is the introductions we’ve gotten to bands we didn’t know about. That’s one of the objectives we had when we started NCS — one we’ve tried to follow through on consistently: Introduce people to new music, usually from bands that aren’t household names, at least here in the U.S. And in the process of trying to do that, we’ve learned about lots of new bands ourselves.

Case in point: this Finland Tribute Week thing we spontaneously started a few days ago. (We could have done this with other countries — and we will — but Finland just kinda emerged as the focal point of its own accord.) We invited suggestions for Finnish metal, and man, did we get them. They’re still coming in — and by all means, don’t stop! (The best place to continue adding suggestions is on this post — it’s a good collection point not only for me but also for readers who are as interested as I am in exploring new sounds.) We’ll still work into the daily posts some of our regular features, and maybe a new album review here and there, but I really don’t see any reason to put an artificial stop to the Finland tribute. The music is so richly varied and so good that it just makes sense to continue rolling with it.

Plus, it’s proving to be such a good antidote to Christmas season fuckery that rolling it right through the holiday is just what a good (witch)doctor would prescribe. Plus, who says we have to define a week by reference to the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis? We’ve discovered that it takes Mercury about 58 Earth-days to rotate once around its axis, which would make a week on Mercury the equivalent of 406 Earth-days. 406 days in a row of Finnish metal might be pushing the envelope past the rupture point, but it sure gives us a lot of leeway while continuing to call this series Finland Tribute Week. We like leeway.

So far, we’ve had three days in a row of Exceptions to the Rule. Don’t get me wrong — the music has been strong despite the presence, in varying degrees, of clean vocals and sweeping melodies. But to be brutally honest, I’ve had this gnawing hunger for something that’s harsh and nasty, like the feeling I get when I’m stuck in a place where I can’t smoke for hours on end. So today, we’re veering back in the more typical NCS direction with Demilich.  (And given how many intriguing recommendations we’ve received, we’ll probably start to double-up on these posts in the coming days, or this thing really will go on for 406 days.)  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

GROVERXIII IS A SWEET DUDE

 Uncategorized  22 Responses »
Dec 032010
 

I’m about to ruin groverXIII‘s reputation as a hard-nosed metal blogger.

Before I do that, get out your calendar and draw a big red circle around December 21. On that day, The Number of the Blog will celebrate its one-year anniversary. On that day in 2009, groverXIII published the first post on his brainchild. It happened to be exactly one month after the day when we started NCS.

In the almost 12 months that have followed, groverXIII and his talented colleagues have turned TNOTB into an extremely entertaining, extremely informative, content-rich, heavily trafficked home for metalheads. I can’t imagine that anyone who visits NCS hasn’t discovered TNOTB, but if you haven’t, you ought to.

Now, on with the ruining of groverXIII’s reputation. Less than a week after we observed our own Year One birthday at this site, he e-mailed me with an offer to produce for us “a shiny new header for the site’s second year.”

Now, bear in mind that this dude is raising a family, holding down a job, writing prolifically for his own site, and undoubtedly doing all sorts of other things in the operation of TNOTB — and he offers to spend time he probably should have used sleeping to help give us a new look. In other words, groverXIII is one good dude.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FINLAND TRIBUTE WEEK: GHOST BRIGADE

 Exceptions to the Rule  7 Responses »
Dec 032010
 

Contrary to widely held belief, it is not true that 100% of metal emanating from Finland is awesome. The actual statistic is 95%. We’ve speculated before that this is because of something in the water supply over there that mutates 3 out of every 4 fetuses in the womb into riff-meisters. Or maybe it’s Finland’s proximity to Estonia.

Seriously, the whole damned country has only got a population of 5.4 million souls — a little smaller than the population of Wisconsin. How many awesome metal bands are from Wisconsin? No offense to Wisconsin, but we’re having trouble thinking of even one. Now, how many awesome metal bands are from Finland? The actual count is 2 gazillion. It’s true.

No, seriously — it’s statistically demonstrable (as shown here) that Finland has more metal bands per capita than any other country on Earth — and a high percentage of them are good.

So, it should be no surprise that we write about Finnish metal bands a lot here at NCS. This year, we’ve written long or short reviews of music by Kalmah, Kivimetsän Druidi, The Jasser Arafats, Cyphosis, Cavus, Apocalyptica, Blastanus, Sole Remedy, Sotajumala, Survivors Zero, Man-Eating Tree, Gloria Morti, Amberian Dawn, Radiance, Amorphis, and Before the Dawn, and probably some others we missed in our searches.

But we’re not finn-ished writing about Finns. We’re doing a little impromptu series on Finnish metal. We’re calling it Finland Tribute Week, though we’ve gotten so many intriguing suggestions about Finnish metal bands from our commentators since we announced this series that we may have to re-name it Finland Tribute Month. It started two days ago with a post about Amorphis, and that a-morphed into a post yesterday about Before the Dawn. And today, we’ve got Ghost Brigade.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

HELP A BROTHER OUT!

 Uncategorized  89 Responses »
Dec 022010
 

We need help. No, we’re not referring to psychiatric counseling. Of course, we do need that, but we’re afraid that if we got it, this site would become as dull as dishwater. So no psychiatric counseling.

Instead, we need help with music. Two kinds of help, to be specific:

FIRST, we’re going to make an attempt to reprise something we did last December — creating a list of the Ten Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs of the year. After the jump, we’ll reprint last year’s description of what that “Most Infectious” label means. What we’d really like you to do is send us your nominations.

We’ve got our own ideas, but there were a ton of new metal albums released this year, and we sure didn’t hear all of them. Hearing from you would reduce the chances that we’re overlooking songs that really ought to be on our list. Plus, this seems like a good way for all of us to discover some new tunes.

SECOND, without meaning to, we’re on a Finnish metal roll. We certainly didn’t plan it that way, but hey, flexibility’s a good thing, even if you’re not a contortionist. Yesterday we featured Amorphis, and earlier today a band called Before the Dawn. And in one of the comments we got, our UK contributor Andy Synn suggested we have a week-long tribute to Finland.  He may have only been half-serious, but it sounded good to us — so we’re gonna roll with that.  (more after the jump about what we want from you . . .) Continue reading »

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