THE JASSER ARAFATS

 Metal News  No Responses »
Mar 162010
 

Serendipity (noun): (1) an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident; (2) the fact or occurrence of such discoveries.

Synchronicity (noun): the coincidental occurrence of events that seem related but are not explained by conventional methods of causality.

We always get these words confused, though they’re both cool words. Both came to mind as we thought about the following chain of events:

Two days ago we wrote glowingly about the new melodic death metal opus from those Finnish swamplords, Kalmah. Later the same day, we stumbled across a press blurb about a new Finnish thrash/death metal band called The Jasser Arafats that has a debut album on the way, called Condemnation. The album cover (above) plus the band’s wacky name made us pause and jump over to their MySpace page to check out the music. And there, on the band’s MySpace page, was a notice about their upcoming performance on March 19 at a CD release party in Finland for — Kalmah.

And then, just to round everything off, the music turned out to be sick! So, we guess it was both serendipity and synchronicity. And for the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake, we found a widget that allows us to give you a stream of four of the 12 tracks from the forthcoming album. (and that, plus a little more info, you’ll find after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

LIVE SUFFO

 Metal News  No Responses »
Mar 152010
 

Those brutal tech-death godfathers from Suffocation are playing in Europe now, and some HD video of their show last Friday in Utrecht, Holland, has become available. The audio is decent, and the video — well, it’s HD and it’s great.

You get clear shots of Terrance Hobbs shredding with dreds flying, Derek Boyer playing his bass like he usually does (i.e., with the instrument almost vertical), a few glimpses in the background of Mike Smith hammering the shit out of the kit, Guy Marchais calmly riffing away on the right, and of course Frank the Tank with tongue wagging and hands tomahawk-chopping as he blasts out those brutal vocals.

If you’re a Suffo-addict like we are, this is fun to watch. All that’s missing is video of action in the pit — but we can imagine the mayhem.  Enjoy these videos of “Thrones of Bones” and (after the jump) “Suspended in Tribulation” and “Breeding the Spawn.”

Thrones of Bones

(two more videos after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FLAMING TUSK

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 152010
 

Last week we received the following e-mail:

Hey, No-Cleaners.
We definitely have a whole lot of no clean singing on Flaming Tusk’s new album Old, Blackened Century. For that and many other reasons I think you’re going to love it. The album is available as a pay-what-you-will download (yes, even $0) at http://music.flamingtusk.com.
Enjoy. In a horrifying kind of enjoyment.

Keith [aka Zosimus]
Flaming Tusk

Well, we thought that was one of the most intriguing e-mails from a band we’d received in a while. So, we hopped right over to the linked page, downloaded Old, Blackened Century, made a monetary contribution, and started listening. And then listened again. And again. And it turns out that Flaming Tusk’s stylistic flair doesn’t stop at e-mail messaging and cool album titles.

The music is indeed immensely enjoyable, in a horrifying kind of unclassifiable metal enjoyment. If you like blackened post-hardcore proggy doom sludge noise metal, well you’ve come to the right place. (read on after the jump, and we’ll give you a track to stream, too, plus some musings about band names that Flaming Tusk may have narrowly averted . . .) Continue reading »

KALMAH

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 142010
 

Melodic death metal as practiced by the Swedes and Finns is alive and well, and those swamplords from Kalmah proudly bear the standard in their sixth studio album, 12 Gauge. In our humble opinion, it’s the best music these five dudes from the northern marshes of Finland have put out since 2003’s Swampsong.

It’s the same model Kalmah have been driving since the beginning, but they’ve given their machine an oil change, a tune-up, and a supercharger, and it’s running fast and smooth. Hop in, fire it up, and the adrenaline starts flowing.

12 Gauge is filled with thrash-metal speed, hammering rhythms, and enough infectious power-metal riffs to wake the dead and set their heads to banging. But this is melodic death metal, and so 12 Gauge also delivers blistering melodic guitar solos and soaring keyboards. Pekka Kokko’s vocals supply a low-end howl that provides an effective contrast and complement to the melodies.

For variety, folk-metal stylings make an appearance on “Better Not To Tell” and “Sacramentm,” and in acoustic intros to “Rust Never Sleeps” and the title track, while black-metal style tremolo work mixes with swirling guitar and keyboard solos to flavor “Godeye”.

Lyrically, the songs are as interesting as the music. (more after the jump, including some Kalmah-style swamp metal to stream . . .) Continue reading »

VARG SPEAKS; THE DETAILS OF ARTIFICIAL ELEPHANT INSEMINATION

 Metal News, Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Mar 132010
 

When we started this site, we committed to ourselves (and to you) that we would post something new here every day — rain or shine, weekdays and weekends, holidays and mornings-after-binging — no exceptions. Inevitably, something will happen and someday we’ll fail to live up to that commitment. But so far, so good.

Thinking of something new to add every day that meets even our minimalist standards hasn’t been easy. Sure, there’s always new music to hear and then write about, but that takes a fair amount of time, which we don’t always have. So, sometimes we let our minds wander around the interwebz, just to see what might make an impression.

Like yesterday. Two things caught our eye: (1) a recent interview by black metal legend, convicted murderer and arsonist, and recently reinvigorated Norwegian recording artist Varg Vikernes; and (2) more info than we wanted to know about the artificial insemination of an elephant that was perpetrated earlier this week in Seattle, as reported in grotesque detail by the city’s daily newspaper.

Are these two items related to each other? Well, not actually, though pairing them in the title to this post seemed like an eye-catchingly good idea. Do they both relate to extreme metal? Uh, not actually. What the fuck, we fudged a bit. So sue us. Actually, don’t sue us. Read these bits instead, which include our always-incisive commentary (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

BLOODSHOTEYE: EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 122010
 

As I enjoyed Steff Metal‘s guest post from a few days ago and her unusual collection of female black metal and death metal vocalists who can growl and howl with the best of the dudes, something nagged at the back of my mind. Something I’d forgotten. Something about a killer female vocalist whose killer band had a new album coming out.

My mind is like a steel trap (rusted shut), and I knew it would come to me (probably as the answer to some completely different question). And then it hit me (like the car that knocked me out of a crosswalk last year): Bloodshoteye!

We wrote about this band (here) on the day after Christmas when we stumbled across a report that they had signed with Canadian-based label CDN Records for the release of their third album, Expect the Unexpected. We listened to some songs streaming on the band’s MySpace page, we watched some performance videos, and we were duly impressed. And not just because their vocalist, Jessica Desjardins, was an attractive woman who could belt out those broken-glass-gargling vocals we all know and love so well here at NCS.

In that previous post, we noted that the new album was due for a February release and that we would be watching for it. And sure enough the album dropped on February 12. And sure enough, we missed it (“mind like a steel trap,” my ass!). Until it came back to us as a result of Steff Metal’s guest post. So we got the new album, we listened to it, and man is it good! (read on after the jump, and listen to a sample track . . .) Continue reading »

AMERICAN DEFLORATION TOUR DEFLOWERS SEATTLE

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 112010
 

It’s not uncommon that when we see a national tour on its Seattle stop, there’s one or two bands that caused us to shell out for the tickets and one or two that we can pretty much take or leave — or worse yet, that we simply have to endure, as part of the price paid to see who we really want to see.

But that sure as hell wasn’t our reaction when we first heard about The American Defloration Tour. Black Dahlia Murder, Obscura, Augury, and HateSphere. We would have paid to see any one of those bands. To see them all on the same bill was just a fucking bonanza!

So when that stellar line-up took the stage at El Corazon on the night of March 9, all three of your NCS Co-Authors and our entourage were there to bear witness to the awesomeness, and we now file this report, along with a few photos (for which we apologize, because we forgot to bring the good camera and used a borrowed camera that hadn’t been charged and ran out of juice and, well, shit happens).  (read on after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NO CLEAN CHICKS SINGING

 Steff's Posts  No Responses »
Mar 102010
 

[Today, we’re pleased to feature a post from our occasional guest contributor from the Antipodes, Steff Metal (whose usual site you can find here). We wish we had at least thought up the wicked title to this post, but that was hers, too. And the rest of post is also pretty damned wicked. Prepare yourself to be entertained, and to discover some new music in the process.]

I went to a Cripple Mr. Onion gig. During setup I was nursing my bourbon and cola at the bar when I overheard a couple of dudes discussing Arch Enemy.

“She’s alright to look at,” one said, “but she can’t growl for shit.”

“Yeah,” his friend agreed. “Chicks can’t do extreme metal. Every extreme metal band with a chick vocalist is crap.” Therein followed a heated discussion of what chicks should be doing instead of playing extreme metal, which I’ve omitted due to the rules of common decency.

Resisting the urge to punch them both in the face, I drained my glass and wondered if I could prove his claim false. Surely there must be extreme metal bands with decent female vocals?

It’s a long-held belief among metalheads that girls can’t do extreme metal. Extreme Metal is probably the most aggressive, angry, violent form of music there is, and every study ascertains its audience as overwhelmingly male. There’s a kind of “lost boys club” surrounding extreme metal, a sort of grymm forest treehouse with a badly handwritten sign on the door: NO GIRLS ALLOWED.

I think the lack of decent female extreme metal musicians has more to do with simple maths. Hardly any girls listen to extreme metal, and of those that do, hardly any play instruments. There are hundreds of thousands of men playing in metal bands and about twenty-two girls (seriously, I counted), and if 80% of all metal is crap, then that’s only … 4.2 decent female extreme metal musicians.

No I just have to find them.  (and find them she did — read on after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FROM EXILE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 092010
 

Cerebral Metalhead is a blog we like to visit because it often turns us on to new music we don’t encounter elsewhere and because the album reviews are so well-written. On our latest visit, we read a glowing review of a self-released album called Monolith by an unsigned Atlanta prog-metal band named From Exile. So we quickly got the album, and we gotta agree — this is an amazing piece of work, and we feel compelled to help spread the word.

At its core, From Exile are two very talented guitarists — Eric Guenther and Ben Wetzelberger. On Monolith, they are joined on drums by the ever-awesome Kevin Talley from Daath. And the Daath connection doesn’t stop there. Eyal Levi co-produced the album with Guenther, handled the mixing chores, and provided a guest guitar solo on a song called “In the Faded Silence.” And the Daath connection still doesn’t stop there: Guitarist extraordinaire Emil Werstler added another guest guitar solo on “Apparition.”

Basically, with magnificent help from Talley’s accomplished drumwork, Monolith is a 32-minute treatise on guitar metal. If you found yourself on Pandora with nothing but an electric guitar and you were trying to explain it to one of those blue Na’vi, we imagine the conversation would go something like this: “Yeah, that neural thing you got on the end of your braid is pretty cool, but this thing is a fuckin’ electric guitar, and if you wanna know all the sounds it can make, slot your braid into my iPod and listen to Monolith.” (read more after the jump, and listen to a track . . .) Continue reading »

BLACK METAL MONDAY

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 082010
 

I’ve been a latecomer to black metal, but it’s been growing on me, sorta like rash that just spreads the more I scratch it. I’ve been trying to further my black-metal education (though still, I haven’t read Hideous Gnosis) while at the same time trying to keep up with interesting new releases across many extreme metal genres — which hasn’t been easy. Only so many hours in the day, unfortunately.

Basically, when it comes to black metal, I feel like a small child. In black diapers. Actually, I gave up the black diapers last week.  Figured it was time.  Because they weren’t black when I started wearing them.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to get educated. One thing I’ve learned is that the term “black metal,” standing alone, really doesn’t tell you very much. Bands that work under that banner can sound remarkably different from each other. I suppose I still associate that genre label with tremolo picking, blast beats, and evil-sounding shrieking in the vocals — but I’m discovering that’s a gross generalization that fails to capture the musical variety of “black metal.”

For example, I’ve listened to three new/forthcoming releases in the last couple weeks that are all classifiable as “black metal” but that sound dramatically different from each other — one from a legendary Norwegian band whose members are pictured above and whose name will be found in every history of the genre that has been or will be written — Darkthrone — and one from a band that is painfully obscure outside their home country (and maybe even within their home country) — Nydvind.

I really like both releases, though they sound nothing alike. Collecting some thoughts about each of them in this roundup and allowing you to stream some excerpts is as good a way as any to illustrate the variety in black metal, even as it’s being practiced today. (read on, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries