PENDULUM → IN FLAMES → PITCHSHIFTER → SYBREED → FATHER BEFOULED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 112010
 

The human brain, if left to its own devices without a lot of external distractions or things to focus on, and if not previously saturated with intoxicants, will jump around from place to place in all sorts of unpredictable ways. That’s kind of what happened to me and my tiny brain last night. Except I was mildly intoxicated. By the end of this post, you may think I’m still intoxicated.

It all started with a fan-filmed video of a U.K./Australian band called Pendulum playing a song called “Self Versus Self” on stage at the U.K. edition of the Sonisphere festival, which took place on July 30 – August 1. I’d never heard of Pendulum. They’re not a metal band. According to the Blabbermouth blurb that featured this video, they’re a drum-and-bass band.

What caught my eye was that, according to the blurb, Anders Fridén of In Flames joined Pendulum on stage for the  performance of that song.

As it happens, all of us here at NCS are big In Flames fans.  We’re still fans despite the slagging the band has suffered from some In Flames purists over the musical direction of their last few albums. So, I decided to watch the video, while at the same time wondering, “What the fuck is Anders Fridén doing on stage with this Pendulum band?”

The quality of the video isn’t that great, but I liked the song. So, after a little research, I found out that the song is on a Pendulum album released earlier this year called Immersion — and it turns out that In Flames recorded the song with Pendulum. Which led to another “what the fuck?” moment.

We’re clearly late to this party, because we discovered that lots of other metal blogs tumbled to this strange collaboration months ago. So we’re not just a little late to the party, we’re the kind of late where you show up and all that’s left is a bunch of people passed out in their own piss. But hey, better late than never, right?  (more unpredictable jumping around, including video and music, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

INCARNIA SWEEPSTAKES!

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 102010
 

If you’ve read our earlier post today with our review of the debut album (Proclamation) by Montreal’s Incarnia, you know that we’re hooked on the band. You also know that we’ve been trying to decipher the lyrics to a killer song from the album called “Yersinia Pestis”, which you can hear via our earlier post.

To incentivize you readers to help us fill in the missing lyrics — because it’s driving us crazy — here’s what we’re gonna do: For every reader who correctly fills in one of the missing blanks in the lyrics as they’re currently set out in our original post — or accurately corrects any lyrics that we were wrong about — we will send you a physical copy of the Proclamation CD. Even if some other reader also makes the same correct guess you do, you still win.

Of course, our ability to determine whether you’re right or wrong depends on our success in trying to contact the band and get the actual lyrics. But surely, we will hear from them eventually . . . .

You may ask, “How can NCS make this offer when it doesn’t have any physical copies of the Proclamation CD?” (Because, if we did, we might already know the lyrics.) For the answer to that astute question, and more details about our offer, continue reading after the jump . . . . Continue reading »

INCARNIA

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Aug 102010
 

Do you like keyboard-driven, Gothenburg-style melodic death metal that’s catchy as ebola and both beautiful and evil enough to keep a serrated edge on it? Well, if you do, have we got a band for you: Incarnia.

Incarnia is from Montreal, Scandinavia. Okay, maybe Montreal is in Canada (we read that somewhere), but Incarnia’s musical hearts reside in the land of bands like Dark Tranquillity, Insomnium, late-stage Hypocrisy, Mors Principium Est, and (more recently) Zonaria.

My sometimes collaborator IntoTheDarkness urged me to listen to Incarnia’s just released debut album, Proclamation (on Panoptic Records). His tastes and mine don’t always mesh, but man, they sure did this time.

For a young band’s debut release, Proclamation is a remarkably assured, remarkably sophisticated offering of melody-drenched melodeath that also triggers the headbang reflex quite nicely. The more we’ve listened, the more massively hooked we’ve become (more after the jump, including a sample track to hear . . .) Continue reading »

LORISES

 Off Topic  11 Responses »
Aug 092010
 

One of my largely behind-the-scenes collaborators on this site (Alexis) saw my totally random use of a loris photo in a recent post and sent me the video up above. I just about busted a gut laughing at it. It’s got nothing to do with metal, and I promise I’m not going to make a habit of showing cute animal videos on this site. Just this one time. Just couldn’t resist.

I still don’t think I’d want a pet that has hands. That would make me nervous. On the other hand, I think I’d prefer the kind of tricks this loris can do to my cat’s favorite trick — which is to jump on my keyboard while I’m in the middle of writing and delete everything.

This video has 3,117,938 hits on YouTube, which is about 3,117,900 more hits than we have on this NCS site.  Fucking lorises. I wonder if a video of someone scratching my pits would increase our traffic. I could make my eyes really wide while being scratched. What do you think?

I did find one related video on the YouTube sidebar after I watched this one. It’s the same loris, but at feeding time. This one is somewhat more metal. You can see what I mean — after the jump . . . (UPDATE: now with suitable musical accompaniment) Continue reading »

WRETCHED

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 092010
 

Just when we were beginning to think it was a law that all metal bands from North Carolina south to the Florida border had to sound like Mastodon or Baroness, we discovered Wretched and their new album Beyond the Gate (with that very cool Dan Seagrave album cover). Not that we have anything against Mastodon or Baroness. In fact, we’re fans. But Wretched ain’t cut from that cloth, not by a long shot.

Instead, in their new album on Victory Records, North Carolina’s Wretched are wearing the mantle of melodic, technical death metal with some interesting progressive threads woven into the fabric. Think about bands like The Faceless, Veil of Maya, and Black Dahlia Murder, and you’ll start to get close to Wretched’s musical territory. But there are also some big surprises in store.

Seven of the album’s 11 songs are fast-paced and feature shuddering rhythms with jolting staccato bass lines and weaponlike drumming, intricate math-metal riffs, and fire-breathing guitar leads and solos. The vocals are predominantly mid-range growlers, but they occasionally drop lower or vault higher into cutting shrieks.

But those seven songs aren’t simply exhibits in a case of “let me prove how fast I can play.” They’re actual songs, with structure and melody, that happen to be executed with a lot of fancy fretwork and blazing double-kicks. Wretched also spices up a few of those songs with some attention-grabbing surprises, like the brief extract from a Cuban folk song at the end of “Birthing Sloth” or the cello-and-guitar outro at the conclusion of “The Talisman”.

But there are four songs left to be discussed. They’re all instrumentals, and they’re not at all what you would expect from the musical style of the other seven.  (more after the jump, including a sample track and more examples of Dan Seagrave’s eye-catching album covers . . .) Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (No. 11): THE TOE SNACK EDITION

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  3 Responses »
Aug 082010
 

Usually when we put together these “That’s Metal!” posts, we collect an assortment of news items from a random day’s worth of reporting. But today’s piece of news is just so fucking over-the-top that we think it deserves to stand alone, without being diluted with any other stories.

It’s really a classic example of something that isn’t music but made us exclaim “Shit, that’s metal!” It’s so bizarre that there’s probably an even chance you’ve already seen it. So we’ll try to spice it up with some tasteless commentary, and of course, we’ve chosen some musical accompaniment that will follow the story.

When we saw the piece, it appeared under the following headline:

Dog chews off Michigan man’s toe, saves his life

Wed Aug 4, 4:47 pm ET

DETROIT (Reuters) – A Michigan man credited his dog with saving his life by chewing off his diseased big toe as he lay passed out in a drunken stupor.

(Bet that got your attention. More after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MISCELLANY (NO. 5)

 MISCELLANY  2 Responses »
Aug 072010
 

I guess this MISCELLANY thing is turning into a weekly installment. I do have fun with it, and I hope you continue to find it worthwhile, too.

For new readers, it’s a record of how I spent my time on a recent morning (in this case, yesterday), checking out music I hadn’t heard before. The process is pretty random. I see something that looks interesting — whether from an internet post somewhere or an e-mail we receive here at NCS or a MySpace friend request or something that shows up in the mail.

I’m still hoping our cat will bring me a new CD someday, thinking it’s a mouse. That would really be random, but it hasn’t happened yet. I try to explain what I want, but he just looks at me like that rare Sri Lankan loris over on the right. Except he’s a cat. I wouldn’t want a loris for a pet because they have hands. That would worry me.

Anyway, this MISCELLANY post is a record of what I heard, not knowing in advance whether it would be good, so you’re kind of taking pot luck right along with me. As usual, there’s an international flavor to what I found. And as it happens, I had amazingly good luck on this most recent excursion. Not 100% satisfaction, but pretty fucking close.

The performers whose new music I heard (or whose new videos I watched) were: Navene Koperweis and Alex Rudinger (U.S.), Sole Remedy (Finland), The Red Shore (Australia), Apocalyptica (Finland), and The Autumn Offering (U.S.) — with a little bonus from The Crown (Sweden).

You can hear the music and watch the vids after the jump . . . Continue reading »

A MESSAGE FROM EARLY GRAVES

 Metal News  No Responses »
Aug 062010
 

Well, I said yesterday I would be done talking about the death of Early Graves vocalist Makh Daniels, and death in general. But Chris Brock and the rest of the band have just posted a note on the Early Graves MySpace page that’s worth sharing with those of you who’ve been following our posts at NCS this week about Makh’s death.

The note includes confirmation about the funeral service that we reported earlier in the week, plus a way to make contributions for the support of the family and to pay for funeral costs, plus news of another memorial show on August 29 in San Francisco.

The note follows after the jump. Continue reading »

NEW VIDZZZZ!

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Aug 062010
 

As you know if you’ve been reading our earlier posts this week, we’ve been feeling kind of bleak. But there’s only so much dwelling on the sadder things in life that we can get away with and still have anyone bother to read what we’re writing.

So, we’re moving on to brighter topics. And in fact, we do have some bright, metal things to write about. That’s one of the many reasons why we listen to extreme metal. It crowds into your space like a giant hairy thing, glowering at you with red-eyed, dripping-fanged, predatory hunger, panting with hot breath. But it does scare all of your worrisome cares into running straight for the exits.

First, we’ve got details on two mouth-watering fall tours that — wonder of wonders — will be stopping here in The Emerald City (that would be Seattle, not Oz). That was the subject of our first post today.

Second, two of our favorite bands just released new videos. One of those bands — Boston’s Revocation — will be on one of the new tours we mentioned in the earlier post. The other, Xerath (from the UK), is hard at work on their second album, which is very welcome news.

The 2009 releases from both bands just knocked our fucking socks off. They were among our favorite albums of that year. Both of the new videos are for tracks off those 2009 albums.

Both videos only show you the bands playing the songs, and in the case of Revocation’s, it’s a live performance. Nothing as mind-blowing as the animation in Heaven Shall Burn’s latest video, but nothing as stupid as the kind of unconnected or poorly executed imagery we see on most metal videos either. And besides, the songs themselves are hot shit.

(See the videos, plus a few more details about the news from each band, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NEW TOURZZZZ!

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Aug 062010
 

Man, have we got some breaking news for those of you who occasionally enjoy the sensation of leaving the caves where you live and spending a night in a different kind of cave — one that’s filled with really loud, skull-splattering metal and other cave-dwellers like yourselves.

We’ve just gotten confirmed dates for two new tours that make us gleeful with anticipation. Bet you can’t guess which ones.

Oh, wait. I guess you can guess which ones.

Well, bet you can’t guess the dates and places where these two tours will descend in order to lay waste to paying cave-dwellers. S’okay, you don’t have to guess, because both tour schedules are laid out in all their glory after the jump.

In our humble opinion, these will be two of the fall’s best tours. Not that it matters to you, but we’re particularly stoked because they’re both coming to a cave near us — way the fuck up here in the Northwest corner of the U.S. And there are Canadian dates on one of them, too.

(check it out after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries