“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (No. 14): THE QUILTS AND CLAMPS EDITION

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  6 Responses »
Sep 102010
 

It’s been a while since we featured anyone in a THAT’S METAL! post that we actually admired. Instead, it’s been Serbians who cook testicles, guys whose dogs chew off their big toes or get shot in the head and are so wasted they don’t notice, and dudes who get gored in the scrotum by angry bulls. Sure, all that stuff, and more like it, made us exclaim, “Shit! That’s Metal!”, but not really in an admiring way.

Come to think of it, we did admire that bull who spent his last few minutes on earth rampaging through a packed grandstand of yokels in Spain who were being entertained by the bull’s torment. But still, that was a bull, not a person.

Today, we’re giving a shout-out to a person here in Seattle who’s done something metal that doesn’t involve personal injury or rank stupidity. Her name is Boo Davis, and that’s her at the top of the post. But because we know you’ve come to expect some brutality and sarcastic commentary in your THAT’S METAL! posts, we’ve paired up her story with one that involves electrified nipple clamps.

Now, you know you want to continue reading after the jump, and who’s stopping you? If you need a cookie for your efforts, we don’t have any, but we do have some musical accompaniment . . . Continue reading »

FRACTAL GATES

 Album Reviews  20 Responses »
Sep 092010
 

Do you remember the first time you listened to extreme metal — of any genre? Do you remember which band it was? I bet you do. I know I do.

For me, in terms of my musical tastes, it was like I was traveling on a train and someone flipped a switch without warning and shunted the car onto a side track that headed off at a sharp angle into an entirely different landscape. The band that flipped the switch for me was In Flames. It could have been some other band, because it was a pretty random experience, but that’s who it was.

The music was so different from anything else I’d heard. It was like I’d unwittingly reached out and grabbed a live power line — it sent a current bolting through and just torched my head. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my hair had started smoking. That combination of fast, powerful aggression with harsh vocals and catchy, melodic hooks was completely arresting. I went off down that side track and never came back to the main line.

Since then, I’ve gotten into other kinds of music that’s more extreme than In Flames — certainly more extreme than what In Flames has become in recent years — but probably because of that first experience, melodic death metal is still what grabs me the hardest, and when I hear it done right, it still gets me charged up like nothing else.

Last week I listened to the latest album from a Parisian band called Fractal Gates, and it reminded me of what I felt the first time I listen to In Flames — not because Fractal Gates is an In Flames knock-off, but because they’ve succeeded so well in combining dark, threatening power with soaring melodies to produce a galvanizing result.  (more after the jump, including a song to hear, and some very interesting album art . . .) Continue reading »

YORBLIND

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 082010
 

Last week, I got a series of attention-grabbing messages from my NCS collaborator IntoTheDarkness. In one, he urged me to check out a band called Yorblind, calling it “one of the best melodeath bands I’ve heard in a loooong time.” In another, he pushed me to hear Fractal Gates:  “Sooo good. In the same vein as Yorblind and Incarnia — new melodeath bands that kick ass. In Flames really was never this good lol.”

“In Flames really was never this good”?  Really?  Well, ITD is sometimes given to overstatement, particularly when he’s trying to get me to pay attention, and I’m sure he didn’t know I would quote him verbatim. On the other hand, when it comes to metal, he’s a lot harder to please than I am. So if his aim was to get my attention, he succeeded.

Oh, and I’m soooo fucking glad he succeeded, because, really and truly, these bands are soooo good. I spent much of the Labor Day weekend using them as a soundtrack to my R&R (what little of it there was), and the music just made everything sharper, more invigorating, more zap-headed. It made me happy all over again that somewhere in the dim mists of the past I started listening to metal.

I started out intending to write about both bands in a single post, but decided that just wouldn’t be right. So today the focus is on Yorblind, and tomorrow will come a few hundred words about Fractal Gates.  (more after the jump, including, as usual, a track to hear . . .) Continue reading »

THEN, AND NOW

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 072010
 

We’ve splashed our admiration for Navene Koperweis across these pages enough times that it’s verging on stalkerish. If somehow you missed one of our many posts in which we dropped his name, he’s a self-taught drummer from California who’s also strikingly adept at playing all sorts of other instruments, too.

He used to blast the skins for deathcore band Animosity. Now, he plays with Tosin Abasi in the stunningly good Animals As Leaders, and he’s the creative and instrumental force behind Fleshwrought (with Job For A Cowboy’s Jonny Davy on vocals).

It’s not like we think about him all the time, which would be kind of creepy. But a few days ago, we saw a Facebook post by one of the dudes in FXZero that linked to a four-year old video of an Animosity song called “The Black Page” that we’d never seen.

And there was Navene Koperweis, pummeling the crap out of his drums and looking much younger than when we saw him with AAL on the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour a few weeks ago (see our photo above).

So, we thought, what the fuck — let’s put together a little audio-video montage of this dude, then and now. You can see how he’s grown in his playing and his musical interests, and all the songs happen to be fucking great, too.  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

LABOR DAY FUCKING OFF, AND OUR THEORY ABOUT HOW TO LEAD A HAPPY LIFE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Sep 062010
 

Today is Labor Day in the United States. Contrary to what someone might think based on the name of the holiday (which originally was intended as an homage to the labor movement in this country), it is not a day for laboring. It is a day for fucking off. It is not a day for serious thoughts. It is a day for getting tanked up and banging yo head.

With this in mind, we’ve selected a few items to put you in the right mood for a day of fucking off. For those readers in other nations who are unable to fuck off today, or those in the U.S. who are compelled to do something labor-like and serious despite what they might wish, we are really fucking sorry to do this to you. Perhaps you could bookmark this page and come back when you’re in a situation more conducive to fucking off.

And the idea of fucking off has inspired us to inscribe on this site, in this post which almost no one will read, because most of our readers are fucking off today, our lessons for how to lead a happy, successful, and fulfilled life. It requires this:

(1) That, when you need to, you can be serious, focused, and wise in your decisions;

(2) That you are not serious, focused, or wise any more than is absolutely necessary, and that the rest of the time you are free, impulsive, even borderline insane, and constantly expecting that good things will come your way, even when all the evidence points in the other direction; and

(3) That you are the beneficiary of pure dumb luck.

The only problem with this formula is that although (1) and (2) are within your control, number (3) is not. Striking the right balance between (1) and (2) is hard enough, and because of (3), you could still go through life as a human toilet brush. But you still need to focus on (1) and (2), because if you fuck up that balance, all the number (3) in the world won’t save you.

Today, we’re just paying attention to number (2), because it’s Labor Day. And so, after the jump, we have a couple of things to help you get in the right fucking-off mood. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY (NO. 10)

 MISCELLANY  4 Responses »
Sep 052010
 

Here in the U.S., we’re in the middle of Labor Day weekend, a 3-day break that culminates in Labor Day tomorrow. Most Americans probably don’t know the history of the holiday, or maybe even the fact that it’s intended to celebrate the labor movement (only about 12% of salaried workers in the U.S. still belong to a labor union). It’s simply viewed as a sign that summer has ended, football season is about to start, and school is resuming.

Most people spend the holiday taking it easy, goofing off, partying, enjoying the break. Here at NCS, we’re still working away like demented bees, or ants, or some kind of mindless insectile creatures that just mindlessly work until they mindlessly die. That’s how much we care about you. So we sure hope you get something out of the posts this weekend, because if you don’t, we’ll feel even stupider than we really are. Yeah, we know that’s tough to imagine, but still.

So today we have part two of the MISCELLANY post we began yesterday, finishing off the log of new music or videos we randomly checked out in a recent exploratory session. Yesterday, we left off with Synapse Defect. Today, we resume with Gloria Morti (Finland), and finish up with Steven Wilson (Kingston-Upon-Thames, Hemel Hempstead, Tel Aviv, London), and Resistant Culture (U.S.).  (music and video after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

BLACK METAL UPDATES

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Sep 042010
 

WORLD PREMIERE VIDEO

Fifteen years have passed since Immortal last released a music video. But they’ve just released a new one, for the title track of their most recent album, All Shall Fall.

It’s a great song — we’ve thought so since the first listen last year. But as much as we want to like this video, it just doesn’t match the intensity or grandure of the song — the dramatic setting notwithstanding. It’s the fucking design of their corpsepaint that’s at fault — that, and the unintentionally comical posturing. We’re sorry, but these guys just don’t look ominous or evil. They look more like Kiss with frowny faces.

Further details about the video are available at the Immortal web site.

And in other news, we have a new tour to report. Yesterday, we got all hot and bothered over the release (for free download) of the first song from Enslaved‘s forthcoming album. Now, we’ve seen the news that Enslaved will be touring North American in November and December as support for Dimmu Borgir. The other bands on the tour will be Blood Red Throne and Dawn of Ashes.

Online ticket sales will begin September 15. The dates and places are after the jump . . . Continue reading »

MISCELLANY (NO. 9)

 MISCELLANY  No Responses »
Sep 042010
 

As fodder for this latest installment of MISCELLANY, I once again played the human pinball machine, randomly bouncing from one thing to the next, checking out new music and videos without knowing much about what I’d see or hear. With one exception, I’d never heard the music of the bands I checked out in this session.

As usual, this post is a log of what I heard and saw, without filtering. I spent so much time exploring that I’ve decided to split up the report into two parts. If you’re like me, you have the attention span of a hummingbird, so I won’t push my luck with a really long post. We’ll post the second part tomorrow. The subjects of today’s post are King of Asgard (Sweden), Fractal Gates (France), and Synapse Defect (U.S.).

KING OF ASGARD

I’ve lost track of where I first read about this three-piece Swedish band, but I’ve had their debut CD for a couple weeks. It was released by Metal Blade on August 16 and it’s called Fi’mbulvintr. And no, I have no fucking idea how to pronounce that.

From the band’s name, I deduced that it might be Viking metal — Asgard being the home of the Norse gods, and the king being Odin. The very cool album cover (by Ola Larsson) reinforced that guess. And I just sort of felt in the mood for Viking metal, so my first stop was to fire up this CD and pick a track. (more after the jump, including the chance to hear the music and watch the vids . . .) Continue reading »

BECOME ENSLAVED

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Sep 032010
 

We may have started the day with Linkin Park, but we’re trying to make up for that.

You may have seen elsewhere that Enslaved has just put up a new song for streaming on their MySpace page. Called “Ethica Odini”, it’s the opening track on the band’s next album, Axiom Ethica Odini, which will be released in North America on September 28.

What you may not know is that the song is also legitimately available for free download. The band has announced a contest, inviting fans to make videos for the song. They’ll pick the best one as the track’s “official video”, with some pretty good consolation prizes for second and third place. To facilitate the contest, Enslaved has made the song available for download at this location. You’ll need to give an e-mail address, and then go to your inbox for that address to get the download link.

The song is 8 minutes of tremolo-picked awesomeness. I didn’t even mind the clean singing in the choruses or in the beautiful two-minute finish, which includes a soaring, pure guitar lead. It inserted itself under my skin like . . . like . . .like . . . uh . . .

Crap, simile fail.

What inserts itself under your skin?  Got it!  A splinter!  The song inserted itself under my skin like a splinter!  Fuck, that’s not right.  You want to get splinters out, but I don’t feel that way about this song. Well, something will come to me. In the meantime, you should go trade an e-mail address for that song.

WIDOW SUNDAY

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 032010
 

Forrest Gump famously said that “life is like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get.” There’s some truth to that. There’s also some truth to this:

Life is like a box of hand grenades with a few of the pins pulled, and you don’t know if you’ve lifted out a live one until it goes off and leaves a bloody stump in place of your arm.

Fortunately, Widow Sunday‘s 2010 album In These Rusted Veins is more like a box of chocolates. From song to song, you don’t know what you’re gonna get, but it’s all sweet. Every now and then, it also blows your arm off.

Sometimes we read album reviews that criticize bands for playing too many different styles of metal on the same album. Sometimes, the criticism is that the band isn’t good enough to pull off all the genre-jumping. Sometimes, it just seems the reviewer thinks a band ought to define its sound and stick to it — apparently for no good reason.

Widow Sunday apparently sees no good reason to be defined by one style or another. They’re also talented enough to pull of a mix of styles without falling flat on any one of them. In These Rusted Veins is almost like a mixtape or a playlist of different bands, except it’s the same band. And they go far beyond simply not falling flat — they crush everything.

In fact, the one constant on the album, despite an impressive range of musical flavors, is that all the songs make you wanna jump up and start bouncing — or slamming into things.  (more after the jump, including a track to hear . . .) Continue reading »

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