AMORPHIS: OFFICIAL VIDEO FOR “YOU I NEED”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 202011
 


Today Amorphis released their official video for the first song they debuted from their next album, The Beginning Of Times, which is scheduled for release on May 27 via Nuclear Blast Records. We already wrote a post about that song when it was first released and don’t really have anything new to say about it. We weren’t blown away, but it’s still Amorphis, and as we warned you then, we’re going to continue covering developments about this album like a wet blanket between now and May 27.

So, without further fucking around — go watch the video after the jump. That is all. Continue reading »

VARIOUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 202011
 

To supplement Andy’s review of the recent show in Leicester by The Faceless, Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, and Gorod (here), I threw together some breaking news of interest to me (and perhaps you), plus some new music and videos (also of interest to me, and possibly to you, too). The subjects of this post: Bewilderbiest, Nekrogoblikon, Fit For An Autopsy, Adam Gray (Texas in July), and Your Chance To Die.

BEWILDERBIEST

NCS co-founder IntoTheDarkness doesn’t write for NCS much any more, but at unpredictable times he texts me in bursts of enthusiasm about new music or new developments in the scene. Yesterday was one of those days. So, credit to him for this first piece of intriguing news.

Bewilderbiest is a new band, a “super group”, if you will. Somehow, IntoTheDarkness became aware of the recent, unheralded appearance of this band on Facebook. So far, I haven’t seen any fanfare about this, but it sure does command interest. Check out the line-up of band members:

Sacha Dunable – guitar (Intronaut, Graviton)
Derek Donley – drums (National Sunday Law, Graviton)
Charles Elliott – vocals, guitar (Abysmal Dawn)
Derek Rydquist – bass (The Faceless)

I think this makes the 5,231st band that the super-talented Sacha Dunable is involved in. No music is yet available, but based on some internet sleuthing, I did discover that the band are finishing up work on their debut effort and that the genre focus will be doom. When we have more to report, we’ll clue you in.  That Facebook page is here, though the content is pretty spare at the moment. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE FACELESS / BORN OF OSIRIS / VEIL OF MAYA / GOROD – Leicester, Sub91, May 17, 2011

 Concert Reviews  3 Responses »
May 202011
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn has been burning up his keyboard this week. Today we’re featuring Andy’s review of live performances by The Faceless, Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, and Gorod in Leicester, England, on May 17, 2011.)

Leicester’s Sub91 is a nice venue. It was my first time there and I was definitely impressed. The layout is spacious but focussed, with a well-positioned sound-desk, a nice-sized bar at the rear of the venue and a large, open stage which provides a good space for the band as well as a clear viewing area for the audience to watch. A perfect venue for tonight’s tech-tacular spectacular.

First up were French Jazz-Tech-Metallers Gorod, who quickly get down to business with a bruising, thrashy assault of complicated riffs and complex song structures. New singer Julien Deyres supplemented the more traditional death growls with an additional hardcore/thrash bark thrown in for good measure, whilst drummer Samuel Santiago performed as an obscenely tight machine on the drums, potentially the best drummer on the entire bill, handling the multitude of timing and tempo changes with ease, while maintaining an unrelenting pace throughout.

Guitarists Mathieu Pascal and Nicolas Alberny were reasonably static presences throughout, capably delivering impressively technical trade-offs and hook-filled tech-riffs with aplomb, while occasionally dropping down for a good old-fashioned headbang, which only served to reinforce the old-school 80’s thrash vibe of their performance. Think Atheist, Sadus, Martyr, but with a more modern, tech-ed up and souped out extreme metal edge.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

“DELIVER US” FROM IN FLAMES: THE VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
May 192011
 

We’ve already featured the first song — “Deliver Us” — from the new album by In Flames, Sounds of A Playground Fading, and pronounced it a noticeable step up from the disappointments on A Sense of Purpose (that post is here).  It’s a damned catchy song with better vocals by Anders than he delivered on AOP. No, it’s not a return to the glory days of Clayman, but this band has been there, done that, and have moved on, whether diehard fans like us approve or not. At least “Deliver Us” provides some hope for a better version of the current In Flames than ASOP.

This morning we saw the official video for “Deliver Us” and it’s a very tasty piece of eye candy — beautifully filmed, with striking images of a shining ferris wheel at night and fireworks blazing in the sky — and the band members blazing away on their instruments inside the ferris wheel cars. I’ll leave the connection between the imagery and the song’s lyrics to other cinematics. I’ll just say it’s fun to watch (and that song continues to grow on us).  See it after the jump (you might want to take this one to full-screen if you can) . . . Continue reading »

THE TWO BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR SO FAR: SYLOSIS AND XERATH

 Album Reviews  37 Responses »
May 192011
 

(NCS contributor Israel Flanders steps up with his nominations for the year’s two best albums of the year to date. Agree or disagree in the Comments, won’t you?)

Let’s just address something here . . . A ton of kick-ass new music has been unveiled in the year thus far, but some of the new releases have obviously been better than others.  While my choices are controversial, I’m going to talk about, IMO, the two most essential albums of 2011 to date:  Sylosis‘s Edge Of The Earth and Xerath‘s II.

I know, you’re asking me, “No TesseracT!?  No Devin Townsend!?”  Believe it or not (given my tastes), I liked Deconstruction, but it just felt like Devin repeating himself and starting on the path to self-parody, and I love One, but it was too little too late, on top of suffering from a syndrome of repetitiveness.  With that said, let’s dig into these two albums shall we?  I’m not going to go into real depth here; instead, I’m gonna let the songs I’m providing speak for themselves.  I will give a brief overview of what you are getting yourself into, though, so let’s get started.

SYLOSIS: EDGE OF THE EARTH

This is the best melodic metal you’re going to hear all year.  Sylosis has been well on the way to taking their place amongst the metal greats, but this album surely will seal the deal. What we have here is a combination of old school metalcore, early Metallica, and Forbidden that provides a stunningly vicious, thrashing melodic assault.  This band doesn’t play around one bit, wasting no time in laying down the punishment with a plethora (and I do mean a HUGE ASS plethora) of riffs — every single one of them memorable, every single one of them hitting hard with technicality and tasteful execution. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

BYFROST SPEAKS OF DEATH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
May 182011
 

As we were reminded by the new THOR movie, in Norse mythology, Bifröst is the name of the burning rainbow bridge that reaches between Midgard (the world) and Asgard, the realm of the gods. The phonetically identical word BYFROST is the name of a Norwegian metal band that has become one of our supreme favorites, providing a burning bridge between our humble reality and an under-realm of primal, massive, blackened death metal ruled by the almighty riff.

When we reviewed their debut album Black Earth last July, we explained that listening produces “the sensation of being shaken like a rag doll by giant, clawed hands in time to a hellish beat.” Not only was Black Earth one of our favorite albums of 2010, we also named a track from the album (“Desire”) as the first entry on our list of 2010’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs (here).

We knew the band was at work on a follow-up album for release at some point this year, but this morning we got details from the awesome publicist/manager Patricia Thomas that lit up our faces like those of children in a candy store. For example, we now know the album title — Of Death — and we now have the awesome cover art by Christian Sloan Hall (above), and we now know that the album was co-produced by Herbrand Larsen and Ice Dale of Enslaved (Larsen also makes a guest appearance on two tracks). And even better, we got the actual candy, too: The sound of two new tracks from that forthcoming album — “Of Death” and “Buried Alive”.

Stay with us after the jump for more details about the album plus a first listen to those two new songs (which, by the way, will send horns to the fucking sky). Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 11: THE AXIS OF PERDITION

 THE SYNN REPORT  24 Responses »
May 182011
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn turns in his latest SYNN REPORT. It’s safe to say this is the most unclean of Andy’s reports yet.)

Decadent filth-mongers The Axis Of Perdition have been on an unholy mission for many years now, spreading their terrible gospel of sickness and depravity to all those disturbed or lost enough to listen to their ravings. Over the course of 3 albums and 1 EP (with a new record, Tenements, imminent) they have mutated and corrupted the minds and souls of their listeners, displaying a nauseating growth and spread which is as fascinating as it is disgusting.

Comparison to fellow British urban blackened grinders Anaal Nathrakh is inevitable (particularly comparing early AN and early Axis…) but whereas Anaal Nathrakh epitomise the superiority of the urban predator, perfectly evolved for maximum carnage, The Axis Of Perdition occupy the opposite end of the spectrum, the imperfection of urban decay, the collapse of progress into inevitable decline and pestilent rot.

The band also dabble and delve into occult themes and sickening blasphemies, stealing widely from Lovecraftian lore and the modern day computerised horror of the Silent Hill mythos to express their deep-seated antipathy towards the surface of things, beneath which lies another world of indescribable repugnance and shit-covered, drooling madness. (more after the jump, including disgusting songs from each of the band’s albums . . .) Continue reading »

THE EMPIRE OF AUGUST BURNS RED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
May 172011
 

August Burns Red has a mega-sized fan base. Let’s just take their Facebook “likes” as an indicator of that: 807,942 “likes” as of this writing. That’s a shitload. Now, I don’t mean to suggest we’re in awe or anything — we’re closing in on that number ourselves. With just 807,651 more likes, our NCS Facebook page will tie August Burns Red’s. So, we’re not in awe, we’re just stating the fact: For a metal band with a hardcore edge of extremity to their sound, they’ve built an unusually large empire of fandom.

The three of us who originally founded this site are among those fans, and we’ve posted about them a lot since we started NCS. They’re not as extreme as most bands we write about here, but they’re smart, creative songwriters, they play with passion, and their musical output shows they’re not standing still. Oh yeah, their songs are also distinctive and really memorable — so much so that we named ABR’s song “Meridian” (from the Constellations album) to our inaugural list of The Ten Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs of 2009.

ABR has a follow-up to Constellations due for release on June 21, called Leveler. It features that interesting cover art above (by Jordan Crane) showing a house that’s been leveled (see what they did there?) by a tornado or hurricane or some kind of disaster, but with life going on anyway. Or at least chicken life. It’s not your typical metal cover, but we still thought it was eye-catching.

With the album release fast approaching, ABR has begun the process of fan titillation by uploading the first song from the album for streaming. It’s called, naturally enough, “Empire”, and it’s a metalcore bruiser. After the jump, we’ve got that song for you plus some additional details about the album. Continue reading »

KLONE YOURSELF

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
May 172011
 

Too infrequently, we write about music that we pick out for listening based solely on the album cover art, not knowing anything about the music itself. Last July we did that for an album called Black Days by a French band called Klone. To crib from what we wrote about the album back then:

Well, it’s not my usual cuppa tea, which tends toward the more skull-pulping leaves grown on the jagged crags of Tartarus. For one thing, there’s a lot of more-or-less clean singing. . . . But, unexpectedly, I’m really diggin Klone. At a very high level (like, from space), the music straddles a line between the darker side of progressive metal and Chevelle-style hard rock. The instrumentalists are sharp and technically impressive, and even when his vocals are clean, Yann Ligner has an invigorating edge to his voice. The songs cover a wide range, from crosses between doom and prog, to melodic headbanging anthems, to dark dreams of hypnotic ambiance.

Today, we have some news to report about Klone: First, they’ve released a brand new two-part single called The Eye of the Needle that’s available for free download — and it’s absolutely worth hearing. Second, we came across a recent official video for one of the songs from Black Days, and it’s absolutely worth seeing. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT: DECONSTRUCTION

 Album Reviews  25 Responses »
May 162011
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn has many things to say about Deconstruction, one of two forthcoming albums from The Devin Townsend Project. Both albums will be released on June 21 (one day earlier internationally) by InsideOut Music and Century Media. We got very enthusiastic listening to “Sumeria” when it leaked on YouTube, but now that we’ve received our review copy and listened to the whole thing, brevity is the last thing on our minds. )

Settle in people, this is going to be a long one.

And deservedly so, as there’s simply so MUCH to digest here, often TOO much in fact. As an exploration of one man’s psyche, this record is one to immerse oneself in, swimming deep and letting the currents pull one to and fro, absorbing what feels most natural to each listener. Some have already grandly stated that they “got” this release from the off, or that everything makes sense to them – which of course is fine –yet I feel that perhaps this is a record only Devin himself will ever “get” fully, as the record IS him, and he IS the record.

I also question whether or not the record is even designed to make sense; more and more it seems to follow a linear (yet at times disjointed) story arc that speaks of the man finally letting his inner child out to play, finally and fully expressing itself, be it through raging tantrums or wistful, child-like wonder.

My advice to listeners is this: trying to swallow the whole mechanical carnival of musical themes, rapidly swinging moods and sheer gamut of emotions on display is an almost impossible task, liable to overwhelm the individual and leave them feeling over-stuffed and unable to enjoy the delectable morsels offered to them.

Instead. put the record on and allow it to capture your attention naturally, piece by piece. Dive in with your senses open, but don’t stuff yourself trying to grasp everything at once. It’s a record designed to be enjoyed and examined over a long period of time, and is clearly going to fuel endless debate and discussion. You will enjoy it far more if you focus on making calm connections with what bits of the music most suit you, rather than trying to mould yourself to fit a record whose identity is synonymous with its creator and not with its listeners.

A full track-by-track breakdown follows the jump… Continue reading »

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