PRIMORDIAL’S “REDEMPTION AT THE PURITAN’S HAND”: A CRITIQUE

 Album Reviews  12 Responses »
May 042011
 

(NCS writer BadWolf provides a critique of the new album by Primordial, released April 26 by Metal Blade)

Primordial’s 2011 powerhouse album Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand is the black metal record I would give to my friends who listen to Fleet Foxes, and not merely because this is ‘folk metal.’ Rather, as they have before, Primordial transcends folk metal.

That term is insufficient. It has come to describe bands that shoehorn ethnic instruments and elements into what is, in the end, basically power metal repackaged. I find the practice self-deprecating and highly commercial, resulting in music with more in common with a Nightwish record than any strong sense of cultural identity. That is not Primordial. This record has nothing in common with the work of, say, Eluvite, Tyr, or Turisas, who make themselves into a travelling circus side show.

Primordial have no need of specialized instruments—no Viper violins, just guitar, bass, drums, and voice. The elements that feel meaningful and authentic are transmitted well enough in the tribalism of the drums and the melodies of the guitar. The unique sounds of Celtic folk have been alloyed completely with black metal guitars; there is no separation.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

TOXIC HOLOCAUST LEAVES YOU NOWHERE TO RUN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
May 032011
 

By and large, the so-called “re-thrash” movement has left us cold here at NCS. To be brutally honest, we’re not that much into most of the old gods of thrash who are still cranking out albums and touring (though we can still get it up for Exodus and Death Angel), and that may explain why the many bands in the last few years who’ve just re-tread the style without bringing something new to the old chassis aren’t that interesting to us.

But — there are exceptions, one of which is Toxic Holocaust. Maybe it’s our regional prejudice (Toxic Holocaust is from the Pacific Northwest), maybe it’s because we’ve had some fun at one of their smokin’ live shows in Seattle, or maybe it’s because their stripped-down, punkish approach to thrash appeals to our affinity for the raw and raucous — whatever the reason, Toxic Holocaust has been growing on us.

And so it is that we’re actually looking forward to the next release by the band — Conjure and Command, which Relapse Records will begin distributing on July 19. Man, July 19 is a long way off, isn’t it? But the teasers are starting, and the first one is a song from the new album which went up for streaming a few hours ago. It’s called “Nowhere To Run” and it got my head to moving up and down and side to side. There’s nothing fancy going on, but if you like thrash straight-ahead, unvarnished, sneering, and slightly evil, you probably ought to stay with us past the jump and check out that song.

Isn’t that a cool album cover? Continue reading »

BATTLECROSS SIGNED

 Metal News  8 Responses »
May 032011
 

(Our bro BadWolf offers a word of congratulations . . .)

It feels good to know that even in these dark days good things happen to people who deserve it, and great hard-working bands do get signed to big labels. Today is a day we can celebrate something good happening to an underground band we support.

When I last checked in with Battlecross (here), Detroit’s finest tech-thrashers, they were sounding global but bogged down in local. They’d just completed a lead singer swap after self-releasing a debut album with no backing. They were re-recording said album with said new vocalist, but had nobody to support them or release the debut V2.0.

What a difference a few months and some good press makes:  On May 2nd Battlecross announced that they have signed a contract with Metal Blade Records. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

HATE ETERNAL: “PHOENIX AMONGST THE ASHES”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 032011
 

If you’re a fan of extreme metal and haven’t yet heard that a new album from Hate Eternal is about to be released, then most likely you’ve been living in a cave. The album is called Phoenix Amongst the Ashes and it will debut May 10 on Metal Blade Records. It features a new bassist named J.J. Hrubovcak, along with the phenomenal guitars of Erik Rutan and the drumming of Jade Simonetto.

The album was recorded at Rutan’s own Mana Recording Studios in Florida with mastering handled by Alan Douches of West West Side. The interesting cover art was created by Paul Romano, who is responsible for other Hate Eternal album covers (plus album art for Mastodon, The Acacia Strain, Godflesh, Earth Crisis, and others).

Two songs from this album have previously debuted on other metal sites, but I’ve been so busy answering e-mails from people in faraway lands offering me millions of dollars in inheritances that I didn’t make time to hear them. Silly me. Late yesterday, Metalunderground.com exclusively premiered a third song — the title track. This time, I listened. “Jaw-dropping” is an overused adjective, but that was the effect the song had on me. Literally, the shit dropped my jaw. It’s an irresistible tidal wave of superheated death metal, and you should hear it.

To do that, you can visit Metalundergound here; that site has more info about the album. Or, you can go past the jump on this post and hear the song on the player we’ve embedded.  By the way, Metal Sucks will be hosting an exclusive full-album stream of Phoenix Amongst the Ashes from Friday, May 6, to Monday, May 9. I know one thing I’ll be doing this weekend. Continue reading »

CLEAN SINGING: 40 WATT SUN AND ARKAN

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  9 Responses »
May 032011
 

This site is called NO CLEAN SINGING for a reason. It’s not just a gimmick. We really do prefer our metal with harsh vocals. In part, that’s because the music of bands who feature unclean vocals tends to be extreme in other ways we like, too. But we’re not completely dogmatic about the “no clean singing” thing — we do like some metal that mixes clean and unclean vocals (see Andy Synn’s review of Scar Symmetry’s latest album yesterday, for example), and on even more rare occasions, we enjoy metal that includes nothing but clean singing. We call that kind of music “Exceptions to the Rule”.

Today, we want to write briefly about two recent albums that fall into that category of exceptions — the debut album from UK doom lords 40 Watt Sun and the unusual (and amazing) second album from a French band called Arkan. We’ll get back to our usual, nasty fare in our next post.

40 WATT SUN

We don’t claim to be experts in the genre of traditional doom metal. We try to provide variety in the music we cover at NCS, but doom is a category that we just don’t listen to very much, and as a result we’re fairly ignorant on the subject. In fact, we’re so ignorant that we knew nothing about this band and listened to a promo copy of their new album without any idea of what the music would sound like. If we’d known more about it in advance, we probably would have skipped over it. Ignorance can sometimes be a good thing, because we’re damned glad we discovered this band’s debut, The Inside Room. (more after the jump, including tracks to hear . . .) Continue reading »

AMORPHIS DEBUTS SECOND NEW SONG FROM NEXT ALBUM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
May 022011
 

Today Amorphis began streaming a second song from their next album, The Beginning Of Times, which is scheduled for release on May 27 via Nuclear Blast Records. This one is called “My Enemy”.

Now, we already warned you in our post about the first song released from this album (“You I Need”) that although we weren’t blown away by that song, we were going to continue covering developments about this album like a wet blanket. Actually, what we said was this: “. . . we’re probably going to run a feature every time anyone in the band belches or farts between now and May 27.” So far, we haven’t been tested on that boast. Fortunately, what we have today is an actual song rather than an expulsion of nether-wind.

So what about this song? Well, you can tell it’s an Amorphis melody from about the first 2 seconds — and then the first vocals you hear are GROWLY (yes!). The song includes some heavy riffing too go along with those gruff vocals, and the chorus melody is just fine. I’m calling this a step up from “You I Need”). Speaking of that first song, Amorphis is filming a video for it, which will be available in the coming weeks — and I’m sure we’ll stick it up here at NCS pronto.

Now go past the jump and listen to the new song. Continue reading »

SCAR SYMMETRY: “THE UNSEEN EMPIRE”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 022011
 

(Andy Synn joins us again today with his review of the The Unseen Empire, the new album from Sweden’s Scar Symmetry. The Unseen Empire was released on April 15 in Europe and will be released on May 17 in North America via Nuclear Blast Records — that’s the North American jewel-case cover art above.)

I have to admit right now that Dark Matter Dimensions was my favourite of SS’s releases thus far. Although the two new vocalists were not fully integrated together, I felt that the musicianship and song-writing on their last album was nothing short of stellar. Too often the band was referred to merely as an afterthought to the impressive vocals of Christian Alvestam, yet on this latest record the new vocalists have made huge, leaping bounds of progression, matching the capabilities of the musicians and material surrounding them as never before.

Comparing their performance with that of their predecessor is now a pleasure, rather than an unfortunate chore, as the harsh vocals are now more varied and aggressive, lower, harsher, higher, more emotionally convincing, while the clean vocals have also pushed themselves to greater heights, smooth yet unexpected melodies matched by digressions into piercing falsetto and powerful, intensely emotive singing. The new blood and new-found variety allows the band to explore vocal arrangements and melodies which would never have been possible or thought of with their previous vocalist. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 5)

 Forthcoming Albums  6 Responses »
May 022011
 


What the hell is that big yellow thing up in the sky? It looks vaguely familiar, but it’s appeared so rarely here in The Emerald City over the last six months that we’re having trouble placing the name. Well, maybe the name will come to us. The great wheel of the seasons surely must continue to turn someplace, but in Seattle it seems to have been stuck on Winter since, like, forever. In some parts of the world, April showers bring May flowers, but here, April showers will probably bring . . . May showers.

Okay, enough whining. At least we don’t get tornados dropping from the sky like atom bombs and wiping whole towns off the map. And even though the weather hasn’t been our friend, we have metal to make up for the cold shoulder — and there’s a bunch of new metal headed our way.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. Continue reading »

OSAMA BIN LADEN HAS BEEN KILLED

 Off Topic  23 Responses »
May 012011
 

Tonight, in a televised statement, President Obama has confirmed previous reports that a small team of U.S. military forces killed Osama Bin Laden at a compound deep inside Pakistan today and took custody of his body.

I don’t know how much this means to people outside the U.S., or what it means to people in other nations. In this country, it means a great deal, a kind of closure after nearly a decade since 9/11.  At least when I’m in my right mind, I don’t wish the death of anyone, but I confess to a feeling of relief tonight, a feeling that some small measure of justice has been done for the nearly three thousand families, both here and in other countries, who lost loved ones on that awful day.

But, really, I’m just a part-time metal blogger, and no one in their right mind visits NCS to get their “hard news”, so I’m keeping this brief and I’m going to withhold any further comment. Anyone else who feels like saying something, please do so. I just couldn’t let this pass without notice.

KRODA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
May 012011
 

Assume that you’re a near-slavish fan of Agalloch. Now assume that you saw this post by the band on its Facebook page, preceding a link: “New KRODA album sneak peak. It is awesome!” What would you do? As a near-slavish fan of Agalloch, I clicked on that link with my trusty mouse. That took me to a web page for a Ukrainian black metal band called Kroda. On that page was a music player streaming five songs from a forthcoming album entitled Schwarzpfad (which Google Translate tells me is German for “black path”).

The player was preceded by this cryptic verbiage: “Don’t download this promo-version due to low bitrate and because this mix miscontains something. Furthermore, please, don’t upload this promo-version to mp3-traders portals as ‘album’. Respect musicians and their wish to give you possibility to listen new material for free before it is officially released. The promo-player will be active only ’til 02.05.2011. Schwarzpfad album will be released via PURITY THROUGH FIRE in closest time.”

I’m really only guessing about what that means, but my guess is that some of the mixing and mastering remains to be done for the songs as they’re delivered via the player (though it sounds finished to me). I wondered why Kroda bothered to put up the stream with those kinds of reservations. But Agalloch vouched for the awesomeness of the music, even in its not-entirely-finished state, so I started listening.

I listened to every song. And then I started over and listened again. Why? Because it’s . . . awesome. And it doesn’t sound quite like any black metal I’ve heard this year. I figured out a way to embed that player here on our site (after the jump). Check it out now, because if that cryptic note is correct, the stream is about to evaporate. Continue reading »

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