LIVE LOVE FROM CONVERGE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 272011
 

Our brutha BadWolf e-mailed me yesterday recommending a video he’d just seen. It’s the legendary Converge performing live at Hellfest in Clisson, France, on June 18.

There are love songs and there are songs about love. What you’re about to see wouldn’t be anyone’s definition of a love song, but as Jacob Bannon explains on stage, it is a song about love. The song is called “On My Shield”, and it was self-released by Converge last July as a 7″ vinyl single (with Bannon’s stunning cover art, which you can see above). The song is full of roof-collapsing heaviness, and possibly it sounds even more brutally cathartic in this video. The imperfect, fuzz-distorted quality of the sound suits this song.

If you’ve ever seen Converge perform live, then you know these fuckers leave nothing in reserve — all they’ve got spills out on stage. They drain themselves, and they drain the audience, too. The imagery in this video captures that feeling and includes lots of clear close-ups. I also like the way it captures the glow of the stage lighting at night. But as BadWolf pointed out when he wrote me, maybe the best thing about it is when the fan shooting the video headbangs in sync with bassist Nate Newton, the camera moving smoothly up and down along with Newton. Very nice touch.

Check out the video after the jump, along with the lyrics. The song is a good reminder that in the battleground of life and love, don’t withdraw: It’s better to be carried out on your shield. One more thing: Also after the jump, we’ve added a stream of a brand new Converge song called “Runaway”, which was released on June 21. Continue reading »

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER: “RITUAL”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jun 272011
 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album from The Black Dahlia Murder.)

Well here it is, the latest and much-hyped release by Michigan melodic death metal heavyweights The Black Dahlia Murder. And let me tell you now, it seems the hype may well be fully justified. This is indeed a stunning album, all its parts fitting seamlessly, all its cogs and gears working in perfect synchronicity. Ignore those who claim that this is a sequel to Unhallowed – it isn’t. That’s a woefully limited view of things. Though those people may wish to believe that statement, having never got past the simple pleasures offered by the group’s debut, in truth this record serves to drastically further the progress that the band have shown ever since their inception.

With Ritual the group deliver an ambitious expansion of the sound of Deflorate, whose more overtly melodic twists and turns were themselves an expansion of the renewed focus and extremity of Nocturnal (still their best for me), which in turn expanded on the mix of hooks and crushing brutality found on Miasma, itself a clear step forward from the (relatively) primitive song-writing and tenebrous melodies of their debut. The lines of progression and growth are clear, and while the record remains tied to the sound that began with Unhallowed, it is far more than a rehash of old ideas, far more than a return to older times. It is a new vision that retains the identity of the old while looking boldly toward the new.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

WEEKEND VIDZ: LIVING SACRIFICE, RETALIATORY MEASURES, AND DOOMSDAY PROPHECY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 262011
 

Yesterday I saw three music videos from three bands I like, and I thought they’d make a good combined piece of entertainment for this Sunday. The music all qualifies as extreme, and no, there’s no clean singing in any of them, but there’s still a good variety of styles represented. We’ll start with a recently revealed video of Living Sacrifice performing at the Cornerstone 2008 festival. Then we’ll move to the first official video of a Finnish band called Retaliatory Measures whose most recent EP we reviewed just last week. Last but not least, we’ve got another brand new video, this one from a band we discovered in one of our MISCELLANY expeditions, Doomsday Prophecy.

LIVING SACRIFICE

I became a big fan of this band after seeing them on the 2008 tour that that marked their revival after an extended hiatus. It was one of those sets that gets burned into your memory — a performance by musicians whose maturity showed in the skill and self-assurance of their playing but whose energy level would leave lots of much younger bands in the dust. Yesterday I saw a post on their Facebook page about a video they’d never seen before of a show they did that same year — 2008 — at a festival in Illinois.

The visual quality of the footage is rough — which suits this song — but the sound quality is pretty strong. The whole package shows just how fucking heavy this band is and how much power they generate on stage. It’s a blowtorch performance of  a blowtorch song — coming up right after the jump. Continue reading »

PROGRESS

 Off Topic  17 Responses »
Jun 252011
 

Yesterday, the New York state legislature passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, and NY Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it into law shortly before midnight. Legal gay marriages can begin in New York by late July. With the passage of that bill, New York became the sixth U.S. state — and the largest — to legalize gay marriage. Overnight, it doubled the number of Americans living in states where gay people can legally marry.

Criticism of the new law has already started pouring forth from religious leaders, such as the official statement by the Catholic Bishops of New York that “both marriage and the family will be undermined by this tragic presumption of government in passing this legislation that attempts to redefine these cornerstones of civilization.” I’ve never understood that argument, but then again, I admit I haven’t tried very hard to understand it. To me, you can believe that marriage has a religious/moral component if you want, but it also undeniably has legal consequences, too, and laws like the one NY passed is a matter of extending equal legal rights (and obligations) to gay people. That seems like progress to me.

The metal scene isn’t exactly welcoming to gay people. For the most part, it’s a male-dominated, testosterone-fueled style of music. To steal a line from journalist Amanda Hess, “the human sexuality analysis generally runs along the lines of ‘that band is fuckin’ gay.'” I’ve never really understood that attitude either. To me, metal is about living the way you want and letting other people do the same. It ought to be a culture that fully embraces diversity, requiring only one criterion for admission — that you love metal. But that’s just my ideal, not the reality. The reality, as I perceive it, is that there’s a pronounced prejudice against gay people in the metal scene, which probably explains why metal musicians who self-identify as gay are so few and far between.

But, to commemorate the historic event in New York, I’m going to feature music from a few gay metal musicians who’ve come out of the closet, or were never in it (and credit again to Amanda Hess for these prominent examples). That’s after the jump . . . Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, GHOST BRIGADE, TRIALS, MINUSHUMAN, AND THE CLEANSING

 Eye-Catchers  10 Responses »
Jun 252011
 

In this EYE-CATCHERS series we usually pick music to sample from bands we’ve never heard before based solely on their album art. It’s an ongoing experiment, testing the illogical hypothesis that if the artwork is cool, the music will be, too. Today, we’re continuing that experiment with three bands — Trials (U.S.), Minushuman (France), and The Cleansing (Denmark) — all of whom have new albums on the way.

But we just couldn’t resist also featuring eye-catching artwork from forthcoming albums by two bands we already know and like very much — Fleshgod Apocalypse and Ghost Brigade. We don’t yet have any new music from those albums to toss your way, so we’ll play some older tunes from both bands as a reminder about why we care about what they’re up to. Yes, lots of bands to be covered in this post — so we’ll keep the verbiage short and focus on the art and the music.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

You knew we were going to feature the album art for FA’s next release, Agony, which is due on August 9 from Nuclear Blast. Along with Bury Your Dead (whose 2009 line-up change spurred the start of this site), they’ve sort of become the unofficial NCS “house band” (which means we wished they lived at our house so they could play for us all the time). The only reason we’re a couple days late in posting about it was so we could finish up the rest of this long EYE-CATCHERS installment. It’s a hell of an album cover, don’t you think? Credit goes to the very talented Marco Hassman. Continue reading »

WORDS, AND RICE

 Off Topic  10 Responses »
Jun 242011
 

I love words almost as much as I love metal. That’s probably why I’m so wordy in my NCS posts. That’s also why I was very interested in a message I received recently from one of our regular readers and commenters who goes by the name Utmu.  He brought to my attention a web site called Free Rice, explaining, “I see NCS as a metal blog that actively helps people/groups of people”, based in part on the effort we organized back in March (at the urging of our friend Phro) to raise money for relief efforts in Japan (see this).

When people regard you as better than you are, sometimes that can inspire you to become better. Anyway, I was touched by what Utmu said about our site, and it did inspire me to help spread the word about Free Rice. It’s a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program. It espouses two goals: (1) Provide education to everyone for free; and (2) help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

The program is made possible by sponsors who advertise on the site. So, when you visit the site, it generates ad revenue for the program. When you go there, you’ll see a word challenge. If you click on the right answer, you get a harder question. If you click on the wrong answer, you get an easier question. For every answer you get right, Free Rice donates 10 grains of rice to The World Food Program. According to the site, as of yesterday they had donated 6,499,482,970 grains of rice during 2011 and over 91 billion grains since the program started.

The site also provides this “warning”: “This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance… ” It also helps feed hungry people. As Utmu correctly wrote to me, this is something simple that metalheads can do to help the world. And if you get exhausted with the word challenges, click on the “Subjects” tab at the top of the page, and you’ll find other games that use geography, math, chemistry, languages learning, and humanities. One more time: HERE is the link. Thanks Utmu.

NOCTEM: “OBLIVION”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jun 242011
 

(Andy Synn returns to NCS after a short hiatus with his review of the Oblivion, the new album by a Spanish band called Noctem. Given my own tastes, this review left me slobbering with hunger for this album. Positively slobbering. Just sayin’.)

There is a difference between an easy comparison and a lazy comparison. Just because a comparison is easy to make does not mean it is necessarily a lazy one, nor indeed a negative one. Listening to Oblivion, the second album from these sun-scorched, blackened death metallers (or deathly black metallers – take your pick) immediately brings to mind the monstrous, imperial grandeur of Behemoth, all potent death-metal pummeling and scathing, blackened speed. Perhaps just as strongly, there are elements here of the lumbering, goliath grooves of Kataklysm and the frenzied, melodic assault of The Black Dahlia Murder.

Yet these comparisons should not be seen as an accusation that Noctem are in any way derivative of these acts; rather, the similarities come from the band pursuing a congruent path to their metallic peers, where elements and themes are recognisable yet never plagiarised, not following the path of another but exploring similar territory on their own terms and in their own particular way. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

A NUCLEAR BLAST OF FREE NEW METAL

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Jun 232011
 

‘Tis the season for free music samplers, and we’ve just gotten word of the latest — a sampler being offered for free download by Nuclear Blast Europe. You have to be on Facebook to get it, because you have to “like” the Nuclear Blast Europe Facebook page in order to receive a download link (and you’ll need to provide an e-mail address to get that). But if you’re willing to do that, as I was, here’s what you’ll get on the sampler:

01.  Hell – “On Earth As It Is On Hell”
02. Demonaz – “All Blackened Sky”
03. While Heaven Wept – “Destroyer of Solace”
04. Samael – “In the Deep”
05. Chrome Division – “Bulldogs Unleashed”
06. Hammerfall – “One More Time”
07. Mayan – “Drown the Demon”
08. Amorphis – “My Enemy”
09. Pain – “The Great Pretender”
10. Origin – “Expulsion of Fury”
11. Rhapsody of Fire – “Aeons of Raging Darkness (Edit)”
12. Symphony X – “Dehumanized”
13. Sepultura – “Kairos”
14. Lock Up – “Life of Devastation”
15. All Shall Perish – “Divine Illusion”

In my book, this is a damned attractive list. HERE is the link to the Facebook page where you can initiate the download process.

DETRIMENTUM: “INHUMAN disgRACE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jun 232011
 

NO CLEAN SINGING is still a young tyke as metal sites go, at least in human years. We’ve only been alive since Nov. 21, 2009. In human years, we’re still pissing and shitting whenever we feel like it, smiling for no good reason, and crying when we’re hungry, which is almost all the time. In metal blog years, I guess we’re closer to a teenager. Most metal blogs seem to age quickly and then die from neglect. But it will take a fucking hydrogen bomb to kill us off, so we’re still here, in the stage of life where we’re learning how to fuck.

Where was I? Oh yeah, how long we’ve been around. Well, in the 19 months we’ve been in action, we’ve written about Detrimentum from the UK no fewer than five times, going back to January 2010. Go ahead, type “Detrimentum” in the search box on this page and see what you get. The first time we wrote about them, we were raving about their 2008 debut album, Embracing This Deformity. And then we found out there had been some line-up changes and that the new Detrimentum consisted of original members Jon Butlin (guitar and bass) and Paul Wilkinson (guitar and vox) plus drummer Steve Powell, who performs with NCS favorite Anaal Nathrakh.

Time passed, as it will. Slowly, surely, the re-cast Detrimentum worked on a new album. The day came, just weeks ago, when it was finished and ready to be unveiled to half-wit reviewers like me — like a nasty, newborn brought out to see the relatives. Except this is a newborn with fangs the size of your fingers who would try to eat all the relatives, or maybe hypnotize them and then eat them, and probably succeed. And good riddance to all of the relatives, because INHUMAN disgRACE is a triumph and Detrimentum should be allowed to eat whatever the fuck they want. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NEWZ FROM ALL OVER (INCLUDING A MASSIVE INTERVIEW FAIL) AND ONE ACTUAL SONG

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  28 Responses »
Jun 222011
 

I’ve never been entirely sure about the point of metal news releases about music you can’t yet hear, albums you can’t yet buy, and tours for which you can’t yet acquire tickets, but people still seem to be interested in this kind of shit. Not me, of course. I’m so fucking zen-like in my outlook that these kinds of pointless cock-teasers just flow over me like a soft summer breeze, barely ruffling my hair. My pulse rate doesn’t move a beat from its normal, slothlike resting state. I remain as steady and unmoving as a hummingbird.

Wait, that didn’t end right. Okay, well maybe it did. Truth is, I am metal-nerd enough to get excited about this stuff, though I can’t provide any rational reason why. In keeping with our unintentional Finn-centric theme of this week’s posts, several of these items focus on Finnish metal.

So, here’s the top-level summary of news for this post: Announcement of two new European tours — one featuring Gorgoroth and Vader and the other headlined by Machine Head; a progress report on Insomnium‘s new album; word of an all-star album (and the label “all-star” is no bullshit) in the planning stages from Finland’s Spinefarm Records; and perhaps the most glaring example I’ve seen in months of an interviewer failing to ask a follow-up question (in this case, about Opeth‘s new album).

While I’ve got your attention, I might as well also throw in some music you can actually hear right now — high-quality footage of Suicide Silence performing a song from their forthcoming new album.  (all that stuff after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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