AN NCS INTERVIEW: AARON MARSHALL (INTERVALS)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Dec 262011
 

(In the preceding post today, TheMadIsraeli reviewed the debut EP from Canada’s Intervals. In this post, he follows up the review with an interview of Intervals’ main man, Aaron Marshall.)

A short introduction before you read this interview.  Aaron was kind enough, and willing to take a risk, by obliging a bit of experimentation.  I interviewed him, real time, in a Facebook chat to see how it would come out, as opposed to an email interview.  In my opinion, this is one of the best interviews I’ve gotten.  Maybe I need to try this more often.

Israel: Hey man.  So about this interview, your call.  Do you want to do an emailer or are you willing to subject yourself to an experiment and do this shit right here on the spot?

Aaron: I have a few minutes before I give a guitar lesson so we can do this now if you like.

Israel: So how did this Intervals thing start? I’ve been following you since the “Still Winning” playthrough vid was posted. You’ve got a unique take on what I’m going to call the tech-djent style and I’m really impressed with The Space Between.

Aaron: Thanks dude. Glad you’re enjoying the EP! Intervals started as a sort of moniker or outlet for me to create under about 8 months ago. I was playing in a band for about 3 years at that point with my close friends and things had unfortunately appeared to have reached a ceiling. We were experiencing some creative and ethical differences, so it was time to part ways. It was the hardest decision I ever had to make, leaving a band comprised of my best friends, but music is not something I take lightly and it was make a move, or go insane. The video for “Still Winning” was literally a spontaneous decision on behalf of my good buddy Ben Dundas who is an aspiring film director. He showed up at my place with a camera, and that video is what came of that session! Continue reading »

INTERVALS: “THE SPACE BETWEEN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 262011
 

(TheMadIsraeli turns in this review of the new EP by Intervals, and in our next post, he follows it with an interview of the band’s main man, Aaron Marshall.)

Things are fucking busy at the NCS camp at the moment.  I’m busy doing my top albums of the year while also lining up and preparing some other good shit for the future (including following up on suggestions I requested, which I’ve finally got organized). So for now, it’s time for some quick reviews to fit in amongst our myriad of on-going year-end guest posts.

I’ve been following Aaron Marshall and his instrumental tech-djent experiment Intervals since he put up the first playthrough videos of his songs online.  The guy had obvious skill, catchy riffs, and bold, ambitious lead work that etched its way into my brain.  I’m not sure if he even originally planned to find a band to play this stuff with him, but sure enough he did, including YouTube djent drum-cover sensation Anup Sastry.  Now, under the Intervals name, they’ve released a debut EP by the name of The Space Between, and that’s the subject of this review.

This EP is 5 effective tracks of varying material, all utilizing elements that we’ve seen within the djent style, ranging from the syncopated, low-toned grooves to the noodily Periphery and Sikth legato styling’s, to the more fusion-based melodic elements.  “Begin” is merely an intro that sets the stage for the rest of the EP. It’s a rhythmic, chugging motif under a beautiful electronic-inspired ambient cloud hanging over the distortion and grooving drums.

The music then explodes with the manic fury of a hornet swarm that is “Still Winning”. Syncopation and juxtaposition of whirlwinds of technicality aligned with a rock solid rhythmic foundation provide a solid two-minute ride. Continue reading »

THE NUMBER OF THE BLOG IS DEAD . . . LONG LIVE THE NUMBER OF THE BLOG

 Metal News  134 Responses »
Dec 262011
 

(The following is an announcement by groverXIII, the creator of The Number of the Blog. Something new is coming, but one very good run is over. Comments please.)

This was most decidedly not how I wanted to ring in the second birthday of The Number Of The Blog.

Faced with an expiring hosting agreement, I set about trying to transfer the site to a new, established hosting account. I figured it would be easy, right? Wrong. Between a lack of experience and some issues with the new host and the old host, I ran into a tremendous amount of trouble, in the process losing a massive chunk of the many, many posts TNOTB had accumulated. As things went on, the site itself ceased functioning, and I honestly have no idea what I could do to restore it. As I reached my wits’ end, I finally decided it was time to put the site down.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I gave up so easily. I have a couple of reasons, actually, starting with the burnout I’ve been dealing with over the past months. This gives me an opportunity to relax a bit and recharge my batteries for the oft-hinted Next Stage. Those of you who are familiar with TNOTB will now likely have deduced that the Next Stage does not, in fact, represent the continuation of The Number Of The Blog as a website, and this is quite true. This was, in fact, the plan all along, that TNOTB would cease to be (although we had hoped to maintain an archive of the site’s posts for everyone). This hiccup here actually does not affect the Next Stage one bit, and in fact might make things a little easier for myself in that respect. That, my friends, is the main reason that I’m throwing in the towel on TNOTB.

In the meantime, Islander has kindly agreed to let us crash on the NCS couch, and so you should be seeing plenty of guest posts from the TNOTB legions in the coming weeks. As for my TNOTB family and all seven readers who didn’t already write for us… thanks. You guys are the reason that I kept TNOTB going, and you’re the reason for the grand plans we have for the future. I’ve had a blast.

KRIEGSMASCHINE GODDAMMIT!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 252011
 

I am so fucking retarded.  I had tomorrow’s first installment of the MOST INFECTIOUS song list all planned out and ready to go. We were going to bolt from the starting gate with a cannon blast of extremity, starting with a band I thought might surprise you since we’ve never mentioned them on this site and they’re a pretty underground act. I’ve been plodding along for the last month trying to winnow down the long master list of selections for the list, but this song was an early and easy choice.

I stupidly assumed the song was released this year because I only found out about it through a post by Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges in July. And then, just to be sure, I double-checked the release date a few minutes ago and discovered to my chagrin that it came out in 2010.  FUCK!  FUCK!!  FUCK!!!

So now I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a different way to start the list tomorrow. But I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to leave the song alone. I can’t put it in this year’s MOST INFECTIOUS list, but I can sure as hell create this post as a showcase for it.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard it since July. The song is “Onward Destrudo” and it’s by a Polish black metal band called Kriegsmaschine. It’s one of two songs that Kriegsmaschine contributed to a split with Infernal War called Transfigurations. Like many black metal songs, it’s built around a repeating riff and rhythm. There’s one cool musical digression about 3 minutes in — filled with a massively groaning bass, rancid reverb effects, and what sounds like an increasingly freaked-out harmonica! — but otherwise it’s one continuing, rolling, head-ripping phalanx of swarming infection. And if it’s not firmly rooted in your head by the time it’s over, I’ll be a motherfucker. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2011’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: INTRODUCTION

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011  23 Responses »
Dec 252011
 

Two years ago in December, when NCS was barely one month old, I pondered the tradition among metal sites of publishing lists of the year’s best albums. It seemed like something NCS should be doing, but there were two problems:  First, we had no metal cred at all, and almost no readers, so it seemed pretty presumptuous and pompous for us to be proclaiming which albums were the year’s best. Second, it seemed like waaaay too much fucking work.

So I came up with an alternative idea: Instead of trying to pick and rank the best albums or even the best songs, why not just make a list of the songs that I and my two NCS co-founders had heard from 2009 releases that we thought were the “most infectious” — which was just a way of saying they were the songs we listened to the most because they were . . . catchy. So that’s what we did.

The first year it was pretty easy. Because we started NCS so late in the year, we’d spent most of 2009 just being average fans. Between the three of us, we listened to a lot of new albums, but not nearly as many as would come our way later, after bands and labels started flooding us with new stuff. Each of us just threw together our lists of favorite songs, and then we collaborated on whittling the combined master list down to 10.

Last year, it was a lot harder. My two co-founders had pretty much become inactive, with school and life in general getting in the way. I was not in school and had no life, so I forged ahead. In addition to all the music I’d personally heard, I solicited suggestions from NCS readers. The result was a really long list of candidates that included songs I’d never heard myself during the year. The master list was a lot longer than the one the year before, and I got a headache trying to narrow it down. I started publishing the list in installments before I’d even finished the whittling-down process. Eventually, I just made myself stop — after naming 30 songs as “most infectious”. Continue reading »

Oh Shit, It’s The nWo! Tr00 Nate’s Top 30 Albums of 2011

 Listmania  14 Responses »
Dec 252011
 

(It may be Christmas Day, but we’re still open for business, and today we’re happy to welcome a visitor from another site.)

Hello NCS readers. I am Tr00 Nate, master of all that is tr00 and kvlt. You might be familiar with me. You might not. It makes no difference to me. I write for NCS’s sister/rival site The Number of the Blog. If you visit that site, you might have noticed that it is currently down due to technical difficulties. Seeing as how I have a perfectly good year-end list, it would be a shame if it never got posted. So I contacted Islander to see if he would let me post my list on his esteemed website. He graciously agreed, and now here we are.

What follows are the 30 albums that had the biggest impact upon me this past year. The ones that stuck with me the most. My favorite albums one could say. This list was made while taking everything that I have listened to this year into consideration. So consider yourself warned if you see something unexpected. If you wish to sample one of these fine albums, all you have to do is click on the album art, and it should take you to a youtube video (as that is how we do things over at TNOTB). Continue reading »

SEAN GOLYER’S FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2011

 Listmania  4 Responses »
Dec 242011
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Oak Pantheon is a Minneapolis-based band who we wrote about a couple of times earlier this year (most recently here), singing the praises of their EP called The Void. As a gross generalization, it’s folk-influenced black metal with memorable acoustic and electric melodies, infectious rhythms, and a scarifying dose of Nordic vocals. Sean Golyer is a “behind the scenes” member of the band, and he sent us the following list of his favorite albums from the past year. By coincidence, it includes three bands who made their first appearance on our the year-end lists from Stephen and Kenneth Parker that we posted yesterday.

There have no doubt been a lot of great music releases that I’ve listened to this year — countless more than this list indicates (Absu, Disma, and Wolves in the Throne Room are a few of the bands whose albums are great, but not listed below). However, I decided to take a new approach to my choices this year and compiled a short list of releases that have permanently made it into my collection of music that I listen to regularly, or simply releases that were so stand-out fantastic I couldn’t help but mention them.

I have to admit, the big metal releases this year were not quite as stellar as the past few years (at least not ones from the big names or labels). But that allowed me to open myself up further to bands outside of the genre, or bands that really pushed its boundaries. 2011 will certainly be known as the year that the underground really shined and surpassed anything the big labels put out.

Melancholy is a theme I always enjoy searching for and listening to. I discovered a lot of new bands and I’m also developing a newfound taste in crust, but not a lot of releases stood out enough that they stuck in my playlists regularly.  I’m a man who likes to let the music speak for itself, so instead of me babbling on about my opinions for each band, I’d rather you just listen and take in the music to form your own opinion. Continue reading »

MORE NEW MUSIC – ELUVEITIE’S “MEET THE ENEMY”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Dec 242011
 

As we reported previously, Switzerland’s Eluveitie have a new album coming on Nuclear Blast in February. Called Helvetios, it’s a concept album about a time long ago when a Celtic tribe called the Helvetii occupied part of Eluveitie’s homeland. Today, the band released the first song from the album for streaming — “Meet the Enemy”.

Unsurprisingly, it includes a variety of folk instruments and a bit of folk melody — but these contributions are brief. The song is mainly a galloping dash of familiar Scandinavian melodic death metal, albeit with a female warrior playing the hurdy-gurdy with the reins clenched in her teeth. The apparently studious Chrigel Glanzmann (who belts out the lyrics on the new song in full-on harsh mode) had this to say about the track on Eluveitie’s blog:

“We’re happy and proud to already present you “Meet The Enemy” – track 7 off our upcoming album “Helvetios”!

It tells you about the ‘encounter’ the Helvetians had with the roman legions in the year 58 BC – one of the crucial points in their history, for it was basically when the gaulish wars erupted.

So the song is pretty much filled with wrath and rage – upholding the furious spirit you might know from tracks such as “Kingdom Come Undone”, “Bloodstained Ground” or “Lament”.
Furthermore the song’s substantial instrumentation (including fiddle, hurdy gurdy, whistles and uilleann pipes) is also enriched by one of the guest musicians, we had the honour to work with – Fredy Schnyder (from Nucleus Torn) who contributed some amazing parts on the hammered dulcimer.

Hope you enjoy!”

Continue reading »

NAGLFAR FINALLY RELEASE A NEW SONG: “PALE HORSE”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Dec 242011
 

The Friday before Christmas is probably not an ideal day for releasing important news. In fact, as eagle-eyed as I am, I nearly missed this item. I’m so glad I didn’t. When I saw it last night, I became nearly giddy with excitement. Not actually giddy, because giddy is not metal, but nearly giddy. Here are the key elements of this story:

Sweden’s Naglfar has finished recording their new album — the first one since Harvest was released in 2007. It will be called Téras. It will be released by Century Media in March of next year. Sometime between now and then, the band will put out a limited-edition 7″ single that will include one track from Téras and a second song that will be exclusive to the single.

The band’s new line-up is down to vocalist Kristoffer W. Olivius (the band’s original bass player, who become Naglfar’s lead vocalist prior to the recording of Pariah (2005) after the departure of Jens Rydén), guitarist Andreas Nilsson (who has been with the band since its inception), and guitarist Marcus E. Norman (who joined in 2000). The drums for Téras were recorded by Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork, Scarve).

Last but certainly not least, yesterday Century Media made at song from the new album available for streaming. It’s called “Pale Horse”, and you can listen after the jump. If the quality of Naglfar’s previous albums weren’t enough to put Téras on your radar screen, this song should do it. Continue reading »

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