NOT A METAL INTERVIEW: BLUE STAHLI

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

(DemiGodRaven reappears to tarnish our metal cred with this interview, though I admit that it’s a very interesting read about a very interesting musician. The music turns out to be cool, too)

Back when The Number of the Blog was still a website I was very luck to receive the opportunity to pick the brains of five or six of my favorite musicians all within the same month. I drafted a variety of interview questions for each of them and, surprisingly, about half came back with responses, which is always an incredible thing to me. However, two or three never responded, for whatever reason. The musician got busy, something happened in the press pipeline, and you can’t really blame anyone for it. You just chalk it up as a loss and move on. The fact that TNOTB went down didn’t help either.

However, while combing through messages to the old email address (don’t ask me why, it just bothers the shit out of me seeing 200 Unread on the inbox), I came across a response from electronica musician Blue Stahli (featured here as recently as yesterday), who was one of the interviewees I had originally chalked up as a loss. Somehow, my old interview had been recovered and a response received over the vast reaches of time. I didn’t have the old site at which to publish this, though, which is why you’re now looking at it on NoCleanSinging’s page. So, I introduce you to electronica musician Blue Stahli.

Blue Stahli is a project that has been gaining steady momentum since 2008. A then-recent signee to the Fixt music label, he immediately buried himself headlong in a variety of projects, including an instrumental disc known as Antisleep Vol.1 (Vol.2 saw release in late December), a self-titled debut that our own GroverXIII listed as one of his pleasures in 2011 (here), and a variety of amazing remixes . . . many of which have been used as the backing to movie trailers.

In addition to being certifiably insane, Mr. Stahli is a pretty amicable guy, so even though some of the questions must have seemed like head-scratchers to him at the time, he still tried to answer them the best he could. Even better, I may have triggered the next Fixt Remix contest. Continue reading »

KEYBOARD WARRIORS: DAN GROVER

 Interviews  16 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

(For the last 5 days we’ve been re-publishing an interview series by Rev. Will that originally appeared at now-defunct The Number of the Blog and that focused mainly on metal bloggers. Beginning today, the series continues here at NCS with new interviews, beginning, fittingly, with the creator of TNOTB — groverXIII.)

Classic metal albums + Metal blogging = ?

When one thinks of that, one will no doubt arrive at 2 answers: Reign In Blonde (the gals must have dyed their hair black, which would explain the inactiveness) and The Number Of The Blog (R.I.P.). When one thinks of anime and metal blogging, one will no doubt think of Full Metal Attorney, since it could possibly be a reference to the wildly popular Japanese anime, Full Metal Alchemist, but I digress.

Blogging about metal (or any other kind of) music is not as easy as many would like to think. If done properly, it can actually start to feel like homework once the commitment starts to kick in. Deadlines? Research? Being constantly “marked” and judged on your worth by others? The similarities are all there, but the big difference is that blogging about music doesn’t really get you anywhere in life like school does (or is supposed to), unless you can turn it into a career like Axl and Vince of MetalSucks.

Frontman and founder Dan Grover of ex-The Number Of The Blog may not like to toot his trumpet, but he sure did contribute a unique voice to the metal blogosphere while The Number Of The Blog was still alive and well. Labeled by some critics and even by themselves (probably in jest) as “hipsters”, the blog was really anything but that. It will always be remembered for its one-of-a-kind daily columns, which had humorous and catchy names, yet dealt with serious as well as playful topics. From underground black metal in “Wintermoon Wednesday” to random, everyday topics in “Sunday Shit Shoot”, there was literally something for everybody. Hell, there was even a Pokemon-obsessed Devin Townsend fanboy contributor called Ziltoid; needless to say, he posted about the vastly varied species of colorful critters on more than one occasion.

So read on folks, if you want to get inside the mind of a hipster metal blogger with a very big and secretive plan to launch something new in the near future. I’m hoping it will be a hydrogen bomb filled with confetti. Continue reading »

A BYZANTINE UPDATE (AND IT’S A BIG ONE)

 Metal News  20 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

“Byzantine is one of the most original, most kick-ass, most awesome metal bands in the last 10 years and SHAME ON YOU IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE.  No one else has yet reproduced their combination of Bay Area thrash metal, death metal, Meshuggah math-metal stylings, jazz fusion, and the grooves and melodic nature of the post-thrash movement and made it all work so seamlessly and so well.”

That’s how NCS writer TheMadIsraeli began his retrospective on Byzantine’s discography at this site last August, a look-back that included downloads of the band’s three albums (with permission). In that same post, we reported that Byzantine had re-formed (minus Tony Rohrbough) and was working on new music.

Yesterday, we received the official announcement of Byzantine’s resurrection, almost four years to the day since their last album, Oblivion Beckons, was released — and it’s a complete reunion of all original members: Chris (“OJ”) Ojeda (vocals, rhythm guitar), Tony Rohrbough (lead guitar); Michael (“Skip”) Cromer (bass), and Matt Wolfe (drums). Here’s the statement from Chris Ojeda:

“We’ve all kept in contact through the past few years and have worked on each other’s projects as well. With our guitarist Tony moving back to WV from NC, we decided it would be a perfect opportunity to hang out again and jam. Before we knew it, we were tossing around riffs and song ideas and realized we had what seemed to be the foundation for a pretty kick ass Byzantine album.”

This is a band who were ahead of their time, and the time is certainly right for their reappearance. But they’re looking for help from fans. Continue reading »

TRIPPY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 272012
 

When you take a song that’s pretty trippy to begin with and you put it into the hands of a creative director and a capable production company and give them a decent budget to work with, you get a fucking trippy video. That’s the conclusion I reached after watching the Born of Osiris video that debuted at midnight last night, Eastern Time.

The trippy song is “Follow the Signs”, from the band’s 2011 album The Discovery (reviewed at NCS by IntoTheDarkness here). It’s a mash-up of complexity and beauty,  punchy staccato riffing and Outer Limits keyboard effects, hardcore rage and prog-metal ambience. Sometimes when I listen to this song, it just leaves me confused, and sometimes I think its ingenious and convincing. Despite my own ambiguous feelings about it, I’ll say this: it’s definitely not dull.

Nor is the video. The visual effects are of a high order, much better than most metal music videos have to offer. They capture the mind-bending aspects of the song. Like the song sometimes does, the video also leaves me confused about what I’ve just seen, but as a dish of eye-candy, it’s delicious.

“We are the victims, but we are also the crime / And the only one who can judge us is the Earth in time.” So the song says, after its dreamlike opening. The lyrics aren’t dull either. The video bears watching, even if you’re not a big Born of Osiris fan. It’s right after the jump. (Thanks to TheMadISraeli for a late-night e-mail letting me know this thing was out and about.) Continue reading »

RED FANG: THE “HANK IS DEAD” VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

I happen to like Red Fang’s music, but when it comes to Red Fang’s videos, it really doesn’t matter what you think of the music. They could be playing “Achy Breaky Heart” on a butt trumpet and the videos would still be funny as shit to watch. And now, hot from the cutting room, we have yet another addition to the Red Fang cinematic library: The “Hank Is Dead” video.

People who’ve been following the advance hype already know that the video involves an air guitar competition, but there’s more: awkwardly unclothed dudes who should never be seen without clothes, aerodynamically magnificent paper airplanes, an awesome wristwatch, plenty of beer, and plenty of beer. Also, there is a lot of beer.

If you don’t have some fun with this song set to this film footage, then, as much as I love you for reading NCS, I have to conclude that you have a case of tight-sphincter syndrome and you need a good loosening up.

Speaking of which, no, I don’t know what a butt trumpet is. It just seemed to fit the sentence. Watch the video after the jump. Continue reading »

KEYBOARD WARRIORS: ALBERT MUDRIAN

 Interviews  6 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

 (Shortly before The Number of the Blog met its sad demise, TNOTB began publishing an interview series called “Keyboard Warriors” written by a relatively new TNOTB staffer who called himself Rev. Will. Because the archive of TNOTB posts seems to have exploded in a spatter of bits, never to be seen again, we agreed to give these interviews a home here at NCS. We started on Sunday and have been posting one per day this week. Today’s interview was originally published late last year.)

Surprisingly, most professional metal writers actually don’t sport long manes and subscribe to heavy metal fashion like many of their writing subjects do. Maybe it’s because sitting down for hours and slogging it out on the computer keyboard, rushing out multiple reviews and features like a drone, can get really tiring and warm around the rear end; and the fact that long hair causes an itchy hotness to prickle the area around the ears, eyebrows, and the back of the neck as well doesn’t help much.

Being a journalist of any kind is actually quite a daunting job. It is pretty safe to say that journalism related to stuff-that-ain’t-important-from-a-macro-point-of-view (meaning subjects that aren’t essential to a normal human being’s ability to survive in the practical world out there) is a largely unnoticed (and hence, thankless) job that is strictly reserved for the extremely passionate only. And extremely extreme our dear interviewee is when it comes to metal journalism.

This is the easiest interview I’ve edited in this column so far by the way. The power of a magazine’s Editor-in-Chief is not to be taken lightly, folks. The dude even bothered to italicize all object names; I guess being Decibel’s Editor-in-Chief really made him attentive to such small details that usually only matter to metal writers themselves. Damn, interviewees like him really make a budding keyboard warrior like me as happy as a TFD missile warhead. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: FULL ALBUM STREAM

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

Our Finnish friend fireangel — one of the two creators of the very informative and entertaining Finland-based blog called Night Elves — alerted me to this juicy bit of news: the new album by Swallow the Sun, Emerald Forest and the Blackbird, is now streaming in full at the Finland-based INFERNO site.

And, in an interesting twist, guitarist Juha Raivio provided quotes from Twin Peaks to accompany each song. Do you remember Twin Peaks?

The album is scheduled for release in Finland on February 1, and it’s being offered for pre-order here.  I haven’t had a chance to listen to this album stream yet since I’ve got to do some actual paying work at the moment, but I’m going to listen as soon as I can — as you should, too.

HOUR OF PENANCE UPDATE

 Metal News  16 Responses »
Jan 262012
 


In our last post, DemiGodRaven caught us up on news items from the last few days that I missed, but this item, to which DGR also alerted me, deserves its own special mention.

In the realm of Italian death metal, 2011 was the year of Fleshgod Apocalypse, the year when that band made a huge breakthrough and established themselves as a true force on the international scene. I have a feeling that 2012 will be the year of their fellow Romans in Hour of Penance. Yesterday, HoP announced details about their fifth album.

It will be called Sedition and will be released on March 27 in North America, April 2 in the U.K., and April 6 in mainland Europe via Prosthetic Records. As Fleshgod Apocalypse did with Agony, Hour of Penance will be following the release of Sedition with a North American tour — their first. They will be in fine company on that tour: The Black Dahlia Murder, Nile, and Skeletonwitch.

The cover art also made its first appearance. As you can see, it kills. The artist is Gyula Havancsak, a new name to me but one I suspect we’ll be seeing more of in the future.

This last HoP album, Paradogma, was one of my favorites of 2010. Based on what Hour of Penance showed on that album, Sedition should qualify as one of this year’s must-listen releases for death metal fans.

What? You haven’t heard Paradogma? For shame! Here’s a track, which made our list of 2010’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs: Continue reading »

INTO THE PIT: NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

(DemiGodRaven helps catch us up on metal news.)

Hey folks, I’ve planted my ass in the underworld for a brief period of time in order to round up all the smaller (and maybe not so small) news stories that may have fallen through the cracks in one way or another. Some of them are simple things like album streams, others are album teasers, there’s some tour news, and hey, occasionally you’ll even get a free song or two, ya hear? Also, if you aren’t reading this in a 50’s news reporters voice after seeing the picture of the hat above YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. First up is a pretty simple album stream, and then we’ll go on from there.

Lamb of God’s latest album Resolution saw release recently, and so they decided to run a full album stream over at AOL Music to give people a chance to get in a good listen before they decide whether to buy or not. I’ve enjoyed this release much more than Wrath, but it is still largely iterative on the sound that they started building in Sacrament.

It’s a good listen all the way through, but I can imagine it would be pretty dull if you picked a random song instead of the five or six really great ones. In other words, this is not an album built for Ipod shuffle like Amon Amarth’s stuff usually is (for example), so you’ll have to be in a really Lamb of God mood in order to really get into this one.

Also, they used the shotgun blast sample again. The same one they used on Sacrament. I was just waiting for the GOD-DAMN before it. Full review incoming soon. In the meantime, while you wait for me to validate your opinion and tell you how awesome of a metal listener you are, you can stream that fucker over here. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: LIBER NECRIS

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers  6 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

I’m ridiculously far behind in listening to EPs and albums that bands have sent to NCS over the last couple of months. Hell, I’m embarrassingly far behind in even answering the e-mails from bands who sent us music to hear, which is just plain rude. But I’m going to make an effort to catch up, beginning today.

Long ago, in dog years, we started this EYE-CATCHERS series as a way of unscientifically testing the hypothesis that if album art is cool, the music on the album is probably going to be cool, too. Of course, that hypothesis doesn’t make much logical sense, but then again neither does turning water into wine and lots of people seem to buy that, so who knows? Since we started, this series has branched out to include features on metal artwork, in addition to music, but today I’m going back to the original idea.

Liber Necris (“book of the dead”) is a UK band who wrote us in December. The first thing I noticed, even before reading the words, was the cover art you see above for their debut EP/demo, The Immutable Aversion. I thought it was really well done. The artist is Drew Millward, who has created album covers for other bands, in addition to many shirt and poster designs and much else besides (you can see more of his creations via this link), and we’ll have more of his art for Liber Necris at the end of this post. As soon as I saw the art, I resolved to listen to the EP. That was a good decision. Continue reading »

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