YOUR LOLWUT? VIDEO OF THE DAY: DEICIDE’S “CONVICTION”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  32 Responses »
Feb 252012
 

If someone were to play a word association game with you and said “Deicide”, what would be the first word to pop into your head? Would it be “claymation”? Nah, I didn’t think so. For me, it would be “motherfucking”.  As in “MOTHERFUCKING DEICIDE!!”

But the game may change after you watch the band’s new video for “Conviction”, a song off Deicide’s 2011 album To Hell With God.

Jesus, where to start? Actually, we could start with Jesus, because he’s in the video. He’s not having a good day, because Glen Benton is on his tail, hell-bent on nailing him to a church door and then sending him straight to hell.

I guess Christians who aren’t familiar with Deicide will be offended by this, but it’s not exactly Benton’s first offense. I mean, the guy has branded an inverted cross on his forehead at least 12 different times and 20+ years ago he wrote a song called “Crucifixation”, the first line of which was “Give praise to Satan, he has won.” And that was only the beginning. The damnation of Christ has been a constant Deicide drumbeat for two decades. But now we get the message in claymation. I gotta admit, I didn’t see that coming.

I guess I won’t be surprised if the video causes fresh uproar among people who take Deicide’s schtick seriously, even when a video like this makes it even harder to do that. Maybe after 20+ years, the by-now calculated sensationalism still works. We’ll see.

Don’t get me wrong — the music is still badass, and I am still going to see Deicide when they play here in March with Jungle Rot, Abigail Williams, Lecherous Nocturne, and Super Happy Story Time Land. I just don’t get the urge to do a fist-pump when I watch this video. The urge I feel . . . is to giggle. The video is after the jump. Continue reading »

LAPSE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Feb 252012
 

Midnightmares is certainly not the most delayed album on my mental “most eagerly awaiting” list. No one can take that honor away from Necrophagist. But still . . .

In October 2010, I wrote a post about Dreaming Dead’s video for a song called “Overlord” from that Midnightmares album. I referred to the fact that the album had been recorded as a three-piece, while the band continued to hunt for a second guitarist (who frontwoman Elizabeth Schall wanted to be female). I noted: “We haven’t seen any definitive release date, and the band may be holding that up in an effort to find a label who would distribute it.”

Over the next year I wrote about the band a couple more times, including a piece about Elizabeth Schall shredding with a potential second guitarist (Stephanie Pickard) at the NAMM trade show (that partnership apparently didn’t work out) and another one about a second song from the album (the title track) being streamed temporarily last September.

And then last October I got a press release stating that the band were “readying to unleash their long-awaited new full-length Midnightmares“. It included the Travis Smith album cover you see above and a track list. Well, here we are near the end of February . . . and still no album. But in the meantime, we’ve gotten another new song and a video that reminds us why it’s still worth waiting, plus a bit of updated news. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NAGLFAR — “AN EXTENSION OF HIS ARM AND WILL”

 Premieres  23 Responses »
Feb 242012
 

Drawing upon Norse mythology, Sweden’s Naglfar named themselves for the ship made from the nails of the dead that was foretold to carry the hordes of Hel across the waters, bringing them into battle with the gods of Asgard during the cataclysmic events of Ragnarök. The band released their first demo, Stellae Trajectio, in 1994 and their first album (Vittra) in 1995. On March 26, Century Media will release Naglfar’s sixth album, Téras, and today we’re privileged to stream the North American premiere of its fifth track, “An Extension of His Arm and Will”.

In addition to appearing on the album, the song will be released on Monday (Feb. 27) as a limited-edition 7″ single that will also include a non-album b-side song, “As Long As They Fear.” A white vinyl version will be limited to 100 copies exclusively for U.S. customers, and both black and transparent red vinyl versions will be shipped in the EU, also in limited quantities. They can be ordered through CM Distro via these links:  http://bit.ly/zk8eeq (EU) and http://bit.ly/yA7P3k (US).

Naglfar now features a line-up consisting of vocalist Kristoffer W. Olivius (the band’s original bass player, who become lead vocalist following the 2005 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).

Téras will be Naglfar’s first album in almost five years. One song from Téras — “Pale Horse” — has already debuted, and we featured it here on the day before Christmas. The new song that we’re premiering today confirms that Téras will be well worth the wait. Continue reading »

SECRETS OF THE MOON: “NYX”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 242012
 

Black liquid flowing . . . shamanistic imagery . . . a robed figure with a horned headdress roams the forest . . . a band shrouded in smoke, playing in a darkened space, lit from below by a geometry of candlelight . . . the dark liquid flows, and a a horned raptor of the woodland takes shape . . .

Germany’s Secrets of the Moon will be releasing their new album Seven Bells via Prophecy Productions on March 16, and they’ve now uploaded the official video for a song called “Nyx”. It was directed by Fursy Teyssier and François-Marc Baillet at Viva Emptiness Studios, and it’s engrossing to watch.

The song as it appears on the album is about 11 minutes long, and it’s been cut down for the video, but it’s plenty engrossing at half the length anyway. It has a dreamlike quality, combining gothic melody, doom, and black metal to produce an atmosphere that’s both entrancing and sinister. To see the video, go past the jump. Continue reading »

SCANDINAVIAN METAL DENSITY

 Metal News  21 Responses »
Feb 242012
 

I guess this map won’t surprise many people.  We published more granular statistics about this phenomenon in a post way back in April 2010 called “Geekery In the Discordance”, reporting on the results of a calculation that counted the number of metal bands by country, as listed in Metal Archives, and then divided them by the total population of each country. That count included inactive bands, and so we found a way to sort the data by limiting them to active bands, and the results were very similar. Most active metal bands per million people:

No. 1:  Finland

No. 2:  Sweden

No. 3:  Norway

I haven’t gone back to see if the numbers have changed in the last two years, though I’d be surprised if they have.  Doesn’t look like they have based on the map.  One interesting thing I noticed about that map is that if you look closely, Iceland looks pretty red, too.

Thanks to BlashyrkhBloggen for posting the map on Facebook and to Angry Metal Guy for re-posting it. And speaking of Angry Metal Guy . . . Continue reading »

THE BLACK MORIAH: “CASKET PROSPECTS”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 242012
 

It’s not often I get an e-mail from a band that just says “For Your Damned Ears” with the band’s name and a web link . . . and that’s it. Well, really now, how could I resist? Especially when the band refer to themselves as “Road Agents of the Blast Furnace” or “a horde of highwaymen, hell-bent on Vulture Culture” (I found that out later when I visited that web link). The answer is, I didn’t resist.

The band’s name is The Black Moriah. They’re from North Texas and they “drink the spirits of past greats Bathory, Kreator, Motorhead, Slayer, [and] Venom,” or so though say, though I’m inclined to believe them.

They include former members of bands such as Absu, Bleed the Son, Psychiatric Regurgitation, and Aversion To Life. They’ve recorded and recently self-released a three-song demo called Casket Prospects, with the following track titles: “Casket Prospects”, “Chained and Confined”, and “Watch My Town Burn”. They got some skills. Looks like they may have some knives, too.

They can also rev the thrash engines into the red zone. The title track proves that, with vicious riffs, rapid-fire bass, snare-heavy drums with crashing cymbals, hard-driving pistons, a rusted exhaust pipe belching putrid smoke, and infernally blackened vocals. Irresistible headbang material. Continue reading »

DISOBEY!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Feb 242012
 

The unifying theme of this play is disobedience. That, and the fact that our friend Quigs is responsible for turning me onto both of the items herein. Act One is a band from New Jersey. Act Two is a candidate for my personal theme song.

ACT ONE

Disobey is a band from Hillsborough, New Jersey. Not long ago they released their debut EP, Human Suffering In Five Movements. You might get a clue about the music from the band’s name, not only because it conjures up images of anarchic punks but also because of that “Dis-” prefix. It harkens back to that seminal hardcore crust/punk band Discharge, whose drum technique gave rise to the “D-beat” label and whose music inspired a horde of musical offspring, including Disfear, Disaccord, Disclose, and Discard.

Disobey sound like a pack of starving Dobermans unleashed with a mess of hamburger piled up about 20 yards in front of them. They get there in a hurry (all 6 tracks on the EP hit the finish line about 11 minutes after the start), and getting in their way is really not a good idea.

But don’t let my metaphor mislead you — the music itself is not balls-out racing. The instrumental intro track is a sludgy, heavy, black-as-night crawl, and the songs that follow are mainly mid-paced crushers. And I do mean crushers. Continue reading »

NCS NEWS ROUND-UP: ASPHYX, HIGH ON FIRE, 7 HORNS 7 EYES, AND BEHEMOTH

 Metal News  1 Response »
Feb 232012
 

Quite a few news items were delivered to the NCS Island today via carrier pigeons, which are our preferred mode of news transportation. Unfortunately, a few of the pigeons dived left when they should have dived right and landed in the loris compound, where they were unceremoniously converted into squab tartare. We’ll never know what important messages those brave aeronauts were carrying. But the ones who made it safely to the NCS editorial offices revealed the following:

ASPHYX

Yours truly can testify that the new Asphyx album Deathhammer is a delicious serving of primal death-doom with more hooks than you’ll find in this guy. But you don’t have to take my word for it, because DECIBEL has started streaming the whole album here.

HIGH ON FIRE

High On Fire’s new studio album De Vermis Mysteriis has now been scheduled for an April 3 release by eOne Music. It was recorded in Salem, Massachusetts’ GodCity Studios with producer and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou. The album title apparently comes from a fictional grimoire created by Psycho author Robert Bloch and incorporated by H. P. Lovecraft into the lore of the Cthulhu mythos.

According to the press release I got, “The album carries a deeply mystical undercurrent, incorporating fantastical themes and lyrics detailing, among other things, time travel, a serum called liao that is made out of a black lotus, and ‘a Jesus twin who can see the past through his ancestors’ eyes.'” However, portions of the release were obscured by pigeon dung, so I can’t swear I got the Jesus twin thing right. Continue reading »

SPECTRUM ROAD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, That's Music -- But It's Not Metal  9 Responses »
Feb 232012
 

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this recent discovery (thank you Blabbermouth). It’s likely that the news will mean nothing to anyone reading this except the real old-timers, but for those of you as ancient as I am, it will definitely mean something. And those less ancient might learn a thing or two along the way. By the way, the music isn’t metal, but . . . it’s metal. If you know what I mean.

The news concerns a band called Spectrum Road. The members of Spectrum Road include some genuinely legendary figures — Jack Bruce, one of the founding members of Cream (along with Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker), a hugely influential songwriter, and a widely respected classical, jazz, and Latin musician; and Vernon Reid, the founder and principal songwriter of Living Colour and (among many other recognitions), the holder of the #66 position on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

The band also includes drummer Cindy Blackman-Santana, who was the drummer for Lenny Kravitz’s band for 14 years and an accomplished jazz drummer as well as rock musician (she’s also married to Carlos Santana), and John Medeski, a jazz keyboardist involved in many projects, but principally a groove-oriented jazz trio called Medeski Martin & Wood.

For me, Jack Bruce and Vernon Reid are the real draws for this project. After the jump, there’s a video of Spectrum Road performing live. Just watching Bruce and Reid perform together is amazing — and fuck, Vernon Reid can still really shred. The icing on the cake, though, is Cindy Blackman-Santana; it’s a kick to watch her tear it up on the  drums. Spectrum Road will be releasing a self-titled debut album on June 5 via Palmetto Records. Continue reading »

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