GO SHOW PHRO’S NEW BLOG SOME LOVE, BUT BE SURE TO USE PROTECTION

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

Another ugly duckling has left the NCS nest to explore the wonders of the blogiverse on its own.

Yes, Phro has started his very own blog called PHRO METAL. But don’t fret none about missing Phro here at NCS. As the first ever duckling born with bat wings, he can’t get far in daylight hours and he’ll be returning regularly to the nest to get his pre-digested worms from momma’s thrusting beak.

To translate that into more-or-less plain English, Phro’s blog isn’t about music. For his metal writing, Phro says he will continue to do that here. So why, you may ask, has Phro titled his blog PHRO METAL? Well, as we all know, things can be metal without being music. And what Phro intends to do with his blog is use it as a platform for writing stories.

His first story on PHRO METAL is called “Lucy” and he’s publishing it in installments, with Part 1 appearing today. I’m not going to spoil it for you. Okay, well, I guess I’ll spoil it a little bit. Here’s the first paragraph: Continue reading »

AN NCS SONG PREMIERE: FLAYED DISCIPLE’S “INTERCEPTOR”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

It was nearly Halloween Eve last year when I stumbled across a UK band called Flayed Disciple and their deliciously titled EP, Ejaculate While Killing. In a burst of enthusiasm, I summed up the music thusly: “This shit is a freaked-out blast of death-thrash, like some Formula One machine with a corpse at the wheel, fishtailing across a crowded highway and leaving smoking wreckage in its wake.”

Fresh wreckage is now on the way, because Flayed Disciple have completed their debut album, Death Hammer, and it’s scheduled for release on May 28. Even better, they’ve authorized us to provide the intergalactic premiere of the album’s third track, “Interceptor”. And even better still, they’re making that song available for free download so you can carry it around with you like a severed finger.

Now, you may be interested to know (or to remember, if you’re an older fart like me) that Interceptor was the name of the vehicle driven by Mel Gibson (before he turned into a completely weird fuck) in the first two of the Mad Max movies. That was a fine car — a modified version of the 1973 XB GT Ford Falcon Coupe, which was a production car exclusive to Australia, with a big supercharger protruding from the hood.

Flayed Disciple’s “Interceptor” is similarly a fine song with a big protruding supercharger. Smoking thrash riffs eat up the pavement like a black machine being speed-shifted into ramming mode. And when the supercharger kicks in, you get a heated blast of guitar shred. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: THOSE WHO LIE BENEATH – “ANTICHRIST”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

Sometimes, changes in a band’s membership become catalysts for changes in their music. Sometimes, with the passage of time, musicians’ tastes change and they move to a different place musically because they have become different people. I have a feeling that both things happened to Those Who Lie Beneath.

Those Who Lie Beneath are a metal band from Portland, Oregon, whose debut album An Awakening we reviewed (here) in December 2009. The band have undergone significant changes since then. From a five-piece, they’re now a three-man outfit. The most noticeable change was the departure of their vocalist Jamie Hanks, who joined Seattle’s I Declare War.

I remember when Hanks earned the band a measure of notoriety by giving an interview to Noisecreep in which he said: “We all love Cannibal Corpse. But they’ve been doing the same shit for years. We want to be Between the Buried and Me and Cannibal Corpse and the Black Dahlia Murder, all in one.” In the same interview, Hanks told Noisecreep, “What we’re trying to do is be not only as brutal as we can but as evil, man. We want to have people look at us, and go, ‘Fuck, these guys are scary.'”

I was impressed with An Awakening, but I have to say that I like the direction of the band’s new EP, Antichrist, even more. And it beats An Awakening on the brutal/evil/scary scale, too. Continue reading »

BLOODGUARD UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

Earlier this month, Andy Synn passed his 18-month anniversary as a writer for NCS. His first post was a review of Dimmu Borgir’s Abrahadabra album. In all that time, Andy has rarely mentioned that in addition to writing about metal, he is also the vocalist for a UK metal band called Bloodguard. Maybe it’s that famous British reserve, or perhaps it’s because Andy is a gentleman and a scholar in addition to being a writer and a howler. I, however, am not limited by good manners or any sense of humility, and I have some news about Bloodguard that needs to be spread like the plague.

First, the band have now set the official track-listing for their debut album, Patterns In The Infinite, and this is it:

1. Eye Of The Paradox
2. Vanguard
3. Footsteps (Of The Dead)
4. Our Lady Of The Flood
5. Black Math Ritual
6. Panopticon
7. Final Prayer
8. Bridgeburner

After the jump, you’ll find an album preview video that will give you a taste of what the songs sound like in their unmixed form, although the order of the samples in the video doesn’t match the track-listing. But first, there’s even bigger news, because I’ve discovered from Andy the identities of five guests whose talents will be enhancing Bloodguard’s new album — and it’s quite an exciting list: Arthur von Nagle (Cormorant), Michiel Dekker and Ivo Hilgenkamp (The Monolith Deathcult), Seth Hecox (Becoming the Archetype), and Demonstealer (Demonic Resurrection). Continue reading »

NEW LOOK, SAME HALF-ASSED CONTENT

 Metal News  35 Responses »
Mar 252012
 

Shit, that’s a lot of fuckin’ skulls, innit?

Yes, brethren and sistren, we decided to change our clothes. Not that there was anything wrong with the old clothes, other than the fact that they hadn’t been washed in about a year, but sometimes a new look helps keep things interesting. Or so I’ve been told.

I am not responsible for our new look. I had some input into the tweaks here and there, but credit for the new banner, background art, and font goes to none other than groverXIII, the creator and frontman of The Number of the Blog who occasionally comes slumming here at NCS when he’s not working on his next blog project. Grover also designed our last site header, and this time, as then, he did it out of the goodness of his heart, for which yours truly is very grateful.

So, what do you think? Leave comments after the jump, and be honest. Continue reading »

ENSHADOWED: “INNER PSY-TRIP”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 252012
 

This three-man black metal band from Greece is blowing my mind and not even leaving the tiniest scraps of tissue behind.

I discovered Enshadowed for the first time in January because I saw that fantastic album cover up there, and I promptly included them in this feature. The artwork — created by the band’s guitarist N.E.C.R.O and an unidentified friend who did the design for the Lucifer figure — is for the band’s third album and their first on the reliable Pulverised label: Magic Chaos Psychedelia.

The title of the album (which was recorded by Fotis Benardo of Septic Flesh) is descriptively accurate, at least based on a song called “Inner Psy-Trip” that was released for streaming yesterday. It swarms like demon hornets, it blasts like anti-aircraft armament, it shrieks like a black cloud of wraiths, it crawls with reptilian menace, it lurches like a damaged golem, it thunders like an orcish army on the march.

The tempo changes constantly, the guitars alternately buzz and chime, the music attacks voraciously but also reverberates with grim, even funereal melodies. It starts with teeth bared and ends with slow piano keys over an electronic drone. Fascinating song. Listen after the jump. Continue reading »

FUCKING PIGS!

 Phro's Posts  6 Responses »
Mar 252012
 

(Phro wrote this review.)

(Trolling bandcamp this morning, I found the excellent Georgia grindcore band Gripe.  They seems awful pissed about pigs or something…)

Sunday morning.

I hate every fucking morning, but there’s just something about Sunday morning that really just…makes me wanna fuck a possessed nun with a Molotov cocktail. And this morning is no different. I wake up and wipe the sleepies from my eyes, get out of bed, and trip over the head of a pig.

Splat!

Face full of pig guts.  Seriously, I mean, by now I’m really not surprised by the horrific shit I find in my apartment, but this… Ug.  And it’s still warm, too.  Eww…I think there’s some shit mixed in with the blood. Goddamnit.

I stand up and, covered in pig blood and little squishy flecks of pig shit, kick the head.

“Stupid fucking dead pig.  I don’t even want to know where you came from.”

There’s a bottle of Four Roses, still half full.  Oh, good.  That’ll help me get through the day.  I wander over to the computer.  We need some fucking music to help me clean this shit up before the girl comes home from her business trip. Continue reading »

BEFORE THE DAWN: “THRONE OF ICE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 252012
 

At this rate maybe we’ll get the whole album for free!

About two weeks ago, we featured the official music video by Finland’s Before the Dawn for a song called “Phoenix Rising” from their new album, Rise of the Phoenix. We also included this link for a free download of the song, courtesy of Nuclear Blast (and the download offer is still available).

Yesterday, another song called “Throne of Ice” became available for free download via the Finnish language EMI web site. You have to register on this page to get the download, but it doesn’t seem to be limited to residents of Finland, because I got it. The registration page is in Finnish, but with a little help from Google Translate, I can tell you that the boxes you’ll need to fill out ask for the following info in the following order: a first name, a last name, an e-mail address, a gender selection, and a year of birth. After that is a box with stuff you can sign up for like e-mail alerts (you’ll probably want to uncheck what’s in that box). Then click the “Rekisteroldy” button and you’ll immediately get a download link.

Why am I giving you this tedious step-by-step info? Because the song fuckin’ rocks hard, that’s why. Listen to it after the jump if you don’t believe me. What the hell, we’ll include a stream of “Phoenix Rising” after the jump, too, just in case you missed it the first time. Continue reading »

AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED MAKES BANDCAMP’S NOSE BLEED

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 242012
 

In 2005, Relapse Records released a double-CD album by Agoraphobic Nosebleed titled Bestial Machinery. It collected all of the band’s recorded material before their Relapse debut, Honkey Reduction, including tracks from the Agoraphobic Nosebleed splits with Cattlepress, Laceration, and Enemy Soil, plus out of print material and previously unreleased tracks.

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with ANb, it is the mutated offspring of the infernally talented Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer) and a drum machine from Hell. The rest of the line-up (mainly vocalists) has varied over time, and I don’t think the current group was around when the material on Bestial Machinery was recorded. And what’s on Bestial Machinery is a rampaging cybernetic grindfreak on steroids, just as violent and otherworldly as Florian Bertmer’s magnificent album cover.

The main reason I’m posting about an album that’s now about seven years old is that I just discovered that it’s available for download on Bandcamp. I’m not sure how long it’s been there, but I think the addition is pretty recent.

Also, I’m posting about it because the album consists of . . . wait for it . . . 136 tracks!!! Now, a bunch of the songs are less than 10 seconds long, and the vast majority clock in under a minute, but still.

I can’t resist embedding all 136 tracks here at NCS, because that’s what having the album on Bandcamp permits me to do. The player is after the jump. Go listen and get fucked hard in the head. Should you choose to buy the album, you may do so HERE. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: IN MOURNING

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Mar 242012
 

THAT, my friends, is the cover art for the new (third) album by Sweden’s In Mourning, The Weight Of Oceans, which will be released by Spinefarm Records on April 18. The artwork is by none other than Kristian Whålin (Necrolord).

This is old news, since the album art and details about the album were released in late February — except I didn’t pick up on it until TheMadIsraeli started chatting with me about In Mourning earlier today on FB.

Necrolord has created so many stupendous metal album covers in his career, but this is definitely one of my favorites.  This excerpt from his bio at The Font of All Human Knowledge includes some info I didn’t know (and after the jump, I’ve got some music from The Weight of Oceans):

At the age of 17, Wåhlin formed Grotesque (as guitarist) with school friend Tomas Lindberg on vocals, Alf Svensson on guitar, and Tomas Eriksson on drums. The 1990 break-up of Grotesque would lead to the formation of At the Gates, who would be credited as instigators of the “Gothenburg Melodic death metal sound”. Wåhlin would collaborate with Lindberg and other At the Gates members a short time additionally in the death metal band Liers in Wait, and would go on to design the “Russian icon” cover-art of At the Gates’ cornerstone release, Slaughter of the Soul.

Dissection, who shared practice quarters with At the Gates, would display illustrations by Wåhlin on the cover of The Somberlain and also Storm of the Light’s Bane; the latter featuring the infamous scene of the “grim reaper horseman” in the middle of a snow-covered forest tundra. In the Nightside Eclipse, the debut of seminal Norwegian black metal band Emperor, would also be graced with his work on the cover. Wahlin would continue as an album artist for several other bands in the European death, black, doom, power and gothic metal collective throughout the 2000s.

Continue reading »

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