Gojira have produced another lyric video for a track from L’Enfant Sauvage. This time the song is “Liquid Fire” and the visual accompaniment is a montage of really excellent live performance photos.
The song is really excellent, too, including the lyrics. Not a bad way to end our posts for this work week. Of course, we will have some other kind of ear wreckage ready for tomorrow morning.
Video after the jump . . . . Continue reading »
Michiel Dekker and Ivo Hilgenkamp, on the verge of redefining civilization. Again.
The Monolith Deathcult’s new album TETRAGRAMMATON has been brewing slowly, like a fine Dutch lager, except with more radiation. Their last album, Trivmvirate, erupted from the womb in 2008, and the gestation period for the new release has been so protracted that we expect the new offspring to be a real monster (yeah, I mixed my metaphors, so sue me).
TMDC have periodically been streaming pre-production teasers of the new music, and we’ve been dutifully posting those streams as they’ve emerged, but they haven’t stayed up on the net for long, and it’s never been entirely clear whether the songs would actually find a place on the new album. But the final shape of the music is now being formed.
Yesterday we received word that TMDC entered the studio in September to record TETRAGRAMMATON. The band’s statement deserves to be quoted in full, so masterful is its understated eloquence:
“Since 2008 – when we redefined art, music and human civilisation – we’ve been milking Trivmvirate until it’s cheese,” said bassist/vocalist Robin Kok, “so we decided to make a new album and see if we can milk that even further.” Continue reading »
In this post I’ve collected three new songs I heard earlier today that I wanted to recommend. They’re all quite different from each other, sharing only a common devotion to the darkness.
KRODA
Long-term NCS readers will know this Ukrainian band because I’ve written about them so often (their 2011 album Schwarzpfad was probably my favorite black metal album out of all the ones I heard last year, and I included a song-stream from the album on our list of the 2011’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs). But we continue to pick up new readers at a steady clip, and the band’s new recording gives me an excuse to introduce them to our new followers.
As previously reported at this site, Kroda will be releasing a live album in the form of a combined CD and DVD under the title HelCarpathian Black Metal – Heil Ragnarok: Live Under Hexenhammer, which was recorded and filmed in Moscow. Today the band announced that mixing and mastering of the album is now complete and that it will be released as a digipack edition later this winter. They also released one of the live tracks for streaming.
It’s a cover of a song called “Noregsgard” by the Norwegian band Storm (which included Fenriz [Darkthrone] and Satyr [Satyricon]) from their 1995 Nordavind album. I believe the song, even as originally recorded by Storm, was a metallicized version of a folk tune, and Kroda’s performance, which includes both flute and clean vocals, definitely has a pagan/folk air. But it’s still pretty fuckin’ heavy. I like it a lot. Continue reading »
On the same day last week I came across both of these very good Romanian bands. The last time I came across a Romanian band that was new to me was in June (Void Forger), so to find two on the same day was like a message from some dark entity compelling me to write something. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was just a coincidence, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.
ABIGAIL
I have a post by MaxR at Metal Bandcamp to thank for my discovery of Abigail. As you’ll have realized by now, this is not the Japanese black/thrash band named Abigail. This group is based in Bucharest, though they’ve been around as long as those Japanese stalwarts, with their first demo dating back to 1994.
Despite their longevity, they have yet to release a full album, instead producing demos and EPs — though they are now at work on a projected 3-CD + DVD album entitled Dark Days Turned Into Blue Nights. What I heard was the band’s most recent release, an October 2011 EP named It Is the Night I Fear, which is available for free on Bandcamp. A review of that EP is next . . . Continue reading »
I swear, I had a really cool round-up post planned for this afternoon, full of eye-catching news, cover art, and cutting edge music that you probably would have missed without me and that possibly could have changed your life. I was going to follow that with a discussion of the latest (and lamest) scientific study on the sounds that are most disturbing to the human brain and the inexplicable failure of the researchers to play some Cannibal Corpse to the test participants.
Unfortunately, I got busy at work and couldn’t do any of that. Instead, I only have time to show you the new video by Infant Annihilator for their song “Decapitation Fornication” from their forthcoming debut album The Palpable Leprosy of Pollution, projected for release in mid-December.
And for those of you who will want to punch us in the nuts after watching the video because we have such a juvenile or even subhuman sense of humor, I can only say “get in the fucking line!” (I blame TheMadIsraeli, who sent me the link to this insanity.) Continue reading »
We’re going off our usual beaten path of metallic extremity in this post, with two brand new videos from Primal Rock Rebellion and Death Grips. I thought both were worth watching, and so here they are. We’ll get back to our usual diet of gut rumbling music later today.
PRIMAL ROCK REBELLION
SikTh is no more (though a reunion could still happen), but SikTh’s Mikee Goodman is very much still alive and kicking. His two-man band Primal Rock Rebellion (formed with Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith) released a debut album earlier this year called Awoken Broken.
This morning I saw that PRR had released a new music video for a track from the album, “Tortured Tone”, and I decided to check it out. Goodman himself conceived, cast, and directed the clip, and it’s a visual feast. It includes a log cabins, woodland tranquility, seascape vistas, rainy cobble-stoned hills, Goodman and Smith performing in a huge bright field, a pretty girl, and a bit of creepy stop-motion animation.
As noted, the song isn’t the usual NCS fare, but it eventually pulls out some metal grit and heft, and it’s melodically memorable. Here you go: Continue reading »
(Earlier this week Candlelight Records released the new album by North Carolina’s Daylight Dies. Here’s TheMadIsraeli’s review.)
Daylight Dies have reshaped the landscape of melodic death metal almost overnight. Their brand of somber, melancholy, doom-infused walls of mourning melody has proven to be quite fucking badass, with a virtually flawless discography that has consistently commanded attention. The way they weave the music with signature melodic transitions filled with sonic bereavement and darkness is something no other band does so well, each riff, section, or theme in itself taking the listener on a journey. This is one of those bands who just have a perfect batting record, a capacity for unleashing tear-soaked depressive weight conveyed with jolting heft.
Now we have A Frail Becoming, the group’s fourth LP to date. Daylight Dies have added a new emotion to their palette of despair and misery, a sense of angst that gnashes at you with a wolve’s fangs. This is a quality not so much heard in the music, as it is felt (although I would say this album is noticeably more aggressive and angrier than their previous efforts), though the band still maintain their lumbering doom cadence.
The album is definitely a high point of the year. While established bands who’ve followed in their footsteps such as In Mourning and newcomers such as Okera have provided us excellent releases this year, A Frail Becoming proves that Daylight Dies are still the sole masters of their craft. It delivers the same consistently high quality they’ve maintained throughout their three previous full-lengths. Continue reading »
The engineers at Scion have apparently figured out how to make time machines as well as cars. I know this because yesterday Scion A/V released video footage of a reunion show by Boston’s Revocation from the year 2055. The clip shows them performing “The Grip Tightens” from the band’s new EP Teratogenesis. The song seems to have stood the test of time, because all the geezers in the nursing home where Revocation crank up the song seem to be diggin’ it.
It’s really good to see that the guys have stayed together over the course of many decades, and that they can still cause women to throw their panties during shows. They’re still pretty spry, too, for a bunch of old fuckers. Sure, they need some oxygen supplementation and added dietary fiber, along with the occasional helping hand from the nursing staff, but fuck, they can still really bring the shred.
“The Grip Tightens” is a mind-blowing song. The video, directed by David Brodsky, is a really big smile, too — one of the year’s best. Don’t miss the cameo performance by guitarist Evan Duplessis from Sexcrement as Dr. PeePaw. Watch it after the jump. Continue reading »
Chicago guitarist Jeff Wilson is a busy dude. In addition to his bands Chrome Waves and Wolvhammer, both of which we’ve praised here at NCS in the past, he’s also a driving force in a new collective called Doomsday. He’s got some heavyweight talent along for the Doomsday ride, too:
Bassist Bob Fouts (The Gates of Slumber, Chrome Waves, Apostle Of Solitude)
Guitarist/vocalist Jon Woodring (Bones)
Drummer Zack Simmons (Goatwhore)
Vocalist Zion Meagher (Anti-Human Thesis).
In some ways this group is like a Nachtmystium alumni reunion, since Wilson, Woodring, Simmons, and Meagher were all previously involved with that band — and Doomsday’s self-titled, six-song EP was engineered by Nachtmystium’s Sanford Parker, along with Carl Byers (Coffinworm). It will be released on November 6 by Wilson’s newly founded label Disorder Recordings, and it features brilliantly occult cover art by Christina Caperson.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten the details out of the way and nearly sunk this review under the weight of all those links, I do have a few words to say about the music: It’s really fuckin’ good. Continue reading »
I caved in to impulse again this morning. While browsing the interhole to see what was happening in the world of metal, I saw a Facebook post by Planks about a show they’re playing in Plauen, Germany on November 16 with two other German bands, Trainwreck and Lentic Waters. Event details can be found here. The show seems to be part of a two-day fest called Deaf Row, and I came across a flyer for the fest that I thought was cool enough to paste on the top of this post.
Hannover is on the other side of the world from where I live in Seattle, so it seems unlikely that I’ll be at that show, unless of course the Seattle tech geeks figure out how to get my fuckin’ teleporter working again. I’ve become a big fan of Planks but didn’t know anything about Trainwreck or Lentic Waters, so I thought, what the fuck, time to check out some new music!
PLANKS
I first heard the music of Planks over the most recent Labor Day weekend and wrote about them here. What I heard was a Bandcamp stream of Planks’ amazing new album, Funeral Mouth, which is being released on October 12 but can be downloaded via that Bandcamp link right now.
In compiling today’s post, I discovered that Planks also recorded a split with one of the other bands featured on that November 16 show, Lentic Waters. The split was released in June of this year on vinyl by Apocaplexy Records (which can be ordered here), but it turns out that Apopoplexy also made the split available for free download via a link on this page. Continue reading »