BAND NAME CENSORSHIP: LIPS THAT TOUCH THESE NAMES SHALL NEVER TOUCH MINE!

 IQ Subtraction  19 Responses »
Feb 082013
 

This little story originally reported on gawker has been making the rounds on the internetz this morning, and it’s just too good not to share.

According to a notice posted on the employee bulletin board at Seton Hall University’s heavy metal radio station WSOU, uttering any band names or playing any songs with the words “devil,” “Satan,” “God,” “Jesus,” or “any other Catholic references that are portrayed in a negative light” will result in suspension.

But to take any guesswork out of which band names aren’t appropriate for the airwaves at “Seton Hall’s Pirate Radio,” the management drafted a list of the 53 dirtiest band names that you can never say on the radio, a la George Carlin’s iconic monologue about TV.

The list includes such metal radio staples as Cradle of Filth, Cannibal Corpse, Anal Cunt, Morbid Angel, and Deicide, but also a bunch of just-fun-to-say-out-loud outfits such as Adolf Satan, Baby Jesus Hitler, Crucifucks, Jesus Chrysler, Smother Theresa, and, of course, Hell-O.

Completely understandable and appropriate. Seton Hall is, after all, a private Roman Catholic university (located in New Jersey), the Archbishop of Newark is the president of its Board of Trustees, and lord knows that the Catholic Church has never tolerated filth, depravity, or degradation . . . except among minor church functionaries known as “priests”, but that doesn’t count. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: KOZELJNIK, BLACK TABLE, AND VON

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Feb 082013
 

My head is spinning with new music that I want to spread around and introduce to new listeners. I’m afraid I’ll never have time enough to write about all of it. Correction: I know there’ll never be enough time. I’ll do what I can, but there will necessarily be a degree of randomness in the selections. Still, I look for themes around which to organize the picks.

The theme of this post is the rich diversity of black metal. If you’re one of those people who did an eye roll at reading the last sentence, thinking that it all sounds alike, I can only say that you haven’t listened enough. Try out these three offerings as proof. They consist of new music from Kozeljnik (Serbia), Black Table (NY/NJ), and Von (California).

KOZELJNIK

This band is composed of two members: Kozeljnik, who is the vocalist, guitarist, and bass player, and L.G., the drummer. Both of them are also members of a long-running excellent Serbian band named The Stone, which I featured in a MISCELLANY post back in March 2011. Kozeljnik has released an EP and two albums (Sigil Rust and Deeper the Fall), and they’re on the verge of releasing a second EP named Null: The Acheron of Multiform Negation.

One song from the new EP is now streaming and available for download on Bandcamp (here) — “Time, Neglected in the Wound of a Martyr”. The last album, Deeper the Fall, is also available on Bandcamp (here). Last night I listened to the new song as well as the first track from Deeper the Fall, “Thetruthisdeath”. Both are them are striking, and strikingly different from the norm. Continue reading »

MORE GEMS: CREST OF DARKNESS AND OCTOPUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

It’s getting late in our usual posting day, but I thought I’d throw a couple more things your way that I discovered today.

CREST OF DARKNESS

Norway’s Crest of Darkness have a new album (their sixth studio release) scheduled to appear on February 25 via My Kingdom Music. Its name is In the Presence of Death, and the cover art is above. This band trace their origins back to the mid-90s, though I haven’t ever explored their albums with any care. After hearing the first song to be released from In the Presence of Death, that’s about to change.

The track is called “From the Dead”, and it grabbed my interest within the first 10 seconds. And by the time it really began to roll 30 seconds later, I was hooked. There’s no doubt that this is black metal with lots of bite, but not the kind that depends heavily on drum blasting and knife-edged whirlwinds of tremolo guitar. Depending on where you are in the song, it includes rock beats, industrial rhythms, progressive guitar parts, a head-spinning solo, and ominous, pounding riffs. I really like this and want more!

Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: NEW THINGS FROM BLUE STAHLI AND CARACH ANGREN

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

Here are a duo of new videos I spied yesterday and this morning that I thought were worth sharing. They stood out because the visuals enhanced the music and were actually very entertaining to watch, which I honestly can’t say about most metal videos.

BLUE STAHLI

I discovered Blue Stahli thanks to an interview with him that DGR did for us last year. I’ve been following his social media and music releases since then, and it’s obvious that he’s a clever, creative, slightly unhinged dude, and I like his style, even though the kind of music he makes isn’t my usual kind of thing.

This morning, Bloody Disgusting premiered a music video for the song “ULTRAnumb”, which comes from Blue Stahli’s 2011 self-titled album, which you can acquire here. The song is a catchy piece of work with an industrial beat and harsh vox that remind me of Devin Townsend’s, plus clean crooning that doesn’t make me run for the exits. And the video . . . the video is a complete head trip, most of it funny as hell, and ultimately full of gore, too. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SCENT OF DEATH — “MAN KILLS GOD TOO”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

Spain’s Scent of Death has recently released their second album . . . which followed the first one by approximately eight years. The new one has proved to be a real eye-opener for me. Whatever this band accomplished in the past, their new offering is an atomic-grade kick in the teeth — and in the head, and in the kidneys, and in other vulnerable organs.

Entitled Of Martyrs’s Agony and Hate, it calls to mind the likes of Suffocation, Hate Eternal, Dying Fetus, and Morbid Angel. Hell, I might as well throw in references to Origin and Behemoth, because I thought of them, too, at different points on the album.

The music is a non-stop onslaught from start to finish. It’s brutal, bruising, and bludgeoning, but it’s executed with an impressive degree of technical flourish. The songs are loaded with punishing grooves and fire-breathing guitar solos, with gut-level vocals that summon up images of voracious lions. In short, it’s a nasty piece of work.

Today we’re stoked to bring you the exclusive premiere of the album’s sixth track, “Man Kills God Too”, which we hand-picked from among the album’s 9 songs. The album’s first song premiered earlier this year, and we’re including a stream of that one, too. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE COMPLETE LIST

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  15 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

Last week I finally finished rolling out our list of 2012’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. The list mushroomed in comparison to my lists from 2011 and 2010 because last year I listened to more metal and a greater variety of it than ever before. Also, I’m really bad at choosing among things I like.

As long as the list turned out to be, I still wasn’t able to include everything I wanted to include, but I really felt it was time to stop before February began. I actually put a lot of time into making the list — time spent re-listening to hundreds of songs, time spent wrestling with myself over choices, time spent writing about each track. Since then I’ve started going back to reviewing new things and writing the regular NCS  features that I’ve been neglecting for most of the last two months.

But I’ve also made time to collect all the song streams (56 of them!) here in this post, in the order in which they appeared in the series from start to finish. I don’t claim that this represents a thorough survey of all metal genres or anyone else’s idea of which songs were the most infectious. It’s one person’s opinion reflecting one person’s tastes. Still, I hope it will be a good reminder of what a fuckin’ great year in metal 2012 turned out to be. Continue reading »

BARKS AT THE MOON – BRIEF REVIEWS

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

(Our man BadWolf is trying a new review format with these quick takes on new releases by Portal (which I reviewed at length here yesterday), Head of the Demon, and Shai Hulud. Leave a comment and let us know what you think of this idea.)

 

Portal – Vexovoid

By this time many of you are already familiar with Australia’s Portal. They play a technical, alienating brand of death metal, a bit like Pyrrhon but sludgier, with more blunted riffage. The band’s imagery–hooded members and vocalist wearing a clock on his head—made a big splash at Maryland Deathfest. So big an impact, in fact, that I’d wager more people are familiar with the band’s image than their music—Portal is the only death metal band I can say that about, come to think of it. I found their 2011 album, Swarth, pretty unremarkable—another substance-free death metal record that sounds like it’s coated in mucus. That Swarth came out on Profound Lore, normally the best label I can think of, irked me more.

Now Portal’s back with Vexovoid, and maybe I was wrong to dismiss them. A little clarity in the production really shows off the technical aspects of their music—my inner Deathspell Omega fanatic did a little backflip while listening. I especially liked the song “Plasm,” which opens with a flurry of hypnotic blasting,  then degenerates into foghorn distortion. I still hold some qualms: the titles and vocals still sound essentially like word-vomit, and Portal are aware that HP Lovecraft wrote fiction, not prophecy, right? Still, Vexovoid impressed me enough to warrant giving Swarth a second chance. Continue reading »

PORTAL: “VEXOVOID”

 Album Reviews  19 Responses »
Feb 062013
 

Portal’s new album Vexovoid comes more than three years after their last album Swarth, which was my introduction to the band. At that time, I had heard nothing like Swarth. My reactions, of course, were a product of my tastes at the time and what, in retrospect, was the limited range of metal to which I’d been exposed up to that point in my education as a metal lover. I found the album deeply disturbing and yet transfixing. I can’t say I immediately liked it, but I couldn’t stay away from it either.

Since then, my tastes have expanded, as has the range of extreme music I’ve heard. Among other things, I’ve listened to a lot more blackened death metal (a micro-genre I also think of as apocalyptic death metal or atmospheric death metal, some of which also gets labeled “war metal”). Which is to say, I’m no longer the innocent virgin who was violated by Swarth. Having been violated by many other rough beasts in the intervening years, I wondered how the new me would react to Vexovoid.

The new me likes Vexovoid very much. It doesn’t have the shock value that Swarth delivered to my unprepared ears more than three years ago, but even to these now mangled and punctured ear drums Portal haven’t lost their ability to create vivid, catastrophic atmospheres of horror and doom. Vexovoid is both disturbing and mesmerizing. It will detonate a highly radioactive bomb in your head, grind up the remains like hamburger, and send your soul into the void. Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM DEBUT THEIR OFFICIAL VIDEO FOR “THE UNKNOWING” . . . AND IT’S ALL BEAUTIFUL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 062013
 

Sadistic bastards that we are, we published three different glowing reviews of Beyond, the forthcoming album by Finland’s Omnium Gatherum, months before the album’s scheduled release dates (Feb 25 in Europe and Mar 5 in the U.S.). We had no music we could share with you then, but Omnium Gatherum eventually started streaming one of the album’s numerous stand-out tracks, “New Dynamic” (which you can hear at this location). And as of this morning Metal Hammer premiered an official video for a second one — “The Unknowing”.

In addition, the same song is now available on iTunes.

The imagery in this new video was an inspired choice as accompaniment for the music. Along with close-up film of the band performing the song, it depicts the majesty, power, and sublime beauty of a sunlit coastal sea from dawn until dusk. And that pretty much captures the spirit of the song — majestic, powerful, beautiful. It’s one of many tracks from the album that I’ve already put on our list of candidates for our list of 2013’s most infectious extreme metal songs.

Check out the video after the jump, and give thanks to Olli-Pekka Lappalainen, who directed and edited the video, and to director of photography, Tapio Aulu. Continue reading »

VREID: “WELCOME FAREWELL”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 062013
 

(Below, Andy Synn reviews the forthcoming sixth album by Norway’s Vreid.)

To me a new Vreid album is a very… sexual experience…

First we have the announcement that a new album is in the works, the enticing promise of something special to come, a reward for being good boys and girls…

Then comes the build of anticipation, the flirting glimpses of the artwork, the teasing interviews where the band stoke our ardour with their verbal prowess and come-hither eyes…

Then there’s the foreplay, the premiere of a song, the release date announcement, the booking of tours, all designed to get you all primed up and ready to go…

Then, finally, you get to the main event. The album is released and all that pent up frustration and energy finally reaches… climax.

Sorry everyone, I got a bit worked up there.

Anyway, Welcome Farewell is an awesome record, it really is. Continue reading »

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