LORD WORM REJOINS CRYPTOPSY (BRIEFLY)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 242013
 

Okay, sorry about that somewhat misleading headline. I couldn’t resist (and I did put the word “briefly” in there).

Cryptopsy’s first two albums, Blasphemy Made Flesh (1994) and None So Vile (1996) are widely (and rightly) regarded as death metal classics, and the disgusting vocals of Lord Worm were a key part of the music’s violent impact. He left the band in 1997, returned long enough to record Once Was Not (2005), and then departed again.

However, at the Amnesia Rockfest in Montebello, Quebec, on June 15, 2013, Lord Worm joined Cryptopsy on stage, sharing vocal duties with the band’s current growler Matt McGachy. Today, a 9-minute video surfaced on YouTube showing Lord Worm performing a medley of tunes from Blasphemy Made Flesh. The audio quality is iffy (among other things, the volume randomly goes up and down), but it’s damned cool to watch . . . which you can do next. Continue reading »

WATAIN UNLEASHES LYRIC VIDEO FOR “ALL THAT MAY BLEED”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 242013
 

As we previously reported, the Swedish horde known as Watain have a new album named The Wild Hunt coming on August 19 in Europe and August 20 in the US via Century Media Records. A two-track single (All That May Bleed) was released last Friday (June 21). And this morning brought us the band’s official lyric video for the single’s title track.

As should be expected from Watain by now, the song is not standard black metal fare. It’s bombastic, thrashing, slightly industrial in its rhythms, and of course completely vehement and venomous. It also includes a memorable (and eerie) guitar solo, as well as a bass solo.

The new single can be downloaded at iTunes and it’s also being offered as a 7″ black or red vinyl, and on a 7″ picture disc. These can be acquired at http://www.wolfwear.net or from http://www.cmdistro.com. The lyric video is next. Let us know what you think. Continue reading »

THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT: LIVE AT DOKK’EM OPEN AIR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 242013
 

If you know of a death metal band other than The Monolith Deathcult who have used the Scottish folk song “Donald, where’s your trousers?” as the intro music for a live set, please speak up. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it. But that’s what TMDC did at the beginning of their performance on June 22, 2013, at the DOKK’EM OPEN AIR festival in The Netherlands.

Of course, they didn’t use the funny, up-tempo version of the song recorded by Andy Stewart. They used the slow, creepy version sung by machine intelligences in an episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. As expected, the voice of Optimus Prime makes a later appearance as well.

But as interesting (and fitting) as these oddities were, the stars of the show were THE 6TH MOST POPVLAR AND ALMOST AWARD-WINNING SVPREME AVANTGARDE DEATH METAL BAND FROM KAMPEN, THE NETHERLANDS. And man, did they crush. How do I know? Because TMDC have uploaded a quality video of the entire set to YouTube. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: PYRE / ENTRAPMENT SPLIT

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jun 232013
 

Last month the Dutch label/distro Soulseller Records released a 45 rpm black vinyl split featuring two songs each from Pyre (Russia) and Entrapment (The Netherlands). I don’t have the vinyl — yet — but I did discover all four of the songs on Bandcamp, and what a discovery that proved to be. I admit that I have a real weak spot for the style of metal both bands play; more accurately, it’s a G-spot (or at least the male equivalent thereof). But even making allowances for my predisposition toward this kind of music, what both bands have done here is impressive.

The genre to which I’m referring is old school, Swedish-style, metal of fucking death. I hasten to add that Pyre and Entrapment do not sound like clones of each other. Although both bands have obviously plunged their hands up to the elbows in the river of gore that spread out from late-80’s/early 90’s Stockholm, they have very distinctive takes on the tradition, and there are some nods to Autopsy and NYDM in the music, too.

PYRE

Pyre are based in St. Petersburg, and this is only their second release (the first was a 2012 EP, Ravenous Decease), but man, they already sound like they’ve been at this for a long time. “Destined To Die” is a hard-rocking, punk-fueled rampage that gets the neck snapping immediately. The guitars and bass are stuffed full of HM-2 distortion, the gut-punch drumming is pitch-perfect for this kind of music, and the vocalist sounds a helluva lot like LG Petrov. Very nice screaming guitar solo in this one, too. Continue reading »

AGALLOCH: LIVE FROM BELGIUM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 222013
 

I’m going to be scarce around here the rest of the day and a big part of tomorrow. Two friends of mine are getting married tomorrow, and I intend to help them celebrate the joyous occasion to the utmost of my abilities. If the NCS site becomes comatose, please look for me at hospitals in the vicinity of Ithaca, NY.

Until we meet again, I’d like to leave you with something that really made my morning, and I hope it will make yours brighter, too. It’s a video of about half of Agalloch’s live set in Aalter, Belgium, on April 22, 2013, as part of the LUCIFER OVER EUROPE tour. The video and the audio quality are both very good. In fact, if you decide not to stare at a computer screen for 44 minutes, the audio is good enough that you could just blast it in the background.

So fucking heavy, so fucking sublime. Four excellent musicians really locked in, casting spells. Thank you John Haughm, Don Anderson, Jason Walton, and Aesop Dekker for getting my weekend off to a fine start. Continue reading »

TOURISM AND DE-TOURISM

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Jun 222013
 

Happy fucking Saturday to one and all. In this post I’ve collected information about a random assortment of new tours that have recently been announced. But first, I have to mention a tour that it seems was announced a bit prematurely.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE – ANAAL NATHRAKH?

Two days ago it was announced that Fleshgod Apocalypse would be leading ‘The Lords Of Extremity Tour‘ in the UK this October, with support from Anaal Nathrakh, Bound By Exile, and Scordatura. There were press releases, official-looking poster art, and sponsorship by the likes of Nuclear Blast and Terrorizer. And who in their right mind would miss the chance to see Fleshgod Apocalypze and Anaal Nathrakh on the same bill?

There was just this one little problem. Here’s a statement that appeared on Anaal Nathrakh’s Facebook page about 3 hours ago:

“For anyone hoping to see us in the UK in October: It appears we have been announced for a string of UK dates with Fleshgod Apocalypse in October. We did NOT agree to play these shows. Repeat: at no point have we ever said that we would play these dates, or that Mick would even be in Europe at the time. Continue reading »

EVILE: “SKULL”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jun 212013
 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by British thrashers Evile, which is out now via Century Media and Earache.)

Evile may very well be THE best of the so called re-thrash movement (I don’t count Vektor, they have a completely original sound IMO), bringing together elements of Forbidden, Slayer, Sepultura, and early Metallica to create a sound that has managed to remain old school, true to the roots, yet still distinct in its delivery.

With three killer albums to their credit thus far, the question, of course, is whether or not Skull manages to be a genuinely awesome fourth. I really think that opinion comes down to what you’ve liked most over the course of Evile’s three previous albums. While Evile have always had “their” sound, the three albums pre-dating this one had distinctly different areas of emphasis among the elements, which made them distinctly different from one another.

Skull is an odd edition in the Evile discography, mainly because it’s three steps back and strikes a ton of notes resonant with their debut Enter the Grave. The songs are one-note as far as tempo goes for the most part, the riffs are stripped-down, and the gang shouts are back. However, none of this changes the fact that I love it front to back. Like Enter the Grave, Skull is packed with adrenaline-surged immediacy and cut-throat riffage out the ass. Although I think by now these things are just to be expected with an Evile album. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CRIMINAL ELEMENT, WOLVSERPENT, A.M.S.G., MURDER MADE GOD, AND FREE SHIT FROM METAL BLADE

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 212013
 

This is a round-up of carefully selected items I saw and heard yesterday while prowling through the filthy chambers of the interhole. As usual, I’ve made an effort to include a variety of metal, so you don’t get too comfortable. Comfortable isn’t what we aim for around here.

CRIMINAL ELEMENT

Criminal Element is a band that until yesterday had completely slipped beneath my cracked radar screen. I learned about them from my NCS compadres TheMadIsraeli and DGR. They came into existence in the vicinity of 2005, and at the time of their first EP (Career Criminal), the line-up boasted two members from Suffocation (Derek Boyer and Terrance Hobbs) and one from Dying Fetus (Vince Matthews, and when the band first began Sparky Voyles from Dying Fetus was also on board)).

In the current incarnation of Criminal Element, Boyer, Hobbs, and Matthews are joined by Darin Morris from Misery Index (at one point Adam Jarvis and Mark Kloeppel from Misery Index were also part of this project). With a line-up like that, you can understand why I paid attention when I learned that Criminal Element released a new album (Modus Operandi) in April. Continue reading »

SPAM

 IQ Subtraction  14 Responses »
Jun 212013
 

Spam is evolving. I know this because our site gets bombarded by it every day. It used to be that I’d get e-mails from people in Africa offering me mountainous stacks of cash from dead relatives I never knew I had, or cancer-striken widows just looking for a good Christian willing to spend millions caring for orphans. For some reason I don’t get those e-mails any more, which is too bad, because now I can’t write responses and share them with everyone here on the site like I used to do. Now I’m seeing the spam in a daily flood of bullshit comments.

I guess there have always been spam comments, but I rarely saw them until recently. The WordPress software we use to create content for NCS includes a spam filter plugin called Akismet that runs in the background and has always done an excellent job detecting spam comments and eliminating them before they ever appear. But as I said, spam is evolving, and Akismet’s algorithms haven’t yet completely adapted to the spammers’ new strategies. Because of the way the new shit is crafted, Akismet puts them in a “moderation” queue, and I get an e-mail for every one of them that Akismet isn’t sure about, allowing me to decide whether the comment should appear or be trashed. And every now and then, one of them will slip through even that filter and appear on the site.

The reason this new generation of spam is puzzling Akismet is that the comments sort of look like they could be real, by which I mean that it’s more difficult for Akismet’s programmers to develop rules that will be effective in determining if they’re real or not. Which is why I’m having to look at them. And I’m getting really fuckin’ tired of looking at them. Continue reading »

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