FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE… ALBUMS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2014

 Metal News  32 Responses »
Jan 272014
 

(Here’s another installment of Andy Synn’s irregular series devoted to his favorite things that come in fives. Seems like a good occasion to sound off on what you’re looking forward to as well, so please leave Comments.)

Now this is an easy one… and a hard one… to write.

Easy… because there are SO many awesome albums coming out this year to choose from.

Hard… because there are TOO many awesome albums coming out this year to choose from!

Still, here’s a selection of five to whet your appetite. (Note – some nepotism involved) Continue reading »

IT’S OFFICIAL: AT THE GATES WILL RELEASE A NEW ALBUM IN 2014

 Metal News  11 Responses »
Jan 272014
 

We earlier reported a bit of a video tease from seminal melodic death metal band At the Gates which suggested that a new album might be on the way for the first time in almost two decades. And now, it’s official. Here’s a statement from the band; I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting a few passages of particular interest:

“So, here we are almost 24 years since the birth of AT THE GATES, and some 18+ years since our latest album Slaughter Of The Soul. A lot of years have passed and we have embarked on some life-changing reunion tours and shows the last couple of years.

“So, why make a new album you might ask, and why now? Well, what we learned from the last couple of years hanging out and playing shows together, is that we enjoy what we do to the fullest extent. We love playing music together, and we love to hang out as friends. But, as a musician, we constantly write new music. It’s a huge part of our identities.

“We are fully aware that we have made some very drastic statements in interviews as well as the closing words on the DVD about the longevity of AT THE GATES, but things change, situations change and people change. When Anders sent the first song last summer, we had zero expectations of the outcome. We only knew one thing – That it sounded amazing! At the time we weren’t even sure there would be an album, but as things progressed, more songs came into existence, and we knew we were on to something great. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: PUTREVORE AND PUTREFACT — “FUNEBRE PLAGUE INTO DARKNESS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  12 Responses »
Jan 272014
 

Germany’s Unholy Prophecies has just released a 7″ split that for me is the stuff of daydreams, even though it sounds like a waking nightmare. The split joins together two of the best and most hellish propagators of old-school death metal who are currently active, and they have both outdone themselves. The bands are Putrevore and Putrefact, and their split is entitled Funebre Plague Into Darkness.

PUTREVORE

Putrevore is a joint project of Sweden’s Rogga Johansson (Ribspreader, Paganizer, Bone Gnawer, Demiurg, etc.) and Spain’s Dave Rotten (Avulsed, Christ Denied). I discovered Putrevore through their second album, 2012’s Macabre Kingdom. If you were looking for pure, unadulterated, unforgiving, horrific death metal in 2012, you couldn’t go wrong with that record. You still can’t. It’s an unstoppable battle tank that’s both catastrophic in its atmospherics and also strangely addictive, so much so that I included one of its tracks on our list of the year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs”.

Putrevore’s track on the new split is “A Cold Grasp In the Night”, and it’s utterly obliterating. The riffs come fast and furious, like an over-heated pile-driver fueled by an accelerant that puts gasoline to shame. The drumming is superb, and superbly merciless. And Dave Rotten’s vocals sound like they’re welling up from a deep sewer that hasn’t been flushed clean in decades. And before the song ends, it dives into an off-speed crush-fest that’s just as compelling as the full-bore adrenaline surge that precedes it. A thoroughly energizing song that will zap you right in the brainstem. Check it out: Continue reading »

ALIVE: AEVANGELIST, ARTIFICIAL BRAIN, AND OBITUARY (PLAYING THREE NEW SONGS)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jan 272014
 

I came across some new live videos last night that I’d like to share. The first two are performances by Ævangelist and Artificial Brain at Brooklyn’s St. Vitus bar on January 25, 2014. I’ve been following both bands for a long time, but this is the first time I’ve seen what they look like on stage.

The new album by Ævangelist, Omen Ex Simulacra, was released last November by Debemur Morti. For my money, the most compelling track on a very compelling album is the long closing song “Abysscape”. To quote what I’ve previously written, it’s “a dense, bottomless, indigo whirlpool of doom, made for immersion. Immense grinding guitars match up with immense, horrific vocals and stunning drumwork. Alien keyboard melodies call out like the cries of homeless souls. The ravaging music alternately storms and drifts. You look into the void, and ‘Abysscape’ is there, looking back at you.”

How nice that the Ævangelist video filmed at St. Vitus by Frank Huang was the performance of “Abysscape”. And how nice that the alien nature of the song was matched by an otherworldly performance, beginning with the band’s live bassist — ][ — shrieking his lungs out for minutes on end before the song kicks into gear and lead vocalist Ascaris starts discharging his horrific, abyssal roars. Performing against a red backdrop but nearly immersed in shadow, both ][ and the band’s musical mastermind Matron Thorn are covered in strange sigils, and the top of Ascaris’ face is concealed by a creepy mask. Visually, the band is as arresting and unsettling to watch as their music is to hear. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: GAPED – “THE MURDEROUS INCEPTION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jan 272014
 

(In this post our friend from The Dominican Republic, Vonlughlio, provides a guest review of the recently released debut EP by Australia’s Gaped.)

First of all, I would like to thank Islander for the opportunity to write for NCS about a band that I discovered last year, while doing my year-end list.  That band is a death metal act named Gaped from Newcastle, Australia, signed to Lacerated Enemy Records. Gaped is the brainchild of Ryan Huthnance, who is the vocalist and plays all the instruments, with lyrics written by Shane Watts (Nekrology and ex-Osmium Grid).

As I mentioned, I discovered this band while doing my list. Up to that moment, I only had two EP’s that I had really loved throughout 2013.  While compiling the list I decided to check out the label’s FB and saw that they had posted the single “Realm of Impurity” from Gaped’s upcoming EP The Murderous Inception and decided to listen (plus, the cover art by Mottla Brutal Art is just killer).  So for the next couple of days, I found myself listening to the song over and over. It’s really groove-oriented, with killer riffs, and the vocals were just insane.

Once the EP was released, I went to the label’s Bandcamp (where I had purchased some of Lacerated Enemy’s other releases) and right there discovered that Gaped had recorded a cover of a Cannibal Corpse song (“Stripped, Raped and Strangled”). I mention this because “Realm of Impurity” had reminded me of CC and some other old school death metal acts. But anyway, I listened to the whole EP and bought it right away. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: FRAMEWORK AND FOREVER DAWN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 262014
 

I went to an annual party last night with co-workers, friends of theirs, and friends of mine. It’s a celebration of the life of Robert Burns on his birthday. He would be 255 years old if he were still around. I feel 255 years old this morning. I blame the amber bead.

As has become traditional, this morning I’m going to a “hangover-cure, southern-fried” feedbag at a friend’s house, attended by whoever else besides me survived last night’s blowout. There will be hair of the dog, in addition to a mess of high-calorie comfort food, none of which will cure my hangover — but misery loves company.

All of this is by way of excusing the fact that I don’t have a big mess of comfort metal to serve you today. But I hate to let a day go by without something new, and thanks to my NCS comrades, I have two somethings to throw up here on the site before I go ineffectually attempt to cure my hangover.

Did I just say throw up? A Freudian slip. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 11

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013  3 Responses »
Jan 252014
 

Welcome to Part 11 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the three I’m announcing today, click here.

That’s right, three songs today instead of two. I have reasons for grouping them together, but not because they’re similar. In fact, the styles of metal are quite different. I’ve put them together in this post because all three bands are relative newcomers, they’re all from the U.S., and they’ve already given us ample cause to expect great things from them in the future — because what they’ve already accomplished is pretty great. Of course, these three songs are also damned infectious.

OAK PANTHEON

This Minneapolis-based band will not be a new name for followers of NCS because we’ve been covering them closely since June 2011, when I included them in a feature that focused on a handful of promising bands I’d found who had less than 100 Facebook likes (they’re over 2,000 now). Musically, Oak Pantheon haven’t been standing still since then. Every new release seems to bring surprises — and further proof that their talents are as expansive as their musical interests.

Their latest release was a 2013 split with Amiensus (yet another very promising U.S. band), which I reviewed here. Oak Pantheon’s contribution to the split is a song entitled “A Gathering”. It manages to rock very hard while also being worthy of the label “epic”. I thought the riffs were ridiculously catchy when I first heard it, and time has only confirmed my first impressions — I’ve been drawn back to the song a lot over the last three months. It was a foregone conclusion that “A Gathering” would have a place on this list. Listen: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2013’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 10

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2013  11 Responses »
Jan 242014
 

Today we reach the 10th part of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the two I’m announcing today, click here. I’m still not positive how many more parts remain, but I have resolved to finish before this month ends.

If you’re not familiar with today’s two additions to the list, you’ll soon understand why I grouped them together. They’re the least “extreme” of the songs featured so far, and I suppose some folks might argue they don’t belong on this list at all. But as different as both songs are from what I usually pass my days hearing and writing about, both of them lodged firmly in my head and have meant a lot to me since I first heard them. So they’re here, and so are you, and on we go…

FALKENBACH

Falkenbach is the German one-man project of Vratyas Vakyas. Since 1996 he has released six albums on an irregular and unpredictable schedule, the most recent being 2013’s Asa. By coincidence, it appeared on a late-breaking year-end list we published this morning, with these words:

“With multiple styles present, Asa sounds atmospheric and epic, Vratyas Vakyas putting forth excellent performances in everything he’s done with this album. The contrasting vocal styles are well done and may rival some of the best bipolar voices in metal, but the use of acoustic guitar may actually be the highlight of the album. I can envision Asa being what campfire stories at night would sound like with backing guitars and drums as others go forward to to do the deeds being sung about back home…. Falkenbach remains one of folk metal’s standard bearers, Asa showing exactly why.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AGELESS OBLIVION, METSATÖLL, DOMAINS, LIE IN RUINS, CORPSESSED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Jan 242014
 

The creative juices are REALLY flowing out there in metaldom . . . SO much juice . . . So sticky, so pungent . . . You just want to smear it ALL over and massage it into your scalp and make fluffy merengue with it . . . and

Ooops, sorry about that.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, a lot of creative juicing going on. LOTS of new metal songs to be spread around, like. . . well, you know. Here’s just a small smear of what I found this morning (more of what I found over the last 24 hours can be seen and heard here).

AGELESS OBLIVION

In July 2012 our own Andy Synn reviewed the debut album by a band from Hampshire, UK, named Ageless Oblivion. Here’s a relevant excerpt:

“You may not have heard of this band, but doubtless you will be doing so more in the future. With a fresh take on the death metal dynamic, this, their debut album, provides a master class in modern death metal, shot through with unusual progressive impulses. . . . The playing throughout is deft and highly skilled, without veering into territory one could describe (often dismissively) as “tech”. While there is no doubt some complex fretwork going on here, it’s always done in service to the song and as part of an overall pattern of interlocking riffs, woven together seamlessly. Drums clatter and pound with impressive force, eschewing the simple blast-blast-blast approach in favour of punchy, jarring kick patterns and sharp, hammer-blow snare-beats, while the vocals favour a tormented, guttural howl that successfully captures an all-too-human sense of rage and despair, making a rare emotional connection with the listener.” Continue reading »

A YEAR-END LIST FROM ELVISSHOTJFK

 LISTMANIA 2013  12 Responses »
Jan 242014
 

EDITOR’S FORWARD: When I announced the end of our 2013 LISTMANIA series, I wrote that there might still be one or two late-breaking lists that I would add later. What you’re about to read was the main one I had in mind. It could have arrived in July, and I still would have posted it. It comes from someone in Michigan’s Upper Penisula who has been a supporter of NCS since the early days. His first comment was back on May 28, 2010, and though he now appears pretty infrequently in our Comment section, my WordPress dashboard tells me he was responsible for over 900 comments in the earliest years of the site, and his interaction meant a lot to me at a time when we had few readers and even fewer commenters. His thoughts and eclectic recommendations, and occasional guest reviews, also played an important role in my own continuing education as a metalhead, and so I also figured his 2013 list would be an interesting one worth waiting for. And so it was. Plus, he can write, as you will see.

***

2013 was a pretty busy year. Between work, spending a good part of the summer being sick and on antibiotics a few times and short on cash a bit more often than I would have liked, I missed out on quite a bit. I was able to catch a few metal releases early on, but a lot of what I had on my radar had to wait. Then, other stuff got my attention, not all of it good. Still, without these albums (and a few more that I haven’t mentioned here), I may have lost my mind having to endure the likes of the “Single Ladies” dance, Ke$ha, “Blurred Lines”, Miley Cyrus, and bad singalongs set to Journey, Bon Jovi, and the B-52’s (hint: these all happen at weddings). (editor’s intrusion: ElvisShotJFK manages a couple of buildings, one of which is often used as a venue for weddings)

First, let’s visit a couple entries from late 2012 that caught my attention early on last year. Continue reading »

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