SUNDAY SEEN AND HEARD: GHOST, HOWLING, AND ARKONA

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 162012
 

From me to you, new things discovered today . . .

GHOST

I became an acolyte of Ghost after witnessing their live ritual twice in the last year. The music was already growing on me before those shows, but they sealed the deal.

Now we have a new Ghost song and a new live video performance of the song to go with it. Ghost began rolling out the song on-line, one recording track after another, and now the entire song is available for listening — and it’s also a free download.

“Secular Haze” has the rhythm of a waltz and fancifully begins and ends with the sound of a calliope. Like so many of the band’s songs, it’s poppy and catchy, and yet moments of ominous tension find their way into the melody. The song didn’t grab me as fast as some of the tracks on Opus Eponymous, but by the third listen I was hooked.

To hear the song and get it for free, go to this location and enter your e-mail address. You’ll then receive a download link by e-mail. To watch the new video, continue on past the jump. Continue reading »

RXYZYXR: “LMNTS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  12 Responses »
Nov 292012
 

RXYZYXR and I go back a ways, back to their four-song instrumental demo in 2010 called Geometrical Metal, though I didn’t discover it until first being caught up in the videos they made for two later songs — “Denial of Death” and “Polar Knights” — which I wrote about in July 2011. By that point, the instrumentalists in the band (whose precise overseas locations are still not clear to me) had joined forces with a talented Florida-based vocalist named Tommy Wills.

Earlier this month RXYZYXR finally released a full-fledged debut album, and by full-fledged I mean 13 songs and nearly a solid hour of music, including those two songs that first grabbed me back in 2011. Continuing to shun vowels, the band have named the album LMNTS, and it’s available on both iTunes and Bandcamp.

When I first heard the band’s music, I began comparing them favorably to the likes of Textures and CiLiCe, whose vocalist Daniel de Jongh moved over to Textures and made his debut with that band on 2011’s wonderful Duality. Having now heard LMNTS, the comparison is even more apt, and yet RXYZYXR have integrated more stylistic variety into their music than even those comparisons would suggest.

At the core of RXYZYXR’s music is the kind of Meshuggah-influenced polyrhythmic pummeling that fellow blogger Angry Metal Guy once delightfully termed “high-IQ-riffage”. The unpredictable, unstable rhythms are heavy as lead and yet bound and dart like cheetahs in a high-speed chase. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: BIRGIR THORGEIRSSON (KONTINUUM)

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  1 Response »
Nov 272012
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Seattle-based writer and NCS reader Gemma Alexander recently journeyed to Iceland in late October to see the country, and she timed her visit to coincide with the Iceland Airwaves festival, which included over 420 bands playing all over Reykjavík for five days, plus 400 more unofficial, off-venue performances.

While in Iceland, Gemma generously arranged to conduct interviews of some Icelandic bands for NCS. So far, we’ve published  her interview of Angist and her interview of Beneath. Today we’re giving you part of Gemma’s fascinating interview of Kontinuum’s Birgir Thorgeirsson. It’s the metal part of the interview. Given the nature of Kontinuum’s music, there were “less metal” parts as well, and you’ll be able to find those at another blog for which Gemma writes regularly, Three Imaginary Girls, by following this link.

To hear Kontinuum’s well-received debut album Earth Blood Magic, you can stream it in full via the player located at the end of this interview. The album can be purchased from Amazon as an import, or preordered directly from Candlelight. Kontinuum is on Facebook here.

And if you haven’t yet checked out Gemma’s beautifully written blog about her entire Icelandic vacation, do yourself a favor and do that via this link. And now, here’s Gemma’s interview, preceded by her own introduction:

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Birgir Thorgeirsson may be familiar to the tr00 and cvlt from his work in Potentiam, one of the first black metal bands in Iceland, and one of the few to ever release albums internationally. After a stint abroad, Birgir is back with a new project, Kontinuum. They are the first Icelandic band to sign with Candlelight, which will release their debut album Earth Blood Magic in North America on January 8th, 2013.

This one comes with a warning: it’s an Exception to the Rule – the NCS rule, and most other rules you can think of. Mostly clean vocals lean to the gothic. The music, too, is right on the edge of NCS territory, extreme primarily in its disregard for conventional genre boundaries. Like other notable Icelandic bands, Kontinuum are doing whatever the fuck they want with their music, without particularly giving a rat’s ass what anyone thinks about it. If you use spellings like tr00 and cvlt, as Angist’s Halli tells people when they discover that he’s in a band, “You’re not gonna like it.” Continue reading »

EARTHSHIP: “IRON CHEST”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  1 Response »
Nov 202012
 

(NCS contributor Tyler Lowery provides this guest review of the new album by Earthship from Berlin.)

In due respect to Earthship’s new album Iron Chest, I’m not going to grease the wheels with any quippy one-liners or give any background at all. I’m just going to hit the ground at a sprint and let the music do its own talking. Earthship have released their second album, and it isn’t an exercise in extravagance or even beauty. It’s raw, no-nonsense sludge metal that would rather kick your teeth in than wow you with any fancy tricks, and because of that, it’s excellent.

The album starts with a bang and rarely slows down. The guitars shake and rumble through stripped-down leads and coherent riffs that have only one job — keep the movement gritty and propel the song into the next battering ram. The bass is fuzzier than a gerbil’s jewels, and the drums are loud and rudimentary. There aren’t tricky solos or self-indulgent post-rock inspired passages of layer upon layer of quiet sound that eventually arrives at something akin to satisfaction.

The leads are brilliant in their simplicity. You won’t find any weedly weedly here. The washed-out guitars play the part of caravan, carrying the music from the beginning to the end. Where your death metal lead guitar will slice through songs like a well sharpened knife, the guitars on Iron Chest present a more blunt approach. Each song is like a club coming swiftly down on the top of your skull. Continue reading »

ACYL: “ALGEBRA”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Nov 162012
 

(New Zealand-based NCS patron Booker follows up his last guest review with another one.  The subject of this piece is the debut album by a Paris-based band named Acyl, who have a decidedly different approach to metal.)

 

So growing up in the 90’s (OMG! I’m like, so old!!), Sepultura were one of my favourite bands. Some say Arise was their best offering and despise all the ‘world-music/Brazilian’ influence on later releases, most notably Roots. Without wanting to revive the old chestnut of post-Max Sepultura (arguing about which never seems to die), whatever your opinion of Against-onward era Sepultura, or the direction of Soulfly, unarguably both have progressively moved away from the world-music influence into a more stripped-down sound.

Over the same course of time, the Western world has been exposed more and more to the Arab world, and let’s face it, not usually from the likes of Jim Al-Khalili expounding on how insightful those ancient Arab mathematicians and astronomers were, but more likely linked with post 9/11, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, radical Islam, and the like.

Well, who should come along and kill two birds with one stone (or album, more accurately – although really I don’t think the killing of birds was actually involved) but Acyl with their debut LP Algebra out this year – bringing a good ‘world music mixed with metal’ fix, and also some of the goodness the Arab world has to offer in terms of its language (one of the most ancient in the world, consider that for a while if you will) and old-school Arabian musical stylings. In doing so, these guys have achieved something incredibly difficult in this day and age – a debut album with a distinctive, unique sound. Continue reading »

COLD NIGHT FOR ALLIGATORS: “SINGULAR PATTERNS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Nov 152012
 

(Continuing our November series of guest posts, we’re joined today by writer Austin Weber with a review of the new EP from Cold Night For Alligators.)

In the past few years, djent has spread like a tidal wave across the scene, bringing to light many interesting acts. Like the deathcore trend behind it, djent ultimately has over-saturated the scene with bands only interested in playing it as a style, without bringing anything new to the table sonically or from a songwriting perspective.

That being said, releases this year by Periphery, Chimp Spanner, and others have shown it’s not a sinking ship just yet. Another name that should be included among the top tier bands in this sub-genre is Copenhagen, Denmark’s Cold Night For Alligators. They formed in 2008 and released a three song introduction in 2010, Ulterior Motives.

 


Continue reading »

DEFTONES: “KOI NO YOKAN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  6 Responses »
Nov 142012
 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Deftones, which was released yesterday on the Reprise label.)

Let’s face it, some bands exist in a genre of one. Despite what imitators they may attract, Deftones are certainly one such band, capably incorporating a countless multitude of influences (there’s a hip-hop, jazzy freedom to much of the material, while the always dramatic vocals have a gothy, new-wave romanticism to their breathless, aching delivery) into a singular ocean of metallic sound.

The Sacramento five-piece find themselves in the enviable, and rare, position of possessing a singular sound – hugely influential, but rarely (successfully) imitated. From the halcyon days of whiny post-hardcore, through to today’s crop of weak-kneed djentiles, the influence of Deftones has been palpable, but rarely well-incorporated. And that’s because these other bands have almost all attempted to use the Deftones influence to soften their sound, to give it a forced romantic edge which blunts their overall impact. And in doing so, they’ve missed the point entirely.

For Deftones those quiet moments, those ethereal melodies, and sparse, shimmering structures, contain just as much power as their down-tuned riffage and tumultuous drumming. There’s heartbreak, there’s angst, there’s even love… but it’s always powerful. Continue reading »

KRAKOW: “DINN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  2 Responses »
Nov 072012
 

(In this post, NCS writer Andy Synn reviews the sophomore album by Norway’s Krakow, which was released in September.)

Hands up: Who remembers the last time this band were featured (albeit briefly) on this site…?

Ok, so I’m going to guess that very few hands were raised. Partly because none of you remember the band, and partly because raising your hand over the internet would be pretty stupid.

Back when I had my little Black Metal Weekender™ there was a killer little show featuring Kampfar, Vreid, and Secrets of the Moon. And opening that show (and indeed, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb) were the as-then-unknown-to-me band Krakow, playing a form of dragging, weighty stoner-metal, shot through with some distinctly Scandinavian influences. It was certainly an interesting sound, and their performance prompted me to keep an eye on the band.

Which brings us to Diin, their recently released second album. To describe it succinctly, I’d say imagine Enslaved with a more depressive, less bombastic vibe, channelling the spirit of latter-day Isis. Add a splash of Mastodonian psychedelia to that, stir, and serve over ice. Continue reading »

UNCLE ACID AND THE DEADBEATS: “BLOOD LUST”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  5 Responses »
Nov 062012
 

I guess we’re really going to confuse people today. We started with a guest review of Kamelot’s new album. To provide balance, I should be reviewing something that mimics the sound of your guts being clawed out by a pack of rabid wolverines. Instead, I’m writing about a UK band named Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats.

If I were more deeply ensconced in the world of stoner doom, and even more precisely, the world of throwback, acid-dropping, occult, garage-band horror/rock, I would have known about this band before yesterday. But I’m not and I didn’t.

I didn’t even intend to review this album. I simply intended to listen to a song or two out of curiosity, because Metal Blade is giving the band’s 2011 album Blood Lust its first big-scale release in advance of a new album due next spring. But a song or two was all it took to fall for the album like a bag of bricks.

Listeners of a certain advanced age, such as yours truly, will think they’ve entered a time warp and surfaced in the era when Led Zeppelin, Cream, and Neil Young were changing the face of rock. But where those bands were singing about climbing stairways to heaven, strange brew, and Southern men, Uncle Acid steep themselves in witchery, murder, and the ritual of sin. Continue reading »

KAMELOT: “SILVERTHORN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Nov 062012
 

(Today we continue our series of guest posts with a review by “Andrew Jackson” of the new album from Kamelot, which was released on October 30 by SPV/Steamhammer.)

Kamelot are a Power Metal band who I had overlooked for quite a while, though I had known about them for at least a year before I first heard Silverthorn. I had intended to buy one of their albums eventually, but when you’re broke and live in a town that thrives off of Country, Modern Pop, and other garbage that is guaranteed to reduce your already dwindling number of brain cells, it becomes difficult.

Anyways, so after some time I finally got my hands on Kamelot’s new album. To be honest, I didn’t really expect much. The band had just lost their singer of ten years, one of the hardest things for a band to recover from. Their previous singer, Roy Kahn, was well known in the Metal community and loved by fans. So after some time they filled in the gap with a singer named Tommy Karevik.

Hell if I know who he is, I just focus on the important shit here; and what’s most important is that he kicks ass. It seems like Kamelot decided to give him free range to explore his own vocal abilities and pump out some incredibly infectious melodies, while still bringing in the classic Kamelot feel to each song. In fact, he sounds very similar to Roy Kahn.

Silverthorn is a concept album about some chick named Jolee (I’m guessing that’s her picture on the cover) who dies at the hands of her brothers. Each individual track continues the storyline and focuses on the emotions that each character in the story feels, along with their individual regret for their actions. Along with the lyrics, the music also changes from moments of power to moments of reflection, such as the track “Song for Jolee”. Continue reading »

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