Jun 022012
 

Happy Saturday to one and all.  I am awake and adequately caffeinated now, only moderately hung over from Friday night’s revels, and therefore able to type.  My thinking capacity is only on a par with that of the lower primates, but this is not unusual, so I am forging ahead with our first post of this first weekend in June.  And really, this post doesn’t require much thought, because it involves free music.

The first offering comes from Century Media. They have compiled a free sampler of songs from bands who are scheduled to perform at the SUMMER BREEZE festival in Germany on August 16 – 18. It’s a hell of a compilation, too, with songs from the likes of Insomnium, Napalm Death, Darkest Hour, Crowbar, Deicide, Asphyx, and Vallenfyre. Though it’s unlikely that every band is going to appeal to every metalhead, I’d be surprised if you don’t find some tunes to like, even from bands whose music you don’t already own.

To get the download, you do have to surrender an e-mail address and expose yourself to email marketing campaigns from Century Media and its affiliates, so there is that hitch. But otherwise, this is free, and you can get it via this link.

But that’s not all.  I found another just-released free compilation worth mentioning, and it’s maybe even more delicious. Continue reading »

May 222012
 

We’ve mentioned The Violitionist Sessions before, but you may have forgotten. In the words of the site’s proprietors: “The Violitionist Sessions are 3 questions and 3 songs with bands from Denton and passing through Denton, Texas. The sessions are all recorded live in a living room with no overdubs and no fancy tricks. The goal is to document a moment in time. This is what happened in Denton, Texas.

Yesterday, The Violitionist Sessions put up videos of the three songs recently performed in that living room by Brooklyn’s A Storm of Light. They also made the live recordings available for free download (in exchange for an e-mail address).

This is a band I lost track of. I got their debut album, And We Wept the Black Ocean Within (2008), after reading raves about it when it debuted. Somehow, I missed their next two full-lengths, including 2011’s Profound Lore release, As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade. What a dumbass I’ve been. Continue reading »

May 132012
 

Klonosphere is a French business devoted to organizing and promoting musical performances and releasing music, with distribution provided by Season of Mist. Their name has been associated with a number of bands we’ve featured at NCS over the years. This morning I discovered that they’ve released an 18-track sampler of music from Klonosphere bands for free download. The sampler includes music from five bands we’ve featured at NCS (each of these names are links that will take you to our features about them):

Hypno5e
Jenx
Nojia
Klone
Nami

These bands are all so good — and their music is so diverse — that it bodes well for everything else on this sampler. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet, but I did pick out a few songs at random from bands whose names were new to me. I’ll stream those after the jump and provide a link for the download. Continue reading »

May 082012
 

(groverXIII brings you some excellent music that’s free — though you can certainly kick in some money if the spirit moves you.  At the end of his post, you can hear music from the albums he’s about to recommend.)

Greetings and salutations, NCS readers. It is I, your old pal groverXIII, here with another round of free goods for you all to download for your listening pleasure. Join me on a sonic adventure!

KEITH MERROW

We start with an old friend of The Number Of The Blog, the inimitable Keith Merrow. Keith, as you all should be quite aware, is one of the best-known one-man home-recording metal artists to arise in recent years. He’s put out some amazing music over the last few years, most recently 2011’s Awaken The Stone King, and on Sunday he gave us a new EP, entitled Retrospecial. This is what he told me about the EP:

“The album has a nerdy, light-hearted kinda Sci-Fi thing going on even though a couple of the tunes sound sort of serious. I’ve always been inspired by the 80’s sci-fi I grew up on… also old Atari and Nintendo games. I’ve been feeling really nostalgic the past year or so. The name Retrospecial is basically a culmination of that inspiration, but there’s also a couple older songs on here that have been redone. So those are in “retrospect”. It’s just a simple EP, with 8 tracks on it. I don’t expect it to blow anyone’s mind.”

It may not be mind-blowing, but it is a fantastic release from a very talented artist. Continue reading »

May 072012
 

Recently, I’ve discovered two independent record labels that I think are worth your attention. One is a label and distro based in Washington, D.C., called Replenish Records. I found out about them for the first time about a month ago via their release on vinyl (and as free downloads) of albums by Alda (Tacoma, WA) and Sky Burial (Nashville, TN) — see this post for comments about those releases.

More recently, I saw that Replenish is releasing a 7″ vinyl split by Masakari (Cleveland, OH) and Tempest (Vancouver, BC), with two songs from each band. All the proceeds from the split will be donated to Wiggle Butts Bully Rescue of Cleveland and HugAbull Advocacy & Rescue Society of Vancouver, BC. Both organizations are non-profits dedicated to rescuing and providing education about pit bulls. Replenish has also released the split as a free download.

The other label is Reaper Records, which is based in Liverpool, New York. Reaper specializes in hardcore music and has released vinyl by the likes of Terror, S.O.S., Madball, Trapped Under Ice, and Merauder, among many others. I’ve gotten way out of touch with the hardcore scene over the last decade, but even I recognize those names. What brought Reaper to my attention was a feature on Stereokiller about the label’s release of debut albums by Fire & Ice (Richmond, VA) — Not of This Earth — and Sai Nam (NYC, NY) — Crush — and a related contest for album and shirt giveaways.

After the jump, short notes about all this music and links for free shit. I’ll warn you: the songs will tear you inside out. Continue reading »

May 062012
 

Long-time readers may remember my repeated praise for a Vancouver, BC, grind band called Burning Ghats (the latest of multiple posts about the band can be found here). It turns out that two of the guys in Burning Ghats (Cam and Kevin) are in another Vancouver band called WTCHDR (along with members of other area bands, Spirals and Memorial). Last month, they released a self-titled debut EP, which you can stream and download for free on Bandcamp (HERE).

I had high hopes for this EP because I lost so many brain cells listening to the Burning Ghats releases and I’ve found that life is more enjoyable now that I’m able to comprehend less of it due to brain cell loss. But, to be brutally honest, I was also kind of afraid. I could stand to lose some more brain bits flying out my ears and nose, but if one or both of my eyeballs exploded out of their sockets, that would complicate important daily activities such as being able to locate the toilet paper and getting a beer out of the fridge for a big swig instead of the hot sauce.

So I tied a blindfold really tight, to provide some extra reinforcement, and started listening to this EP. Seven songs raced by in less than 11 minutes and left smoking tread marks across my face. The ingredients: Distorted guitar and bass chords tuned to subterranean levels of low, alternately slamming hard and dragging the listener through pools of filthy sludge; bursts of squalling lead guitar and ear-splitting feedback; a vocalist being strangled by barbed wire; percussion that sometimes pounds like a massive sledge and sometimes attacks with d-beat fury. Continue reading »

May 022012
 

You know how sometimes advertisers intentionally misspell words on billboards and elsewhere because of its strange tendency to catch the eye?  I thought I’d try that.  The correct spelling, of course, is “Free Sith”, which refers to the movement to liberate the unjustly imprisoned Dark Lords in a galaxy far, far away.

Also, while checking my digital in-box this afternoon, I learned about a couple of free metal giveaways that I thought were worth passing on. First, Candlelight Records has today made available a free 8-song sampler of music by Candlelight artists, including previously unreleased material from Falloch, The Rotted, Wodensthrone, Sear Bliss, Woe, Winterfylleth, and Rumpelstiltskin Grinder — and it also includes the first single (“The Paranoid”) from Ihsahn’s new album Eremita.

I’m not familiar with Wodensthrone (yet), but the rest of those bands are all excellent, which makes this a very delectable deal. Unfortunately for many of you, the sampler is being offered exclusively through Amazon.com. For those who are able to get downloads from that site, GO HERE. After the jump, I’ve pasted more info from the press release about the music included on this sampler.

Oh, but that’s not all . . . Metal Blade has just made available a free sampler on the Amazon.de (Germany) site, and it includes 20 tracks, including songs by Amon Amarth, Six Feet Under (this is a new track from their forthcoming album), Cannibal Corpse, In Solitude, JFAC, Goatwhore, and Vomitory. The track list is after the jump. GO HERE to get that sampler, if you can. Continue reading »

Apr 292012
 

(groverXIII reviews the recently released second album by Soul Cycle, a two-man project consisting of Chris Catharsis and Mark Hawkins.)

Dawn Of The Shred. Evil Shred. The Quick And The Shred. Shred Poets Society. Better Off Shred. Shred Rising. Shred Man Walking. Shred Alive. The Shred Pool. Things To Do In Denver When You’re Shred. Shred Reckoning.

OK, I think I’m about out of “movie titles using the word ‘shred’ in place of the word ‘dead'”. I couldn’t think of a better way to start my review of the new Soul Cycle album, Soul Cycle II, which is an instrumental album full of, you guessed it, shred. Soul Cycle is the brainchild of guitar wunderkinds Chris Catharsis and Mark Hawkins, the band’s sole members; Catharsis handles writing, production, bass, and drum programming in addition to guitars, while Hawkins provides mostly guitar leads. The first Soul Cycle album (the cleverly-titled Soul Cycle) was a great collection of instrumental guitar pyrotechnics with bits of groove and, yes, a little bit of djent mixed in, and they have not deviated from that particular mix on their sophomore release.

However, in order to up the ante a bit, they went out and assembled the largest group of guest soloists I have ever seen. Seriously, this is like a combination of the Avengers and the Justice League, except instead of super heroes, this group is comprised of some of the most talented guitarists (and a couple of keyboardists) you’ve never heard of (and a few you have). To put things in perspective, I’ve compiled a list of each guitarist, along with a link to some of their work, in order of appearance: Continue reading »

Apr 222012
 

In celebration of yesterday’s fifth annual Record Store Day, various people have made metal available for free download. For example, the organizer of the Death Metal Decapitation 2 festival in Toronto (scheduled to explode on May 4), Blacktooth Entertainment, has put together a free compilation of music from extreme bands who will be playing at the fest. The line-up includes Toronto’s Nephelium, an excellent band who we’ve previously featured at NCS. The comp includes two songs from Nephelium’s new album, Coils of Entropy.

Also on the comp are two tracks from a Montreal band named Derelict, who are also excellent (and we’ll be reviewing their new release, Perpetuation, shortly). We haven’t yet explored the music of the other bands on the comp — Deamon (Ottawa), The Unborn Dead (Toronto), and Blastmycosis (Toronto) — but this comp will make it easy to do that. To stream the music and download it for free, use this link:  http://blacktoothmay4.bandcamp.com/

But wait, there’s more! Free music from The Neologist and Dreaming Dead . . . after the jump. Continue reading »

Apr 022012
 

(Veteran metal blogger and NCS web site designer groverXIII brings you some free treats to begin the month of April.)

Ahroy! It’s your old pal, groverXIII, back with some more free musical goodness for you all! Let’s jump right on in here with free releases from four up-and-coming unsigned bands.

EntityThe Meaning Of Infinity

We’ll start things off with a progressive metal band from sunny Orlando called Entity. These guys are a four-piece, and they have a rather varied sound, technical and melodic with some interesting song structures. They’re not afraid to blast the listener (see the second track, ‘Triadic Complex’, for a prime example), but they also make good use of clean vocals and soaring guitar solos.

My only gripe with the music is that the drums sound overly processed and fake; I was actually assuming that they used a drum machine until I checked their Facebook page, which lists a drummer. To be honest, though, it’s a pretty minor complaint, given how good the music is. You can acquire this fine EP on the band’s Bandcamp page. Continue reading »