ROUNDING UP THE RIFF-RAFF (Part 2)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 292012
 

As explained in Part 1 of this feature, I mean no disrespect to any of the bands mentioned herein when I refer to them as riff-raff. I guess I’ve been called a motherfucker so many times by bands during live shows that I’ve become convinced we’re all riff-raff, and surely that’s how the straight world looks at all of us, so why the hell not? Plus, there’s the appeal of alliteration.

This post is a continuation of my earlier report on news, music, and videos I saw over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth sharing. Even after dividing this into two parts, there’s still a shitload of stuff left to pass along. So I will try to be brief with my verbiage (yeah, like that will happen). In this post: Reports of new Season of Mist albums from Rage Nucleaire (featuring Cryptopsy’s Lord Worm) and Khonsu (featuring the Grønbech brothers and Thebon from Keep of Kalessin); Jucifer’s new Bandcamp page; new music videos from Profane Omen and Whitechapel; new songs from A Band of Orcs and Dysrhythmia; and for Mike Patton fans in the audience, a blurb about the revival of Tomahawk.

RAGE NUCLEAIRE

I just saw this, but three days ago Season of Mist announced the signing of a four-piece black metal band called Rage Nucleaire. It got my attention because the band was formed by Lord Worm, former vocalist of Cryptopsy. The band are working on a debut album called Unrelenting Fucking Hatred and they describe the music as a “hate-filled blend of melodic black metal and violent industrial.” Their list of influences range from early Emperor and Immortal to Anaal Nathrakh and Mysticum. The other members are bassist Alvater (ex-Frozen Shadows), guitarist/keyboardist Dark Rage, and drummer Fredrik Widigs.

The band have a new Facebook page here, which will allow me and you to sniff around for more info as it emerges. At the moment, although I’m hungry for some music by this group, I have none to share, nor do I have a release date yet. Continue reading »

ROUNDING UP THE RIFF-RAFF (Part 1): MURDER CONSTRUCT, ASH BORER, IN MOURNING, AND A MASTODON/OPETH/IN FLAMES COLLABORATION?

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
Jun 292012
 

Yes, I’m still trying out titles for these posts in which I collect metal news, new videos, and new music that I’ve seen recently. I mean no disrespect to any of the bands featured in this post. In my lexicon, “riff-raff” is a compliment, plus I really wanted some alliteration; otherwise I probably would have called this “Rounding Up the Motherfuckers”.

Yesterday I saw and heard a lot of things worth passing on, so I’m dividing this collection into two parts, with the second part to follow a little later this morning. In this Part 1 are observations involving new albums from two excellent bands —Results by Murder Construct and Cold of Ages by Ash Borer — plus a recent live performance by In Mourning caught on film, plus a from-the-horse’s-mouth report on a potential Mastodon collaboration with Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt and In Flames’ Björn Gelotte.

MURDER CONSTRUCT

This band is a super-group of sorts, featuring Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan on vocals, Exhumed/Phobia/Impaled’s Leon del Muerte on guitar and vocals, Intronaut/Uphill Battle’s Danny Walker on drums, Bad Acid Trip’s Caleb Schneider on bass, and Fetus Eaters/Watch Me Burn’s Kevin Fetus also on guitar. The name of their game is death-grind, and I fuckin’ loved their 2010 self-titled debut (described here). Continue reading »

70,000 TONS OF METAL 2013

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Jun 272012
 

Aw jeez, yet another metal armada is going to be polluting the pristine waters of the Caribbean with filthy music and even filthier passengers. Yes, all you swabbies and swabettes in the audience, 70,000 Tons of Metal is back for their third cruise, setting sail from Miami on January 28, 2013, for five days and four nights of heavy drinking and loud music.

It seems like a decade ago when this grand-daddy of the floating mosh pits embarked on its maiden voyage. (Can a three year old be a grand-daddy?), but it was only in January 2011.  Ah, well do I remember the fun I had with this concept when it was first announced. I made running jokes about it throughout 2010, and then had to eat crow when it turned out to be a blast (or so I heard). And then they did it again earlier this year, and now they’re starting to roll out news of the third installment.

Once again, the cruise operators are planning to have 40 metal bands on board playing non-stop, open mic nights, clinics, work-shops, metal karaoke, and of course bars that never close. They haven’t yet disclosed the island destination where the ship will vomit forth the pasty-faced black-clad throngs to horrify residents and unsuspecting tourists, but they have announced the first 10 bands who’ve signed on for the cruise this year. Talk about a strange, motley line-up:

ANACRUSIS
DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER
DORO
HELSTAR
IMMOLATION
IN FLAMES
LACUNA COIL
NILE
SABATON
SUBWAY TO SALLY
Continue reading »

FESTIVAL-DEPRIVED METALHEADS REJOICE: GRASPOP IS STREAMING LIVE!

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jun 232012
 

More than once in NCS posts, I’ve bemoaned the fact that the good ole U.S. of A. is largely lacking in the kind of big, multi-day outdoor metal festivals that happen during the summer elsewhere in the world, and mainly in Europe. One of these days, I’m going to make the trek and take in the experience up close and personal. Until then, I’ll just bitch.

One of the biggest Euro festivals is going on right now in Dessel, Belgium: the Graspop Metal Meeting, 2012 edition. And earlier today I discovered the next best thing to being there: watching the festival on my computer in real time.

Yep, the Skynet.be web site is streaming most of the performances in high quality, as it happens, with multiple camera angles on the stage and in the audience. Just before pausing to write this post, I was watching All Shall Perish fuck shit up. Still to come tonight (based on the schedule I found at that site): Exodus, Comeback Kid, My Dying Bride, Fear Factory, and Pennywise. Dimmu Borgir is also on the schedule tonight, but it looks like that show won’t be streamed.

But check this out: At 7:50 pm (19:50) tomorrow night (June 24), Belgium time, Gojira will be performing! That’s 10:50 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.  Continue reading »

PRETTY PICTURES

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  9 Responses »
Jun 222012
 

Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I suppose people in our community have as varied a set of tastes in artwork as the rest of society at large, but when it comes to album art in particular, we’re off in a world unto ourselves. What we find “beautiful” in album art tends to fall on the ugly side of things. I think that’s because we look for album art that represents the dissonant, frequently voracious, often bleak sound of the music.

But even within the realm of extreme metal album art, there’s good and bad. Today I came across a collection of new artwork for forthcoming albums that I’d put on the good end of the scale . . . plus some works in progress by a well-known metal artist for album covers that are in the making.

The first example is the one you see above. It’s the just-disclosed artwork for the next album by long-running Swedish death metal band Grave, who happen to be one of my perennial favorites. The next album will be their 10th and is titled Endless Procession of Souls. It’s due for release in Europe on August 27 by Century Media. The artwork is by Costin Chioreanu, who also created the art for Grave’s last two albums. If you know anything about Grave’s music, you’ll appreciate how perfectly appropriate this creation is for their style of music. Beautiful. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT FROM THE LORD

 Free Shit, Metal News  6 Responses »
Jun 202012
 

“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

So it says in the Book of Job. I’ve never been quite clear about the being-naked-and-returning-to-my-mother’s-womb part, but I do know the Lord giveth. Witness, this:

Last night in Seattle was the kick-off show of a tour organized by the Southern Lord label (in fact, organized personally by the label’s owner, Greg Anderson), showcasing four of the label’s up-and-coming crushers: Black Breath (Seattle), Martyrdöd (Sweden), Burning Love (Ontario), and Enabler (Milwaukee).

All four of those bands have new albums that have either been released this year or will be coming soon. We’ve run features about two of those bands (which you can find here and here), and I’ve been meaning to write something about Martyrdöd ever since hearing a stream of their new song “Köttberg” when it started streaming at Pitchfork in late April.

At various stops on the tour, this foursome will be joined by the likes of Poison Idea, Noothgrush, Pelican, Power Trip, Wild/Tribe, Dead In the Dirt, and The Secret, almost all of whom we’ve also written about at NCS. So in a nutshell, this tour is going to be one rolling slaughterhouse of hard metal.

And that brings me to the free shit. To celebrate this tour, CVLT Nation, in cooperation with Southern Lord, is hosting a free download of a mixtape consisting of 20 songs — half of them from the bands on this tour and the remaining half from other recent Southern Lord alumni — including tracks from High On Fire, Black Cobra, Wolfbrigade, and a bootleg from Sleep that’s never before been officially released. Continue reading »

HEAVY T.O. AND HEAVY MTL ARE HEAVY

 Metal News  1 Response »
Jun 192012
 

Though we cover metal bands from all over the world, we do tend to be pretty U.S.-centric when it comes to writing about tours and festivals. So in this post I’m going to make a small stab at remedying that by helping spread the word about what look to be two awesome shows this August in that very civilized nation to the north of us. Y’know, that place where I’ll be spending lots of time if Mitt Romney wins in November.

One of the festivals is called HEAVY T.O., and it will take place on August 11-12, 2012, at Downsview Park in Toronto, Canada. Part of the reason why I’m posting about this now is because Gojira are weighing heavy on my mind (see our post from earlier today about the full-album stream of L’Enfant Sauvage) and Gojira will be playing at this festival. But Gojira are only one of (to date) 27 bands who are scheduled to perform.

It really is a pretty stunning line-up, including (to mention some of my favorites) Cannibal Corpse, Kataklysm, Between the Buried and Me, Job For A Cowboy, Deftones, Goatwhore, The Faceless, Exhumed, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Origin. And that doesn’t include the headliners, Slipknot and System Of A Down, or the reinvigorated, Jesse Leach-fronted Killswitch Engage (who are sounding more and more like a band on the verge of reclaiming past glories).

NCS may have some boots on the ground at this festival, and if all works out, we hope to bring you some show reports in August. The full line-up, plus more info, is after the jump.

But that’s not the only Canadian festival of note in August. On August 10-12, HEAVY MTL will be kicking ass at Parc Jean-Drapeau in Montreal. Continue reading »

ONE MORE NEW NILE SONG: “THE INEVITABLE DEGRADATION OF FLESH”

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Jun 192012
 

Just a quick news flash here for consumers of maniacally active death metal: Nuclear Blast has premiered another song from Nile’s new album, At the Gates of Sethu, which will be released on July 3 (with pre-orders shipping on June 26).

The song is called “The Inevitable Degradation of Flesh”. It’s brootal. And maniacally active. To hear it, you have to visit the Nuclear Blast pre-order page (HERE) and click on one of the pre-order options.  That will take you to another page where the song is streaming on a SoundCloud player. You don’t have to buy anything, though I’m sure all concerned would be happy if you did.

Did I mention that the song is brootal?  It is that, and worth hearing.

HELLFEST LIVE!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 192012
 

Thank you, thank you DECIBLOG!

Thanks to the DECIBLOG, I discovered that Arte Live Web has uploaded multi-camera, professionally filmed video of complete live sets from HELLFEST 2012, which took place in Clisson, France on June 15-17, 2012. I’ve only watched parts of a few so far, including the Napalm Death set that DECIBLOG featured, but the quality is outstanding. So are the bands whose performances are captured at the Arte Live site. They include (to name the ones most interesting to me):

Arcturus
Lock Up
Sacred Reich
Aborted
Brujeria
Nasum
Dropkick Murphys
Heaven Shall Burn

Go HERE to access all of these performances, and more (some are still being uploaded). If you’d like a taste first, I’m including the Nasum footage right after the jump. Continue reading »

FULL ALBUM STREAMS: DYING FETUS AND IHSAHN

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Jun 182012
 

This is just a quick news flash:

Our friends at Metal Sucks today began exclusively streaming the entirety of Reign Supreme, the new album from Dying Fetus that will be officially released tomorrow. Follow this link to hear it. You’ll be glad you did.

Also today, AOL Music began streaming Eremita, the new album from Ihsahn. I found out about this from Metal Sucks as well. As Anso DF correctly notes in his brief notice, AOL Music really does have this legend appearing below the album cover for Eremita: “Sounds Like: Daughtry, Metallica”.  No shit. It would be fun to see the reactions of Daughtry and Metallica fans to this album.

On second thought, no it wouldn’t.

Anyway, you can (and should) hear the Eremita stream at this location.

That is all.

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