TODAY IS THE 25th ANNIVERSARY OF “ABIGAIL” BY KING DIAMOND

 Metal News  59 Responses »
Jun 152012
 

How do I know this is the 25th anniversary of King Diamond’s Abigail album? Because our brother in blog Full Metal Attorney has devoted a post to the anniversary on his site today (here). I would add that today is also the first birthday of his twin children, who someday will realize that their old man is way cooler than the daddies of most of their friends.

FMA’s post about this album makes me feel even more ignorant than I normally feel, which is saying something since NormallyIgnorant is one of my middle names. I feel more than normally ignorant because, despite the fact that FMA calls Abigail “one of the most beloved metal albums of all time”, I’ve never heard it. In fact, I’ve never heard any King Diamond album, though I’ve heard scattered songs here and there. Maybe I listened to the wrong scattered songs, because they never sent me into a rush to discover more of the band’s music, and that’s been true despite the iconic status of Mercyful Fate.

According to FMA, Abigail “has some of the best songwriting and performances of any metal record, ever, by everyone involved. And a creepy horror story to go along with it.” With praise like that, I felt compelled to check out two of the songs from Abigail to which FMA devoted particular praise — “The 7th Day of July 1777” and the title track.

I must say, the acoustic + synth intro to “1777” was very cool, as was the riffing that followed it . . . and then I remembered why I never dived deeper into the music: THAT VOICE!! Continue reading »

NACHTMYSTIUM DEBUT “BORROWED HOPE AND BROKEN DREAMS” ON SOME NON-METAL GERMAN SITE WHOSE PLAYER WON’T WORK FOR ME

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jun 152012
 

Nachtmystium’s new album Silencing Machine is due for release on July 31 via Century Media. I’ve been really interested in this album because of Blake Judd’s interview comments about it (promising that it’s a move away from the Meddle albums and more of a follow-up to Instinct: Decay, i.e., “It’s a fuckin’ black metal record”.) and because of what I heard on the first song to be released from the album for streaming (the title track).

Today, Nachtmystium premiered a second song titled “Borrowed Hope and Broken Dreams” exclusively through some German site called Visions.de (here).

I’ve been trying off and on to get the goddamned music player on that site to stream the song for the last half hour, without success. I press play, and it just sits there like a lump of inert code. On the computer I’m using, I’ve only got Firefox and Safari, so maybe it’s a browser issue, or maybe it’s a slow net connection, which sometimes plagues me where I’m currently located. Or maybe Visions.de is just lame.

But really, why did Chicago-based Nachtmystium (or Century) pick some apparently non-metal site in Germany which features a bunch of annoying flashing ads as the locus for this song debut instead of an ad-free site whose music player works and whose verbiage can be read by stupid monolingual Americans, i.e., our site? There is no justice.

Anyway, if you can hear this song, let me know what you think. Meanwhile, I’m going over to Pitchfork to listen to the title track again, because it rips and rolls.

ENSIFERUM: “UNSUNG HEROES” ON THE WAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 152012
 

I must have been one of the 84% of Ensiferum’s Facebook fans who didn’t see the announcement about their new album in late May. However, I was one of the 16% of Spinefarm’s Facebook fans who did see the status update today about their uploading of a new cover photo, which you can see above, and which depicts Ensiferum in all their half-dressed, kilt-clad, face-painted, badass finery, and which led me to explore why Spinefarm was featuring an Ensiferum photo at the top of their FB page. And here’s why:

Spinefarm will be releasing a new hour-long album of Ensiferum music titled Unsung Heroes on August 24. It will be released as both a CD and a vinyl LP, plus there will also be a two-disc digipak set, with the second one being a bonus DVD consisting of almost 3 hours of material. It will include album art by the godlike Kristian Wahlin (Necrolord), and will feature special guests including members of Apokalyptischen Reiter (which is very weird) plus “legendary Finnish singer & actor, Vesa-Matti Loiri” (about whom I am clueless because Vesa-Matti Loiri is not yet legendary where I live).

Knowing the ways of Spinefarm, August 24 will be a European release date, and the album will be released in North America sometime in 2014, and I will not receive a promo for review purposes until sometime in 2015, if ever. HOWEVER, all the available versions are now available for pre-order at Finland’s Record Shop X (here), which ships worldwide. I have just pre-ordered the two-disc digipak for myself in lieu of waiting for the promo copy in 2015, if ever, at a price of 25.85 Euro, including shipping, which I think is about $5,000 U.S.

I did this because I love Ensiferum. I love you, too, which is why I’m telling you about this news, in addition to the fact that I haven’t posted a feature about Finnish metal all week, and that’s a wrong that must be righted.

Also, I have another Ensiferum promo shot after the jump, plus an older song, because I’m in the Ensiferum mood now. Continue reading »

I SPILL YOUR GUTS: SOUNDTRACK POSSIBLY BETTER THAN THE MOVIE

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Jun 142012
 

Of course you’ve heard of the forthcoming summer blockbuster movie I Spill Your Guts, directed by James Balsamo and headed your way from Acid Bath Productions, though not to a theater near you.

No?  You haven’t?  Seriously?

Huh.  Well, it includes appearances by Frank Mullen (Suffocation), Oderus Urungus (GWAR), Skeletonwitch, and Andrew W.K.

Still not ringing any bells?  Okay.  Well, the soundtrack will include music from 40 bands, including Suffocation, Ghoul, Cannibis Corpse, and Immersed.

Still clueless?  Well, don’t worry.  The movie looks clueless, too.  But the soundtrack might be cool.  Check out a recently released (revised) official trailer for the movie after the jump, which includes some nice metal, along with a few more tasteful posters. Continue reading »

THE NEW FACEBOOK: FACT, FICTION, AND UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

 Metal News  64 Responses »
Jun 112012
 

Facebook’s recent rollout of Promoted Posts and Pages Insights has stirred up a storm of controversy among members of the Facebook community, including the little corner of it occupied by metal bands, their fans, independent labels, and blogs like this one. The development that generated the most intense feelings of betrayal was the revelation that Facebook shares Page posts with only a small fraction of fans who have “liked” the page, and that Facebook will deliver page posts more widely only if you pay them to do it.

Much has been written about these changes — and much of it has been wrong.

Last week I wrote an article on NCS about these changes, and I got some things wrong, too. I spent hours this weekend surfing the web, trying to separate fact from fiction, instead of listening to metal. That was a really piss-poor tradeoff. I’ve learned some things, but even after some fairly intensive research, I still haven’t found the answers to some important questions. That in itself is worrisome, not so much because I’m a mediocre researcher (though I am), but because Facebook hasn’t been entirely open and above-board in what it’s been doing.

But, I do seem to have learned more than a lot of people who’ve unwittingly been spreading misinformation on Facebook band Pages during the last week. So, what I plan to do in this post is separate fact from fiction (expressly citing the sources of my information) and clearly identify the questions that I still haven’t been able to answer definitively.

I’ll also report on the results of our own experiment with Facebook’s new Promoted Posts feature — the one that lets you access more of the people who have already liked your Page by paying for it.

This is a long post, even by NCS standards, so here’s an “Executive Summary”: I’m still fuckin’ pissed off, and you should be, too. Continue reading »

OCULUS INFERNUS: THE INTERHOLE JUST BECAME A MORE INTERESTING PLACE

 Metal News  19 Responses »
Jun 112012
 

The demise of The Number of the Blog was one of those “their loss is our gain” kind of events. Since TNOTB went to the Valhalla of metal blogs in a burning longboat last fall, the site’s founder groverXIII has been slumming here at NCS, gifting us with reviews and always-interesting write-ups about new free music, biding his time until the advent of the Next Big Thing.

The Next Big Thing hasn’t yet arrived, but groverXIII has decided to spice up our lives with something else in the meantime: Over the weekend he launched a new site that he has named OCULUS INFERNUS, which is Latin for “The Eye of Hell”, with “the express purpose of documenting his thoughts regarding the Devil’s music and the world of the occult.”  Mother pus bucket!

He has also taken upon himself a new moniker, befitting his role as preceptor of the paranormal: Professor D. Grover the XIIIth.

And what, you may ask, does the good Professor have in store for us in the curriculum of OCULUS INFERNUS? Continue reading »

RUMPELSTILTSKIN GRINDER!!!

 Metal News  1 Response »
Jun 092012
 

Rumpelstiltskin Grinder is a Pennsylvania band formed by current members of Absu, Woe, Azure Emote, Ashencult, Fucked Forever, Total Fucking Destruction, Smoker & the Rollers, and more. I have their last album, Living for Death, Destroying the Rest (2009), which I really enjoyed. Their new album Ghostmaker is set for release by Candlelight Records on June 19. The eye-catching cover art is by artist Mike Hrubovcak.

I’ve held off listening to our promo copy of Ghostmaker because I’m hoping Phro will review it for us so I can perceive the music through the gloss that Phro puts on it, and by gloss I mean that translucent sticky substance that turns crusty when it dries.

However, yesterday our friends at Stereokiller premiered Ghostmaker‘s title track, and I couldn’t resist giving it a listen while deciding what else I need to give Phro as a bribe for his review, other than the ebullient gratification that will come to him for pleasing me. And man oh man, is that song a sweet head-fucker. Continue reading »

NEW TRIBUTES TO ENSLAVED AND EMPEROR

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jun 082012
 

Enslaved at the Quart-festival, photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen, Scanpix/NTB

“Emperor and Enslaved are two of the most well-known bands in the history of Norwegian extreme metal, and June strangely enough brings tributes to both bands. On June 25th the album A Tribute To Emperor-In Honour Of Icon E will be released, and a week before Önd-A Tribute To Enslaved will see the light of day.”

And so begins an article by Totto Mjelde that appears today on Lydverket, a Norway-based web site affiliated with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK. We’ve written about Totto’s coverage of Norwegian metal in the past, and this most recent piece by him is definitely worth reading. It includes interviews of Raphael Henry (Pictonian Records), the curator of the Enslaved tribute; Ivar Peersen of Enslaved (who, interestingly, plays guitar on Taake’s contribution to the Emperor tribute);  Nocturnal, from Tryzna Productions, which is releasing the Emperor tribute along with Candlelight Records; and Ørjan Nordvik of Helheim., who perform on that tribute.

But that’s not all. Totto’s article also includes exclusive streams of two songs from the Enslaved tribute compilation: Ribozyme’s performance of “To The Coast”, and Vreid’s cover of “Lunar Force”.

GO HERE to read and listen to Totto’s feature. After the jump I’ve included the cover art and track lists for both albums. Continue reading »

EVOKEN: “AN EXTRINSIC DIVIDE”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 082012
 

On July 31, Profound Lore will issue the label’s 100th release, and it will be Atra Mors [“Black Death”], by Evoken. This is the band’s first album in five years, and only their fifth in a career that has spanned 20 years.

I gather from reading about the band that many regard them as forefathers of the funeral doom movement in the U.S. And you can correctly infer from that last sentence that I’m a newcomer to Evoken. As far as I can remember, the sum total of the music I’ve heard consists of a brand new song that Profound Lore began streaming yesterday: “An Extrinsic Divide”.

The song makes quite an impression, which is sort of like saying that World War II was a bit of a scrape. At more than 10 minutes in length, it exhales a suffocating fog of dank miasma, creating an all-encompassing atmosphere of catastrophe. The uber-distorted music is very heavy and generally ponderous — the sound of dinosaurs walking the earth and making the ground tremble with their might.

But that’s not the sum total of the song by a long shot. It also includes some beautiful, albeit haunting, melodies (ably assisted by reverberating guitars and keyboard overlays), as well as accelerated passages of gut-churning death metal. Continue reading »

I’M NOT GOING TO CALL THIS “THINGS I SAW AND HEARD YESTERDAY” BECAUSE I’VE OVERUSED THAT LINE SO I’LL COME UP WITH SOMETHING ELSE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Jun 072012
 

Really, I swear, this isn’t going to become a regular feature, despite the fact that this is the fourth time I’ve done one of these posts in the last week. And the proof is that I’m not using the same name for this post as I did for the last ones. I’m calling it something different. You can see that.

Anyway, here are some things I saw and heard yesterday and last night, and at the end of the post I’ll have an update on our experiment in paying to promote our Facebook posts. Here’s a disgusting hint: It works.

I saw an announcement by Century Media that Swedish death metal icons Grave (in their leather finery up above) will release their 10th studio album, Endless Procession Of Souls, on August 27th in Europe and on August 28th in North America.  I’m already beginning to get the stench of rotting corpsemeat up inside my nose. I’ll probably stop bathing soon, just to get myself fully attuned to the reek by August. We previously reported that Grave will be touring NorthAm with Dark Funeral (and some band named Morbid Angel) this September and October.

And speaking of grisly old-school Swedish death metal, I received through the ether an electronic copy of a new EP from Mexico’s Zombiefication called Reaper’s Consecration. I’ve only listened to two of the five tracks so far, but it is a fucking brain assassin, and the EP includes this sweet cover art designd by the band’s vocalist Mr. Hitch: Continue reading »

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