DID FACEBOOK JUST MAKE A HARD LIFE HARDER FOR UNDERGROUND BANDS?

 Metal News  81 Responses »
Jun 062012
 

Maybe this is old news to people better informed than I am, but I just discovered some very disturbing developments at Facebook. What I found is ironic. Last weekend, I used screen shots of Facebook posts by metal bands as a snapshot of the kinds of difficulties that underground bands face in attempting to continue creating music and performing. Now, it turns out that Facebook is restricting the ability of metal bands — and labels and blogs like ours — to market themselves and stay in touch with their fans through Facebook.

How long has this been going on? I haven’t yet found the answer to that question. But one thing is quite clear: When a band or a label or a blog like ours adds a post on Facebook, most of our fans who have “liked” us do not receive those posts. Here’s what I know:

NCS has a Facebook page. I add a Facebook post every time we add a post on this site, as one way of telling people we’ve done something new and ridiculous on this site (or new and awesome, in the case of posts created by the other writers). At this writing, we have 1,476 Facebook “likes” — a number that’s pitifully inadequate considering the amazing quality of our content, but still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

As the “Admin” of our Facebook page, I started noticing recently a set of statistics at the bottom of each one of our FB posts showing the number of “people reached” by each of those posts, and the percentage of all the people who “like” our page who saw the post. Since then, I’ve been looking at those stats, and the percentage has never been as high as 50%, and it’s usually less than a third of all the people who have “liked” us.

I assumed that when I added a post, it would show up in the news stream for every person on FB who had “liked” our page. When I saw those “people reached” statistics, I assumed that FB had implemented some kind of algorithm to  calculate how many of those people had logged in to FB and perused their news stream.  WRONG. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT – WEEKEND EDITION

 Free Shit, Metal News  No Responses »
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 »

THINGS I SAW AND HEARD TODAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Jun 012012
 

I’ve been doing actual paying work all morning. I took a break not long ago and cast my baleful eye around the interhole and my NCS e-mail box to see what there was to see and hear. And these are things I thought worth passing on.

First, that cover you see above is for a tribute album to Emperor called In Honour of Icon E, which will be released on June 25 by Metal Swamp. It’s a very nice piece of art, created by Wolkogniv of Folkingrimm Art.

It also looks like it will be a very nice album, with Emperor covers by the likes of Demonical, Helheim, Horna, Taake, and Setherial. I’ll give you the full tracklist rundown after the jump, but the news for today is that the album has gone up on Amqzon for pre-order, which means you can hear snippets of each song here. Continue reading »

NILE: DOWNLOAD “THE FIENDS” FOR FREE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
May 312012
 

Last week we reported on the premiere of the first song from Nile’s new album, At the Gates of Sethu, which will be released via Nuclear Blast Records on June 29 (Europe) and July 3 (North America). The song is called “The Fiends Who Come To Steal the Magick of the Deceased”. At that point, it was exclusively streaming at Noisecreep.

But now, you don’t have to stream it any more, because Nuclear Blast is making the song available as a free download, in return for your e-mail address.  GO HERE to get the track for your very own. And in case you haven’t yet heard the song — which may not be exactly what you’re expecting from Nile, check it out on the player below:
 

THINGS I SAW THIS MORNING

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  24 Responses »
May 312012
 

I saw this album cover. It’s for the next album by Dysrhythmia, Test of Submission, which Profound Lore says they will be releasing on August 28. No test is needed . . . I am ready to submit.

I also saw that Be’lakor has just put HD versions of all the songs from their terrific new album Of Breath and Bone up on YouTube. Find those tracks here. Read Andy Synn’s review of the album here. (And thanks to NCS reader Daniel for the tip on this news.)

I also saw that Doris Yeh from Chthonic is on the cover of a fashion magazine called FHM.  I no longer have to wonder what she looks like naked. Continue reading »

RELAPSE GOES ALL IN ON BANDCAMP

 Metal News  26 Responses »
May 302012
 

I like to think we were one of the first metal blogs to pay attention to Bandcamp, with this feature on the service back in March of 2010. Since then, the popularity of Bandcamp as a platform for streaming and distributing metal has exploded — to the point where, in addition to bands, almost every metal label worthy of attention has put big chunks of their catalogs on the site. (Metal Bandcamp has been keeping track of all the metal labels who’ve established a presence on Bandcamp, and you can see their pretty comprehensive list here.)

But yesterday, we saw what must still count as something of a milestone, notwithstanding the now-established popularity of Bandcamp: The venerable Relapse label has now put their entire 20+ year catalog on Bandcamp. The official Relapse page now features over 122 artists including (and these are the names that Relapse called out in their press release) Baroness, Dying Fetus, Pig Destroyer, Red Fang, Necrophagist, Revocation, and of course many more. This will allow fans not only to stream everything in the Relapse catalog, but also to get CD-quality downloads of the music (Bandcamp offers the FLAC format as well as 320k mp3).

But wait, that’s not all! Continue reading »

WINTERSUN ALBUM UPDATE

 Metal News  2 Responses »
May 292012
 

Yes, you read that correctly. There is a Wintersun album update, and there is more to it than simply stating, “there will be a new Wintersun album someday . . . .”

Specifically, after 8 years since this Finnish band’s impressive debut, there will be two albums: Time I and Time II. Each album will contain approximately 40 minutes of music — 80 minutes of new Wintersun altogether.

Per the press release we received, the mixing and mastering of Time I is scheduled for completion in July, with release planned for the early fall. Time II will be released in 2013. We expect to see videos and teasers over the summer.

There’s also this tour news: Wintersun have been confirmed to headline this year´s edition of the so-called HEIDENFEST tour kicking off in October, with support from Korpiklaani, Varg, Trollfest, and Krampus — and after that, Wintersun plans to tour the world. Well, they plan to tour parts of the world, but I don’t know which parts yet. For more info about HEIDENFEST, go here. Continue reading »

NEW KARTIKEYA ON THE WAY!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
May 292012
 

What a nice way to start this new day . . . seeing a video of Kartikeya rehearsing a new song called “Vayu”.  No vocals yet, but man, this sounds very fucking nice.  It appears that this will be released as a single on June 22, and will feature guest appearances by Keith Merrow and Aleksandra Radosavljevic. Should be interesting, to say the least.

Check out the video after the jump.  And if, by some remote chance, you don’t know about Kartikeya already, click this link and read one of our 5,000 previous posts about the band. Continue reading »

NEWS ABOUT A BUNCH OF BANDS ON COMPLETELY OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE METAL SPECTRUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 282012
 

(Here’s a round-up of recent news and music from DemiGodRaven about Katatonia, Æther Realm, Fear Factory, Shadows Fall, and The Browning.)

Katatonia’s new album: Dead End Kings (August 27th)

Over the past two weeks Katatonia have done a pretty interesting publicity bit on their Facebook page by putting up a picture of what looked like a dead tree branch in some snow and then slowly adding letters and more to the branch, eventually revealing that it was something more of a dead shrub and that the letters would spell an album title and release date for the group’s new upcoming disc.

Now they’ve completed the whole picture, and yes, it’s got branches on it alright, but it is something more than that. It’s looks like a dead bird wearing a crown, and the album title for their new disc will be Dead End Kings. It has an August release date, appearing a day later in the US than in Europe, but the difference of a day really isn’t that huge when you have the internet essentially spreading everything around at light speed. The moment anything from this album is out I’m sure it’ll be all over youtube, so if you have to wait a day you can find solace in at least streaming the songs that way. The image for you folks to check out is above, all Facebook banner-styled. Continue reading »

THE RE-UNITING OF AUGURY’S ORIGINAL LINE-UP IS AN AUGURY OF GOOD THINGS TO COME

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
May 262012
 

There are times when I catch myself about to say that Quebec is the current tech-death capital of the world, and then I’m reminded by things like the new song from Nile which premiered yesterday that such a claim would be an overstatement. But not by a lot. Quebec seems loaded up with excellent tech-death bands — including Cryptopsy, Gorguts, Neuraxis, and Beyond Creation — and Augury is certainly near the head of the pack.

Their first two albums, Concealed (2004) and Fragmentary Evidence (2009), were both true mind-benders of progressive technical metal, dazzling in their complexity and ever-changing styles, both imminently memorable and satisfyingly brutal.

I had the great pleasure of seeing the band perform twice in 2010 (and reviewed those performances here and here), once on The American Defloration Tour with The Black Dahlia Murder and again on the Panic Over North America Tour with Soilwork. Vocalist and co-lead guitarist Patrick Loisel was especially impressive, perhaps even more so because he’s older than your average death metal frontman and in his day job he teaches history and science.

At the time of those tours, Augury was playing without fretless bassist Dominic ‘Forest’ Lapointe and drummer Étienne Gallo, both of whom were members of Augury when the band recorded Concealed and Fragmentary Evidence. Lapointe had left in February 2010 to focus on another band, Montreal’s Beyond Creation, whose amazing 2011 debut, The Aura, we reviewed here. If you want to have your mind blown by some six-string fretless bass shred, check out this video we featured at NCS of him doing a playthrough of Beyond Creation’s “Omnipresent Perception”. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries