MORE GORE: GENERAL SURGERY UPDATE

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Jan 222012
 

General Surgery is a name that all properly educated death metal and goregrind fiends will know quite well. Originally formed in 1988, this group of Swedish butchers released an influential EP on Relapse Records in 1991 called Necrology. Then they sort of dropped out of sight until returning in 2002 with numerous splits, EPs, and two full-length albums.

Today I read the news that General Surgery has rejoined Relapse. To celebrate the joyous reunion, Relapse is going to release a compilation of 30 General Surgery tracks on March 27 under the name A Collection of Depravation. This thing, which can be pre-ordered here, will include cuts from General Surgery’s previous split releases, and they’re being digitally remastered by none other than Scott Hull of Pig Destroyer fame. It will also include a 24-page booklet with liner notes from the surgeons. (Hey Scott, where my goddamn new PD album?) More details about those 30 tracks are after the jump.

But hey, that’s not all. General Surgery has already recorded a five-track EP of new songs. I love the title of this new EP (and I think Dismember would be proud): Like An Ever Flying Limb. There’s no release date yet for the EP.

Oh, and guess what? The band is also working on their third full-length album for release “in the near future”.

And guess what? It looks like General Surgery just recently established an official facebook page HERE. If you hurry, you can be the 25th person to like them.

And, guess what? Since General Surgery is now on my mind, which is kind of like having leeches in your nose, I’m gonna include some General Surgery tunes after the jump. Fuck yes. Continue reading »

KARTIKEYA AND RXYZYXR BRINGING DAT MASSIVE WALL OF PENIS

 Metal News  21 Responses »
Jan 212012
 

This is so massively cool I just had to share. That pic up there is Arsafes (on the left) and Anton of the most excellent Kartikeya sporting the NCS “Fucking Good Pancake” tour shirt in Moscow. How did this come to pass? Therein lies a story . . .

The story begins with RXYZYXR, a band we’ve featured multiple times at NCS, most recently here. They started out as an instrumental band whose members were based somewhere in Russia. But then they later decided to add vocals, and hooked up with Florida-based Thomas Wills. His mix of clean and harsh vocals has been a positive addition to what was already some pretty fuckin’ amazing music.

Fearless dude that he is, Thomas was an early requester of the now-infamous “Fucking Good Pancake” tour shirt that we gave away starting back in August of last year. For latecomers to NCS, the Fucking Good Pancake tour was total fiction and featured bands who don’t exist but should exist — bands such as Massive Wall of Penis, Thor’s Uterus, and Trollcock Fetish. Also, Cephalopodic Sperm Packets. (These names were created by NCS readers in a series of demented comments that kind of took on a life of their own.) But the shirt — created free of charge by the awesome Dan Arena — is completely real.

Thomas went to Russia not long ago to do RXYZYXR-related things, including performing live shows in St. Petersburg and Moscow on January 18 and 19 with none other than Sweden’s  Vildhjarta [thall]. Guess what Thomas took with him, somehow smuggling it past the vigilant Russian security apparatus, which has been on a state of high alert to prevent this shirt from infecting Russian culture? Continue reading »

AN NCS-SPONSORED KING GIANT CONTEST

 Metal News  20 Responses »
Jan 182012
 

The January 21 official release date for Dismal Hollow, the new album by Virginia’s King Giant is fast-approaching, and we’re teaming up with the band to bring one lucky NCS reader a special prize package: either a CD or the color-vinyl LP of Dismal Hollow (whichever the winner chooses), signed by the band — plus any one of the band shirts to be found at their Big Cartel site as long as the winner’s size is available (and if not, winner’s choice of one of the hats).

We’re thrilled to help promote interest in Dismal Hollow, because this album is so damn good that it knocked us flat — stretched out on the ground, eyes rolled back in our heads, and drool coming out our mouths. To quote BadWolf’s review (posted here), “prepare yourselves for the first excellent album of 2012, a slow cruise through doom country.”

And to quote myself from yesterday’s post on the excellent video for “Appomattox”: “It’s simply one of the new year’s first great albums — a dark, raw, smoke-filled crusher of Southern doom that rocks hard and is also one of the heaviest beasts you’ll hear in 2012. Massive, hook-filled riffs link up with thundering rhythms, head-spinning guitar solo’s, and Dave Hammerly’s incredible vocals to produce one memorable song after another.”

So what do you have to do to put yourself in the running for this prize? Find out after the jump . . . Continue reading »

TAAKE NOMINATED FOR SPELLEMANN AWARDS (2012)

 Metal News  19 Responses »
Jan 182012
 

(NCS contributor Rev. Will provides a retrospective on some recent news from Norway.)

Ah, Norway. The land of salmon and black metal. It’s every metal-loving fisherman’s dream destination.

However, it is also home to some of the world’s most extreme black metal bands. Taake, a Norwegian black metal band that recently gained notoriety for anti-Islamic sentiments expressed in their song lyrics, had been nominated for Norway’s top metal prize, the prestigious Spellemann award in the “Metal” category.

This is the equivalent of the American Grammys, except the American Grammys don’t nominate black metal bands in any category. It’s a surprise (or perhaps more of a shock) to many that the essentially one-man black metal project was one of five nominees competing for the award last week (the other four being Insense, Shining, Vreid, and Årabrot; with Årabrot coming in victorious), because one of Taake‘s songs on Noregs Vaapen declares: “To hell with Muhammad and the Muhammadans!” Continue reading »

SPAWN OF POSSESSION DEBUTS THE FIRST SONG FROM “INCURSO”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Jan 172012
 

Fans of technical death metal had a lot to be happy about in 2011, with new releases by the likes of Decapitated, Origin, and Krisiun. This year shows promise, too, with a new Psycroptic on the horizon (I’m not mentioning Necrophagist for fear of jinxing that possibility). But most die-hard tech death freaks I know are perhaps most excited about the March 13 Relapse release of the third album by multinational heavyweights Spawn of Possession.

It’s been a long wait since Noctambulant dropped in 2006, but the wait is nearly over. So far, we’ve seen the eye-catching Par Olofsson artwork for the album cover. We’ve seen the track list. And now, we’ve got the first song from the album.

It’s called “Where Angels Go Demons Follow”. It’s an auspicious introduction to the new album. It’s right after the jump. Continue reading »

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS UPDATE: GOOD NEWS (“BECOMING” IS NOW STREAMING IN FULL) AND NOT SO GOOD NEWS (DARK FUNERAL TOUR WILL BE CANCELED)

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Jan 172012
 

We’ve got good news and not so good news on the Abigail Williams front. The good news is that the band’s forthcoming album, Becoming, is now streaming in full at Hails & Horns, accompanied by an interview with AW’s Ken Sorceron. We got a very early listen to this album back in November, and published what (as far as we know) is the first review of Becoming, written by NCS scribe Andy Synn. (here).

In a nutshell, this is an unusually compelling album, one that should vault this band into the upper echelons of American black metal, one we expect will be on many people’s Best of 2012 lists when this new year draws to a close. We’re not the only people who feel that way — Becoming is already racking up a slew of advance rave reviews. But you don’t have to take anyone else’s word for it any more. GO HERE to listen to the entire album while the stream lasts. Becoming will be released by Candlelight Records on January 24, and pre-orders are being accepted at this location, as well as on iTunes.

Now for the not-so-good news: Although no official statement has yet been released, word is already out that Dark Funeral is canceling its headlining North American tour, which was scheduled to begin on January 29 in Springfield, Virginia. Plans for the tour were already impacted by Belphegor’s exit from the line-up due to frontman Helmuth Lehner’s surgery last fall, which caused the band to cancel all performances through this May. Now, it appears the tour will be shelved altogether.

However, we’ve learned that Abigail Williams — who were to be part of that tour along with Inquisition and Gigan — are doing their best to schedule replacement dates. They need help from interested venues and local bands. More about that after the jump. Continue reading »

TWO TITANS TIP TITLES (CANNIBAL CORPSE AND MESHUGGAH)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 162012
 

What a feature-packed Monday this has turned out to be!  The latest thing to catch my bloodshot eye is that gnarly Vincent Locke album cover up there, from one of the gnarliest-ever, ever-gnarly death metal bands ever: Cannibal Corpse.

Yes, the next Cannibal Corpse album is fast approaching (with the Metal Blade release scheduled for March 13) and it will be called Torture. More from today’s press release: “While Torture marks the latest progression in the band’s sound, it also witnesses a return to what drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz accurately terms ‘the frenzied attack of Butchered At Birth (1991) or Tomb Of The Mutilated (1992),’ infusing the band’s advanced musicianship with the raw savagery that haunted their earlier releases, and in the process conceiving the definitive CANNIBAL CORPSE record.” Can I get a throaty FUCK YEAH!?  Thank you.

Also, you may remember that one week ago we zapped up on this site a YouTube leak of the first track from Torture called “Demented Aggression”. Unauthorized thing that it was, it got yanked from YouTube fairly quickly. But now, we have an authorized stream of the song for those who missed it. That’s right after the jump (and yes, it lives up to that “raw savagery” billing), along with pre-order info for the album. Also after the jump: more news about Meshuggah’s next album. Continue reading »

MORE FREE DELICIOUS HEAD FUCKAGE FROM SCION A/V METAL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 162012
 

I’m almost to the point of buying a Scion car just to express my gratitude to Scion A/V.  Almost.  Unless you’ve been living in a cave (or the loris compound at the NCS Island), you probably know that Scion A/V has been releasing free EPs and videos from badass metal bands.  But they’re doing more than that.

What I just discovered is that Scion A/V has been enlisting certain metal labels to round up a selection of their artists for performances in Los Angeles before live audiences, professionally recording the shows, and then prepping audio of the performances for free download.

The first team-up was with Nuclear Blast, who helped arrange appearances of Exodus, All Shall Perish, Origin, and Decrepit Birth at The Roxy in West Hollywood on November 12 of last year. As of today, the digital album of those live performances has become available for free download. Here’s the track list, which happens to include many of my favorite songs from each band:

1.  Decrepit Birth: “Metatron”
2.  Decrepit Birth: “The Resonance”
3.  Decrepit Birth: “Polarity”
4.  Origin: “Banishing Illusion”
5.  Origin: “Evolution of Extinction”
6.  Origin: “Swarm”
7.  All Shall Perish: “Wage Slaves”
8.  All Shall Perish: “Procession of Ashes”
9.  All Shall Perish: “Gagged, Bound, Shelved and Forgotten”
10. Exodus: “Beyond the Pale”
11. Exodus: “Blacklist”
12. Exodus: “Metal Command”
Continue reading »

DIGGING UP FREE MUSIC AND THE FASTEST TRIP TO SEATTLE EVER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 122012
 

(Ex-TNOTB stalwart DemiGodRaven gifts us with another post, and this one brings news of free new music from The Neologist. Also, there’s something in here about Seattle. Personally, I love when people tell the rest of the world how grey and wet it is here.)

I have been to Seattle once before in my lifetime. Back in 2009 I was invited rather suddenly and without warning to join some friends on a pilgrimage to the Seattle Convention Center where the Penny Arcade Expo was being held, and so naturally that resulted in three other dudes and myself packed into a Ford Focus driving up I-5 for 11 1/2 hours so that we could arrive at seven in the morning, about an hour before the show started.

In a way it was everything I had imagined Seattle to be — it rained for two days and was pretty grey the rest of the time. Looking at it long enough, you can almost see how a movement like Grunge grew out of the Pacific Northwest. I personally didn’t find it that miserable, but you’re talking to a guy who enjoys Swallow The Sun, Katatonia, Before The Dawn, and Insomnium. If it’s the sort of beauty you’d find in a field completely blanketed with snow, a desolate city, or in Seattle’s case the sort of melodramatic grey that seems to permeate everything, then you’d better believe that I’m the first in line to enjoy every second of it. Of course, that doesn’t explain why I’m here now but then again there are a lot of things that need explaining.

Such as why this asshole does his job interviews in person. Continue reading »

THIS HELPS KICK THE SHIT OUT OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Jan 062012
 

Yesterday, I was whining about the INFERNO Metal Festival in Oslo Norway this April — exciting line-up of bands, too fucking far away for me to see. One of the comments on that post, from Kazz, pretty much summed up my feelings about the matter:  “Sometimes the Atlantic Ocean just pisses me off.” To which I responded, “Damned ocean. If it were only smaller, we could kick the shit out of it.”

But look! Now we have help with the shit-kicking! This morning I saw the announcement about the tour featured in that flyer up there. Now THAT is going to be one skull-fucking abomination of a musical extravaganza. It will be particularly sweet because the tour starts only four days after GOATWHORE releases their new album on February 14, which was recorded by Erik Rutan at his Mana Recording Studio in Florida.

And speaking of Erik Rutan . . . HATE ETERNAL! Hells yeah. No one puts the power drill to your cranium quite like Hate Eternal in a live setting.

Oh, and speaking of boring holes in your skull . . . CEREBRAL BORE, all the way from Scotland! And fucking FALLUJAH on top of that!

I’m not saying this is better than Inferno Fest, I’m not saying that we’ve found the secret to subjugation of the Atlantic Ocean, but it do make me feel a damned sight better than I did when I was whining yesterday — because this death metal juggernaut will be stopping in Seattle, which involves no Atlantic Ocean crossing for me to reach. Maybe it will make a stop somewhere near you, too. The full schedule is after the jump. And because these four bands are now on my mind, I’ve got videos from each of them after the jump, too. Continue reading »

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