THIS JUST MAKES ME WANNA PUKE

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Jan 052012
 

Over the last couple of months, Norway’s INFERNO Metal Festival has been dribbling out the names of the bands who will be performing over the Black Easter weekend in Oslo on April 4-7.  I hadn’t checked the line-up since before the holidays, but I just did. Makes me fucking sick . . . because I’m here and Oslo is there and never the twain shall meet, or at least there will be no meeting this April. Because I would dearly love to see this show, but it ain’t happening.

Let’s just consider the headlining band — Arcturus. Now that’s a band I would like to see. They seem to have achieved a kind of cult status in Europe with an avant-garde take on black metal. They broke up in 2007, but reunited last year under the leadership of ICX Vortex for an anticipated appearance at the ProgPower USA festival — which never came to pass. Assuming they actually follow through at the Inferno fest, it would be their first festival appearance in five years.

But that’s just for starters. Look at the rest of that line-up! And it could get worse: There’s an Inferno “kick off” show on January 28 at the John Dee Club in Oslo (with performances by Vesen, TrollFest, Bulk, and Dead Trooper) at which the final festival line-up will be announced — which means more bands will probably be added.

If you’re going to this festival in April, do me a favor and keep that to yourself.  And don’t tell me about the line-ups for the other European festivals that have started rolling out for the coming spring and summer.

COME INSIDE “THE CATHEDRAL WALLS”: SWALLOW THE SUN’S NEW VIDEO

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 052012
 

Swallow the Sun blend melodic doom and death about as well as it can be done. We’ve been eagerly awaiting their new album, Emerald Forest and the Blackbird, which is due for release on February 13 by Spinefarm. We already posted a preview of what the album holds in store at this location. And now, we have a first taste of the music.

Today, Terrorizer premiered an official video for the song “Cathedral Walls”, which features the vocals of Anette Olzon (Nightwish) in the chorus.

The first half of this nearly 7-minute song is all melancholy, the sorrow of bereavement, all clean vocals from Mikko Kotamäki and Olzon. Pretty and atmospheric. And then as the ashes fall to the ocean, the shit gets heavy, and it’s the heavy side of StS that I wait for in their songs. It’s usually worth the wait, and I’ve even come to enjoy the build-ups and the denouements.

No big surprises here — it’s Swallow the Sun doing what they do — but it’s a satisfying introduction to the new album. Watch and listen after the jump. Continue reading »

STREAM THE NEW ALCEST ALBUM

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News  3 Responses »
Jan 042012
 

Alcest are from France. Many people I know like their music. In two days, their third album will be officially released by Prophecy Productions. Its title is Les Voyages de L’Âme. It’s now streaming in full on Prophecy Productions’ YouTube channel — which you can find via this link.

I’ve been listening to the album this morning for the first time. It’s beautiful, often hypnotic, one of those albums that pulls you in. You swim in it, it swims in you. Almost all the singing is clean, but Neige has a beautiful voice. Occasionally, he lets rip with black metal shrieking. When that happens, the intensity of the music also increases and the effect is galvanizing.

But mainly, this is just beautiful stuff. Not our usual fare around here, but I’d like to stream one of the new songs for you after the jump anyway. You can get lost . . . Continue reading »

MESHUGGAH – MARCH 27, 2012

 Metal News  29 Responses »
Jan 042012
 

Posted today at http://www.meshuggah.net/:

After a long time of deep
soul searching and intense
wrecking of the psyches, the
new album is finally done.

Soon you will meet this colossus
that will pulverize your being.

Welcome to the other side
on March 27.

The album will be released by Nuclear Blast. This can’t be good news for your garden variety djent band. Why settle for a knock-off when you can have the real thing?

IRON MAIDEN + SIKTH = PRIMAL ROCK REBELLION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 032012
 

Okay, the headline of this post is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you’ll forgive me after you hear the music.

The news is this: Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith has joined forces with former SikTh frontman Mikee Goodman for a new studio project. It’s called Primal Rock Rebellion, and the duo have finished recording an album that will be released on February 27 by the Spinefarm label.

The songs were all co-written by Smith and Goodman, with Smith playing both guitar and bass. Session musicians who also contributed to the forthcoming album include Abi Fry of Bat For Lashes, plus original SikTh member Dan ‘Loord’ Foord on drums, among others.

Spinefarm and the band have just released a song from the album called “I See Lights”. It’s dark and nasty, and the guitar and bass riffage get their hooks in you pretty fast. Listen to it after the jump — and if you like what you here, you can download it for free. Continue reading »

HAIL SANTA! – A LATE PRESENT FOR YOU

 Metal News  1 Response »
Dec 272011
 

I just noticed this, a few days late: Nuclear Blast compiled a free 25-track sampler of songs from the label’s artists as a Christmas gift to metalheads. It’s a strong line-up of music, and coincidentally includes a song from a Finnish band — Battle Beast — who were included in fireangel’s year-end list on NCS and who were signed by Nuclear Blast just in the last two weeks. I count 11 other bands whose music we’ve featured or reviewed on NCS this year. Here’s the track list (it continues after the jump):

01 Destruction – The Price
02 Hell – Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us
03 Demonaz – All Blackened Sky
04 Scar Symmetry – lluminoid Dream Sequence
05 Chrome Division – Bulldogs Unleashed
06 Hammerfall – One More Time
07 Pain – Dirty Woman
08 Rhapsody Of Fire – Aeons Of Raging Darkness (edit)
09 Symphony X – Dehumanized
10 Communic – Destroyer Of Bloodlines
11 Vader – Come And See My Sacrifice
12 Seven – Get It
13 Fleshgod Apocalypse – The Violation (edit)
14 Tasters – Please Destroy This World Continue reading »

THE NUMBER OF THE BLOG IS DEAD . . . LONG LIVE THE NUMBER OF THE BLOG

 Metal News  134 Responses »
Dec 262011
 

(The following is an announcement by groverXIII, the creator of The Number of the Blog. Something new is coming, but one very good run is over. Comments please.)

This was most decidedly not how I wanted to ring in the second birthday of The Number Of The Blog.

Faced with an expiring hosting agreement, I set about trying to transfer the site to a new, established hosting account. I figured it would be easy, right? Wrong. Between a lack of experience and some issues with the new host and the old host, I ran into a tremendous amount of trouble, in the process losing a massive chunk of the many, many posts TNOTB had accumulated. As things went on, the site itself ceased functioning, and I honestly have no idea what I could do to restore it. As I reached my wits’ end, I finally decided it was time to put the site down.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I gave up so easily. I have a couple of reasons, actually, starting with the burnout I’ve been dealing with over the past months. This gives me an opportunity to relax a bit and recharge my batteries for the oft-hinted Next Stage. Those of you who are familiar with TNOTB will now likely have deduced that the Next Stage does not, in fact, represent the continuation of The Number Of The Blog as a website, and this is quite true. This was, in fact, the plan all along, that TNOTB would cease to be (although we had hoped to maintain an archive of the site’s posts for everyone). This hiccup here actually does not affect the Next Stage one bit, and in fact might make things a little easier for myself in that respect. That, my friends, is the main reason that I’m throwing in the towel on TNOTB.

In the meantime, Islander has kindly agreed to let us crash on the NCS couch, and so you should be seeing plenty of guest posts from the TNOTB legions in the coming weeks. As for my TNOTB family and all seven readers who didn’t already write for us… thanks. You guys are the reason that I kept TNOTB going, and you’re the reason for the grand plans we have for the future. I’ve had a blast.

NAGLFAR FINALLY RELEASE A NEW SONG: “PALE HORSE”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Dec 242011
 

The Friday before Christmas is probably not an ideal day for releasing important news. In fact, as eagle-eyed as I am, I nearly missed this item. I’m so glad I didn’t. When I saw it last night, I became nearly giddy with excitement. Not actually giddy, because giddy is not metal, but nearly giddy. Here are the key elements of this story:

Sweden’s Naglfar has finished recording their new album — the first one since Harvest was released in 2007. It will be called Téras. It will be released by Century Media in March of next year. Sometime between now and then, the band will put out a limited-edition 7″ single that will include one track from Téras and a second song that will be exclusive to the single.

The band’s new line-up is down to vocalist Kristoffer W. Olivius (the band’s original bass player, who become Naglfar’s lead vocalist prior to the recording of Pariah (2005) after the departure of Jens Rydén), guitarist Andreas Nilsson (who has been with the band since its inception), and guitarist Marcus E. Norman (who joined in 2000). The drums for Téras were recorded by Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork, Scarve).

Last but certainly not least, yesterday Century Media made at song from the new album available for streaming. It’s called “Pale Horse”, and you can listen after the jump. If the quality of Naglfar’s previous albums weren’t enough to put Téras on your radar screen, this song should do it. Continue reading »

BONE5

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  35 Responses »
Dec 172011
 

Gee whiz, it’s been almost 24 hours since we last talked about a Finnish band here at NCS, and even though Andy Synn listed two of them yesterday as his top 2 picks for favorite albums of 2011, the loris horde at the NCS Compound is starting to get restless, so we’d better do something about that.

Bone5 is a band from Jyväskylä who released their debut album in 2010 — Dead City Tales. Earlier this month, they released their second album, From the Ashes. What caught my eye was the news announced in late November that Pasi Pasanen had joined the band as its new drummer. Pasi Passanen was the drummer for Swallow the Sun for almost the first decade of that fine band’s existence (2000 – 2009). In addition, along with Bone5’s vocalist Tony Kaikkonen (Code of Silence) and a couple of dudes from Ghost Brigade (among others), he’s also a member of a fairly new band called Sons of Aeon, who we featured with high praise in this post last spring.

When I saw the news about Pasanen joining Bone5, the band had just released a music video for a track off From the Ashes called “Rain”. I liked the song a lot, but deferred writing about it until I could try to learn a bit more about the band. With the help of fireangel, who’s a Finland-based creator of the Night Elves site and whose year-end list of songs we published recently (here), I was able to get in touch with Pasi Pasanen, and he was nice enough to answer a few of my questions.

After the jump, check out the cool video for “Rain”, and you can also read our mini-interview with Pasi Pasanen. Continue reading »

UH, IT MIGHT BE BETTER TO LET THE MUSIC TELL THE STORY

 Metal News  38 Responses »
Dec 162011
 

I do like Eluveitie. They put on a helluva live show, and I picked “Thousandfold” as one of 2010’s most infectious extreme metal songs. I’m looking forward to hearing their new album, Helvetios, which will be released by Nuclear Blast in February. It’s a concept album about a time long ago when a Celtic tribe called the Helvetii occupied part of Eluveitie’s homeland of Switzerland.

Today, Nuclear Blast released a trailer for the new album. It consists of about 15 seconds of music and several minutes of Eluveitie frontman Chrigel talking about the concept behind the album. Watching the trailer induced an attack of narcolepsy, and I fell asleep before the trailer ended, so I may have missed some more music at the end. Apparently, there’s an even longer trailer available at Eluveitie’s web site. I’m getting sleepy just thinking about a longer version of the trailer I watched.

Are most Eluveitie fans even more nerdy than average metalheads (Trollfiend, I’m looking at you)? Because that’s the only explanation I can come up with for why Nuclear Blast or the band thought this trailer would put everyone on the edge of their seats, instead of into a deep coma. I will probably wake up again before the album comes out. I will probably still listen to it, because it couldn’t possibly be more soporific than the trailer. In case you’re feeling jittery and really need to calm down, the trailer is after the jump. Continue reading »

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