DIMMU WILL ENTHRONE DARKNESS TRIUMPHANT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 242011
 

I’m writing this post just to show how much we here at NCS love all of our European brethren and sistern (sistern?) even though we are not ourselves European and even when we also want to hate our European brethren and sistern because of opportunities they have that we lack. Such as this opportunity:

Dimmu Borgir will be playing a series of shows during the month of November at nothing but small clubs in the UK, Ireland, and on the Continent. There will be no support acts. Each performance will consist of two sets. In the first set, the band will play one album in its entirety. It won’t be the latest album. It will be . . . wait for it . . .  1997’s Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. Color me green with envy.

The second set will be a selection of Dimmu “classics” from a variety of other albums in their substantial discography.

After the jump, you can see all the dates and places where Dimmu will be doing this. We’re also including links to places where you can buy tickets, though I suspect tickets will be tough to come by. Good luck. Also after the jump, because I’m now thinking about this, two tracks to stream from Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. Continue reading »

SON OF AURELIUS THROWS A CURVEBALL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Oct 232011
 

The 2010 debut album from California’s Son of Aurelius, The Farthest Reaches, drew an avalanche of critical acclaim and enthusiastic fan response. It made several of the Top 10 lists we published at the end of that year, including one from our own Andy Synn, who wrote this: “Son Of Aurelius have come seemingly out of nowhere with an epic, heroic take on the technical death metal genre, impressing nigh on everyone whom they have encountered. The songs on The Farthest Reaches have a character and individuality not usually found in the sort of music which usually contains technical wizardry of this level.”

So, when Son of Aurelius makes new music available, we sit up and pay attention, like good, obedient bloodhounds. That’s what happened today: Son of Aurelius started streaming a “pre-production” track off their next album. It’s called “Strange Aeons”, and it’s a strange choice as a musical tease for the next album. There are no vocals and no technical “wow” factor. It’s mid-paced, with prominent synthetic keyboards, and drums that sound programmed (though I doubt they are, with a beast like Spencer Edwards in the line-up).

In short, it sounds like a dreamlike mood-piece or instrumental interlude. Perhaps the plan is to add vocals later, but I can’t see vocals fitting with this music. As it is, it’s mildly interesting, but at least for me, nothing more than that. Have a listen after the jump and tell me if I’m a fuck for reacting so placidly.

By the way, is that an ass-kicking piece of artwork up there or what? I found it on SoA’s facebook page, but I don’t know what it is. New album cover maybe? And by the way (again), there’s no news I’ve seen about when the new album will be finished. Continue reading »

CONTROLLING EVOLUTION

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Oct 192011
 

(Here’s a shout-out from TheMadIsraeli for a Tennessee band called Controlling Evolution.)

I usually do not, and in fact generally will not, write about local acts where I live.  For the most part, they fucking suck, are generic, or are generic and fucking suck.  With that said, I’ve got an in-state band worth pitching to you that deserves a chance.

After the jump is the Bandcamp player for some friends of mine, Controlling Evolution, that is streaming their free first album, In the Wake of Leviathan’s Campaign.  You can visit Bandcamp (here) and download it if you like what you hear, which I’m high recommending you do.  Playing a brand of technical, progressive, and dizzying metalcore with heavy jazz influences, these guys are set to take the metal scene by storm.  They are currently recording a new EP, and from what I’ve heard, it will make this first album look like child’s play.  Considering how badass this debut is, that almost scares me. (music after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

BONUSES FROM THE BABOON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 122011
 

It’s been too long since we last showed some love for our blog brethren at Death Metal Baboon, so we’re remedying that. If you haven’t discovered the delights of DMB, you should. Here at NCS, we pride ourselves on promoting underground metal by spotlighting not-so-well-known bands from around the world, as well as the bigger names that everyone has heard of — but in that department, DMB has got us beat. Especially for metal coming out of Europe, they do an excellent job ferreting out musical gems from bands who don’t get much exposure here in the States, and DMB writer (and frequent NCS commenter) byrd36 does the same for State-side music.

Apart from showing some love and appreciation for DMB, the purpose of this post is to alert you to two recent pieces of content at that site I thought might interest you. The first is an entertaining and informative interview that DMB head-honcho Niek Baboon conducted with Dutch folk-metal band Heidevolk. You remember Heidevolk, don’t you? They were included in one of our MISCELLANY posts in late August (here), and  that mention has led to increased attention to folk metal at NCS (thanks in large part to the energies of our guest contributor Trollfiend). Check out Niek’s recently expanded interview HERE. When it comes to the Dutch, it takes one to know one.

The second piece of DMB content concerns a 3-piece UK instrumental metal band called Bleaklow. Niek reviewed their latest EP (The Sunless Country) HERE. His review led me to listen to the album, and today he alerted me to the fact that it’s now available for download on Bandcamp at a “name your price” option. The EP is one, long, 24-minute song. Like Niek, I have some trouble describing it, except to say that I like it a lot. It’s more on the prog side of the spectrum than most of the music we cover here, but it’s definitely headbang-worthy. Gritty, compelling, stripped-down prog with heavy balls. And a sweet sax solo in Part IV of the song. I’m including the second part of the song after the jump, and you can stream the whole thing via that Bandcamp link. Continue reading »

NCS PRESENTS!

 Metal News  24 Responses »
Oct 122011
 

Is that not the most awesomest thing you’ve ever seen? Or at least the most awesomest thing you’ve seen in the last 5 minutes? And unlike the last thing musical event we presented, this one happens to be real, and there are two other real, related events in addition to this one.

Becoming The Archetype have announced an October/November European headlining tour in support of their latest album, Celestial Completion , which was released earlier this summer on Solid State Records and reviewed at NCS here. As part of that BEARDING EUROPE 2011 tour, the band will be playing three four dates in the UK, with support from a stellar line-up of UK metal bands, and we’re doing our part to help spread the word by co-sponsoring this BEARDING THE UK TOUR. The only band playing with BTA on all three dates is Bloodguard, who are fronted by our very own Andy Synn (congrats to Andy and the whole band for scoring these gigs).

On October 24, BTA will play Birmingham at The Actress & Bishop with Bloodguard and Haerken.. Tickets are £4. On October 25, BTA will be playing Manchester’s Roadhouse with Bloodguard and Bisonhammer. Tickets are £7 in advance from http://www.theroadhouselive.co.uk/. On October 26, BTA will be hitting  The Maze in Nottingham, with Bloodguard, Daor, and Incinery; advance tickets on sale HERE. And then on October 27, BTA will wreck Camden’s Purple Turtle with Talanas, Bloodguard, Chapters, and Ruins of Earth. Advance tickets are available for a paltry £7 here: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/137045

And by the way, you can find out more about Talanas by reading Andy’s review of their new album HERE , and you can get an introduction to Chapters via TheMadIsraeli’s write-up HERE. After the jump, check out the other UK tour posters with our humble name appearing on the top and see BTA’s entire European tour schedule, with support from Immortal Souls and Beyond the Dust after leaving the UK. Continue reading »

INSOMNIUM: FULL-ALBUM STREAM

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Oct 102011
 

The new album by Insomnium, One For Sorrow, has been making the rounds here among the NCS staff, and it’s been uniformly drawing praise. Despite a fair amount of clean singing, even I am digging it. In the near future we will have at least one review, from Andy Synn, but the point of this post is to alert you to the news that the entire album is now streaming at a Finnish web site called Inferno. And to get there and start eating up the goodness, follow THIS LINK.

Over and out. Whatever that means.

“THE NEW YORKER” FEATURES BLACK METAL

 Metal News  30 Responses »
Oct 082011
 

I’m the only metalhead I know who subscribes to The New Yorker magazine, though I’m sure there are other metalhead subscribers out there. But probably not many. I usually read the movie and book reviews because the writing is so good, even though I almost never get around to reading the books or seeing the movies themselves. Most weeks, that’s all I can manage to do, usually because I don’t have the time to read more.

Sasha Frere-Jones is the magazine’s pop-music critic (though what he writes about is really more eclectic than the term “pop” might lead you to believe). He’s also a member of bands called Calvinist and Piñata. I usually read his stuff, too, but not because I have much interest in the music he covers; again, I admire the writing.

Today, the on-line version of The New Yorker published a Frere-Jones piece that I read because, for a change, I was interested in the subject matter as much as the writing. The subject is American black metal, with a particular focus on Wolves in the Throne Room and Liturgy. I found it amusing because it’s being written for an audience that probably knows nothing, or next-to-nothing, about black metal, and reading it is like seeing our tiny, extreme genre of music through someone else’s eyes.

Also, remarkably, it doesn’t use the words “fuck”, “fucking”, “brutal”, “pummeling”, or other words most of us are used to seeing (or in my case, using) in descriptions of metal. You can read the article via this link, or you can go past the jump, because I’ve pasted it into this post. Continue reading »

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS: A STUDIO UPDATE

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Oct 072011
 

(Here’s an update from Andy Synn about Abigail Williams’ work on their next album.)

Some of you may know (or may not, hell, I don’t know how much any of you pay attention) that I’m a big fan of Abigail Williams. You might also know that since we opened for them a few months back I’ve been in pretty regular contact with Ken “Sorceron”, keeping tabs on their various tours and the writing and recording of their upcoming third album.

The band recently completed drum-recording at Keene Machine Studios in LA, with the irrepressible Michael Keene (of The Faceless fame) engineering. The rest of the record is being recorded at the group’s own home studio, with frontman Ken Sorceron acting as producer (as, contrary to popular belief, he has done on both the group’s previous records). With that in mind, I thought it the perfect time to issue a bit of an update on how things are going and collect together the various hints and bits of info that I’ve managed to glean so far . . .

First things first, as you may have seen, the band are collaborating with drummer Zach Gibson, who originally appeared with them way back on the Legend EP (btw – if you can track down “Watchtower: Revisited”, the re-recording of one of the debut EP’s best tracks, I recommend you do). Mr Gibson has been appearing of late with “Phobia” and “Gutrot”, delivering short spasming blasts of grindcore devastation. As he says in the video you’ll see at the end of this post, he’s had to adapt his style a bit to the new AW material… (more after the jump) Continue reading »

NCS ON THE AIR (sort of)

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Oct 062011
 

NO CLEAN SINGING was originally launched by three people almost two years ago. My two comrades have sort of fallen by the wayside as time has passed, though on rare occasions one of them surfaces to contribute a post. On this site, he goes by the name IntoTheDarkness. Beginning last month, he became the Metal Director at KSUB, the internet radio station of Seattle University. He’s responsible for the station’s metal playlist and he also personally hosts a two-hour metal show every Thursday night at 10:00 Pacific Time.

There’s not a lot of talking on that show, apart from IntoTheDarkness telling you what you’re going to hear, or have heard, but I can pretty much guarantee that the music will be killer — all extreme metal with no commercials. Now, I know there are 1,000 other ways you can find metal on the web for listening purposes, wholly apart from your own personal collection of music, but this is one way that I can’t help but promote, (a) because I know the dude pretty well (that’s an understatement), and (b) because I respect his taste. So, give this a shot.

To hear the show, you’ll need Winamp, iTunes, XMMS or an mp3 player capable of listening to shoutcast streams on your computer. You can listen by clicking this link. And for future reference, here’s the URL:

http://www.seattleu.edu/ksub/default.aspx?id=66045

And yeah, this is Thursday, so the show will be on in about 6 hours from now.

TEASERS: NEW MUSIC FROM THY CATAFALQUE, VEKTOR, IMMOLATION, AND GOATWHORE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Oct 052011
 

Oh baby, did yesterday bring some titillating musical teasers. Actually, only two of the four teasers featured in this post are actual music. The other two are simply forecasts of music that will become available shortly.

By the way, I’m writing this in a hurry because I’m about to leave for the airport. The old fucking day job is sending me to the East Coast for a couple of days. I’ll tell you, the life of a coke mule isn’t as glamorous as it’s cracked up to be. The prospect of parking my tender, balloon-filled butt in a cramped airplane seat for 5+ hours isn’t appealing. But it comes with the territory, y’know? Anyway, when I ignore all your comments until tonight, it won’t mean I don’t love you.

THY CATAFALQUE

This talented Hungarian band has already teased us about their new album on Season of Mist, Rengeteg, which won’t actually see the full light of day until November 11 and fucking January 10, 2012 in North America. Yes, last month we got some snippets of music (featured at NCS here) — not even a full song, but certainly enough to stir our loins in anticipation. Now we have a full song, the first to debut from the new album. It’s called “Fekete mezők”, which means “black fields”. And guess what? Season of Mist has made it available for free download HERE. Listen up (right after the jump): Continue reading »

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