ARKHUM UPDATE (INCLUDING A PREMIERE OF NEW MUSIC)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Aug 202011
 

There’s a happy symmetry about this post. Exactly one year ago today we posted our review of Anno Universum, the debut album from Oregon’s Arkhum, along with an interview of brothers Stephen and Kenneth Parker. On that day, we were thrilled to report that Arkhum had signed with Vendlus Records, who released Anno Universum last fall. We were “early adopters” of Arkhum’s music, but over the last year they’ve racked up a slew of positive reviews worldwide and enthusiastic fan response to Anno Universum.

The band are now working on songs for their second album for Vendlus, with the goal of releasing it in 2012, and on this one-year anniversary of those previous posts, we have a few tastes of what’s to come. First, we have the premiere of a pre-production version of a brand new song called “Cenancestor”, which will appear on the next album. The vocals and instrumentals are scratch tracks and the recording reflects a rough mixing and mastering, but this is still a sweet song, and you’ll be able to download it.

Second, we’ve also got some icing on this cake — we’re also premiering video of the band’s excellent guitarist Stephen Parker playing along to “Cenancestor”.

Today also marks the official digital release of a new, three-song Arkhum EP called Olalain Linal Tutulu. It features a reimagined version of the song “Bloodgutter Encircling” from Anno, a remix of the song by electronic artist Beta Project, and a remixed, remastered version of the “Bloodgutter” track as it appeared on the album. We’ll give you a link for a free download of this EP. Stay with us after the jump for all this fine shit. Continue reading »

CARTHAGE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 202011
 

(TheMadeIsraeli has an urgent message for you . . .)

My friend Tre Watson finally got the EP of his band Carthage put out today.  Progressive deathcore that brings in a lot of interesting influences and is worth checking out for sure.  Head over to their bandcamp before midnight tonight; until then, this EP is “pay what you want,” meaning yes, you can get it for free.  Once it hits midnight, it goes back to 5 dollars.  Expect a review of this soon.

http://carthageband.bandcamp.com/album/carthage-ep

Follow Carthage on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Carthageband

EXONERATION WEEK

 Metal News  10 Responses »
Aug 202011
 

Here at NCS, we avoid the daily news like the plague (unless it involves metal), because it offers constant reminders that human beings are fucking nuts, and not in a good way. For every small step of advancement toward civilization, there seem to be about 10 steps in regression as the self-centered and the arrogant persist in reenacting acts of gob-smacking idiocy that have been a feature of the human landscape for millenia and inflicting their prejudices on people who don’t think or act as they do.

But there are just enough, just barely enough, episodes of rationality to keep hope alive that a day will come when most people will act like the higher-order creatures they are supposed to be, instead of just bigger-brained versions of water buffalo and warthogs.

This week we had news about the lifting of legal clouds in two criminal cases that most metalheads have come to know quite well — the murder case against the West Memphis 3 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and the prosecution of Adam Darski (a/k/a Nergal) of Behemoth for giving offense to religion in Poland.

According to this story, a Polish judge found Nergal innocent of offending religious feeling when he ripped up a Bible during a 2007 Behemoth concert, called the Bible “a deceitful book”, and branded the church a “criminal sect.” The judge held that Nergal’s actions were “a form of artistic expression consistent with the style of his band.” Duh. He added that the court had no intention of limiting freedom of expression or the right to criticize religion. That’s an encouraging pronouncement.

Nergal can now go about the business of continuing to recover from leukemia and practicing for Behemoth’s next live performances this fall. No doubt, his detractors in Poland are seething over this turn of events, still stubbornly refusing to understand that trying to jail people who speak ill of churches, no matter how “offensively,” or who tear up “holy books,” won’t silence criticism of churches or religion. If people aren’t secure enough in their own faith to ignore what people like Nergal do in performances for their own fans, then enforcing laws against religious offense won’t save them. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

TEXTURES PREMIERES A NEW SONG: IS IT ROCK? IS IT METAL? IS IT BOTH?

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 182011
 

On August 3, Dutch metal band Textures released the first song from their new album (“Singularity”), which we declared to be fucking good pancake. Now the band have premiered yet another new song called “Reaching Home”. Like the first one, it comes from the forthcoming Dualism album.

I have mixed feelings about this song. On the one hand, the instrumental part of the song is cool, anchored by the complex Meshuggah-connected rhythms that are a large part of Textures’ signature sound. And you won’t be surprised to hear that the song has an infectious melody, too, because that’s also a big part of this band’s style.

On the other hand, there are no harsh vocals in the song at all, and there’s not much of a metal edge to it either. As drummer Stef Broks candidly told REVOLVER magazine, it “sounds like a direct assault to the rock charts,” and may remind people of Tool, Depeche Mode, and U2. Perhaps that’s why the song is premiering on the REVOLVER web site (cuz, seriously, REVOLVER hasn’t been metal in a long time).

On the third hand, as Brok also said, it may also remind people of Devin Townsend, and I get that connection, too. There’s a dreamy ambience to the song that is appealing, and the appeal may grow if I listen to it more. If you’d like to listen, GO HERE (I can’t yet embed the song).

Dualism will come out on September 23 in Europe, South America, Australia and Asia, and on September 27 in North America.

NOW THIS IS HOW TO DO A CD RELEASE SHOW

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
Aug 162011
 

I’ve mentioned that I have an impulse-control problem. Case in point: I took a short break from the job I’m actually being paid to do so I could check my NCS e-mail, and I saw the name Beyond Creation in a press release I got, and the short break turned into a long break. You may remember Beyond Creation — a Montreal band whose Marco Hasmann album cover for their 2011 debut, The Aura, lured us into checking out the music in one of our EYE-CATCHERS posts (here). To quote myself (because if I don’t, who else will?):

“We’re too lazy to keep Best of the Year lists, but if we did, I’m pretty sure The Aura would be in my personal Top 20, maybe my Top 10. . . Beyond Creation is a head-spinning trip like few bands you’ll hear this year.”

What I learned in the press release from Ricburn Media were three things: First, there’s a Toronto death-metal band called Nephelium who will be releasing their new album, Coils of Entropy, on August 20. Second, to celebrate the event, Nephelium is headlining a CD release show in Toronto on the same day, with support from (you guessed it) Beyond Creation, as well as two other Toronto bands, Nexortus and Fragile Existence. Third, to celebrate the event, the four bands on the bill teamed up to make available a free digital split via Bandcamp, consisting of one song from each band.

I just like everything about the way this is being done, but most especially, I like the idea of offering a free digital comp to promote a metal show — one song from each band. IMHO, the same idea would work just as well for tours, too. In addition to helping spotlight the show, it also uses the show to help introduce fans to the bands’ music. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

WITH A NAME LIKE “SUCKFEST”, IT’S GOT TO BE GOOD

 Metal News  9 Responses »
Aug 162011
 

When I was growing up, in the larval pre-metalhead stage of development, I remember watching TV ads for Smucker’s jelly that featured the slogan: “With a name like Smucker’s, it’s got to be good!” I didn’t understand that slogan at the time. Smucker’s jelly did taste good in the PBJ sandwiches I used to take to school, so I didn’t see why it had to taste good just because the name was Smucker’s.

Looking back, I get it now: The company might have been able to fool consumers into thinking the jelly was good, even if it tasted like shit, by calling it something like “Orgasm of the Gods”, or maybe “Fucker’s”. But because the name was Smucker’s, which had no sex appeal at all, the jelly had to stand or fall on its own intrinsic merit.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, where I was going was the subject of a new metal festival called “Suckfest”, sponsored by our friends at MetalSucks. “Suckfest” is a clever name, but it’s also a ballsy name, because with a name like that, it had better be good. At least they’re off to a good start, announcing yesterday that Day 1 of the fest will be headlined by Municipal Waste and Day 2 by Cynic. The rest of the 20 bands will be announced over time, and we’re mighty curious to see the rest of the line-up.

We’re also mighty proud to see a metal blog as the lead sponsor for a whole 2-day, 20-band festival in New York. Really, that’s an impressive accomplishment. Granted, it’s not quite as impressive as the NCS-sponsored, nationwide FUCKING GOOD PANCAKE TOUR, but it does have the very slight advantage of being real. We’ll be keeping our eyes on the unfolding of the line-up. We might even have one of our own intrepid reporters on site to cover the event. Depends on how well our bake sale goes.

A METAL MILESTONE IN INDIA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Aug 152011
 

Kryptos is a band from Bangalore, India, whose music I heard for the first time today. They’ve set October 29 as the release date for their third album, The Coils of Apollyon. Thanks to a tip from Siddharth Darbha, I also learned that Kryptos has scheduled a nationwide tour of India to begin in Bangalore on that same date.

It appears this will be a history-making tour in India. It’s scheduled to cover 30 cities in 40 days, making it the longest and largest tour of India by any metal band in the history of the Indian metal scene. They’re also doing this in style, traveling in a fully customized bus along with a complete sound and lighting rig as well as a 14-man crew.

As we’ve been discovering here at NCS over the last year and a half, India has a vibrant and talented metal scene, but only recently (thanks to bands such as Demonic Resurrection) has that scene begun to draw the attention of metalheads outside the sub-continent. Undoubtedly, there are also corners within that vast and ancient country itself that haven’t yet been enlightened about the wonders of metal; this tour will help remedy that by including stops in cities and towns that rarely, if ever, get exposed to this kind of live show.

According to The Font of All Human Knowledge, India is a nation of 1.2 billion people (second only to China in population); it’s the 7th largest country on earth by geographic size; and it’s an extraordinarily diverse and complex amalgamation of cultures (to pick but one example, there are 29 different languages spoken by at least 1 million people each). So, the idea of a metal tour that will attempt to span the country is worth some attention. As it turns out, the music of Kryptos is worth some attention, too. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

METAL FROM SOUTH AFRICA: PART 3

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Aug 152011
 

When it comes to NCS, I have trouble making plans and sticking with them, because I have an impulse-control problem. I get distracted easily, which is a serious weakness for someone like me who enjoys a broad swath of metal. Every day, new music appears, often from unexpected sources, and I’m easily carried off in some unintended and uncharted direction. I offer this confession as a feeble excuse for allowing almost three months to pass since Part 2 of our series on metal from South Africa. I’ll go ahead and say right now that there WILL be a Part 4 — and I have no fucking clue when it will appear.

Now that I have that out of the way, let’s move forward with Part 3 before I lose my concentration and fly off again. As many of you longer-term readers know, we didn’t intend to create a series on SA metal. It just happened. We ran a post in April about three SA metal bands. That led to lots of recommendations about other bands, so we added a second post about three more bands, and that led to more recommendations, and so here we are.

In this installment, we’re focusing (in no particular order) on Riddare av Koden, Warthane, and Architecture of Aggression. I picked these bands in part because I got very enthusiastic recommendations about them from SA metalheads and partly because they’ve got songs that you can go get for yourself instead of being stuck solely with YouTube clips or other music players that keep you tethered to your computer if you want to listen. I also happen to really like what I’ve heard from all three bands. So, here we go . . . after the jump. Continue reading »

A LITTLE BIT OF THIS, A LITTLE BIT OF THAT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Aug 142011
 

Just catching up on news here. But I’ll throw in some new music I heard this morning, too. The bands featured in this post: Thy Catafalque (again), Gire, Threat Signal, Solace, RedScream, and Deicide.

THY CATAFALQUE / GIRE

Just a few days ago, we posted a short feature that included this two-person band named Thy Catalfalque as a result of my first serious effort to get into their music — and man, have I gotten into it. I get more out of it the more I listen, like peeling back the proverbial onion, except without the watering eyes. To my good fortune, this led to a few e-mail exchanges with the band’s principle creative force, Tamás Kátai.

To date, Thy Catafalque have produced four albums and a demo, with a new album to be released in the future by Season of Mist. The last two albums (the ones I’ve been listening to) were released by Epidemie Records and have become a bit hard to find, at least if you want physical copies, though Epidemie will be re-releasing Róka Hasa Rádió on November 30, but this time in a jewel-case edition with an 8-page booklet (versus the original, nearly sold-out digipack version).

Thy Catafalque isn’t Tamás Kátai’s only musical project. He also handles keyboards, programming, lyrics, and more for another long-running Hungarian band called Gire, who have six demos to their credit plus a 2007 self-titled debut album (which features that eye-catching album cover above). The Gire debut album is also hard to find, but Tamás helpfully pointed out that it can be downloaded from this location — so, of course, I did that.

I’ve only just started listening, and I have a feeling that, as on the albums from Thy Catafalque, no one song on this album is going to tell you very much about the rest of them. But of the tracks I’ve heard so far,this is a mixture of eviscerating death metal, catastrophic sludge, industrial red-lining, and meteoric, experimental guitar extravaganza. I’m deadly serious. This is a stupendous head-check. (more after the jump . . . .) Continue reading »

T-SHIRT UPDATE (IS MWOP SCARING PEOPLE AWAY?)

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  56 Responses »
Aug 112011
 

On Sunday we launched a free NCS t-shirt campaign. I realize that Sunday’s aren’t the best days to launch campaigns, except maybe for surprise military attacks, but I did this as I do almost everything in life, i.e., completely on impulse. Which is to say, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking it through. Nevertheless, I anticipated that the orders for these babies would roll in like a flood tide and we’d max out by Monday morning. I mean, come on! The shirt is free, and we’re even paying for the shipping. All I asked was that people wear them. Now, who wouldn’t get up on that deal?

Well, a lot of people did e-mail me on Sunday asking for a shirt, and more e-mails have arrived since then. We had a noticeable up-tick after we posted Phro’s review of the FUCKING GOOD PANCAKE TOUR‘s inaugural show in Humptulips, since the shirt features the tour poster. But still, we offered to give away this shirt to the first 100 U.S. and Canadian residents who asked for one, and as of yesterday, we were only about halfway there. This caused my brow (what little of it there is) to furrow. It just didn’t make sense.

So, I went back and read through e-mails I’ve received about the shirt, and I began to get an inkling of the problem. A few older metalheads, including one of my friends, complimented me on the shirt design, but said they had small kids and didn’t think it would be a good idea to wear the shirt around them. On the other end of the age spectrum, a few people still living with their parents had some concerns about how mom and dad would react. At first, this didn’t make sense to me. I went and looked again at the tour poster.

It’s colorful, and who doesn’t enjoy colorful things? It includes a picture of a brain, and that promotes . . . uh . . . it promotes braininess, which is good, right? It also includes a syringe, which is what I use to get most of my nutrients, so it’s a nutritional shirt, too. Plus, it’s got the word FUCKING on there, and who doesn’t like a good fuck (or at least the idea of a good fuck)?

So, I pondered, what could the problem be? I stared at the poster a long time and thought really hard about it. By the time my headache went away, I had figured out the problem: MASSIVE WALL OF PENIS! (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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