WHO IS THE KONSORTIUM?

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
May 242011
 

I try to skim through Blabbermouth for news at least every other day. And “skim” is exactly what I do. Most of what I see just scrolls past my eyes like freight cars at a railroad crossing, exciting very little interest. There’s often no rhyme or reason to what might make me stop and pay closer attention to a post.

This morning, rhymeless and reasonless, I paused at a post about an outfit called The Konsortium. The facts, as represented in the post I read: The band is from Norway. They recorded a self-titled debut album over a one-year period. It will be released on June 24 via Agonia Records. It includes guest vocals by Erlend Hjelvik (Kvelertak).

Beyond that, there was this description of the music from the band’s press release: “black metal with various thrash, avant-garde and non-metal influences creating [its] own atmosphere and identity.”

As for the band’s members, we know that guitarist Teloch from Mayhem and Nigingr has joined the band. Otherwise, all we have is this statement: “THE KONSORTIUM features various members. Some of them better and some of them [not as well] known to the metal (but not only) community.” I think the right word for that is “cryptic”.

And then, there’s the song that was available for streaming on Blabbermouth — and of course that’s why I’m bothering to write this post: The song is a jackpot payoff for all the Blabbermouth skimming I’ve done this month.  (a bit more info, plus the song, after the jump . . .)

Continue reading »

SLAUGHTER SURVIVORS TOUR SCHEDULE IS OUT

 Metal News  12 Responses »
May 242011
 

If you live in the U.S., you may remember that the promoters of this year’s SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour conceived a creative piece of marketing by allowing fans to vote from among a list of 11 bands for the last act to fill up the touring line-up. Within the Ruins won that vote and will be joining The Black Dahlia Murder, Whitechapel, Darkest Hour, Six Feet Under, Dying Fetus, As Blood Runs Black, Oceano, and the almighty Fleshgod Apocalypse on SUMMER SLAUGHTER.

Earlier this month, the tour promoters put out the word that they were organizing a second tour featuring some of the bands from the voting list that didn’t get selected via the Facebook ballot-stuffing . . . uh, voting — plus Scale the Summit. Here’s the line-up (which unfortunately doesn’t include some of the best vote-losers — Revocation, Neuraxis, Augury, 7 Horns 7 Eyes, Dawn of Ashes).

CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE
THE CONTORTIONIST
SCALE THE SUMMIT
RINGS OF SATURN
VOLUMES
STRUCTURES

As of this morning, we now have the tour schedule. I have mixed feelings about this schedule. On the one hand, I’m happy for all the people in Lubbock and Des Moines who’ll get to see it. On the other hand, they couldn’t be bothered with a single date anywhere in the Pacific Northwest? What are we, chopped liver?  The schedule is after the jump . . . Continue reading »

ARSIS INVITES YOU INTO THE SHADOWS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
May 232011
 

With increasing frequency, we’re seeing bands inviting their fans inside the creative process before their songs are all fully mixed, mastered and packaged into an album’s worth of music. I think that’s smart marketing, in addition to satisfying the impatience of hungry fans like me who hate waiting around for new music from bands we like.

We had one example yesterday when The Monolith Deathcult put up on SoundCloud a preliminary version of a new song called “H.W.A.” (Human Wave Attack). And today we have yet another example: Arsis has posted a brand-new song for streaming via SoundCloud called “Since the Shadows”. Yes, that does indeed mean that Arsis is writing a new album.

Early days yet, but based on this demo version of the new song, it’s not too soon to start panting for that album to come. At least if you’re a panter like me. If you just breathe normally, like a human instead of a beagle, then you may just want to smile when you hear this song. As they say in the field of professional music journalism, it fucken rawks.

ARSIS – Since the Shadows (Demo) by NuclearBlastRecords

VARIOUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 202011
 

To supplement Andy’s review of the recent show in Leicester by The Faceless, Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, and Gorod (here), I threw together some breaking news of interest to me (and perhaps you), plus some new music and videos (also of interest to me, and possibly to you, too). The subjects of this post: Bewilderbiest, Nekrogoblikon, Fit For An Autopsy, Adam Gray (Texas in July), and Your Chance To Die.

BEWILDERBIEST

NCS co-founder IntoTheDarkness doesn’t write for NCS much any more, but at unpredictable times he texts me in bursts of enthusiasm about new music or new developments in the scene. Yesterday was one of those days. So, credit to him for this first piece of intriguing news.

Bewilderbiest is a new band, a “super group”, if you will. Somehow, IntoTheDarkness became aware of the recent, unheralded appearance of this band on Facebook. So far, I haven’t seen any fanfare about this, but it sure does command interest. Check out the line-up of band members:

Sacha Dunable – guitar (Intronaut, Graviton)
Derek Donley – drums (National Sunday Law, Graviton)
Charles Elliott – vocals, guitar (Abysmal Dawn)
Derek Rydquist – bass (The Faceless)

I think this makes the 5,231st band that the super-talented Sacha Dunable is involved in. No music is yet available, but based on some internet sleuthing, I did discover that the band are finishing up work on their debut effort and that the genre focus will be doom. When we have more to report, we’ll clue you in.  That Facebook page is here, though the content is pretty spare at the moment. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

BYFROST SPEAKS OF DEATH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
May 182011
 

As we were reminded by the new THOR movie, in Norse mythology, Bifröst is the name of the burning rainbow bridge that reaches between Midgard (the world) and Asgard, the realm of the gods. The phonetically identical word BYFROST is the name of a Norwegian metal band that has become one of our supreme favorites, providing a burning bridge between our humble reality and an under-realm of primal, massive, blackened death metal ruled by the almighty riff.

When we reviewed their debut album Black Earth last July, we explained that listening produces “the sensation of being shaken like a rag doll by giant, clawed hands in time to a hellish beat.” Not only was Black Earth one of our favorite albums of 2010, we also named a track from the album (“Desire”) as the first entry on our list of 2010’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs (here).

We knew the band was at work on a follow-up album for release at some point this year, but this morning we got details from the awesome publicist/manager Patricia Thomas that lit up our faces like those of children in a candy store. For example, we now know the album title — Of Death — and we now have the awesome cover art by Christian Sloan Hall (above), and we now know that the album was co-produced by Herbrand Larsen and Ice Dale of Enslaved (Larsen also makes a guest appearance on two tracks). And even better, we got the actual candy, too: The sound of two new tracks from that forthcoming album — “Of Death” and “Buried Alive”.

Stay with us after the jump for more details about the album plus a first listen to those two new songs (which, by the way, will send horns to the fucking sky). Continue reading »

THE EMPIRE OF AUGUST BURNS RED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
May 172011
 

August Burns Red has a mega-sized fan base. Let’s just take their Facebook “likes” as an indicator of that: 807,942 “likes” as of this writing. That’s a shitload. Now, I don’t mean to suggest we’re in awe or anything — we’re closing in on that number ourselves. With just 807,651 more likes, our NCS Facebook page will tie August Burns Red’s. So, we’re not in awe, we’re just stating the fact: For a metal band with a hardcore edge of extremity to their sound, they’ve built an unusually large empire of fandom.

The three of us who originally founded this site are among those fans, and we’ve posted about them a lot since we started NCS. They’re not as extreme as most bands we write about here, but they’re smart, creative songwriters, they play with passion, and their musical output shows they’re not standing still. Oh yeah, their songs are also distinctive and really memorable — so much so that we named ABR’s song “Meridian” (from the Constellations album) to our inaugural list of The Ten Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs of 2009.

ABR has a follow-up to Constellations due for release on June 21, called Leveler. It features that interesting cover art above (by Jordan Crane) showing a house that’s been leveled (see what they did there?) by a tornado or hurricane or some kind of disaster, but with life going on anyway. Or at least chicken life. It’s not your typical metal cover, but we still thought it was eye-catching.

With the album release fast approaching, ABR has begun the process of fan titillation by uploading the first song from the album for streaming. It’s called, naturally enough, “Empire”, and it’s a metalcore bruiser. After the jump, we’ve got that song for you plus some additional details about the album. Continue reading »

KLONE YOURSELF

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
May 172011
 

Too infrequently, we write about music that we pick out for listening based solely on the album cover art, not knowing anything about the music itself. Last July we did that for an album called Black Days by a French band called Klone. To crib from what we wrote about the album back then:

Well, it’s not my usual cuppa tea, which tends toward the more skull-pulping leaves grown on the jagged crags of Tartarus. For one thing, there’s a lot of more-or-less clean singing. . . . But, unexpectedly, I’m really diggin Klone. At a very high level (like, from space), the music straddles a line between the darker side of progressive metal and Chevelle-style hard rock. The instrumentalists are sharp and technically impressive, and even when his vocals are clean, Yann Ligner has an invigorating edge to his voice. The songs cover a wide range, from crosses between doom and prog, to melodic headbanging anthems, to dark dreams of hypnotic ambiance.

Today, we have some news to report about Klone: First, they’ve released a brand new two-part single called The Eye of the Needle that’s available for free download — and it’s absolutely worth hearing. Second, we came across a recent official video for one of the songs from Black Days, and it’s absolutely worth seeing. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

ISIS TO RELEASE FIVE LIVE ALBUMS; BADWOLF SAYS HE CAME

 Metal News  No Responses »
May 152011
 

We just got an e-mail from NCS writer BadWolf about the news that’s the subject of this post. This may be too much information, but he says he got so excited that it made him come. I suspect there are other Isis fans who visit this site. If this news also makes any of you ladies and gents come, too, then I’d say our work here is done for the day. I myself did not come. I did get some wood, but it may have been because the cat picked that moment to rearrange his sleeping position in my lap.

Where was I? Oh yeah, five live albums from Isis. Here’s the deal: Isis has been disbanded for just under a year, but they’re saying good-bye in grand fashion by announcing that five live recordings from their back-catalogue will be released digitally this summer. Four are of single shows and a fifth is a compilation. They will be released every two weeks between May 31 and July 26.

Individually the albums are priced at $5.99, while the whole set is $20. Pre-order packages are supposed to start selling soon at this location.

As for what the former members of Isis are up to these days, we’ve got a bit more news after the jump. Continue reading »

SHORT, BUT SWEET: PRISTINA AND PANDEMONIUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  20 Responses »
May 152011
 

Since the end of last week we’ve accumulated some small collections of new music that we think are very sweet. In a way, they’re all teasers for longer and grander things to come from some very good bands. Consider us well and truly teased. But this isn’t like getting all hot and bothered with a chick in the backseat of your car and then being denied the payoff. No, this is a good kind of tease.

Late last week we featured the first of these brief releases — a three-song EP from Swedish black-metal behemoths, Marduk. Today, we’ve got two more: New music from Pristina (U.S.) and Pandemonium (Poland).

PRISTINA

We were bowled over by this Connectuicut band’s 2010 debut album, The Drought (Ov Salt and Sorrow), and we weren’t the only ones. It has received plenty of attention and critical praise.  You can see our review of the album here, and our revealing interview of Pristina mainman Brendan Duff by using this link.

We heard from Brendan a few days ago with some very welcome news. First, Pristina has recorded three new songs that will only be made available as a limited edition EP at the band’s live shows, though one of them is available for streaming now (we’ll get to that).  Second, Pristina have finished writing their next album and plan to begin recording it shortly.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NEW SONG FROM THE FACELESS (GROAN)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  27 Responses »
May 112011
 

This post is what we consider a “public service announcement”. In other words, we’re informing you of something that we know many of you will be interested in learning — but not because we’re recommending it to you.

Within approximately the last hour, The Faceless posted a “pre-production preview” of a new song called “The Eidolon Reality”, which will appear on the band’s next album, due sometime this fall. This is not the final mastered version of the track. I’m not sure why the band (or Sumerian) decided to release this instead of waiting until completion of mastering, but they did.

Fans of technical death metal have mixed opinions about The Faceless. We here at NCS are fans of technical death metal, and we liked Akeldema and, to a lesser extent, Planetary Duality. But to be honest, this new song made me cringe. Literally. Cringe.  I even have a hard time developing an opinion about the instrumental work and the growly vocals because the song includes some truly bad clean singing. There. I said it. Go past the jump and listen for yourselves.  Be forewarned, I think the YouTube clip is set to begin playing automatically. Continue reading »

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