At the end of March we enthusiastically reported the line-up that had just been announced for this year’s edition of the SUMMER SLAUGHTER TOUR. In case you’ve forgotten, here it is:

The Black Dahlia Murder
Whitechapel
Darkest Hour
Six Feet Under
Dying Fetus
As Blood Runs Black
Oceano
Fleshgod Apocalypse

One slot still remains to be filled — the slot that’s reserved for the outcome of fan voting among 10 candidates. The voting is closed, but the tour’s promoters haven’t yet revealed the winner. But the dates and venues have now been released. See those after the jump . . . Continue reading »

Over the weekend, we ran a guest post from our bro Surgical Brute spotlighting five bands scheduled to appear at the Rites of Darkness 3 festival, which is scheduled to run December 9 -11, 2011 in San Antonio, Texas. We hadn’t heard about this festival before that post, but 41 bands are already scheduled to appear, and it’s one helluva line-up (as you can see at the bottom of Surgical Brute’s post here).

No sooner was the ink dry on that post (figuratively speaking) than we got an e-mail from “Utmu“, another NCS reader/commenter, alerting us to yet another San Antonio festival scheduled for November 18-20 called The Goregrowler’s Ball. We checked the line-up, which Utmu cryptically said might include a few names that would interest us, and . . . holy shit, was he right.

Check out the names of the co-headliners: Suffocation, Aborted, Exhumed. Yeah, that got our attention. But that’s just the start — there are 54 bands confirmed for this festival so far, and the promoters may not be finished yet. The line-up also includes Lair of the Minotaur, Malignancy, Putrid Pile, Noisear, Dreaming Dead, Woods of Ypres, and The Evil Amidst — just to pick out a handful of our favorite names.

San Antonio’s definitely got it goin’ on, metal-wise. Who knew? I dunno, maybe everyone but us. But now we know, and so do you. You can check out the full line-up after the jump. There may be an Alamo-and-River-Walk visit in our future . . . Continue reading »

On Monday we tipped you to the fact that our friends at The Number of the Blog had assembled a compilation of music from 18 bands. In the comments, we even gave a really high-level sketch of the musical styles represented on the comp.

Well, the comp is now ready for download, at no charge (unless you feel like throwing a few dollars in the direction of TNOTB). Here is the link for the Bandcamp page where you can do the download.  And here again is the track list:

1 – Cormorant – ‘Scavengers Feast’
2 – Returning We Hear The Larks – ‘Uprising’
3 – Enditol – ‘Monoculture’
4 – Tre Watson – ‘Spack Jarrow’ (previously unreleased)
5 – Iron Thrones – ‘Against The Grain’
6 – Robots Pulling Levers – ‘Sumati II’ (previously unreleased) (featuring George Richman of Hypnorock)
7 – A Walk With The Wicked – ‘Architects Of Sadism’
8 – Cloudkicker – ‘We’re Goin’ In. We’re Going Down.’
9 – Shades Of Devastation – ‘Art Of Agony’ (previously unreleased)
10 – Amogh Symphony – ‘Osiris 1′
11 – Giant Of The Mountain – ‘Awakening’ (previously unreleased)
12 – Keith Merrow – ‘Heart Of The Sea Nymph’ (featuring Jeff Loomis of Nevermore)
13 – Shaidar Logoth – ‘Mashiara Shai’tan’
14 – I’ll Eat Your Face – ‘Dr. Pancake’s Luxurious Ratskin Housecoat’
15 – Soul Cycle – ‘Rising Defiant’
16 – Cut Your Teeth – ‘T.W.H.W.Y.T.B.’
17 – Assimilated Mind Phase – ‘Breeding Insanity 2.0′ (previously unreleased remix)
18 – Brent A. Petrie – ‘Collapse/Conquer’ (previously unreleased)