GRIND TO THE MAX

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 232009
 

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grinder

Are you having one of those days when it seems like the whole world is made out of sharp edges? Where all the people you encounter just seem pointed and cutting? Where even the light feels like daggers in your eyes? Where you begin to think your skull itself is filled with razor blades? Well, my friends, what you need is a little industrial strength grind action.

No, no, no, we don’t mean that kind of grind action.  Get your nasty minds out of the gutter! We’re talking about something that will grind all those sharp edges down to a nice smooth finish that you can slide right over. We’re talking about the kind of grind that Brutal Truth delivers. (More after the jump.) Continue reading »

LIVING SACRIFICE UPDATE (No. 4)

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Dec 222009
 

Two weeks ago, influential death/thrash band Living Sacrifice released “Rules of Engagement,” the first song from its forthcoming new album The Infinite Order (scheduled for a January 26 release), and we slobbered over it.

One week ago, Living Sacrifice released a second song from the album, called “Nietzsche’s Madness.” More slobbering here at NCS.

This week: another new song? Not quite. But today the band premiered a video for “Rules of Engagement” at AOL’s Noisecreep site.  The video intersperses band performance with a story about a psychologically damaged young soldier dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. To read guitarist/singer Bruce Fitzhugh’s thoughts about the video and the making of it, go here.

To watch the video, simply look below:

THE BINARY CODE (Part 2)

 Interviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 212009
 

Yesterday we frothed at the mouth over The Binary Code, its just-released full-length Suspenson of Disbelief, and the kick-ass “Metal As Art” tour that The Binary Code is about to launch with Hypno5e and NCS favorites, Revocation. In the course of preparing that post, we put a few questions to the band’s guitarist and co-songwriter Jesper Zuretti, and the dude was good enough to indulge us. Yesterday’s post was so damn long that we didn’t want Jesper’s answers to get lost in the rest of our verbiage, so we deferred publication of the interview til today. If you’re already a Binary Code fan or just beginning to get curious about the band, there’s some interesting revelations in there. Read our interview of Jesper after the jump: Continue reading »

THE BINARY CODE (Part 1)

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 202009
 

Last week we put up a brief, rushed post about the one-day-only streaming of The Binary Code‘s December 15 full-length release on MetalSucks.net — brief and rushed because we wanted to give our readers the chance to listen to Suspension of Disbelief before the stream evaporated into the ether. But now it’s time to explain why we thought that alert was worth doing.  And tomorrow, in Part 2, we’ll also share with you our e-mail interview with The Binary Code‘s guitarist/songwriter Jesper Zuretti. Trust me, it’s worth coming back here to read that.

First, the explanation of why we care about this band.  In three words:  shitloads of talent. At all the levels that count. Prodigious technical instrumentation; complex, beautifully structured song-writing; the ability to dive deeply into the technical/progressive side of death metal while at the same time incorporating compulsive grooves and elements of jazz; an abundantly evident creative intelligence that promises future growth. All that and more make Suspension of Disbelief a very impressive full-length debut and The Binary Code a band worth watching closely.

As a reader, I usually lose patience with album reviewers who feel compelled to offer observations about every last track on an album. But there’s so much going on in Suspension of Disbelief that I don’t know how else to fucking do it. So, here goes:

The album begins with a powerful, genre-defying one-two punch. “Suspension of Disbelief (Part I)” is a furious, pummeling, riffage-and-blast-beat-filled onslaught that showcases the band’s technical talent. And then without warning, the music shifts gears into “Suspension of Disbelief (Part II)” — a prog-metal influenced, largely instrumental track that begins and ends with down-tempo atmospheric soloing with high-intensity riffage packed in between. “Mechanical Seas” is tech-death with a groove, but punctuated with melodic synth interludes. “Ghost Planet” is more blast-furnace death metal, featuring a mix of deep gutterals, high-pitched shrieking, and chants; screaming guitar interludes; and some awesome syncopated interplay on the low end between bass and skins. And then there’s a “what the hell?” moment: The closest label I can affix to “Void I” is metal-infused progressive jazz.

Following a brief musical interlude, the band then launches into “The Story,” another genre-bending, technically complex piece with multiple tempo changes, jazzy interludes, and even more vocal variation (including flashes of clean singing). Following another brief instrumental interlude, the band explores the “Human Condition” — more unexpected tempo changes, brutal vocals, crashing riffs and machine-gun bass-and-drum work alternating with more episodes of progressive jazz. “Awaiting Necropolis” is another foray into tech-death territory with probably the most head-bangable rhythms on the album. And then, to finish off this mind-blowing collection we come to “Void II,” another melodic, jazz-influenced number. Continue reading »

WHY IS GERMANY SO FUCKING BRUTAL? (postscript)

 IQ Subtraction, Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 192009
 

wacken10smallVans WarpedYesterday, NCS Co-Author IntoTheDarkness posted a piece on the brutality of German extreme metal bands. In an episode of synchronicity, this morning I saw three news updates about festivals scheduled for 2010 — one in the U.S. and two in Germany. And the comparison speaks volumes. On the one hand, we have the 2010 Vans Warped Tour spreading across the US next summer like a brain-sucking plague. On that tour, you’ll have the opportunity to see such stupifyingly awful bands as Attack! Attack!, Breathe Carolina, and Eyes Set to Kill. There are a few saving graces on the tour — Parkway Drive, Suicide Silence, and Whitechapel. But suffering through the rest of the 67-band lineup for the opportunity to see those dudes would be worse than a garden-hose colonoscopy without anesthesia.

SUMMER_BREEZE_2010On the other hand, next year in Germany we’ll have the latest installments of (a) the Summer Breeze festival scheduled for August 19-21 in Dinkelsbühl; and (b) the Wacken Open Air festival scheduled for August 5-7 in (where else) Wacken, Germany. At Summer Breeze, you could see the likes of Asphyx, Barren Earth, Behemoth, Dark Tranquillity, Despised Icon, Dying Fetus, Hypocrisy, Necrophagist, Obituary, Sepultura, Swallow the Sun, The Crown, and Maroon. And Wacken Open Air will feature bands such as Amorphis, Arch Enemy, Caliban, Immortal, Iron Maiden, and Slayer.

What’s really mind-blowing about the contrast is that those German festivals, each spread over just a few days in a single location, will draw tens of thousands (e.g., 70,000 tickets were sold for the 2009 edition of Wacken Open Air more than 200 days in advance). To get that kind of attendance in the U.S. for metal, you apparently need to have a line-up of largely craptastic bands and a schedule of about 40 dates in 40 cities.

To be fair, the German festivals draw crowds from all over Europe, and the U.S. does have some legitimately extreme festivals that are drawing headbangers in increasing numbers (the Maryland Deathfest, now in its 8th year, comes to mind most prominently). But still, so far, it’s no contest.

For full lists of the bands scheduled to date for these 3 tours, continue reading after the jump.

Continue reading »

The ABOMINABLE SNOW TOUR: LIVING SACRIFICE, WAR OF AGES, SHAI HULUD HIT THE ROAD

 Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 172009
 

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We’ve been writing about Living Sacrifice quite a lot recently, but that’s because there’s been a lot of Living Sacrifice news recently. Oh yeah, and they’re also a killer band. And we’re writing about them again today because, why? Well, because there’s more (good) news of course.

Living Sacrifice and War of Ages will be co-headlining “The Abominable Snowtour” during the month of February, with Shai Hulud, Lionheart, and The Great Commission rounding out the line-up. There will be 21 shows in 23 days. No stops in the Pacific Northwest, or West of Texas for that matter, but we will be patient. All good things come to those who wait. On the other hand, good things sometimes also come to those who push and whine and nag the shit out of everybody.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the “Abominable Snowtour.”  You can get all the scheduled dates and places after the jump. Continue reading »

BINARY CODE — HURRY BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!

 Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 162009
 

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Metal Sucks is currently streaming the debut release from New Jersey’s Binary Code. But they say they’re only doing it for 24 hours — and they started streaming yesterday. So time is flying. Which is why this post is so short. We wanted to help get the word out before the freebie disappears and you actually have to spend a little money to listen. And why do we care? Because we’ve listened to that stream, and this shit is amazing. Technical death metal that will knock your socks off. And because we’ll get the chance to see these dudes live in Seattle on Jan 26 (check out our NW Metal Calendar).

Do it! Go here now! You won’t be sorry.

UNEARTH’S PANTERA COVER IS UP

 Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 162009
 

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Your NCS Authors are big Unearth fans, and fans of Pantera too. You may have heard that to commemorate the 5th anniversary of Dime’s death, Metal Hammer magazine brought together a group of well-known artists to record covers of Pantera songs for a CD that ships with the mag. Unearth was enlisted to cover “Sandblasted Skin,” and the band has just now put that song up on their MySpace site for public consumption. “Sandblasted Skin” captures a lot of what Pantera was all about, and Unearth’s cover does it complete justice. Don’t know about the rest of the covers on the Metal Hammer collection, but this one slays.

So, down below, after the photo of Dime, check out a 1996 live Pantera performance of “Sandblasted Skin” and then run over to Unearth’s site and listen to what they do with the song.

BLACK METAL NAVEL-GAZING

 Metal News  10 Responses »
Dec 152009
 

Immortal

I don’t read The New York Times regularly. I’ll make a wild guess: I bet most visitors to this site don’t read it either. If you do, you need to rearrange your priorities. There are only so many hours in the day, and you’d be happier if you spent more time here at NO CLEAN SINGING, or any of the linked sites over to the right, and less on The New York Times. But though I don’t read that paper regularly, I’ve got friends who do, and three of them e-mailed me about an article that appeared there today entitled “Thank You Professor, That Was Putrid.”

The word that first came to mind after I read it was “bizarre.” The second word was “fucking pretentious.” The article describes a six-hour symposium on black metal held last Saturday afternoon at Public Assembly, a bar and nigthtclub in Brooklyn. The symposium, called “Hideous Gnosis,” was attended by an odd combination of pointy-headed academics (including two who traveled from England for the event), music critics, and at least one actual black metal musician, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, the frontman and guitarist from Liturgy. (That can’t possibly be his real name, can it?  Gotta be a black metal stage-name.)

The academics presented papers with such mouth-watering titles as “The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances,” “Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya,” and “Perpetual Rot: Obsessive Cycles of Deterioration.” I can sum up my reaction like this: “Reading About Hideous Gnosis: Regurgitating in My Lap.” Continue reading »

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