AGALLOCH: LIVE FROM BELGIUM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 222013
 

I’m going to be scarce around here the rest of the day and a big part of tomorrow. Two friends of mine are getting married tomorrow, and I intend to help them celebrate the joyous occasion to the utmost of my abilities. If the NCS site becomes comatose, please look for me at hospitals in the vicinity of Ithaca, NY.

Until we meet again, I’d like to leave you with something that really made my morning, and I hope it will make yours brighter, too. It’s a video of about half of Agalloch’s live set in Aalter, Belgium, on April 22, 2013, as part of the LUCIFER OVER EUROPE tour. The video and the audio quality are both very good. In fact, if you decide not to stare at a computer screen for 44 minutes, the audio is good enough that you could just blast it in the background.

So fucking heavy, so fucking sublime. Four excellent musicians really locked in, casting spells. Thank you John Haughm, Don Anderson, Jason Walton, and Aesop Dekker for getting my weekend off to a fine start. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CRIMINAL ELEMENT, WOLVSERPENT, A.M.S.G., MURDER MADE GOD, AND FREE SHIT FROM METAL BLADE

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 212013
 

This is a round-up of carefully selected items I saw and heard yesterday while prowling through the filthy chambers of the interhole. As usual, I’ve made an effort to include a variety of metal, so you don’t get too comfortable. Comfortable isn’t what we aim for around here.

CRIMINAL ELEMENT

Criminal Element is a band that until yesterday had completely slipped beneath my cracked radar screen. I learned about them from my NCS compadres TheMadIsraeli and DGR. They came into existence in the vicinity of 2005, and at the time of their first EP (Career Criminal), the line-up boasted two members from Suffocation (Derek Boyer and Terrance Hobbs) and one from Dying Fetus (Vince Matthews, and when the band first began Sparky Voyles from Dying Fetus was also on board)).

In the current incarnation of Criminal Element, Boyer, Hobbs, and Matthews are joined by Darin Morris from Misery Index (at one point Adam Jarvis and Mark Kloeppel from Misery Index were also part of this project). With a line-up like that, you can understand why I paid attention when I learned that Criminal Element released a new album (Modus Operandi) in April. Continue reading »

NEW GORGUTS MUSIC: “FORGOTTEN ARROWS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jun 202013
 

Well, that didn’t take long. Yesterday we got the album title (Colored Sands), album art, release dates, and track list for the first studio album by Gorguts in 12 years. And now we have the album’s first single — “Forgotten Arrows”.

I don’t know what’s more impressive, what Luc Lemay and Kevin Hufnagel do with their guitars, what John Longstreth does with the drum-kit, or what Colin Marston does with the bass. Oh hell, why choose? It’s all striking.

And the song itself uses the top-shelf expertise of all four to deliver music that’s tremendously heavy, dark, and doomed. It has the impact of buildings collapsing, but it provides a good scrambling of the neurons as the same time. Tremendous stuff. Listen to it next: Continue reading »

NEW REVOCATION: “THE HIVE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 182013
 

Boston’s phenomenally good Revocation have a new, self-titled album scheduled for release by Relapse Records on August 6. (It’s available for pre-order here.) Within the last hour the first advance track from the album exploded on YouTube. The song’s name is “The Hive” and damned if it doesn’t sound like a hive full of thrashed-up hornets swarming in a syncopated dance, bursting with venom and slightly delirious. A couple of those hornets bust out a sweet guitar solo, too.

Damned fine song, which you can hear next: Continue reading »

WIZARDRY IN THE RIFFERY: A JEFF LOOMIS – KEITH MERROW – OLA ENGLUND JAM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 182013
 

Oh, they make it look so easy.

Jeff Loomis and Keith Merrow (Demisery) were trying out their new signature amp packs for Jamup Pro. And they decided, why not throw together a new jam? And they spontaneously wrote and recorded an instrumental track in a couple of hours. And then they decided, what the hell, let’s invite Ola Englund (Feared) to come bust out a solo for this thing. And voila! They produced de-li-ciousness.

And they videotaped it, too, so that all of us can bask in all the delicious riff wizardry.

Watch these three guitar dynamos tear it up right after the jump. You’ll be glad you did. Continue reading »

ROTTING CHRIST’S NEW VIDEO: “666”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 182013
 

Andy Synn’s review for this site of Rotting Christ’s new album, Kata Ton Daimona Eaytoy, described it as “a heavier and more aggressive album” than the band’s preceding two releases, and “one that wraps itself in a more black metal aesthetic than we have seen from the band in some time, recalling the bands Non Serviam years, but with added extremity and muscle.” But as Andy noted, although the album is built more on a foundation of black metal guitars and thunderous drums, it’s not without its more esoteric moments, with the ominous, gothic vibe of doom-laden closer “Χ ξ ς” (666) as a prime example.

Today the band premiered an official video for “666”. The beautifully executed black-and-white film by Jon Simvonis captures the dramatic, occult atmosphere of the music and, like the song itself, leaves no doubt that Rotting Christ have not severed the black roots of their past. Watch it next: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AMON AMARTH, DARKANE, AND THRÄNENKIND

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 182013
 

Here is a trio of songs that I discovered yesterday that are worth hearing. The first two are brand new and come from well-known Swedish melodic death metal bands. The third is from a German band who are a pleasant new discovery for me, and maybe for you, too.

AMON AMARTH

I suppose there are people out there who are on the fence about Amon Amarth, or conceivably haven’t yet made their acquaintance. But I suspect most people who are reading this are either already fans or wrote the band off already. This message is addressed to the fans and to those who might not yet have given the band their time: The song that premiered yesterday is awesome.

Its name is “Father of the Wolf”, and it rocks very damned hard. It’s packed with irresistible riffs and megawatts of energy, and the wah-wah solos bring a different kind of guitar sound that gives the song a refreshing spin. With any luck we’ll soon have a review of the entire new album — Deceiver of the Gods — but in a nutshell I think it’s a standout for a dependably solid band. Here’s the new song: Continue reading »

FREE SHIT: DOOM NATION

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 172013
 

I know a lot of NCS readers have got a taste for doom. I’ve developed quite a strong taste for it, too, and my mouth juices started filling up my gob when I saw this piece of news: Our blog brethren at CVLT Nation have compiled a free doom mixtape that’s loaded with killer bands who specialize in the slow and low.

There are 19 tracks on offer, including music by the likes of Dopethrone, Bongripper, Loss, Primitive Man, Graves At Sea, Batillus, Atriarch, and Seattle’s own Bell Witch. There’s a lot of strong, devastating music on this comp (2 1/2 hours of it to be precise), and it’s even sweeter because, as mentioned, it’s FREE!

Go HERE to download it, and if you’d first like to see the whole tracklist and listen to the tunage, move on past the jump. Continue reading »

UNLOCKING THE TRUTH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 172013
 

Back in April, a video of three 12-year-olds playing music on a Times Square street corner made the rounds on the interwebs. A combination of three things made a lot of people sit up and take notice: the kids were black, they were playing metal, and they were pretty damned good — especially for 12-year-olds. The name of their band: Unlocking the Truth.

I’d like to think that the video would have drawn attention even if these were white kids, but let’s face it, at least in the US you don’t see many black kids of any age playing underground metal. But as I said, that’s really only part of the reason why the video grabbed some attention. It happens that these dudes have got some really good chops for their age, especially the guitarist.

Many other videos of Unlocking the Truth playing in public have surfaced over the ensuing weeks, and this weekend several friends sent me a link to a short documentary about two of the band’s members — Malcolm Brickhouse and Jarad Dawkins — that went up last week, and it’s an awesome (and endearing) thing to watch. Yeah, these are young kids, but both of them seem really committed to what they’re doing, and they’ve got big ambitions. More power to them. Continue reading »

A DGR ROUND-UP: MECHINA, THE AMENTA, TYRANT OF DEATH, CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE, STEVEN WILSON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 162013
 

(DGR provides this round-up of artwork, new music, and new videos.)

Apparently nobody else got the memo that last week was E3 week and, goddamnit, that I was going to be away from the computer, because holy crap did the news updates come fast and furious throughout the week of June 10th. A lot of these bands are going to look very familiar to readers of the site because a lot of them are in fact the same groups featured in my last round-up. However, here at NCS we try to stick with really substantial stuff since a tracklisting usually means dick to the reader unless it has something attached to it.

This week, these bands delivered in spades – some with cover art, most with new songs or videos, one with a whole new release. Regardless, it was a smattering all across the board if you love music and love shit just being heavy as hell. I’ll attach my thoughts along the way, of course…otherwise this article is going to look all sorts of wacky.

MECHINA

That picture you see above is artwork for Mechina’s upcoming Xenon release, which the group stated in this here post would be hitting on 1/1/14. Continue reading »

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