TIME TO BUST SHIT UP: NEW MUSIC FROM BEHEADED, MALEVOLENCE, UNDEAD CREEP, AND 7 H.TARGET

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 052012
 

Here’s another round-up of music I came across over the last 24 hours that I want to recommend. By my lights, it’s a good way to charge into the weekend, because it helps get in the mood for destroying shit. And isn’t what weekends are for? To destroy all the things you spent the work week building, including your reputation?

Here’s a helping of viciously destructive music from Beheaded (Malta), Malevolence (Portugal), Undead Creep (Italy), and 7 H.Target (Russia).

BEHEADED

Beheaded are from the island nation of Malta in the Mediterranean. Having heard some of their new music, I’m surprised Malta hasn’t imploded and sunk beneath the waves in a titanic geyser.

Beheaded have recorded their third album, Never To Dawn, for release by Unique Leader on November 6. Based on a very old MySpace blog entry by the band, the fantastic cover art appears to have been created by an artist named Yang Guang (click on the image to see a bigger copy of it).

A few days ago Beheaded released an advance track from the album called “Where Hours Etch Their Name”, and it made me hungry not only for the whole album but also for human flesh. It’s a monstrous, and monstrously groovy, behemoth of death metal might that reminded me of Immolation and Hate.

The riffs have a booming, cataclysmic quality, spiced with rapid techy jabbing and whirlwinds of dark melody. The vocals are a paragon of bestiality, and the fuckin’ percussion is explosively off the hook. Beheaded definitely have the knack for forging relentlessly brutal music that’s also groovy and memorable. I’m in lust for this album. Here’s the song: Continue reading »

SWIMMING WITH THE STREAMS: JEFF LOOMIS, MY DYING BRIDE, AND NIDINGR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 042012
 

 

Look what I found! New song streams! They crash and froth in rapids, they meander slowly through dark canyons, and they explode in white water again. They are new songs by Jeff Loomis (U.S.), My Dying Bride (UK), and Nidingr (Norway).

JEFF LOOMIS

Have you listened to the new solo release by Jeff Loomis, Plains of Oblivion? Well, it turns out that Jeff Loomis is already writing and recording new songs, and he plans to roll out three of them through online debuts. The first one premiered today on Metal Hammer’s web site, and it may come as a surprise to those who have Plains of Oblivion still ringing in their heads. Loomis recorded “A Liar’s Chain” with his current touring band, and they’ve been performing the song on tour this year. Guitarist Joe Nurre provides the vocals.

The hard-charging song is as extreme as anything on Plains of Oblivion, or more so. The central riff is a hammering, quasi-industrial beast; Nurre’s vocals vary between death-metal growls and paint-stripping screams (with something like a nu-metal styling in some of the vocal rhythms); and Loomis’ inevitable extended solo brings a dose of satisfying spitfire flash. Cool shit. It’s right here: Continue reading »

MAN MUST DIE: “ANTISOCIAL NETWORK”

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Oct 032012
 

Scotland’s Man Must Die have been an NCS favorite going back to the early months of our existence in 2009; type the band’s name into the NCS search box and you’ll see the history of our MMD coverage. Following the massive head trauma inflicted by The Human Condition (2007) and No Tolerance For Imperfection (2009), I was greedily expecting a new album from these death metal brutes last year. Unfortunately, this statement by the band greeted my sorrowful eyes in September 2011:

“Hey all, we are getting so many questions about a new release so we feel its best to level with you all, at the moment we are without label, we have found ourselves in the surreal position after our most sucessful year and after gaining so many thousands of fans, our efforts to land a deal have fallen on deaf ears, and its very frustrating as we have such a killer album waiting to record, keep you all posted and we hope that we have better news soon :/ cheers – MMD”

We did get a demo version of a killer new song called “Hiding In Plain Sight” last fall (which you can stream here), but then the well seemed to run dry. Last spring there were rumblings of a new single and a new video in the works, but the months passed without either one surfacing . . . until today.

And praise be, now we have both. The single is “Antisocial Network”, it’s available for free download, and it delivers a crippling beating. Continue reading »

CNOC AN TURSA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 032012
 

Put this album on your radar screen: The Giants of Auld by Cnoc An Tursa.

As announced today, this Scottish band from Falkirk are the latest signing by Candlelight Records. Their debut album was recorded at Foel Studios in Wales by noted producer Chris Fielding, who has also produced albums by Winterfylleth and Primordial, among many others.

After doing a bit of reading about the band and listening to all of their music I could find this morning, Winterfylleth and Primordial were the two bands I thought of even before learning about Chris Fielding’s participation in the Cnoc An Tursa recording. Both of those bands have drawn on the heritage of their respective nations (England and Ireland) in crafting music that draws on both black metal and folk traditions. Cnoc An Tursa seem to be following a similar path with respect to their native Scotland, though their music differs from those other two collectives.

Cnoc An Tursa have wrapped their music around old Scottish poetry. One song I found, for example, bears the title “Winter, A Dirge”, which also happens to be the name of a poem by Robert Burns. A second song is named “Bannockburn”, which is the title of yet another Burns poem, in addition to being the site of one of the decisive battles in the first war of Scottish independence from England in 1314. A third, “Hail Land of My Fathers”, is the name of a poem written in the 1800’s by John Stuart Blackie. And a fourth, “Ettrick Forest In November”, was the name of a poem by Sir Walter Scott.

From what I can hear in the YouTube clips I found, the songs do appear to take the poems’ verses for their lyrics. Continue reading »

RUMBLINGS OF THE BEAST: DEAD BEYOND BURIED, GHOULGOTHA, SHADES OF RETRIBUTION

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 032012
 

This is another “Seen and Heard” post. I just got tired of calling them “Seen and Heard”. I thought about spelling it “Scene and Herd”, just to fuck with people a bit, except those words would really send the wrong message about today’s bands.

Dead Beyond Buried (UK), Ghoulgotha (U.S.), and Shades of Retribution (India) are underground collectives who are each doing their own thing their own way (and by my lights, the right way). They will draw fans not from scene kids or those who travel in herds but from metalheads with discerning taste. You’ll see (and hear) what I mean. Their music makes me want to do my part to help elevate their visibility.

So without further ado, here are the items I came across yesterday via e-mails to NCS and perusal of the interhole that I thought were worth spreading around.

DEAD BEYOND BURIED

I really liked this London-based band’s last album on the Seige of Amida label, Inheritors of Hell (2010), but I had kind of forgotten about them. Their name popped up on my radar screen again recently as one of the bands highly recommended by Ageless Oblivion guitarist David Porter in the Porter interview conducted by our Andy Synn not long ago. Not much later I saw that they would be self-releasing a new album (The Dark Era) in the near future, and that was welcome news. And then I saw that they had released a music video a few days ago for one of the new tracks, “Cold Black Stars”, and I got even more interested.

Man, what a surprise! The video, which was filmed, animated and edited by Joe Slatter (www.thedarkpower.co.uk), is one of the best I’ve seen this year. The animation, and how it alternates and eventually merges with the band performance, is fascinating. And the song itself . . . Continue reading »

FROM EXILE: “MARTYR’S GAMBIT”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 022012
 

From Exile are an Atlanta progressive metal band we’ve written about frequently at NCS. You can see a collection of all our previous features via this link. The last time we checked in with them, they had released a new, freely downloadable song called “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement” and a music video to go along with it. The video was a live performance of the band filmed at the studios of Digital Arts Entertainment Lab on the Georgia State University campus in downtown Atlanta. It was filmed as part of a video series focusing largely on Atlanta-based bands called indieATL (check out their web site here).

At the time of that last post, From Exile had disclosed that they recorded a second song as part of the indieATL session and planned to release it (along with a video of the performance) at some future date — and last night they did that. The new track is called “Martyr’s Gambit”, and man, is it cool.

As in the case of “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement”, it’s not as extreme as most of the music we cover at NCS, and all the singing is clean. But the song is heavy, intricate, and superbly rendered, and it features a powerful, oh-so-memorable chorus. The dual vocal harmonies are beautiful, as is the interplay between the triad of guitarists, the nimble bass player, and the hard-hitting drummer. And as the icing on the cake, the instrumental jam in the song’s back half is a galvanizing flow of compulsive energy. Continue reading »

MORE SEEN AND HEARD: ENCRUST, TREPALIUM, KLONE, UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Oct 012012
 

Earlier today I collected a handful of items I saw and heard in my catching-up time last night, but since posting that round-up I’ve discovered even more new metal that’s worth passing around. The bands featured in this post are: Encrust (U.S.) Trepalium (France), Klone (France), and Unfathomable Ruination (UK).

ENCRUST

Okay, first thing you should do is click THIS LINK to see a bigger copy of that stupendous cover art up there.

Is that not killer? It’s the cover for From Birth To Soil, the debut album by a Chicago quintet who call themselves Encrust. The artwork was created by Ryan Kasparian (whose work we’ve featured elsewhere on NCS) and Chris Angelucci. Not coincidentally those two happen to be one of Encrust’s two guitarists and the band’s vocalist, respectively.

From Birth To Soil was released by Density Records last week, and on the same day the band premiered a lyric video for one of the album’s tracks, “Engine of Deceit”. I only caught up with the video today, and I’m really digging the music and the lyrics. The song is a big, swaggering, brawling hybrid of sludge/stoner riffs, pile-driving percussion, and death-metal vocals. There might be some way to avoid headbanging to this song, but it would probably require severing all the nerves to your neck muscles. Continue reading »

DEATH GRIPS DROPPED THEIR NEW ALBUM TODAY: “NO LOVE DEEP WEB”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, That's Music -- But It's Not Metal  33 Responses »
Oct 012012
 

Especially for an extreme metal site, we’ve showed a lot of love for Death Grips. Why? Because their music is “metal”, even though it’s not metal, and also because they don’t give a fuck.

How many fucks don’t they give? Well, you may recall that Death Grips signed a deal with Epic/Columbia to release two albums this year. The first one was The Money Store (reviewed for us here by groverXIII). The second one was supposed to be released sometime this month. But last night on Twitter the band said, “The label wouldn’t confirm a release date for NO LOVE DEEP WEB ’till next year sometime,” followed by, “The label will be hearing the album for the first time with you.”

And this morning Death Grips just went ahead and put up No Love Deep Web for streaming and free download. Maybe their contract with Epic/Columbia allows them to do this as long as they deliver some other album for label release, but something tells me this wasn’t exactly what Epic expected. I thought Epic was an odd choice for this band anyway, and maybe we’re starting to see why this wasn’t a marriage made in heaven.

Either way, it’s cool to get this new album. It’s so fresh that I’ve barely started listening to it. The SoundCloud player for the stream is after the jump, and you can go HERE to download it while you can (click the smaller “Premium Download” link — it’s the only one that will start the download of the album). You can also download it off the SoundCloud player, or from the other download links I’m including after the jump.

Also, the album cover is a picture of the album’s title written on an erect dick. No fucks given.

Also after the jump, following the erect dick cover art (NSFW): a Phro-tastic write-up I just received from Phro (also NSFW) about this news.

(via Pitchfork) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ATRIARCH, VOIVOD, SYBREED, AND CYTOTOXIN

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 012012
 

I’ve been missing in action more than usual over the last 4 days, having been kidnapped by work-related travel and activities that were fun, but  cut deeply into blog time. I’m now back home on this Sunday night and have been trying to find out what I missed in the world of metal. Of course, I missed a lot that interested me — too much to capture in a single post — so I’m going to pick out just a few of the items I thought were worth spreading around.

ATRIARCH

I first came across Portland’s Atriarch through their 20 Buck Spin split release with Oakland’s Alaric — and that whole split release is just chock full of win. If you haven’t heard it, check it out on Bandcamp here.

Atriarch is now on the Profound Lore label and their first PL release will be Ritual of Passing, scheduled to hit the streets on October 30. The cover art up there is by Stevie Floyd (Taurus). I saw that Pitchfork recently premiered the album’s third track “Altars”, and then I saw that PL had put the song up for streaming on SoundCloud as well. And I checked it out. Fuckin’ glad I did, too. Continue reading »

RECOMMENDATIONS FROM SURGICALBRUTE: CHAPEL, THROWN, AND MORBID VOMIT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 292012
 

Long-time NCS reader SurgicalBrute has been a reliable source of eviscerating musical recommendations for the site, sometimes through guest posts and sometimes via e-mail. Recently he sent me an e-mail with three new recommendations, all of which proved to be excellent. I’ve collected some info and music from each of the bands in this post. Here we go . . . .

CHAPEL

Chapel are based in Vancouver, Canada and they released their debut album — Satan’s Rock ‘n’ Roll — on August 1 via the Irish label Invictus Productions. Here’s what SurgicalBrute said about Chapel:

“Midnight . . . Speedwolf . . . forget them both . . . this band plays some ripping satanic blackened speed metal, and will definitely be on my year end list.”

Rooting around in the interhole, I found that CVLT Nation is streaming the album in full (here). I’ve been listening to it, and yeah, it fucken rips hell. It’s not hard to imagine that if hell were real, this would be the party music of choice. Matching rock and punk beats with filthy riffs, burned-raw vocals, and acetylene solos, Chapel have created a virally infectious debut release. Check out a few of the songs next. Continue reading »

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