DIOCLETIAN / WEREGOAT: “DISCIPLES OF WAR”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 232012
 

At least some of you who are on Facebook and who have liked the NCS Facebook page saw this album art when I posted it late yesterday. Based on how many people saw that FB post, it seems like the artwork has generated a lot of interest. So I thought I ought to explain what it is in more detail.

It’s the cover of a forthcoming split by Diocletian from New Zealand and Weregoat from Portland, Oregon. The title of the split is Disciples of War. It will be released on 12″ vinyl by Parasitic Records and on CD by Dark Descent. I don’t have a release date yet and pre-orders haven’t started. Once I get more info, I’ll add an update.

The complex, hand-drawn album art is, as you can see, amazing, and amazingly vile. It was created by Daniel “Desecrator” Corcuera, a 27 year-old artist who lives in Chile. Based on a brief bio I found on a site that was describing an exhibition of his work in Portland (here), it appears he is entirely self-taught and spends his time as a tattoo artist, illustrator, and vocalist/bassist for a band called Slaughtbbath.

Desecrator has created album art and logos for bands such as Bestial Mockery, Sathanas, Vomitor, Suicidal Winds, Dead Congregation, Hooded Menace, Thornspawn, Satanic Warmaster, and more. A listing of many bands for whom he has created artwork can be found here. And via this link, you can find an interview with him and more of his artwork.

As for the music on the split, I expect it will be utterly savage. We’ve written about Diocletian multiple times, most recently here. Their most recent releases are a May 2012 7″ EP entitled European Annihilation, produced for their European tour earlier this year, and a June 2012 hour-long compilation of the songs from their first four recordings between 2005 and 2008 by the name of Annihilation Rituals. The word “annihilation” appears in these titles for a reason. Continue reading »

WOLVES AND WORMS FOR THE WIN (AND CEREBRAL BORE, TOO)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 222012
 

I saw two of these live videos yesterday and one this morning. They involve three of my favorite bands. They are all from S Nations — Sweden, Singapore, and Scotland. I feel compelled to share them.

In the first one, Sweden’s Wolfbrigade throws down hard at the D.I.Y. Fest in Gdynia, Poland, on July 14, 2012. These dudes have been crushing skulls and kicking asses since the mid-90’s (with a break-up in 2004, followed by a revival in 2007), and it’s clear that they still know how to bring it on stage. Their new album, Damned (on the Southern Lord label), is one of my 2012 favorites (reviewed here). To quote myself (always the right way to go), it’s “a boiling stew of d-beat drums, swarming chainsaw guitars, slamming rhythms, and molten guitar solo’s that come for you like grasping alien face-huggers that are a shitload stronger than you are.”

Apparently, one of the factors leading to the band’s dissolution in 2004 was the fact that frontman Micke needed surgery for vocal chord problems and couldn’t sing for at least a year after that. I’d say he’s fully recovered. The sound quality on the new fan-filmed video isn’t pro-quality, but you don’t need that to feel the power of this performance.

The second video is Singapore’s awesome Wormrot performing at the Obscene Extreme Fest in the Czech Republic, also in mid-July (Wolfbrigade performed there, too). This video captures the band’s entire 30-minute set. It will grind your pointy heads down to a nub.

And finally, I have a last-minute addition to the post: video of Scotland’s Cerebral Bore playing at the first show of SUMMER SLAUGHTER 2013 at L.A.’s House of Blues on Friday night. Vocals by Som, always surprising. Continue reading »

ENTOMBED COVERS KING DIAMOND: “WELCOME HOME”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Jul 222012
 

Back in June I saw the news that Screaming Records was going to release a limited 7″ vinyl single by Sweden’s legendary Entombed. I’ve been waiting hungrily since then for the music to hit the web, and yesterday some of it did.

This new single is called When In Sodom Revisited and it includes three songs: a remixed and remastered version of the original “When In Sodom” track, which originally appeared on the band’s 2006 EP by the same name; an alternate version of the song composed, performed, and recorded by a Danish artist and sound designer named Klaus “Q” Hedegaard Nielsen (Beta Satan, The Malpractice), and a new studio recording by Entombed of the King Diamond song “Welcome Home”.

This single is the second Entombed release for 2012, the first being a digital release of a variant version of the song “Amok”, which we previously featured here. The recording of “Welcome Home”, however, is the first release by the current Entombed lineup — with Victor Brandt (TOTALT JÄVLA MÖRKER, AEON, SATYRICON) and second guitarist Nico Elgstrand (who previously played bass for the group) joining L-G Petrov, Alex Hellid, and Olle Dahlstedt.

For those of you who remember the post we ran on the 20th anniversary of King Diamond’s Abigail album (here), it will come as no surprise to learn that I prefer this Entombed cover to the original — mainly because I’ll take L-G’s vocals over King’s. The cover is a cool song. Continue reading »

PERCUSSION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, That's Music -- But It's Not Metal  20 Responses »
Jul 222012
 

Percussion is an important part of almost all forms of music. Of course, it’s vital to metal, and it’s not limited to the drums. I may be stretching the dictionary definition of the word percussion, but I’d go so far as to say that in genres of extreme metal that use distorted down-tuned guitars and bass, those instruments are used more for percussion and rhythm than for creating melodies.

The presence of percussion instruments in all the world’s cultures stretching back many thousands of years suggests there’s something about the appeal of beat and rhythm, the patterns of sounds and silences, that’s innate in human beings, something we’re born with rather than something we’re taught. Maybe it comes from the beat of the heart we heard in the womb, or maybe it’s a puzzling product of natural selection, but whatever the explanation, the human affinity for rhythm — and especially for percussion — seems like an essential part of who we are (even for spastic white-bread dudes who can’t dance to save their lives).

In this post I’ve gather some fascinating videos of some fascinating people doing fascinating things with percussion, and what they have in common is that they’re using their hands and fingers to strike a variety of different instruments (and machines) directly. The music isn’t metal, but it’s metal, if you know what I mean.

EFRAIN TORO

I learned about Efrain Toro because my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting and spending a little time with his daughter and her new husband on their honeymoon last spring while we were on vacation. Efrain Toro is a Puerto Rican percussionist and music teacher who has some interesting ideas about rhythm. Much of what I’ve read about his theories is over my head and I suspect would mean a lot more to people who, unlike myself, have some actual musical training. But from what I’ve read about him, he seems to be regarded as one of the best percussionists in the world, across a wide range of musical styles and types of drums. Continue reading »

ROLLING WITH IT: SPASMODIC, COFFINS, AND DEMONIAC

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 212012
 

I suppose our first post for this Saturday could have been about something melodious and harmonious, but when you start Friday with Hellish Outcast and then move on to the likes of Hell United, Skeletal Spectre, and Sophicide, it’s tough to change course, especially after a Friday night of blowing it out for the weekend. So we’re just gonna roll with the feeling and stay immersed in the kind of metal that comes for you hard, with raking claws and gnashing fangs.

In this post, new music from Spasmodic (Sweden) and Coffins (Japan) and the re-issue of a classic by Demoniac (New Zealand).

SPASMODIC

Spasmodic gave the world a four-song EP in 2010 by the name of Carve Perfection, which was a compilation of earlier material. They have also finished recording an 8-song demo album called Mondo Illustrated, for which they’ve been seeking label support for a release.

Three days ago they unveiled one of the songs from the latest demo, “Wanda La Put”. It features guest vocals by Emperor Magus Caligula, formerly of Dark Funeral. It’s fucking nutz. It’s a blast furnace of big razor-edged riffs, pummeling rhythms, and wolf-bark vocals (the kind of wolves that leaped in packs out of Hades). The heat comes off this song in waves, and the groove carves like a megawatt laser. Continue reading »

HELL DIVERS: HELL UNITED, SKELETAL SPECTRE, AND SOPHICIDE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 202012
 

Each of the three metal bands featured in this post have new albums on the way. Each of them have publicly released one song from their new albums. None of them sound quite like the others, but they do have these two points in common: First, all three of the new songs are very fucking good. Second, all three of them will make you feel like you’ve just taken a deep dive into the bowels of hell.

HELL UNITED

Hell United are a band of veteran Polish musicians (two of them playing in an earlier incarnation of this band as far back as 1997) who recently signed with Hellthrasher Productions for the September 11 release of their second album, Aura Damage. Just a few days ago, Hellthrasher started streaming the new album’s third track, “Deathlike Cold”.

The evil in this track starts flowing immediately in the tremolo-laced death-doom chords of the intro, and then it turns into a flood, with a dense wall of spitfire riffing, machine-gun percussion, and vocal outpourings of genuine bestiality. This horrific onslaught of hybridized black metal and brutal death-doom may qualify as war metal (a term we’ve had fun discussing around here off and on). Whatever you call it, it cored out my skull and left me hungry for more. Continue reading »

SEPULTURA AND SATYRICON

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  33 Responses »
Jul 192012
 

We’re all toiling away here at NCS on various projects, none of which are quite yet finished for this morning. Actually, to be brutally honest, I was sleeping instead of toiling away, and before that I was fucking off. I have no idea what the other idiots who work here have been doing, and I use the term “work” loosely, since nobody gets paid shit for scribbling about metal at NCS. Actually, I do have an idea what they’ve been doing, and it’s called “life”, which is bullshit because having no life is one of the key qualifications for “working” at NCS, and they all checked the “has no life” box on the NCS “employment” application, so what’s up with that?

Anyway, I haz nothing at the moment, so I’m doing this: I’m playing for you two excellent old songs plus some covers of them that I found this morning. I love these songs, and so it goes without saying that you love them, too. So we will all feel the love this morning, and then we can all do what we do when we feel the strong love, which in most cases will involve some kind of autoerotic satisfaction (and yes, you may take photos, but you may not send them to me because I don’t want to spoil my appetite before breakfast).

The first song is “Slave New World” by Sepultura, and I’m talking old-school Sepultura, from 1993’s Chaos A.D. You, of course, know this song and love it as much as I do, because it is such a great fuckin’ metal song. I think you will also like the cover of the song that Norway’s Dead Trooper did back in 2010, because I like it a bunch. I like it better than the cover Trivium did (also in 2010), though their cover still sounds good, because the riffs in this song are so damned compelling. I just like the original Max Cavalera vocals and the Dead Trooper vocals better.

The second song is “Forhekset” by Satyricon, from their 1996 Nemesis Divina album. It’s another great song, though I’m guessing many people would pick “Mother North” as the best song on that album. But anyway, today I saw a new video by a Québec band named Haeres performing a cover of “Forhekset” live back in March. I really like the cover — it’s not a carbon copy of the original, and it sounds really good. Continue reading »

SHIT SEEN AND HEARD: SONNE ADAM, ERUPTED, SILENT PATH, AND REIGN OF THE ARCHITECT

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 182012
 

Collected in here are items I randomly happened upon last night while browsing the internest and checking out links sent in by our ever-vigilant readers.

ITEM ONE

Sonne Adam are an Israeli death/doom band whose 2011 Century Media debut, Transformation, garnered a lot of critical praise. It was also one heavy motherfucker. Yesterday, I saw the news that the band’s first two-song EP, The Sun Is Dead, has been released by Van Records as a 7″ vinyl with that new cover art you see above.

Sonne Adam are also now working on a new EP to be entitled Doctrines of Dark Devotion, and yesterday they started streaming (for a limited time) a rough mix of a new track called “Bestow the Crown of Death”. Shit sounds heavier than oceans, darker than your worst nightmares. Guitars grinding on HM-2 overdrive; awesome reverberating vocals, deep as trenches and cracked like the windows in an abandoned warehouse; eerie guitar instrumentals swirling above the massive grinding noises underneath.

This is a very cool song and makes me tumescent for the new EP. Stream it right after the jump. Continue reading »

“VIKING METAL”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  113 Responses »
Jul 172012
 

In one of yesterday’s posts I compared a song from Sweden’s King of Asgard to Naglfar and Immortal, and I got questioned about that comparison in one of the comments, suggesting that King of Asgard is a Viking metal band. That caused me to consider, certainly not for the first time, what “Viking metal” really means and whether there really is such a thing as a “Viking metal” genre.

These are questions that have been argued in many other places at many other times. For example, our brother Trollfiend devoted a post to the subject at ALSO, WOLVES last fall, insisting that, yes, it’s a genre and it’s defined by the band’s lyrical themes (though he also implied that, musically, it’s a subset of black metal). Other people contend it isn’t a genre at all, or that if it is, it begins and ends with Bathory and early Enslaved and everyone else can go fuck off. And still other people say it’s a pointless question — you either dig the music or you don’t, and who gives a rat’s ass what you call it.

The fact that there seems to be no consensus about how to define “Viking metal” weighs in favor of the argument that it isn’t a genre. That conclusion is bolstered by the significant diversity in the music of bands who different people classify as “Viking metal” (see, e.g., the bands included in the “Viking metal” tag at Last.fm or the Viking metal genre group at Metal Archives). Genre classifications are usually (though not always) defined by widely accepted hallmarks of the musical style, and if no such consensus exists, or if the sound of the music isn’t really the defining characteristic, can we really say that “Viking metal” is a genre?

Is the lyrical content really enough, especially when much of the time you can’t make out the words in the songs when you hear them? Continue reading »

MORNING ROUND-UP: THE INIQUITY DESCENT AND VENOMOUS MAXIMUS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 172012
 

In this post are two videos from recent days that I missed in my daily rounds of the interhole looking for un-missable metal, and most truly, neither of these should be missed.

THE INQUITY DESCENT

We featured a previous video from this Finnish band back in February (here).  The band was formed in late 2009 by two childhood friends — songwriter and guitarist Mikael Mannström and vocalist Mathias Lillmåns, who provides vokillz for NCS favorites Finntroll and Magenta Harvest as well. They’ve produced two EPs as well as a 2012 full-length debut on Massacre Records, The Human Apheresis, which can be downloaded here.

Their new video is for a track from the debut album called “Collector Vs. Protector”. This song veers back and forth between a mid-paced segment with a stomping killer of a riff and a more accelerated part that’s a galvanizing death ‘n’ roll ass-kicker. And Mathias Lillmåns’ scalding vocals are fucken awesome. Watch this right after the jump. Continue reading »

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