SEEN AND HEARD TODAY: WINTERFYLLETH, GOAT THE HEAD, ONE INCH GIANT, AND MASS HYPNOSIS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 152012
 

Here we have yet another random assortment of things I saw and heard today that I thought merited some attention. And the bands are: Winterfylleth (UK), Goat the Head (Norway), One Inch Giant (Sweden), and Mass Hypnosis (Croatia).
 

WINTERFYLLETH

I saw that another new song from Winterfylleth’s next album, The Threnody of Triumph, has started streaming. As previously reported here, the album is due for release on September 25 via Candlelight. The new song is “The Svart Raven”, and it’s streaming at Stereogum. I won’t blather on about the song; I’m saving my blathering for a review. For now, I’ll say only that the song is excellent and that you should hear it without fail if you have any interest in black metal. Go here to do that.

GOAT THE HEAD

I saw the image at the top of this post appear on the Facebook page of our favorite contemporary primal cavemen death metallists, Goat the Head. This looks suspiciously like cover art for some new collection of contemporary primal caveman death metal. My suspicions were further aroused by this accompanying statement by the Goats: “Exposing evident symptoms of imminent deathrash”.

I must say that I find this highly encouraging. It has been FAR too long since we’ve received new original material from this band, who we have written about a multitude of times in the past (collected here). They are, after all, the band who introduced us to the dreaded Cube, the mere mention of which gives me the nervous shakes. Although the Goatsters haven’t released new material in a while, earlier this summer they did record a cover of “Burner” by Motörhead, which I somehow overlooked. It rocks. It’s right after the jump. Continue reading »

NEW VIDEOS FROM WILDERNESSKING, PRAY FOR LOCUST, AND MOTH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 152012
 

We were a bit light on content yesterday, but we’ll be making up for that today — and this post wasn’t even part of the planned line-up. In one of those happy confluences of events, the morning brought three new videos that I’m really digging. Two of them are from young bands who’ve already become favorites, and the third is a bright new discovery: Wildernessking (South Africa), Pray For Locust (Sweden), and Moth (U.S.).

WILDERNESSKING

I suppose there might be a few things I haven’t yet done to promote this band’s music. I haven’t tried sky-writing or a flashing billboard in Times Square. I suppose I could put their faces on milk cartons, except they’re far from lost. To the contrary, in a relatively short time they’ve turned out some amazingly mature, completely enthralling music. First came their 2012 debut album, The Writing of Gods In the Sand (featuring the killer album art you see above by Reuben Sawyer). To steal words from my review, it lashed together styles from a variety of genres (including black metal, post-metal, and Enslaved-style prog) to create “a uniquely effective expression of power and emotion, a blending of light and dark, soft and hard, beauty and voraciousness.”

Then came a follow-on EP, …And the Night Swept Us Away (reviewed here), which I perceived as one long, panoramic song divided into three parts, not because it was written that way but because it worked that way as a musical journey.

Today the band provided me with yet another excuse to pimp them by releasing an official music video for “Rubicon”, one of the tracks from the album, which marks a turning point in the conceptual journey that the album portrays. It’s a live performance (interspersed with related clips) filmed at their record release show at the Kimberly Hotel on April 20. Have a look and a listen right after the jump . . . after which I’ve got some more news about the band’s activities. Continue reading »

A SCATTERING OF SCARS: THE GARDNERZ, POSH CUNT, AND REX SHACHATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 142012
 

I’m sitting here fresh from a restful 5 hours of sleep, with my eyes feeling like spider monkeys sandpapered them while I was asleep, but rapidly feeling more alive as I slurp on my second cup of Deathwish coffee (read about that shit in this post). In an effort to shock myself awake even more quickly, I’ve been listening to the three songs in this post. They kind of make me feel like alien larvae are burrowing under my skin, some slow and some fast, but all of them inexorably headed toward my gut where they will seek nourishment before exiting explosively through my intestinal wall.

Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have poured that second cup of Deathwish. Anyway, check out the scarring music while I get something sharp and start opening myself up to look for those fuckin’ squirmy larvae. The bands: The Gardnerz (Sweden), Posh Cunt (US/UK), and Rex Shachath (Ireland).

THE GARDNERZ

The sharp-eyed among you will recognize that cover art at the top of the post, because I included it in a previous feature about album art about six weeks ago. The artist is Daniel “Devilish” Johnson and he created this awesome image for a new EP by a Swedish band named The Gardnerz. The six-song EP, entitled It All Fades, will be released by Abyss Records this fall.

Today, the Axis of Metal blog began streaming a song from the album by the name of “Don’t Look Back”, and that’s kind of how I felt listening to it — something was on my heels, but it was a fuckload smarter to keep running than to risk a glance over the shoulder. Continue reading »

AGALLOCH: “THE MANTLE” – TEN YEARS ON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Aug 142012
 

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the release by Agalloch of their second full-length, The Mantle. Also yesterday, our brother in blog, Full Metal Attorney, devoted another one of his album-anniversary retrospectives to The Mantle, and as I’ve done before, I’m using his piece as what I hope will be a jumping-off point for discussion here at NCS.

This particular anniversary recognition means more to me than others we’ve featured here. The Mantle was my introduction to Agalloch, who have become one of my favorite bands, and the album itself was a revelation to me. FMA contends that it represented “two radical changes in metal”, which slowly gained in prominence after the album’s release. First, he states that it represented a form of “[m]etal that’s barely even metal” – “neo-folk music with some black metal elements, rather than the other way around.”

Second, he argues that it represented a shift “away from individual songs and toward complete albums”, a kind of cinematic music in which mood is paramount: “The songwriting is brilliant not because of monster riffs, but because it creates atmosphere and holds it together with memorable melodies and musical themes. In that sense, it resembles classical music more than any kind of rock music.”

While acknowledging that other bands such as Ulver had previously been creating music with a “neo-folk-infused musical style and cinematic/classical songwriting”, FMA asserts that “no one plying this trade had made such a strong statement as The Mantle” and that “[p]agan metal and post-black metal would be unrecognizable (or non-existent) today were it not for this record.” And to push the point even further, he states, “By extension, the nation of Ireland would have zero presence on the international metal stage.” Continue reading »

TASTES OF THINGS TO COME: KRAMPUS, CYTOTOXIN, AND PROJECT:ABOMINATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 132012
 

This is a fairly random collection of new music I heard over the last two days from forthcoming albums. Of course, it’s wildly divergent, because that’s the nature of metal. The bands are Krampus (Italy), Cytotoxin (Germany), and Project:Abomination (U.S.)

KRAMPUS

Krampus are an Italian horde (eight members!) whose last EP was reviewed for us by Trollfiend (here), and he followed that with a band interview (here). They’ve now completed a full-length album, Survival of the Fittest, which is slated for release on August 24 by Noise Art Records, and yesterday brought us a new song: “Unspoken”. Previously, the band started streaming another track, “Kronos’ Heritage”, which  if I’m not mistaken also appeared on the last EP.

Krampus bill themselves as a folk metal band, but “Unspoken is much more straight-ahead, Scandinavian-styled melodic death metal, with a metalcore flavoring of both bestial and clean vocals. The bestial vox are indeed beastly (and excellent), and although you know what I think of clean vocals, I admit that they do have a fitting place in this song. The music is an infectious gallop — not ground-breaking by any stretch, but a lot of fun to hear.

A stream of the new song is right after the jump, and I’m also including “Kronos’ Heritage”, a song in which folk influences are more pronounced. Like “Unspoken”, it’s very catchy.  Continue reading »

CHATEAU BRUTAL: “MEET MY MEAT”

 Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 132012
 

It’s a fact: No one has ever accused the humor at this site of being too sophisticated. We pride ourselves on being moronic, juvenile, and foul as often as possible, or at least I do. For example, I don’t think you can ever have too much dick humor. I know you feel that way, too, which is why this post is just gonna light you up!

Yesterday I was introduced to a French band called Chateau Brutal by the always entertaining Church of the Riff — and if you’re not reading that blog on a regular basis, you’re missing out on some primo entertainment. For example, here’s what the Church had to say about Chateau Brutal’s new second album, Ham Slicer:

This French garage rock duo’s second album is 10 tracks of rump rattling, ear splitting, foot tapping rawk and fucking roll. It’s the drunk guy at the bar who’s lost his pants and is screaming at the half-empty pint on the table to fill itself up again. Noisy, fast and frenetic, it’ll grab you by the nose and shake you until the screaming stops.

Take one porterhouse thick guitar tone, mix in a hammering percussion section and season with everything from turntables to saxophones. Then soak it in beer, rip it’s pants off and stay the fuck out of the way. It goes hard, but not on the sonic destruction front, on the “drink all your beer, then steal some more, then get laid, then find more beer, then steal a zebra from the zoo and get the police to chase you”…front.

Well, fuck, don’t mind if I do!

You just know an album is going to be good when it’s opening track is “My Dick”, and it’s followed immediately by “Meet My Meat”.  Continue reading »

HAMFERÐ

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Aug 122012
 

The United States has always been run by a plutocracy whose power has rarely been challenged in any meaningful way, regardless of which political party happens to be in office. For complex reasons, class warfare has just never really been a serious factor in the civic and political life of the U.S. The big dogs gobble up an ever-increasing share of the pie, and most people don’t ever seem bothered enough by it to rise up politically and demand that their own interests be put first. But as a people, strangely enough, we do like to root for the underdog, and we tend to cheer when the underdog wins. I’m no exception . . . and hence, this story.

Wacken Metal Battle is a globe-spanning competition designed to showcase up-and-coming bands in the world of metal, and this year it celebrated its 10th anniversary. National competitions are now held in 33 countries, with the winner of each national competition journeying to Germany to perform on the first day of the Wacken Open Air festival, playing for all the marbles. And it’s a big bag of marbles, too. Apart from the thrill of getting to play at the world’s biggest metal fest, the winner this year was to receive a world-wide record deal with Nuclear Blast and a shitload of other prizes, such as a Marshall Full-Stack, Washburn guitars, and Paise Boomer cymbals (the whole list of prizes can be seen at this page).

For the first time in 2012, the Faroe Islands joined the Metal Battle competition. The Faroe Islands are a country consisting of 18 mountainous islands located in the North Atlantic between Iceland and the rest of Scandinavia. The total population is about 49,000, with nearly half the people living in the capital region of Tórshavn. They are the descendants of Vikings (and Irish), they have their own language, and they have metal (as those of you who know bands such as Týr, The Apocryphal Order, or SiC are well aware).

This year, eight bands competed in the Faroese national Metal Battle event, and the winner was a band named Hamferð. Hamferð made the trip to Germany and took the Wacken W.E.T. stage on August 6 to throw down against bands from throughout Europe, plus countries as far away as China, Japan, Russia, Mexico, and Brazil. And guess who won the whole thing, as their nation’s first-ever competitor in Wacken Metal Battle? That’s right — Hamferð did. Continue reading »

SHUFFLE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHUFFLE  17 Responses »
Aug 112012
 

As much as I like working on this blog, it has changed my listening habits. One of our missions is to stay abreast of song and video premieres and new albums, sifting through the flood of new metal to find things we believe are worth recommending and reviewing. So I spend almost all my listening time nowadays checking out metal I’ve never heard before. The cost, unfortunately, is that I rarely listen to what’s in the library of albums I’ve accumulated over the years. No more “oldies but goodies” for me.

But yesterday, on a whim, I decided that I’d spend the time walking to and from my job listening to what was on my iPod already, and I used Shuffle to pick what I heard. My iPod Classic is full. It has 22,331 songs on it, and almost all of the shit is metal. To put a new album on there requires that I delete another one, which is horribly painful to do. That process has made the library more top-heavy with newer music over time, which may explain why most of the Shuffle choices turned out to be of relatively recent vintage.

Anyway, it turned out to be a blast, because the first five songs that Shuffle picked were all really good and really beastly. The next couple weren’t as killer, so I decided to just go with the first five in this post. Oddly, two of the five turned out to be from Japanese bands.

DISMEMBER

Fuckin’ Dismember! What an auspicious way to start the Shuffle medley! I didn’t need reminding about how completely amazing Like An Ever Flowing Stream was — and still is — but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve listened to “Skin Her Alive”. What a thoroughly skin-flaying, meat-grinding experience. Continue reading »

WORMFOOD, ANT NOISE, AND THE CALL OF THE WILD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Aug 102012
 

The weekend is nearly upon us. Almost time for the revels to begin. In addition to reveling in my own preferred way after a tough week (i.e., sleeping like a dead man), I hope to catch up on my metal listening. But before diving into a big batch of album-length goodies that are high on my list, I thought I’d close out the week with one more grab-bag of song-length sounds.

Two fresh tracks caught my ears this morning, one from a French band named Wormfood and one from a Brooklyn outfit, Call of the Wild. I also have ant noise. I also have this photo from Mars, beamed back to the mother ship by the Curiosity rover. What look like hills in the distance are the rim of the Gale Crater, where Curiosity is now located.

There’s a better photo of the crater rim after the jump, though it’s in black and white. Continue reading »

NEW VIDEO FROM EX DEO AND NEW SONGS FROM HOODED MENACE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 102012
 

Ex Deo — the “other band” of Kataklysm frontman Mauriozio Iacono — has completed a new album entitled CALIGVLA, the thematic focus of which is Rome under the unhinged rule of Emperor Caligula.

You remember Caligula, don’t you? The emperor who demanded that he be worshipped as a living god, threatened to make his horse a consul (and actually did make him a priest), slaughtered innocent people for amusement, prostituted his sisters to other men (and allegedly engaged in incestuous relations with them), and indulged all manner of sexual perversity, turning his palace into a brothel? The first Roman emperor to be assassinated? The subject of an infamous 1979 movie starring Malcolm McDowell and financed by Penthouse?   Yeah, that guy.

The album is scheduled for release by Napalm Records on August 31, and a couple days ago Napalm began streaming the first official video for the album, for a track called “I, Caligvla”. Two things jumped out at me about the song: First, it’s a real headbanger. Second, it includes a lot of bombastic orchestral music in conjunction with the thundering riffage — more so than I remember from Ex Deo’s last release.

As for the video, if you’re getting your hopes up about scenes of bestiality and fisting, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. About as deviant as it gets are a few swats at a shapely female butt and some gladiatorial combat for the emperor’s amusement. Still, I thought it was worth sharing. And after that . . . I’ll come to two new songs from Finland’s Hooded Menace. Continue reading »

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