FILLER

 IQ Subtraction, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
May 242012
 

Uh . . . yeah . . . I fucked up again. I just woke up, not having finished a post last night. There’s a story behind the failure, but I’ll keep the details to myself because they don’t really put me in a good light, and I’m all about being in a good light.

So, not having prepared a post last night that’s up to our usual supremely high quality standards, I had to grab something really fast to put up on the site that would allow me to finish waking up in a leisurely manner without feeling too guilty about not having a morning NCS post.

Fortunately, I had a few very important items already rattling around in the back of my head. Continue reading »

NEWNESS: DYING FETUS, BLACKLODGE, AND PANOPTICON

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
May 232012
 

Come on now, you didn’t really think I was going to let a new Dying Fetus song pass by, did you? I’ve been a little slow on the draw lately, but I can still clear the holster. And yes, there’s a new Dying Fetus song that’s been released for public streaming. It’s called “From Womb To Waste”, and of course it appears on the Reign Supreme album that will be released on June 19. It’s really good.

In fact, I’ll just go ahead and be a douchebag and say that the whole damned album is really fuckin’ good. In fact, it’s definitely in the running for the best death metal album of the year. Speaking of which, because I have such a hard time comparing albums and ranking them, I’ve decided that I’m going to use a loris race to rank the best death metal albums of 2012. I’ll round up a bunch of them from the NCS loris compound, tie band names around their necks, and let them race for the finish line.

Of course, they’re really fuckin’ slow, so I’ll have to start the race in, like, August.  That will be hard on the bands who release albums in the last four months of the year, but I don’t feel too bad about that because it’s not like bands are waiting around holding their breaths to see if they make the NCS year-end list, especially since we’ve never had an NCS year-end list.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the new Dying Fetus song. It debuted at AltPress. I borrowed their little player to stream the song after the jump. There’s more new music after the jump, too — from Blacklodge and Panopticon. Continue reading »

GOJIRA: THE “L’ENFANT SAUVAGE” VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
May 232012
 

Gojira will be delivering their new album L’Enfant Sauvage to the masses on June 26. We’ve already reported on the release of the album’s fantastic title track, which you can still hear at this location. Today, the band released a video for that song, which is being displayed exclusively at Brooklyn Vegan.

Gojira’s official music videos have been unfailingly interesting to watch, and this new one is no exception. Using black-and-white imagery, a stuttering mix of animation and real people, the video appears to show a transition from urban towers to a state of nature (which is in keeping with the song’s title). Check it out HERE.

WAKING UP WITH KEN BEDENE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
May 232012
 

Last night I didn’t quite finish the review with which I had planned to start our posting day at NCS before running out of gas. The fact that I spent most of the night drowning my sorrows in whiskey with some friends may have had something to do with that. So, I need a little time to (a) pound coffee, (b) continue writing my review, (c) pound coffee, and (d) pound more coffee.

In the meantime, please amuse yourselves by watching Ken Bedene. He used to be the drummer for Abigail Williams and is now the drummer for Belgium’s Aborted. The two videos after the jump were originally posted by Sick Drummer magazine. They were filmed during Aborted’s performance at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco on May 8. The two songs are “Источник Болезни (The Origin Of Disease)” from Aborted’s 2012 album, Global Flatline, and “The Holocaust Incarnate” from Engineering the Dead (2001).

Ken Bedene is amazing. He appears to be part cybernetic metronome, part wolverine in full attack mode, and part Zen monk. Watching these videos means I need less coffee to wake up, which means less time peeing, which means more time pounding the keyboard, which means I should be back soon with that review. Enjoy Ken Bedene and Aborted.
Continue reading »

METAL IN KENTUCKY: THEORIES OF THE APOCALYPSE, TOMBSTALKER, AND SUCCUMB TO DEMISE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
May 222012
 

(NCS reader Black Shuck, who has introduced us to some great bands in the past, does it again in this guest post.)

Since I left home to get my edjumucation and make my way in the wide world, I’ve been very fortunate to have lived in places with good local metal scenes. I’ve previously written (here) about two bands from my college town (Ashes of Avarice and Awaking Leviathan), and two others from the surrounding area have also been featured here (The Horde and A Hill to Die Upon). I graduated from college about a year ago, and am now doing grad school in Lexington, Kentucky. I didn’t expect there to be any kind of metal scene when I moved here. I grew up in West Virginia, two hours away from Lexington, and aside from Byzantine, Appalachian Terror Unit, and one slightly insane security guard I knew at one of my jobs there, the place wasn’t exactly a hotbed of metal activity. So I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from the neighboring state.

I was quite wrong. There is most definitely a scene in Lexington, full of talented musicians dedicated heart and soul to metal. Here are three bands who kick quite a bit of ass.

THEORIES OF THE APOCALPYSE

Taking a page from the playbooks of some of the better re-thrash bands like Lazarus A.D. and Warbringer, Theories of the Apocalypse (shown above) showcase some pretty excellent riffing. I’ve seen them play about four times now, and each time I wake up with a sore neck the next morning. If there’s one problem thrash has, it’s that it’s repetitive to the point of being boring, but Theories manages to keep things interesting, combining traditional thrash riffs with earwormy little licks that will please your brain even as it’s rattled around from the headbanging. Continue reading »

A STORM OF LIGHT: THE VIOLITIONIST SESSIONS

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 222012
 

We’ve mentioned The Violitionist Sessions before, but you may have forgotten. In the words of the site’s proprietors: “The Violitionist Sessions are 3 questions and 3 songs with bands from Denton and passing through Denton, Texas. The sessions are all recorded live in a living room with no overdubs and no fancy tricks. The goal is to document a moment in time. This is what happened in Denton, Texas.”

Yesterday, The Violitionist Sessions put up videos of the three songs recently performed in that living room by Brooklyn’s A Storm of Light. They also made the live recordings available for free download (in exchange for an e-mail address).

This is a band I lost track of. I got their debut album, And We Wept the Black Ocean Within (2008), after reading raves about it when it debuted. Somehow, I missed their next two full-lengths, including 2011’s Profound Lore release, As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade. What a dumbass I’ve been. Continue reading »

MONDAY SONG ROUND-UP: FROM EXILE, NIGHTRAGE, THE STRANDED, AND THE NEOLOGIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
May 212012
 

This morning our buddy DemiGodRaven delivered a short round-up of new songs or videos that struck his fancy, and it came at a time when I was trying to figure out how to publicize a new song and video that I had also recently discovered. So I decided to lead with the one I found and then finish with DGR’s contributions.

FROM EXILE: “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement” Video

From Exile is an Atlanta band we’ve written about frequently at NCS. You can see a collection of all our previous features via this link. Having said that, a year has passed since our last post about the band. That time, the occasion was an amazing music video (featuring guest guitarist Emil Werstler) for a song called “A Warm Place” that appeared on Just Like You Imagined, which was a collection of Nine Inch Nails songs covered by From Exile.

Now, a year later, I’m happy to report that we have a new From Exile song called “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement” and a new music video to go along with it. The video is 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).

From Exile is a three-guitar outfit, and on this song guitarist Eric Guenther steps up to provide lead vocals. They’re all clean, but this qualifies as an Exception to the Rule around here, not only because the vocals are quite good but also because the song itself is so damned excellent — and you can download the live track for free, on top of everything else. Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (DEATH AND DOOM)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
May 202012
 

(NCS reader, commenter, and occasional contributor SurgicalBrute volunteered to help educate me about death/doom.)

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these . . . sorry about that. Unlike some of the other guys here, I’m not a writer by profession. So when you combine that with my natural laziness . . . you end up with long periods of inactivity.

I actually requested the chance to write this post though. While I don’t really enjoy Traditional Doom (there are some exceptions), and I really have to be in the right mood for Funeral Doom. Death/Doom hits a sweet spot for me. Never so slow that I start to lose interest, it still manages to establish the crushing atmosphere that’s so important for this style of metal.

Now, I know Death/Doom can be a rather ambiguous term . . . I’ve seen it applied (and not incorrectly) to everything from the mid-paced death metal of Asphyx and Autopsy to the slow moving riffs of Ahab. For the sake of simplicity I’m going to limit this article to my own personal definition . . . where, more often than not, the pace is kept slower than the average Old School Death Metal band, but still quicker than any kind of Funeral Doom.

As usual, I’ll do my best to provide links for distros/labels that may still have merchandise available (and if anyone’s curious as to what Ive been spinning, you can find me on http://www.last.fm/user/Surgical_Brute)

Enjoy the music \m/ Continue reading »

EVOCATION IN THE TIME CAPSULE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
May 192012
 

Sweden’s Evocation are one of my favorite death metal bands. They are old school. I don’t mean they mimic the old-school sound. I mean they went to the old school when it was new and graduated with honors.

They recorded their first demo (The Ancient Gate) in 1992 and another promo that same year, and then in 1993 the band split up, despite interest being expressed by a number of labels. Evocation returned to life in 2006 with a demo of new material, and then three full-length albums were released between 2007 and 2010, the last of which was the wonderful Apocalyptic (2010).

Since the release of Apocalyptic, Evocation signed with Century Media. On June 26, Century will release Evoked From Demonic Depths – The Early Years, a compilation of demo, unreleased, and rehearsal material.  This isn’t the first comp of old Evocation material; another one was released in 2004 by a label named Breath of Night. But the new comp will include a different collection of songs and performances, as well as a 32-page booklet and three live bootleg videos from 1992.

One of the songs on the forthcoming comp appeared on that four-song  1992 demo, The Ancient Gate. It’s called “Through the Darkened Peril”, and earlier this week DECIBEL began an exclusive stream of the song. It’s a great song — but it’s actually been released before — and that brings me to Swedish Death Metal. Continue reading »

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