MUMAKIL GOING SILENT FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 122012
 

(DemiGodRaven reports some unfortunate news . . .)

Considering that they are one of the loudest and most blast-reliant grind bands out there, the announcement that Mumakil are going to be silent for the next few weeks comes as a bit of a shocker. This is due in part to their drummer developing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which makes drumming outright impossible. He showed signs of it recently, and after a visit to the doctor the band was forced to silence their new album recording as well as their upcoming tour. I’ve personally suffered through that right-wrist pain in a very light instance and stopped drumming for about two months. Believe me, the sheer act of attempting to hold a stick during that time frame was torture.

This news sucks, as Mumakil are fucking intense and one of my surface-level grind favorites. They’re obnoxious as all hell. I found them via the Misery Index split they did a few years back and enjoyed the hell out of their 2009 release, Behold The Failure. The song “Barbecue In Bhopal” is a solid forty seconds of ass-whooping before it ends. Actually, the first five or so tracks blur into each other before you see your first real break for all of about . . . five seconds . . . before you’re back into a whirlwind of guitars and screaming.

The band’s official statement was posted on their facebook: Continue reading »

ALL OVER THE PLACE: REVERENCE, ZATOKREV, AND THE KOREA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 112012
 

We’ve got some show reviews and an interview coming up today that you won’t want to miss, but I thought I’d start off our Wednesday with an assortment of metal that I discovered yesterday while browsing the interhole. The first two items are from bands whose music I’d never heard before: Reverence (France) and Zatokrev (Switzerland). Both have been signed by Candlelight Records, and the songs I heard are new. The Reverence track comes packaged with an official video that’s a real eye-catcher. The third item is a new video from a Russian band we’ve featured here before — The Korea.

Stylistically, the music is all over the place — as diverse as the bands’ locations. As you’ll see, my reasons for picking each of these items are also all over the place. Here we go:

REVERENCE

This French band had their genesis in 1998. After assorted demos and splits (including one with Blut Aus Nord in 2003), they released their first album in 2005. Two more followed that one, and in 2010 the band signed up with Candlelight. Their fourth album and first Candlelight release, The Asthenic Ascension, hit the streets in Europe on April 9 and is being sold as a CD here.

To launch the new album, the band released a music video for “Earth”, the new album’s opening track. Although I’ve seen Reverence described as industrial black metal, “Earth” begins with a slow, lush, orchestral introduction, and when the metal starts, that symphonic air remains. The music swells with keyboard grandeur and heavy riffs and includes a mix of clean and harsh vocals.

“Industrial” this is not; it has more in common with Dimmu Borgir than Blut Aus Nord. Though I enjoyed the song, it’s not enough on its own to make me rush out and get the album. It’s the combination of the music and the video that landed “Earth” in this post. Continue reading »

GET U SUM NEW CATTLE DECAPITATION: “LIFESTALKER”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Apr 102012
 

Metal Blade will release Cattle Decaptation’s new album Monolith of Inhumanity on May 8 in the U.S. and on May 4 in Europe and the UK. Today, Metal Hammer grabbed the second song premiere from the album (we featured the first one here, along with a lot more info about the album). The song is called “Lifestalker”, and man has it fucked me up. I’ve had to play it repeatedly to make sure I didn’t have a spontaneous hallucination at the 1:30 mark.

Oh yes, the song begins with a white-hot blast of death-grind, all blistering riffage and meaty slams and Travis Ryan going from horrific rising growls to hair-on-fire shrieks. And then at that 1:30 mark a few bass notes announce a surprising shift into something very different and very, very cool. I ain’t gonna spoil the surprise — you should hear it for yourself. And even after that “what the fuck?” interlude, the back end of the song pays off again with another dose of fiery fretwork, drummer-pummel, and insane vocals.

I don’t think it’s premature to say this album will be the best thing Cattle Decap have ever done. Speed yourselves onward past the jump and listen . . . Continue reading »

JEFF LOOMIS AND THOSE RIFFS

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 102012
 

(TheMadIsraeli dragged himself out of his phlegm-soaked sickbed to write this retrospective about one of his guitar idols and to provide a brief review of Plains of Oblivion.)

I’m going to share something personal and meaningful about myself with you NCS folk.

I want to be a musician, in a band, and doing the albums-and-touring deal for a living.  If I were, I wouldn’t be doing this music journalism bullshit [editor’s intrusion: I’m sure he meant that in the nicest possible way].  It’s pretty much my alternative as a means of remaining close to something I love.  I’m a guitar player. I’ve played the instrument for over 10 years now (13, to be precise), trying my best to hone my skill and technique.  I’m all too broke to realize any of these dreams though — so broke that I can’t afford to buy a suitable PC, camera, or other gear necessary to produce anything of respectable quality.  So I sit here, wishing, waiting.

I like to think I’m a guitarist first and a music journalist second, as much as it seems The Good Lord doesn’t want to arrange the cards in that order. But even though that’s not the hand I’ve been dealt, it doesn’t change a simple fact about me . . .  I love metal, and I love the fucking guitar.

We guitar players hold onto our idols — those people who for each of us were the inspiration, the people who are our personal golden standard of WHAT IT IS to be a badass riff-writer or shredder.  For myself, I’m unable to pick one favorite, but I can tell you the 5 definitive icons in my evolution as a guitarist:

Chuck Schuldiner, Christofer Malmstrom, Per Nillson, Jeff Loomis, and Alex Skolnick.

If you’ve been paying attention to news in the metal world lately and know what day today is, you would probably know who this piece is going to be about even without the post title and photo. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP: THE ATLAS MOTH, TOMBS, AND EMBERS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 102012
 

Hey, you don’t have to tell me. I’m well aware that this site is like life-giving oxygen to our readers, and I know the air has been getting thin. You’ve been gasping because our daily output of posts has diminished in recent days. It’s just one of those rare times when all of us who write for NCS have been distracted or diverted by one thing or another, all at the same time.

In my case, the diversion was a happy one: Over the last three days I was distracted by events surrounding a long-time friend’s out-of-town wedding, including getting there and getting back and getting hammered in between.

She is now off on her honeymoon and I am now mostly recovered from the celebration and have been trying to figure out what I missed while I was whooping it up and bearing witness to the joyous union. Among other things, I discovered three new music videos for three not-so-new, but excellent songs. The videos are reminders of how good the songs are (I’ve loved all three since I first heard them), but they also add new dimensions to the songs.

The music and the videos have a few other things in common. The first two were produced with backing from Scion A/V, and the production values are quite high. The first two also involve candles. The third is creatively self-produced, making do with Creative Commons footage, but it shares this element with the other two more ambitious projects: You can drown yourself in the audio-visual experience, because there’s a powerful intensity to all three songs, and the visuals suit them well.

So, after the jump, the new videos for “Your Calm Waters” by The Atlas Moth, “Passageways” by Tombs, and “Shadows” by Embers. Continue reading »

DISCOVERIES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Apr 072012
 

I had some other ideas in mind for a Saturday morning post, but I got distracted following up on recommendations from other people — so I’m going with those for now. One, two, three . . . Meankind, Soul Cycle, and Fredrik Thordendal’s Special Defects.

ONE: MEANKIND

We’ve been keeping our eyes on this high-speed Hungarian death metal band ever since TheMadIsraeli reviewed their free EP, 22.Zero, last August (here). Back then, they had put together a speed-chess video (included with our review) for a song called “Incomprehensible Appetite”. I still love that fuckin’ video. So, naturally, I perked right up when TheMadIsraeli e-mailed me this a.m. to report that Meankind have a new video.

But before I get to that, you should know that Meankind self-released yet another free EP in January titled Live, Love, Slay, which I highly recommend. It includes a song called “Mantrap” that we featured in another post last fall, and it can be downloaded on Bandcamp. Check out Church of the Riff’s feature on that EP here. Also, while on the subject of Meankind, I’d like to plug That Devil Music, who have a recent interview with Meankind at this place. Now, onward to the video . . . Continue reading »

KICKSTART THESE BANDS: DREAMING DEAD AND GIZMACHI

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 062012
 

Money don’t grow on trees. If you’re not born with it, you have to work for it . . . or wait for an African widow to drop it in your lap before she dies of cancer or her dead husband’s greedy relatives steal it. And when you’ve got a bit of money, you need to save it for life’s essentials, like buying CDs, vinyl, and band merch. So when a band asks for financial help, we know that’s a tough thing for most metalheads to honor. But when the donation is really just a down-payment on killer music, the decision becomes a little easier.

Lots of bands without label backing are now using Kickstarter to help finance their activities. Here are two who deserve your support: Dreaming Dead and Gizmachi.

DREAMING DEAD

This story just blows my feeble mind. In February I decided to catch up with LA’s Dreaming Dead in a post called “Lapse”, whining about the loooong wait for their Midnightmares album, which the band had been keeping to themselves for almost a year and a half while searching for a label.  Three days later, they announced that the album would be released on April 20, apparently without label support. And then about 10 days ago, thanks to an e-mail from NCS reader Talvalin, I found out that the band had started begging for money on Kickstarter.

I really do not get it. This band’s 2009 debut album (on Ibex Moon records), Within One, was excellent. The songs from Midnightmares that they premiered over the course of that long label hunt were even better. And they have a photogenic frontwoman (Elizabeth Schall) who can both kick out nasty harsh vocals and shred the guitar like nobody’s business. This is NOT a band who should find themselves in this position.

But here they are . . . trying to raise $5,000 so they can put Midnightmares on CDs and vinyl and sell it themselves. I don’t understand how this could be, but then again, I don’t understand how penguins can fly either. Continue reading »

EMANCIPATE THESE RIFFS: ARGHOSLENT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  55 Responses »
Apr 062012
 

(After a little hiatus, BadWolf rejoins us with a thought-provoking piece and lots of sick music [double entendre intended].)

None of us are angels. In fact, most people commit evil on a daily basis (more often if you’re a politician in America). As Anaal Nathrakh said: hell is empty, and the devils are all here.

I’m willing to forgive most people their sins. In fact, most acts considered ‘wrong” or ‘immoral’ are deemed as such based on the value judgments of hypocritical organizations (what up, Catholic church? Yeah. I went to one of your middle schools. What about it!?). It’s value-judgments all the way down my friends, and as such I’m reluctant to cry (bad)wolf at most people.

Racists are an exception to that rule. I never understood judging people based on race when other factors like economic status factor so heavily into racially charged situations. I mean, which of these makes more sense:

A) some dude robbed you because he is starving, unemployed and addicted to hard drugs from birth

or

B) some dude robbed you because his skin cells produce more melanin.

…I know, right!? Continue reading »

A PACKAGE DEAL

 Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Apr 052012
 

I thought I’d wrap up the posting day with a random assortment of goodies I found today. Nothing ties these three items together except that I found them all entertaining, in a slightly unhinged way. The first two would have made more sense in an installment of THAT’s METAL!, but I’m too impatient to wait for that. The third one is actually music, which is why there’s an album cover up above.

ITEM ONE

The BBC will screen remarkable footage of penguins flying as part of its new natural history series, Miracles of Evolution. That’s right, flying. Camera crews discovered this phenomenon while filming a colony of Adélie penguins on King George Island, some 750 miles south of the Falkland Islands.

The program is being presented by ex-Monty Python star Terry Jones, who said: “We’d been watching the penguins and filming them for days, without a hint of what was to come.

“But then the weather took a turn for the worse. It was quite amazing. Rather than getting together in a huddle to protect themselves from the cold, they did something quite unexpected, that no other penguins can do.” Watch what they did after the jump. Continue reading »

MO VIDEOS: IHASHN AND NERVECELL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 042012
 

Well, fuck me blind. It’s just going to be one of those days when every time I glance at my internet feeds I’m going to see something I must post about. It’s not even 10 a.m. here in the grey Pacific Northwest and we’re up to five posts. You can imagine the extent of not-working at my day job that’s going on. But priorities must be observed, and the priorities at the moment are Ihsahn and Nervecell.

IHSAHN

Candlelight Records have announced June 19 as the North American release date for Eremita (Latin for hermit), the fourth album from Norway’s Ihsahn, who should need no introduction.

Ihsahn alone would be worth attention, but on the new album there will be many notable guest appearances. The album will include performances by drummer Tobias Ornes Andersen (Leprous), saxophonist Jorgen Munkeby (Shining – Norway), guitarist Jeff Loomis (ex-Nevermore), and vocalists Devin Townsend, Einar Solberg (Leprous), and Heidi S. Tveitan (Star of Ash). The album artwork was created by Spanish designer Ritxi Ostariz, and you can see the cover after the jump.

Eremita will be available on standard CD and a limited edition deluxe digibook (featuring an exclusive bonus track).

But in addition to all that juicy news, Candlelight has also released today a teaser video with snippets from a few of the songs on Eremita. Among other things, it includes blast beats and harsh vocals, which makes me happy. But frankly, everything I hear on this teaser reel makes me happy. It’s right after the jump. Continue reading »

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