THALLISM: TOWN PORTAL AND MESHUGGAH LIVE (YESTERDAY)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Feb 262012
 

For some reason, That Word leaped to mind twice this morning, prompted by the music in this post. I’m sure I’m leaving myself open to vicious assault by Meshuggah purists for using it in their case, since they came first and That Word came later. But I kind of view it as a form of homage to The Masters, even though I still have no clue what it means.

And speaking of The Masters, what I have for you is a fan-filmed video of Meshuggah performing one of the new songs from KOLOSS — “Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion” — at the Soundwave festival in Brisbane, Australia, yesterday. But first, I have to share a new discovery I made this morning via a status from a Facebook friend (thanks Talae).

TOWN PORTAL

This Danish three-man band is relatively new, and their six-song debut EP, Vacuum Horror, is available on Bandcamp for a “name your price” download. That Word came to mind when I listened to the EP this morning because it’s loaded with Meshuggah-esque groove, and it has that phat low-end tone that I now tend to associate with That Word. The band do acknowledge the Meshuggah influence, but it’s only one part of what makes their music click. I would not, for example, classify them as a djent band despite the often massive, head-snapping rhythmic structures.

The sound is probably closer to a metalicized math-rock. Along with all the low-end convulsion, head-swimming guitar melodies abound. There’s no singing on the EP, but that simply makes room for a group of very skilled instrumentalists to spin a kaleidoscope of musical colors. The swirling guitar leads are creative, the arrangements are beautifully constructed, and the production quality of the recording is excellent. Listen to two songs from Vacuum Horror after the jump. Continue reading »

TROLL BENDS FIR: “AVE CELIA!”

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Feb 262012
 

We’re masquerading as Also, Wolves in this post, except we won’t fool anyone because this won’t be as funny or as clever as Trollfiend’s prose. But as he would say, Behold the Trollfinger!

So, the music of Russia’s Troll Bends Fir won’t bubble your skin from the heat or cause you to pee out your bunghole from fright like much of what we feature here, but it might still capture you like a mink in a trap, particularly the song we’re eventually coming to in this post.

We featured the music of this band once before last October. Then, the music was humppa, which was in keeping both with the band’s own description of its music as “beer folk” and and also with the prominent appearance of “troll” in their name. Fun-loving, toe-tapping, humppa-folk-metal is a big smile, particularly if you’re beered-up to your eyebrows. But it turns out that Troll Bends Fir are more multi-faceted than I suspected.

The band’s latest album, a compilation released last September called Братья Во Хмелю (Brothers in Drinks), includes more than beer-folk-rock-metal. It includes a song called “Ave Celia!”, which is the only song on the album that doesn’t have a Russian title in the original. And “Ave Celia!” is the subject of a new official video that’s well worth watching . . . and hearing. Continue reading »

ATRUM RULES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 252012
 

Last August, NCS writer Andy Synn introduced us to Iceland’s Atrum through a justifiably enthusiastic review of their debut EP, Opus Victim. To quote from Andy’s write-up: “This extreme metal quartet’s music blurs the line between black and death metal, melding them with inspirations and aspirations drawn from classical music, to craft an epic blizzard of blackened fury and ground-shaking death metal heft that recalls a more deathly Keep Of Kalessin wrapped in a cold and venomous shroud of despondency.” In the ensuing Comments, TheMadIsraeli and I added our hearty endorsements. Suffice to say, NO CLEAN SINGING backs Atrum to the hilt.

Last week, as a tune-up for the Wacken Metal Battle 2012 festival in Iceland on the 3rd of next month, Atrum performed on Icelandic national TV, and the song they performed is a new one — “Peasant” — which is destined to appear on the band’s first full-length album, which is in the works.

Atrum won the Icelandic Wacken competition last year, which gave them a slot at the giant Wacken Open Air fest in Europe last summer. They’ll be appearing at this year’s Metal Battle show with the remarkable Solstafir, among other bands.

“Peasant” is a vivid reminder of just how good this band is. It thunders like an avalanche. Get buried by it after the jump. Continue reading »

SWAMP ABYSS SORCERY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 252012
 

According to the National Park Service, Florida’s Everglades swamp is “the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States.” It’s home to a wide variety of rare and endangered species, many of whom you would not want to meet up close and personal, including alligators, crocodiles, cottonmouths, Boa constrictors, Burmese pythons, rattlesnakes, and poisonous toads.

But there are other, far more menacing creatures in Florida and they’re crawling out of the abysmal swamps to eat your face.

I’m referring to the metal bands whose music is collected in a killer comp that’s available for free download on Bandcamp. Naturally, it’s called Swamp Abyss Sorcery, and it was packaged up by Satanik Recordings (who also released that Prostitute album we praised not long ago). The comp includes music by a few bands we already knew about and liked here at NCS, including the tar-choked, grungy, inexorable sludge metal of Shroud Eater and the crusty blackened thrash of Hot Graves. But man, they’re just part of the nasty menagerie of slavering  creatures crawling and flying out of this download.

I’ve embedded the Bandcamp player after the jump so you can sample the sounds. Seriously, there’s some mighty fine shit to be had here. To do the download, go HERE. Continue reading »

YOUR LOLWUT? VIDEO OF THE DAY: DEICIDE’S “CONVICTION”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  32 Responses »
Feb 252012
 

If someone were to play a word association game with you and said “Deicide”, what would be the first word to pop into your head? Would it be “claymation”? Nah, I didn’t think so. For me, it would be “motherfucking”.  As in “MOTHERFUCKING DEICIDE!!”

But the game may change after you watch the band’s new video for “Conviction”, a song off Deicide’s 2011 album To Hell With God.

Jesus, where to start? Actually, we could start with Jesus, because he’s in the video. He’s not having a good day, because Glen Benton is on his tail, hell-bent on nailing him to a church door and then sending him straight to hell.

I guess Christians who aren’t familiar with Deicide will be offended by this, but it’s not exactly Benton’s first offense. I mean, the guy has branded an inverted cross on his forehead at least 12 different times and 20+ years ago he wrote a song called “Crucifixation”, the first line of which was “Give praise to Satan, he has won.” And that was only the beginning. The damnation of Christ has been a constant Deicide drumbeat for two decades. But now we get the message in claymation. I gotta admit, I didn’t see that coming.

I guess I won’t be surprised if the video causes fresh uproar among people who take Deicide’s schtick seriously, even when a video like this makes it even harder to do that. Maybe after 20+ years, the by-now calculated sensationalism still works. We’ll see.

Don’t get me wrong — the music is still badass, and I am still going to see Deicide when they play here in March with Jungle Rot, Abigail Williams, Lecherous Nocturne, and Super Happy Story Time Land. I just don’t get the urge to do a fist-pump when I watch this video. The urge I feel . . . is to giggle. The video is after the jump. Continue reading »

LAPSE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Feb 252012
 

Midnightmares is certainly not the most delayed album on my mental “most eagerly awaiting” list. No one can take that honor away from Necrophagist. But still . . .

In October 2010, I wrote a post about Dreaming Dead’s video for a song called “Overlord” from that Midnightmares album. I referred to the fact that the album had been recorded as a three-piece, while the band continued to hunt for a second guitarist (who frontwoman Elizabeth Schall wanted to be female). I noted: “We haven’t seen any definitive release date, and the band may be holding that up in an effort to find a label who would distribute it.”

Over the next year I wrote about the band a couple more times, including a piece about Elizabeth Schall shredding with a potential second guitarist (Stephanie Pickard) at the NAMM trade show (that partnership apparently didn’t work out) and another one about a second song from the album (the title track) being streamed temporarily last September.

And then last October I got a press release stating that the band were “readying to unleash their long-awaited new full-length Midnightmares“. It included the Travis Smith album cover you see above and a track list. Well, here we are near the end of February . . . and still no album. But in the meantime, we’ve gotten another new song and a video that reminds us why it’s still worth waiting, plus a bit of updated news. Continue reading »

SECRETS OF THE MOON: “NYX”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 242012
 

Black liquid flowing . . . shamanistic imagery . . . a robed figure with a horned headdress roams the forest . . . a band shrouded in smoke, playing in a darkened space, lit from below by a geometry of candlelight . . . the dark liquid flows, and a a horned raptor of the woodland takes shape . . .

Germany’s Secrets of the Moon will be releasing their new album Seven Bells via Prophecy Productions on March 16, and they’ve now uploaded the official video for a song called “Nyx”. It was directed by Fursy Teyssier and François-Marc Baillet at Viva Emptiness Studios, and it’s engrossing to watch.

The song as it appears on the album is about 11 minutes long, and it’s been cut down for the video, but it’s plenty engrossing at half the length anyway. It has a dreamlike quality, combining gothic melody, doom, and black metal to produce an atmosphere that’s both entrancing and sinister. To see the video, go past the jump. Continue reading »

DISOBEY!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Feb 242012
 

The unifying theme of this play is disobedience. That, and the fact that our friend Quigs is responsible for turning me onto both of the items herein. Act One is a band from New Jersey. Act Two is a candidate for my personal theme song.

ACT ONE

Disobey is a band from Hillsborough, New Jersey. Not long ago they released their debut EP, Human Suffering In Five Movements. You might get a clue about the music from the band’s name, not only because it conjures up images of anarchic punks but also because of that “Dis-” prefix. It harkens back to that seminal hardcore crust/punk band Discharge, whose drum technique gave rise to the “D-beat” label and whose music inspired a horde of musical offspring, including Disfear, Disaccord, Disclose, and Discard.

Disobey sound like a pack of starving Dobermans unleashed with a mess of hamburger piled up about 20 yards in front of them. They get there in a hurry (all 6 tracks on the EP hit the finish line about 11 minutes after the start), and getting in their way is really not a good idea.

But don’t let my metaphor mislead you — the music itself is not balls-out racing. The instrumental intro track is a sludgy, heavy, black-as-night crawl, and the songs that follow are mainly mid-paced crushers. And I do mean crushers. Continue reading »

SPECTRUM ROAD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, That's Music -- But It's Not Metal  9 Responses »
Feb 232012
 

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this recent discovery (thank you Blabbermouth). It’s likely that the news will mean nothing to anyone reading this except the real old-timers, but for those of you as ancient as I am, it will definitely mean something. And those less ancient might learn a thing or two along the way. By the way, the music isn’t metal, but . . . it’s metal. If you know what I mean.

The news concerns a band called Spectrum Road. The members of Spectrum Road include some genuinely legendary figures — Jack Bruce, one of the founding members of Cream (along with Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker), a hugely influential songwriter, and a widely respected classical, jazz, and Latin musician; and Vernon Reid, the founder and principal songwriter of Living Colour and (among many other recognitions), the holder of the #66 position on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

The band also includes drummer Cindy Blackman-Santana, who was the drummer for Lenny Kravitz’s band for 14 years and an accomplished jazz drummer as well as rock musician (she’s also married to Carlos Santana), and John Medeski, a jazz keyboardist involved in many projects, but principally a groove-oriented jazz trio called Medeski Martin & Wood.

For me, Jack Bruce and Vernon Reid are the real draws for this project. After the jump, there’s a video of Spectrum Road performing live. Just watching Bruce and Reid perform together is amazing — and fuck, Vernon Reid can still really shred. The icing on the cake, though, is Cindy Blackman-Santana; it’s a kick to watch her tear it up on the  drums. Spectrum Road will be releasing a self-titled debut album on June 5 via Palmetto Records. Continue reading »

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