THE FRIDAY FINISH (Part 1): NEW VIDEOS FROM ASPHYX, THE INIQUITY DESCENT, AND SOULFLY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 172012
 

Except for those of you who must man your posts over the weekend, this work week is winding down — but the metal is winding up. So much worthy new music and so many watchable new videos have surfaced over the last day or two that I’m breaking this round-up into pieces, much as the music will break pieces off of you.

In this first post I’m including three new videos. Two of them are songs that I’ve already added to the new 2012 “master list” of candidates for the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. (Yes, although long-term planning isn’t your humble editor’s strong suit, I’m making an effort to keep track of these things as the year goes along instead of frantically searching my memory at the end of the year.)

The third one I haven’t quite made up my mind about yet. As much as anything, I’m including it because it’s newsworthy. Here we go:

ASPHYX

In the hellish pantheon of death-doom progenitors, this Dutch band sits on a throne. Dormant after almost a decade, they came roaring back with 2009’s Death . . . The Brutal Way. The follow-up, Deathhammer, will be released via Century Media on February 27, 2012, in Europe and on February 28, 2012, in North America. Undeserving fuck that I am, I’ve heard Deathhammer, and it’s even better. Continue reading »

NEWS FLASH: AUTOPSY RELEASES NEW VIDEO AND FREE SONG DOWNLOAD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

Trust the sensei’s to show all the young grasshoppers how it’s done.

Autopsy have today released an official music video for the title track from their new album, All Tomorrow’s Funerals, which Peaceville Records will drop on February 28. The album is a 22-track collection of re-mastered songs from all of their previous EPs, plus four new songs (of which the title track is one).

The band teamed up with Blood-Disgusting.com to premiere the video, which is streaming online at:

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/music/2575.

Generously, however, the video was made embeddable, so we’ve got it here, too. It’s essentially nothing more than the band playing the song on a stage, intercut with slo-mo film of the band members stalking through a decrepit building. But for me, nothing more is really needed. I’m quite happy just watching these legends prove they haven’t lost a step.

It’s a great song, too. The first part is a high-energy, thrash-punk take on old-school death-gore, fired up with some chaotic guitar solo’s, but this is Autopsy, and so you wait for it . . . and it comes: The racing ghoul first drops to its knees, and then collapses on all fours, and then begins to craaaaawl. Oh, the glorious filth!

Watch it after the jump, and get the link for a free download of the track. Continue reading »

NEW GOROD: “BIRDS OF SULPHUR”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

A Perfect Absolution, the new album from that French band of wizards known as Gorod is one of our most highly anticipated 2012 releases. Unfortunately, it won’t be released in our corner of the globe until March 12 (it’s available for pre-order at Listenable Records web shop here). Judging solely from the stupendous album cover by Yohann “HAÄSH” Huhner, you have to expect it will be . . . pulse-quickening.

But there’s further evidence that this album will be one of 2012’s best offerings. Listenable Records have just started streaming the first song from the album on their YouTube channel. It’s called “Birds of Sulphur”, a title that links up quite nicely with the eye-catching cover art. And man oh man, is it a helluva good song! Simply put, this is tech metal done right.

Not only is it fast, jolting, and jaw-dropping in its instrumental virtuosity, not only does it include voracious vocals and an attack-and-destroy sensibility, it’s also a head-spinning trip through an inventive musical landscape — and I emphasize the word musical.

Listen after the jump — and I’m warning you: the first person who uses the phrase “mindless wankery” in the Comments, I’m coming for you with a meat cleaver. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP WITH DEMONIC RESURRECTION AND SATYROS, AND SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EVOLVING BUSINESS OF METAL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

Demonic Resurrection (India) and Satyros (Germany) are two bands we’ve been following for a while at NCS, and they both have some recent news I thought was worth sharing, in part because they’re further examples of how the business of metal is changing.

DEMONIC RESURRECTION

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that DR is currently India’s best-known and most popular extreme metal band. They’re been riding a wave of deserved recognition that has been surging since the release of their third album, The Return To Darkness, in 2010.

On February 8, the band announced their goal of making a self-financed music video and soliciting financial help from fans. Other bands have been using the Kickstarter or Pledge Music web sites as vehicles for raising money for projects such as videos, the recording of new albums, transferring releases to vinyl, and even buying vehicles to make touring possible. Those sites weren’t ideal for India-based DR because they collect funds in dollars and require payment by credit cards (which many DR fans don’t have). So, DR partnered with a local music webzine called India Music Revolution to run the project.

They set a goal of raising 100,000 Indian rupees (about $2,000), and offered various reward packages depending on the level of commitment. Just a little more than 48 hours later — 48 hours — DR announced that they had met their funding goal. That speaks pretty loudly about the dedication and support of DR fans. But people can still donate to the project, and DR is now offering further inducements to keep the pledges coming in. Continue reading »

PARADISE LOST, NOW AND THEN

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 142012
 

Huh, it still seems to be Valentine’s Day. And I found someone else who loves you, even if no one else does (besides your friends at NCS, of course, because we love all of you). The someone else is Paradise Lost. I discovered that they love you last night (thank you DemiGodRaven), and meant to tell you about it earlier today, and . . . just fucked up.  What a shock.

Here’s how much they love you: They and their label (Century Media) are giving away a song from their next release (their 13th studio album), Tragic Idol. The song is called “Crucify”, and you can listen to it after the jump and get the download link if you like it — but the free download is only for today.

I may have listened to Paradise Lost once long ago, but if I did, I’ve forgotten. I became interested more recently because of all the coverage we gave the UK death-doom band Vallenfyre last year. Vallenfyre was started by Greg Mackintosh, who is a key member of Paradise Lost. I liked the Vallenfyre album so much that I decided to give Paradise Lost a chance, even though I knew their music wouldn’t be my standard fare.

If you’re unfamiliar with the band, their music is melodic doom, with mainly clean singing. Much of it is slow. Of course, much of it is atmospherically bleak. But much of it is also beautiful, and it achieves that without sacrificing heaviness. Continue reading »

NEW MESHUGGAH SONG, WHICH YOU’VE ALREADY HEARD, BUT WITH VIDEO BELLS AND WHISTLES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Feb 132012
 

Last Thursday we broke the news about the apparently intentional leak of the first song from Meshuggah’s forthcoming album Koloss. That’s right, WE broke the news, along with 80% of all metal blogs in existence, 50% of all Facebook pages, and the e-mails you got from your grandmother.

Well, guess what, today we have an O-FFI-CI-AL release of the same song, this time with its proper name — “Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion” — instead of “iamaleak”. It’s available for streaming on Meshuggah’s Facebook bandpage. BUT, the band have ALSO released an official lyric video.

The opening frames of the video explain the title of the song: It’s an excerpt from a quote by philosopher, physician, organist, and 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer: “Revenge… is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.”

The more I listen to this song, the more I like it. It’s so dark and cold, and so very heavy. “This is the soundtrack to our hostility . . . .” Watch the video after the jump. Continue reading »

FILLER

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  25 Responses »
Feb 132012
 

Hey, I gotta be brutally honest with you, which is the only kind of honest we know how to be at NCS.

Long story short, I had to work for my day job yesterday and I ran out of island time last night. In fact, it’s last night as I write this, and I’m out of time. I’m dead tired, my judgment is impaired, and I don’t feel up to finishing the post I was writing for tomorrow, which is this morning where I am as you see this. So, I’m resorting to what we highly trained metal bloggers call filler. Just something to have up on the site until I wake up tomorrow, which is today, and finish what I am working on as I write this, or was working on last night, as you read this. Shit, this is kinda like time travel.

For this filler, I basically just grabbed the first thing I saw, which was The Commander-In-Chief. I mean, I didn’t actually grab her. I just grabbed the idea for this filler.

She’s a 22-year old Norwegian living in London. She plays some kind of a prototype 7-string Ibanez guitar. She also writes her songs and sings. She has a four-song EP called Evolution coming out on February 15. It was recorded and produced by veteran Sterling Winfield (Pantera, Hatebreed, Hellyeah) who has touted the fact that the vocals and instrumental performances on the EP haven’t been manipulated or enhanced in any way by software.

There’s a recent teaser reel for the EP after the jump, and then a somewhat older “official trailer”, plus more photos. Amuse yourselves, and be sure to salute. I’m going to bed. Continue reading »

NIHILANTH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Feb 122012
 

Nihil: a Latin word meaning “nothing”

Anth: a Sanskrit word for “end”

Nihilanth: a band from Mumbai, India, who have released a grand total of two songs for public consumption. One (just uploaded in the last day) is called “Macabre Existence”, and the other is called “Dimensional Domination”. Both songs are cwaaaazy.

This is death metal viciously struggling to come apart at the seams and engulf the listener in its radioactive fallout. Paying homage to the likes of Necrophagist, Psycroptic, Decapitated, and The Faceless, Nihilanth skillfully whip up a whirlwind of percussion and razor-sharp notes that’s authentically menacing.

With this kind of music, there is indeed a fine line between mindless wankery (yes, there’s that phrase again which has been cropping up in recent NCS posts and comments) and true high-speed death metal that happens to mount its attack through the calculated deployment of precision munitions. I guess it’s obvious that I think Nihilanth stay on the right side of the line. Continue reading »

SCOTS WHA HAE (PART 2)

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Feb 122012
 

Calling this “Part 2” may imply that I intended to spend this weekend listening to music from Scottish bands, but instead, I’m just being my usual impulsive self. Yesterday, I combined music from four Scottish bands (and one South African one) in a post labeled with the unofficial Scottish national anthem penned by Robert Burns. Via our Facebook page and comments on that post, we got recommendations for other Scottish metal bands to check out. So I thought, what the hell, go for it!

Unlike yesterday’s post, where I featured bands I know and like, this one is more like what we publish in the MISCELLANY series — spotlighting bands whose music we’ve never heard before, not knowing what they will sound like or whether we’ll enjoy what they’re doing.

The bands I picked from yesterday’s recommendations are (in no particular order) Scordatura (Glasgow), Sufferinfuck (Livingston/West Lothian), Co-Exist (Glasgow), Threshold Sicks (Perth), and Zombie Militia (Inverness). I’ll tell you up-front that this is a divergent mix of metal, and it is all GOOD. So prepare for an underground roller-coaster ride.

SCORDATURA

I checked out this band (pictured above) based on a suggestion from Lisa Coverdale on our Facebook page. Scordatura have their own Facebook page here. They released a six-song debut EP in 2009 called Open Skies as well as a 2010 pre-production demo. When I visited their Facebook page, I discovered that they’re working on songs for a new album and released two of them last year in a promo that’s available for free download on Bandcamp. So I downloaded it (HERE) and listened. Continue reading »

SCOTS WHA HAE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  32 Responses »
Feb 112012
 

A video I saw about some difficulties Apple is experiencing with its Siri speech-recognition software gave me the idea for this post. It don’t seem to do too well with the Scots dialect (or at least the Glaswegian variant of it). I wonder how it would do with lyric recognition when voiced by Scottish extreme metal bands. Probably not to fukkin well. And running some bagpipe metal through the thing would probably cause it to melt down.

First, here’s the video. HIGH-larious. (And to see a translation of what’s being said, along with an explanation by the creator of the video, go here.)

As for Scottish (and Scottish-themed) metal, the line-up after the jump is a mix of new, newish, and older music from three Glasgow bands (Man Must Die, Cerebral Bore, and Achren), one from Edinburgh (Zillah),  and Haggis and Bong (okay, they’re from South Africa, but how can we write about Scottish metal without including some new bagpipe shred?). Continue reading »

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