DEATH GRIPS – UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 082012
 

Death Grips isn’t metal in any conventional sense (shit, did I just use “metal” and “conventional” in the same sentence?!?), but they’re still definitely metal. If you ain’t up on Death Grips yet, you can find a good introduction in BadWolf’s NCS post about them here. That post pushed me to explore Death Grips’ music, and the music made me a believer. Based on the comments we got and the page hits on that feature, there are lots more believers out there, too.

It goes, it goes, it goes, it goes 
It goes, it goes, it goes, it goes
Guillotine – YAAAAAH!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, so, for all Death Grips believers and those who will become believers, we have some news from the Death Grips facebook page: “we’re releasing two full length albums this year world-wide .. first one drops in April ”

We also have some new Death Grips 2012 music . . . after the jump.

I close my eyes and seize it 
I clench my fists and beat it 
I light my torch and burn it 
I am the beast I worship… 

Continue reading »

FEMALE GROWLERS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  72 Responses »
Feb 082012
 

Let’s be honest: women vocalists in extreme metal are still a curiosity. I’m referring to women whose vocals range from bestial growls to blood-curdling shrieks, not the ones who sing pretty in folk metal bands or outfits like Nightwish and Epica. Of course, as soon as you step outside the extreme-metal-loving world, dudes who sing harsh are curiosities, too. Fuck, in that outside world, so are all of us. But within our world, it’s the female growlers who are the novelties.

What makes them a curiosity isn’t that they can do it well, it’s that they can do it at all. And so some fans get overly excited about women vocalists whose vocals really aren’t all that great. On the other hand, because metal is a male-dominated culture, good female vocalists are also the victims of prejudice — the kind of judgmental pomposity that proclaims there’s no place for a woman in the front of an extreme metal band. Consider those two phenomena together and you reach the conclusion that it’s damned tough for a woman’s vocals to be considered for what they are, on the merits, divorced from who’s delivering them.

Maybe the day will arrive when everyone becomes gender-blind in judging metal vocalists, but human biology and male-female relationships being what they are, I doubt it. Fuck, I’m as susceptible to the curiosity effect as anyone else. Why else do you think I’m writing this post?

What I’ve collected here are four new songs or videos by female-fronted extreme metal bands: Landmine Marathon (U.S.), Wykked Wytch (U.S.), and Izegrim (The Netherlands). Continue reading »

VIDEO VIOLENCE: BENIGHTED’S “LET THE BLOOD SPILL BETWEEN MY BROKEN TEETH”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

We didn’t review Asylum Cave, the 2011 Season of Mist album by France’s Benighted. Nevertheless, it was one of the most blistering death/grind albums of last year. Today, we got a reminder of that when the band released their official video for “Let the Blood Spill Between My Teeth” — which is such a vividly descriptive title not only for this particular song, but also for what happens to most people when they hear it.

It is for songs such as this that we keep close at hand the patented NCS rawhide chew, which allows us to listen comfortably without biting through our tongues.

Such a great song. It unexpectedly moves from fast to blazing, and then back to merely fast, like a speed-shifting, coked-to-the-eyes Formula One driver with a behemoth engine behind him and an open road in front . Within the great blur of this tightly controlled but utterly bestial song, the band even manage to spin out an unexpectedly melodic passage, and stomp their whirlwind delivery with gut-shaking grooves that make it stand out even more.

I confess that I’m not entirely sure what’s happening in the parts of the well-made video that don’t involve the band whipping up a whirlwind of sound, except it seems to involve blood and a death (but what else did you expect?). If you don’t have a good rawhide chew handy, proceed with caution, but do check out the video after the jump. Continue reading »

WATCH STAM1NA’S NEW VIDEO; LOSE YOUR SHIT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

Timeline of my exposure to Stam1na:

Dec. 8, 2010: During our Finland Tribute Week series more than a year ago, Stam1na was recommended to us in a comment. Stupidly, I didn’t check them out.

July 14, 2011: Finnish NCS reader jeimssi leaves a comment pushing Stam1na, with links to sample songs. I have a vague recollection of listening to one of them and planning to write about them. Something must have distracted me, because I didn’t.

Dec. 14, 2011: During the NCS year-end Listmania, our Finnish guest fireangel names two Stam1na songs to her list of favorites from 2011. She wrote: “Stam1na have a huge following in Finland; they were founded in 1996 and  nowadays they are one of the biggest and best-selling metal acts. What I like about them is the mix of excellent musicianship, very obscure humour, and outspokenness regarding the protection of nature.”

Feb. 5, 2012: jeimssi takes a break from his compulsory military service to tell us in a comment that Stam1na are releasing a new album that he’s greatly anticipating. I follow up on that and discover that the new album, Nocebo, is being released in Finland tomorrow.

Feb. 6: Heavy Blog Is Heavy publishes a post about a new Stam1na video for the first single from the album, “Valtiaan uudet vaateet”, which is Finnish for “I’m about to get really fucked up”.

I watch the new video, and lose my shit. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: VISCERAL THRONE AND MARCO HASMAN

 Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Feb 072012
 

This is the second EYE-CATCHERS feature in as many days. In yesterday’s installment, we reported on new cover art for a forthcoming album from a band whose music we know — 16. In this post, we’re returning to the original intent of the EYE-CATCHERS series: using cool album art as a guide to finding music from bands we don’t know.

In this case, the album art was created by the talented Italian artist Marco Hasman. We’ve featured his artwork before at NCS, in posts about albums from Fleshgod Apocalypse, Beyond Creation, and Blasphemer. This time, his work will grace the cover of a debut record by a band from Evansville, Indiana, named Visceral Throne. The album is called Omnipotent Asperity and it will be released by Brutal Bands at some point later this year.

What Visceral Throne produced before that album was a two-song, 2010 demo. Both of those songs appear on the track list for the album; don’t know if they’ve been re-recorded for the album. The demo versions are still available for free download via Bandcamp (HERE), though that option will close once the album is released.

Let me attempt to describe the two songs without using the word brutal: barbarous, bloodthirsty, ferocious, heartless, inhuman, insensitive, merciless, pitiless, remorseless, rough, rude, ruthless, savage, severe, vicious, and impolite. Continue reading »

“RED TIDE RISING”: ORANGE GOBLIN DEBUT A NEW VIDEO

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Feb 062012
 

In my observation, nearly everyone who’s a serious fan of metal started out in one particular genre. But I think if you’re passionate about music, the more you listen, the more your interests will expand to encompass different styles. It’s not necessarily the product of boredom with where you started, though that might be part of it. Sometimes, it’s the listener who is changing, and a different kind of music begins to appeal to a different you. And sometimes as your sophistication and knowledge as a listener grow, you simply begin to understand and appreciate aspects of music that once held no interest.

In my case, I’m developing a new-found enjoyment of heavy-riffed stoner metal, a school of music that for me used to start and stop with Mastodon. Don’t get me wrong — it’s not going to replace more extreme forms of metal as my favorites, but I’d be lying if I denied that I’m having fun with it. Most recently, I’ve been having fun with the forthcoming album by long-running UK band Orange Goblin. It’s titled A Eulogy For the Damned, and Candlelight Records is scheduled to release it on February 14. I don’t know if we’ll review it here — I don’t feel particularly qualified to do it myself — but we’ll see.

However, it doesn’t take deep knowledge of the genre to spot a good video for a good song, and that’s what I did this morning. Orange Goblin and Candlelight just released a black-and-white, part-performance, part-animation video for a new track called “Red Tide Rising”. The song is a titanic motherfucker of a headbanging romp, with hooky melodies rising and falling, evil lyrics addressing the rise of Cthulhu, and instrumentation that does its level best to break necks. All those who worship at the church of the riff, come forth and lend your ears to this: Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: 16

 Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 062012
 

I seem to be on an album-art roll over the past week, featuring the new Gorod cover plus new covers by Valnoir, Dan Seagrave, and Niklas Sundin, but as long as the grown-ups continue stuffing my Halloween bag with eye-candy, my wide-eyed inner kid will continue to light up.

SoCal’s 16 began recording their new album, Deep Cuts From Dark Clouds, last September. On Halloween they completed the final mix. In early November, they sent it off to Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer) for mastering. And then two days ago Relapse Records announced a release date (April 26) and delivered unto us the album art you see above. They’re pre-selling the CD and LP versions here.

I had a feeling it would be sweet, because the cover art for their last album, 2009’s Bridges To Burn, was one of the best metal album covers ever. In fact, not having heard 16 before seeing that cover, I bought the album about two seconds after I did. Plus a shirt, which still draws looks when I wear it (unless people are looking at the space where my head is supposed to be — that’s always a possibility).

Anyway, the cover art to Deep Cuts is by Orion Landau (Red Fang, Rwake). It’s not quite as striking as the cover for Bridges that Florian Bertmer (Napalm Death, Converge, Pig Destroyer) created, but I guess it would be too much to get two home runs in a row. After the jump, I’ve collected the rest of 16’s full-length-album covers, plus a song from the last album. Continue reading »

CRYPTOPSY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Feb 062012
 

Most serious death metal addicts I know rank the early albums of Montreal’s Cryptopsy (recently inducted into DECIBEL’s Hall of Fame) among their personal favorites, especially None So Vile (1996), recorded at a time when the “classic” Cryptopsy line-up was in place — vocalist Lord Worm, Jon Levasseur on guitars, Flo Mounier behind the kit, and Éric Langlois on bass. But I doubt I’ll get much argument when I say that more recent albums — and especially 2008’s The Unspoken King — have greatly disappointed the band’s long-time fans.

The band’s musical decline (at least compared to their early glory days) can be traced to Levasseur’s departure in late 2004. He left, and we got Once Was Not (which was not all bad, in part because Lord Worm was back in the fold, briefly) and The Unspoken King (which just plain didn’t measure up to this band’s legacy).

Well, the great circle of life spins, or some shit like that, and Jon Levasseur is now a Cryptopsian again (since May 2011). My fairly simple mind fairly boggles at the contemplation of what he and co-guitarist Chris Donaldson are going to cook up for the band’s next album. Neuraxis bassist Olivier Pinard replaced Youri Raymond (who replaced Langlois last year), and he will be strong, and of course the paranormal Flo Mounier will continue to be his otherworldly self. And then there’s vocalist Matt McGachy, who will ne’er replace Lord Worm in the hearts of the Cryptopsy faithful, but he’s really not bad, and in any event he will be overshadowed by the instrumental extravagance of his bandmates.

And speaking of instrumental extravagance, after the jump, I have a few tastes of what we have in store for our greedy selves from the “new” Cryptopsy, plus a few more morsels of news about the next album. Continue reading »

LET’S GET TECHNICAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Feb 052012
 

groverXIII, bringing the tech metal, with Nami (Andorra), Innerty (France), and Xenocide (Canada)

Nami – Fragile Alignments

Andorra isn’t exactly a hotbed of metal; chances are, the only Andorran band that you’ve ever heard of is Persefone. Well, it’s time to add Nami to that list. This quintet have done something pretty special with their 2011 album Fragile Alignments, seamlessly combining elements of bands like Opeth, Gojira, Cynic, and Porcupine Tree into something that doesn’t necessarily sound like any of those bands.

The amount of talent on display here is impressive, the songs are incredibly memorable and well-written, and the production on the album is clear without sounding overly polished or processed. It’s really a pity that I didn’t find out about these guys last year, because I’m fairly certain they would have made my year-end list. You can stream the first three tracks from Fragile Alignments on Bandcamp, [and here, after the jump] and you can hear the whole thing at the band’s Facebook bandpage HERE. It’s amazing. Continue reading »

ESCHATON: “CURRENT VOID”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 052012
 

(Almost exactly one year after we first wrote about Eschaton HERE, BadWolf reports today on the projected release of their next album and a brand new Eschaton single.)

Eschaton have been on my personal radar for some time, first because they operate completely independently and second because they make some killer tunes. These four (unnamed) Austrian heathens play a very modern style of blackened death metal with melodic death metal influences. I know, it sounds ho-hum. Fear not! Their interpretation of the sound recalls Behemoth, and Andy Synn’s 2010 band of the year, Dark Fortress.

Unfortunately, Eschaton’s record is quite sparse. They released an album called Godmode in 2004, and then a two-song single called An Instrument of Darkness in 2010. I’ve been waiting for a second album ever since.

That wait is over. Eschaton’s second album, Isolated Intelligence, will be released on March 3rd. In anticipation, the band released a single, “Current Void”, this morning. Oh boy. Continue reading »

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