RIVERS OF NIHIL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 292012
 

(NCS guest contributor The Baby Killer is back with us again, this time with an introduction to Rivers of Nihil.)

There’s a reason why people say if you want to find some of the best music, look to the underground. That’s where you’ll find bands who aren’t playing for a paycheck or releasing the same predictable, formulaic album over and over again, bands who are playing simply because they love what they do and want to be heard. To put it simply, underground bands just try harder, and once in a while a genuinely gifted act comes along that stands head and shoulders above the competition. Reading, Pennsylvania’s own Rivers of Nihil is one such band.

Now there are plenty of local unsigned acts who can write cool riffs and get your head bobbin’ and your feet tappin’, but it takes something really special to make you sit back and say, “Holy shit, that’s a bunch of locals playing that?” Rivers do just that with their personal brand of technical death metal, a unique blend of Aborted, The Red Chord, and a splash of Diminishing Between Worlds-era Decrepit Birth.

It’s certainly fast and heavy enough to keep the pits moving, but it also has just the right amount of atmosphere and melody to keep you interested the whole time. Blast beats and bass diddily-doo’s abound without being overbearing, and the guitars and harsh, almost-hardcore-but-not-quite vocals keep everything grounded. Continue reading »

BANDS YOU NEED TO HEAR: HACKTIVIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  87 Responses »
Jan 282012
 

(TheMadIsraeli returns with another quick heads-up about . . . something different from an English band called Hacktivist.)

I am either about to be extremely surprised or lose all metal credibility in front of all of you.

Rewind to the 90’s and early, early 2000’s.

I know, I know. You wonder to yourself why do I assail you with such trauma? Why have I caused your soul such ache? Why doth I penetrate thy conscience with such unfathomable knives of contempt!? Continue reading »

AUTOPSY UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

Yes, we approve this cover art for Autopsy’s next album of body parts. Mind you, no one sought our approval, but we grant it willingly, because this cover by Matt Cavotta includes all the food groups: bat wings, vulture heads, horns, tusks, a snake head, a sickle, a hatchet, a scorpion’s tail, a rib cage dripping with gore, and blood. But best of all, it includes the name AUTOPSY.

All Tomorrow’s Funerals is a collection of all of Autopsy’s past EPs in re-mastered form, plus four brand new songs — the first new Autopsy music since 2011’s wonderful album, The Macabre Eternal. Peaceville Records will be releasing it on February 28, which sounds like something of an oxymoron, because this album will certainly bring no one any peace.

One of the four new tracks, “Mauled To Death”, was included in unmastered form as a Decibel magazine Flexi disk not long ago, and it’s available for streaming on a SoundCloud player that we’ve embedded after the jump, just because even a news item like this one should not be allowed to appear at NCS without some kind of grisly music to accompany it. And believe me, this is grisly death metal straight from the crypt, crawling along at a lurching pace, surrounded by an air of lowering doom.

The track list for All Tomorrow’s Funerals is also after the jump. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM PELICAN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

The last release from Chicago’s Pelican came almost two years ago — What We All Come To Need. Word of new music has been circulating for a while, and today we can hear it.

Pelican’s new EP is called Ataraxia/Taraxis, and it will be released by Southern Lord on April 10. But Pelican has established a Bandcamp page that’s now streaming one of the EP’s four songs — “Lathe Biosas”.  On top of that, you can download that track for free by visiting Spin.com or via the Pelican Bandcamp site here.

The band characterizes the new EP as an “experiment” — the first release that they built “by recording in multiple studios (often not with one another) and compiling the results”. Most of the recording was done by the talented Sanford Parker, and he also handled the mixing.

After the jump, you can listen to the new song, “Lathe Biosas”. I’m writing about this and including the song stream for the usual and obvious reason — because I like it very much, and because I’ve become a fan of this band after seeing them live in Seattle for the first time last year. The song is a sweet jam of ringing, chiming, hammering, crushing music. Check it after the jump and let us know what you think. Continue reading »

BANDS YOU NEED TO HEAR: OBLIVION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

(TheMadIsraeli has a quick tip for you.)

Oblivion is a Bay Area band seemingly coming out of nowhere who are poised to take the death metal world by storm this year, playing a no-holds-barred, spine-crushing brand of insatiably bestial tech death that raises corpses from tombs, worms from rot, and blood from victims. After the jump are videos of portions of songs from their self-titled demo that I will be reviewing soon.

In the meantime, enjoy what you hear, and discuss. This demo is meant to serve as a teaser for their upcoming debut The Reclamation, due out later this Spring. Continue reading »

TRIPPY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 272012
 

When you take a song that’s pretty trippy to begin with and you put it into the hands of a creative director and a capable production company and give them a decent budget to work with, you get a fucking trippy video. That’s the conclusion I reached after watching the Born of Osiris video that debuted at midnight last night, Eastern Time.

The trippy song is “Follow the Signs”, from the band’s 2011 album The Discovery (reviewed at NCS by IntoTheDarkness here). It’s a mash-up of complexity and beauty,  punchy staccato riffing and Outer Limits keyboard effects, hardcore rage and prog-metal ambience. Sometimes when I listen to this song, it just leaves me confused, and sometimes I think its ingenious and convincing. Despite my own ambiguous feelings about it, I’ll say this: it’s definitely not dull.

Nor is the video. The visual effects are of a high order, much better than most metal music videos have to offer. They capture the mind-bending aspects of the song. Like the song sometimes does, the video also leaves me confused about what I’ve just seen, but as a dish of eye-candy, it’s delicious.

“We are the victims, but we are also the crime / And the only one who can judge us is the Earth in time.” So the song says, after its dreamlike opening. The lyrics aren’t dull either. The video bears watching, even if you’re not a big Born of Osiris fan. It’s right after the jump. (Thanks to TheMadISraeli for a late-night e-mail letting me know this thing was out and about.) Continue reading »

RED FANG: THE “HANK IS DEAD” VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

I happen to like Red Fang’s music, but when it comes to Red Fang’s videos, it really doesn’t matter what you think of the music. They could be playing “Achy Breaky Heart” on a butt trumpet and the videos would still be funny as shit to watch. And now, hot from the cutting room, we have yet another addition to the Red Fang cinematic library: The “Hank Is Dead” video.

People who’ve been following the advance hype already know that the video involves an air guitar competition, but there’s more: awkwardly unclothed dudes who should never be seen without clothes, aerodynamically magnificent paper airplanes, an awesome wristwatch, plenty of beer, and plenty of beer. Also, there is a lot of beer.

If you don’t have some fun with this song set to this film footage, then, as much as I love you for reading NCS, I have to conclude that you have a case of tight-sphincter syndrome and you need a good loosening up.

Speaking of which, no, I don’t know what a butt trumpet is. It just seemed to fit the sentence. Watch the video after the jump. Continue reading »

INTO THE PIT: NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

(DemiGodRaven helps catch us up on metal news.)

Hey folks, I’ve planted my ass in the underworld for a brief period of time in order to round up all the smaller (and maybe not so small) news stories that may have fallen through the cracks in one way or another. Some of them are simple things like album streams, others are album teasers, there’s some tour news, and hey, occasionally you’ll even get a free song or two, ya hear? Also, if you aren’t reading this in a 50’s news reporters voice after seeing the picture of the hat above YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. First up is a pretty simple album stream, and then we’ll go on from there.

Lamb of God’s latest album Resolution saw release recently, and so they decided to run a full album stream over at AOL Music to give people a chance to get in a good listen before they decide whether to buy or not. I’ve enjoyed this release much more than Wrath, but it is still largely iterative on the sound that they started building in Sacrament.

It’s a good listen all the way through, but I can imagine it would be pretty dull if you picked a random song instead of the five or six really great ones. In other words, this is not an album built for Ipod shuffle like Amon Amarth’s stuff usually is (for example), so you’ll have to be in a really Lamb of God mood in order to really get into this one.

Also, they used the shotgun blast sample again. The same one they used on Sacrament. I was just waiting for the GOD-DAMN before it. Full review incoming soon. In the meantime, while you wait for me to validate your opinion and tell you how awesome of a metal listener you are, you can stream that fucker over here. Continue reading »

BARREN EARTH: “THE DEVIL’S RESOLVE”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 252012
 

The Curse of the Red River, the 2010 debut album from Finland’s Barren Earth, made quite the splash. That didn’t come as a huge shock, given that the band’s line-up is a collection of veterans of the Finnish metal wars, including vocalist Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun), Olli-Pekka Laine on bass (Ex-Amorphis, Mannhai), drummer Marko Tarvonen (Moonsorrow)
, and Kreator guitarist Sami Ylisirniö.

On March 13, Peaceville Records will release the band’s second album, The Devil’s Resolve, in North America. It was mixed by Dan Swanö (Opeth/Katatonia) at Unisound in Sweden, it features cover art by Paul Romano (whose work graces the covers of albums by Mastodon and a jillion other metal bands), and it includes guest vocals by Mathias Lillmåns (Finntroll) and . . . bagpipes! (courtesy of Jaakko Lemmetty from Korpiklaani).  (Nice timing, given our piece on bagpipe metal earlier today.)

So far so good — but there’s more. According to a press release, the music on the new album will cross through a variety of musical landscapes, ranging from brutal death metal to progressive and acoustic passages and sweeping melodies. You can get a taste of this via a montage of the album’s songs that Peaceville is now streaming on SoundCloud (and that we’re streaming right after the jump). And in exchange for your e-mail address, you can get a free download of a track from the album called “The Rains Begin”. Continue reading »

TOOL vs. INTRONAUT: A SHOW REPORT WITH A SICK VIDEO

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jan 252012
 

(NCS writer BadWolf provides a report on last night’s Tool/Intronaut concert in Toledo and a video of dueling drummers.)

A little informality for you today.

So last night, my GF, Queen of Noise, some friends, and I saw Tool in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio.

What is Tool doing playing in my bullshit city? I haven’t the foggiest, but Good Morning America informed me a few weeks ago that the venue, the Huntington Center, is the 8th most profitable stadium venue in the USA. Who knew?

So the opening band was some pretty sick The Sword/Kyuss-style super-heavy biker-metal band. Nothing too original, but pretty cool—too bad their name was incomprehensible. I think it was Ram-Knight? Anyway, I expect to hear more about them soon.

Intronaut opened and played a strong set with “The Literal Black Cloud” from Prehistoricisms and then every good song from Valley of Smoke in a row. Sick. The crowd seemed to really dig them, which is strange considering that Tool’s fanbase is notoriously picky (according to anecdote, they nearly boo’ed Meshuggah off the stage multiples times, and Meshuggah is basically Tool with lower guitars and growling…). Good for them, I hope this opens doors for the boys in Intronaut. Continue reading »

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