BAGPIPE METAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  27 Responses »
Jan 252012
 

When it comes to bagpipe music, my sense is that most people either love it or hate it. I don’t know anyone who falls in the middle ground. I happen to love it.

I know of a handful of folk metal bands — including Arkona, Suidakra, Skyforger, Cruachan, and Eluveitie — who feature the bagpipes in some or all of their music. But until yesterday, I only knew of one metal band who used the bagpipes as their lead instrument: South Africa’s Haggis and Bong (still one of the best band names ever created). We’ve featured them at NCS more than once, and most recently here.

Yesterday, thanks to groverXIII (The Number of the Blog), I discovered another band who use bagpipes as their lead instruments: Germany’s Schelmish. Now, based on a little reading about Schelmish, it appears that they’re commonly referred to as a “medieval rock band” — a style of music that seems to have originated in Germany — but they sure as hell seem metal as fuck to me (with punk in the mix, too).

Between 2000 and 2010, they’ve released 10 albums, including a live performance CD. But I’m writing this post based on only one song — “Chaos”. It happened to be the first Schelmish YouTube video I watched after groverXIII recommended the band, and man does it sell.

Reasons why the “Chaos” video is the shit:

First, this band appears to have not one but five pipers. Second, the ends of the drones on their bagpipes look like the flared mouths of ancient muskets. Third, Schelmish also have some gargantuan drums to accompany the bagpipes. Fourth, the band members themselves are gargantuan (with the exception of one whippet-like piper who looks like Johnny Rotten). Fifth, they can really jam. Sixth, the song is called “Chaos”, and the music lives up to the name. Continue reading »

MASTODON’S “DRY BONE VALLEY” VIDEO DRIES OUT MY BONE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 242012
 

“Dude, gimme another huff a that embalming fluid.”

“You wanna go easy on that shit.  Will fuck you up somethin’ fierce.”

“Fuck you man, just pass it over here.”

“I’m serious, you huff too much embalming fluid, you’ll start to see some weird shit. Teeth and eyeballs and skulls and shit.  And space.”

“Yeah, well that would be better than what I’m lookin’ at now.  Just shut the fuck up and pass it over.”

“Okay, moron, your funeral.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

(The song is from The Hunter (one of the best on the album, I think.) The video was directed and animated by Tim Biskup and just premiered at boingboing. Go easy on the embalming fluid.)

OVERTHINKING NECROCOMICCON

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jan 242012
 

(The psychic damage caused by working in retail, the pain of 80’s music, the guilty pleasure of listening to a black metal band play that 80’s music . . . DemiGodRaven gets it all off his chest.)

Earlier this January, MetalSucks.net put up a quick little post about a group called Necrocomiccon, a joking sort of internet project that ‘fused’ black metal with 80’s music. Basically, it breaks down to a bunch of goofballs who sat around and covered 80’s music with some black metal vocals. While the joke didn’t quite ring true with the editors over there (some get it, some don’t), I found myself chuckling at the idea and giving the music a download. It’s free over on the Necrocomiccon Facebook page, so if you want, you can hit them up there or on their bandcamp, where the guys have been kind enough to link everything in case the free bandcamp downloads run out.

The post itself was interesting because I think it actually reflected a little microcosm of metal music these days and how the internet has had an effect on it. The internet and its vast reaches have basically given rise to the art of gimmickry as an art form, and if a band has a decent gimmick, it is highly likely you’ll see it taken up by the louder voices on the web and spread like wildfire.

This phenomenon can have huge, lasting implications — it popularized the crabcore movement as a whole, for example, taking what was a bunch of assholes on the internet enjoying stuff ‘ironically’ and transforming it into a whole style that has jumped past the point of being mildly self-aware to a full blown ‘serious’ style, at least to the people who listen to it.

While none of this has had a direct effect on Necrocommicon, I think it helps explain how something like this could have been birthed. I find this whole idea fucking hilarious, and the music actually interesting from the standpoint of it being a novelty. You also do have to appreciate the fact, though, that something like this really shouldn’t work because it only appeals to to two types of people with one unifying factor. They either have to love 80’s music or, like me, be trapped in retail where you’ve heard every single one of these songs to the point where emptying out your skull with some well-placed buckshot seems better than hearing Phil Collins ever again.

That unifying factor, however, is the whole gist of the joke: You have to find that adding black metal to anything is fucking hilarious (which, to be very clear, I do). Continue reading »

DRUDKH: “WHEN GODS LEAVE THEIR EMERALD HALLS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 232012
 

In 2003 a Ukrainian black metal band called Drudkh (the Sanskrit word for “wood”) released their debut album, Forgotten Lands. One of the long songs on the album was called “Eternal Turn of the Wheel”. Nine years later, Season of Mist is about to release Drudkh’s ninth album — Eternal Turn of the Wheel.

I’ve not heard much of Drudkh’s music — a song here, a song there, including a great (long) track called “Skies At Our Feet” from the Estrangement album that I featured in an NCS post about a year and a half ago and another great song called “Furrows of Gods ” from the Blood In Our Wells album, which Johan Huldtgren put on his list of the best 10 albums of the last 10 years in this guest post.

Late last week, NPR premiered a song from the new album, one called “When Gods Leave Their Emerald Halls”. Season of Mist described the song this way: “”When the Gods Leave Their Emerald Halls” witnesses Ukrainian Black Metal heroes musically returning to their dark roots. Taken from the album “Eternal Turn of the Wheel”, which represents the ancient pagan cycle of the seasons, this track portrays the blue skies and Ukraine’s golden fields being harvested. The wheel turns to the twilight of autumn and leaves wither from emerald green to fiery red and blazing yellow gold before crumbling to the black and brown of winter…”

Unfortunately, the NPR page no longer includes the audio stream, but the song has surfaced on YouTube. And it’s quite a song. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: NEW ALBUM ART FROM BORKNAGAR, LECHEROUS NOCTURNE, AND ENSHADOWED

 Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 202012
 

We hardly ever actually “plan” anything around here.  Impulse is in the driver’s seat most of the time.  But sometimes a pattern develops despite the absence of design, and this week our content has been heavier than usual with videos and album art. Yesterday I saw even more eye-catching artwork for forthcoming albums, so I’m collecting them here (along with some music, of course).

BORKNAGAR

This long-running avant-garde Norwegian band is one I learned about through readers on this site back in the early days of NCS. What with all the clean singing, I didn’t immediately love the music, but I’ve developed an appreciation for what they do, and so I’m interested in the new studio album they recorded with Jens Bogren at Fascination Street Studios (Opeth, Paradise Lost, Katatonia) in Örebro, Sweden. The album is titled Urd and will be released on March 26 in Europe and March 27 in North America via Century Media Records.

The eye-catching album art was designed by Brazilian artist Marcelo Vasco, who did the cover for this band’s previous Universal album. He has also created album art for many other bands, some of which we’ve featured here, including Belphegor, Einherjer, Dimmu Borgir, The Faceless, Noctem, and Keep of Kalessin.

The cover for Urd captures the look and feel of a Nordic wood carving. More info about the design and the album can be found on a post at Borknagar’s official site, here. As for the clean singing, the new album will feature three pretty talented vocalists working together – Vintersorg, Lars Nedland, and ICS Vortex. One of the heavier tracks from the band’s last album comes right after the jump. Continue reading »

DESERT SANDS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  20 Responses »
Jan 202012
 

(TheMadIsraeli’s former boss at The Metal Register, Kyle Brady, requested that he write a piece on Middle Eastern metal, and here we have it. We’ve spotlighted bands from that region in previous writing at NCS, and I’ll add some further examples at the end of this post.)

When I say “Middle East”, what comes to mind?  War?  Brutal weather conditions?  The desolation of endless expanse of desert?  Regardless of what you think of, it’s probably not a region you’d immediately associate with metal, but with the evolution of the internet and the advent of file-sharing, becoming a successful band over there is slowly but surely becoming more of an option as we speak.  As a result, over the last four so years, a rash of bands have cropped up who are proving they’re already prepared to take the world by storm.

Consider this a sort of primer, or introduction to bands from the Middle East, with a mix of older and newer. Without further delay let’s begin doing a little analysis of the kind of shit we got going on over there.


Continue reading »

LAMB OF GOD: A NEW, ANIMATED “GHOST WALKING” VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jan 192012
 

Almost six weeks ago, Lamb of God premiered the first track from their next album, Resolution, which will be released on January 24. At that time, they gave us a visually interesting lyric video for “Ghost  Walking”. About an hour ago, they released a second video for the same song. This one is an animated story set in some kind of apocalyptic future, with a protagonist who seems intent on preventing a catastrophe. If you’ve heard the song already, you can probably guess how that turns out.

This video is well-done, and I’m finding that the song is growing on me. You know you’re going to get some heavy-grooved riffs from this band, but what I’m appreciating even more are Randy Blythe’s vocals. They are . . . badass.

The animation was created by Moreframes Animation. Watch the video after the jump, and let us know what you think of it. Continue reading »

THE BROWN BOOK: “QUEER STREET”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 192012
 

I guess there are other stories like this one. It’s a big country after all, and a bigger world. But this story is running through my head this morning:

Three self-taught musicians join together back in 2008 (probably earlier) to form a band and make music. At the time, two of them live in Quincy, Mass (guitarist Jay O’Malley and drummer Ryan Lavery), and the third in Brooklyn (guitarist Mike Kvidera). They self-release an album in 2009 called Thirty-Nothing, which was written in a room by that name, pictured on the right — basically a utility hallway in the basement of an old shipping mill in New Bedford, Mass. A real underground, DIY operation.

I find out about the album the next year; I don’t even remember how. The music is heavy, it’s pummeling, it’s hypnotic, it’s discordant, it’s melodic, it’s unpredictable, it’s organized mayhem. It’s all of those things, plus some. I write about it here. I’m so taken with it that I track down guitarist Mike Kvidera and interview him, which runs along with that review.

Time passes. I lose track of this band until April 2011, when a Bandcamp page appears with The Brown Book’s name on it. The band has become even more geographically dispersed. O’Malley has moved to San Diego, and the band has enlisted a permanent bassist, Sam Matson, who’s conveniently located in Cookeville, Tennessee. They manage to self-release a new EP called Pyramid Scheme. It’s even heavier than the album, but like Thirty-Nothing, it’s deceptively chaotic and it captures my imagination. I write about it here.

More time passes, and then a few days ago a new song appears in my e-mail in-box. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: ENFOLD DARKNESS, VALE OF PNATH, AND KEN SARAFIN

 Eye-Catchers, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jan 192012
 

A couple days ago TheMadIsraeli sent me a link to DECIBEL’s online site, and what should greet my eyes upon landing there but THAT piece of arresting artwork up. I was so struck by the colors and the imagery that I almost forgot there was supposed to be a song on that page, too.

The song is a new single called “Lairs of the Ascending Masters” by a Nashville band signed to Sumerian called Enfold Darkness. It’s an interesting blackened take on tech metal, with spidery riffing, swarmy soloing, spit-fire drumming, and vocals that vault from growly lows to torture-victim shrieks of pain — all of it rushing along well above the speed limit. If that sounds attractive, hop over to DECIBEL and let “Lairs” give your head a good scouring.

Since I’ve heard the song several times, what I want to do is talk more about the artwork. It was created by Ken Sarafin, who happens to be the vocalist for a Denver-based band named Vale of Pnath. Vale of Pnath released a self-titled EP in 2009 and then a debut album last August on Willowtip Records called The Prodigal Empire. I haven’t heard the whole album, though I’ve seen good things written about the band in comments here at NCS as well as elsewhere, and I was certainly intrigued enough by the artwork of Vale’s vocalist to finally dip a toe in the water. As noted, I also took a deeper dive into Ken Sarafin’s art. Continue reading »

SPAWN OF POSSESSION DEBUTS THE FIRST SONG FROM “INCURSO”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Jan 172012
 

Fans of technical death metal had a lot to be happy about in 2011, with new releases by the likes of Decapitated, Origin, and Krisiun. This year shows promise, too, with a new Psycroptic on the horizon (I’m not mentioning Necrophagist for fear of jinxing that possibility). But most die-hard tech death freaks I know are perhaps most excited about the March 13 Relapse release of the third album by multinational heavyweights Spawn of Possession.

It’s been a long wait since Noctambulant dropped in 2006, but the wait is nearly over. So far, we’ve seen the eye-catching Par Olofsson artwork for the album cover. We’ve seen the track list. And now, we’ve got the first song from the album.

It’s called “Where Angels Go Demons Follow”. It’s an auspicious introduction to the new album. It’s right after the jump. Continue reading »

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