BONE5

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  35 Responses »
Dec 172011
 

Gee whiz, it’s been almost 24 hours since we last talked about a Finnish band here at NCS, and even though Andy Synn listed two of them yesterday as his top 2 picks for favorite albums of 2011, the loris horde at the NCS Compound is starting to get restless, so we’d better do something about that.

Bone5 is a band from Jyväskylä who released their debut album in 2010 — Dead City Tales. Earlier this month, they released their second album, From the Ashes. What caught my eye was the news announced in late November that Pasi Pasanen had joined the band as its new drummer. Pasi Passanen was the drummer for Swallow the Sun for almost the first decade of that fine band’s existence (2000 – 2009). In addition, along with Bone5’s vocalist Tony Kaikkonen (Code of Silence) and a couple of dudes from Ghost Brigade (among others), he’s also a member of a fairly new band called Sons of Aeon, who we featured with high praise in this post last spring.

When I saw the news about Pasanen joining Bone5, the band had just released a music video for a track off From the Ashes called “Rain”. I liked the song a lot, but deferred writing about it until I could try to learn a bit more about the band. With the help of fireangel, who’s a Finland-based creator of the Night Elves site and whose year-end list of songs we published recently (here), I was able to get in touch with Pasi Pasanen, and he was nice enough to answer a few of my questions.

After the jump, check out the cool video for “Rain”, and you can also read our mini-interview with Pasi Pasanen. Continue reading »

NEW ASPHYX ASPHYXIATES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Dec 152011
 

This will be quick. Those princes of death-doom in Asphyx have just released a new song for streaming. It’s the title track to their new eighth album, Deathhammer, which will be released via Century Media on February 27, 2012, in Europe and February 28, 2012, in North America.

The new track is exclusively streaming at CVLT Nation, so you’ll have to go there to hear it.  I did that.  I liked the song.  You will like it, too.  That’s both a prognostication and a command.

Be off with you, listen, and then return here to tell us how much you liked the song.

HERE is the link.

NEW PSYCROPTIC SCOURS SKULLS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Dec 152011
 

This will be quick: those titanic Tasmanians in Psycroptic have released a new song for streaming. It’s called “Carriers of the Plague”. It’s from their forthcoming album, The Inherited Repression (the artwork for which you can see above), which will hit stores on February 7th in North America and February 10, 2012 in Europe via Nuclear Blast Records.

I like it. You will like it, too.  That’s both a prediction and an order.

Listen after the jump, and then leave comments telling us how much you like it.  I also have another new song you WILL also like (in the next post). Continue reading »

I HATE MOTHERFUCKING WASPS, BUT I LOVE BLOTTED SCIENCE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 152011
 

In October, then first-time NCS guest contributor The Baby Killer gave us his review of the new EP by the slightly demented and wholly talented Blotted Science. The album is called The Animation of Entomology, and the songs were recorded as soundtracks for movie clips featuring . . . bugs.

We’ve previously posted the first three of those movie clips with the amazing music of Blotted Science as musical accompaniment. I am sad to say that today the band posted the fourth and final video. It’s for the longest song on the album, “A Sting Operation” — which is divided into four parts on the album. Fittingly, the video is also divided into four episodes, using excerpts from the movie Swarmed (2005).

Once again, the band have created music that fits the film footage to a T and synced it closely with what’s happening on screen. The music is a kick in the head to hear all by itself, but the fascinating concept developed by the band of setting the music to these bug-infested movie excerpts really moves it up to the next level.

I’m sad that Blotted Science posted this video for two reason. First, I’m sad because it’s the last one. I’d be quite happy to have one of these every month for, like, indefinitely. Second, I’m sad because I hate motherfucking wasps. Allow me to explain. Continue reading »

ASHES OF AVARICE and AWAKING LEVIATHAN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 142011
 

(NCS reader and commenter Black Shuck provides this guest post as an introduction to two Midwest metal bands who are worth getting to know.)

In the bygone days of old (last year), when I was a foolish young college student in Galesburg, Illinois, full of hopes and dreams and enough coffee to kill a small child if that child were a pansy, I was introduced to the area’s local metal scene. Two bands who I became familiar with there have already been covered here at No Clean Singing: The Horde and A Hill to Die Upon. But there are two more local gems from the several-states-wide corn maze that is the Midwest who I feel people need to know about: Ashes of Avarice and Awaking Leviathan. So I have decided to take a break from trampling flowerbeds and relaxing with my favorite drink (bourbon mixed with several shots of bourbon) to enlighten you about them.

I’ve never been sure how to classify either of the bands. Ashes of Avarice remind me of Black Anvil in the sense that their music seems at its heart based in black metal, but is influenced by so many other things as to be a different genre entirely. It’s dark, yet it’s a heavy kind of dark, rather than an evil one. It makes you want to headbang and put your fist in the air, to rock the fuck out and have a good time, as opposed to, say, making you want to prance around in the forest and drink the blood of koalas, or whatever it is Satanic Tyrant Werewolf does these days.

The riffs tend toward thrash mixed with traditional heavy metal, yet they don’t really fit into either of these genres, nor are they black metal riffs. They’re inventive, they keep the music interesting without being experimental, they lend it atmosphere. The vocals stay mid-range for the most part (a notable exception being the slow, menacing “Our Hangman’s Sweet Embrace,” where they venture into death metal territory at points), yet still have just enough rawness and power to complement the heaviness of the music and lend it a rough edge. Continue reading »

NEWS FROM DOWN UNDER: NE OBLIVISCARIS AND DEVOLVED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 132011
 

We originally featured this unsigned Melbourne, Australia band with the mouthful of a name back in March 2010, focusing on a 2007 demo called The Aurora Veil. We checked in with them again in October, having learned that they had completed their debut album, Portal of I — a 7-track behemoth with a total run-time of more than 1 hour 11 minutes. In October, the band also released one of the new songs for streaming — “And Plague Flowers the Kaleidoscope” — which fuckin’ floored me. It’s a long, but remarkably multi-faceted piece of music.

We heard from the band yesterday with a bit of news. As reported on their Facebook page, the band has parted ways with their drummer, Dan Presland, who was involved in recording both the Aurora Veil demo and the forthcoming Portal Of I album. The band is already rehearsing with a new drummer, and we hope the loss of Presland (who’s quite good — he won the Australian finals of the World’s Fastest Drummer competition) won’t be a setback. At least it won’t delay the release of the album, since that’s already finished.

In an offsetting bit of good news, the band’s lead guitarist Benjamin Baret has been allowed to return to Australia after protracted wrangling over obtaining a visa. Baret lives in France, and his imminent return to Australia on Thursday of this week appears to be the prelude to release of Portal of I and touring in support of it. The band is still in discussions with labels, and so we’re not yet able to provide a specific release date — but you can be sure we will as soon as that’s set.

So, why are we spending time with this bit of news? Go past the jump and listen to “And Plague Flowers the Kaleidoscope” and you’ll understand (or be reminded, if you’ve heard it before). It’s not like anything else I’ve heard this year — and it makes me so damned curious to hear the rest of the new songs when the album drops next year. Also after the jump, a scorching new track from Devolved . . . Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: NORWEGIAN METAL TO WATCH FOR (Part 3)

 Listmania, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

This is the third part of a multi-part post about up-and-coming Norwegian bands. The first part is HERE, and the second part is HERE.  And here’s an abbreviated version of the full explanation that appears in Part 1:

“Pyro” is the name of a radio program on one of the radio channels (P3) operated by NRK, the state-owned Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The NRK P3 radio channel is mainly aimed at younger listeners, and Pyro is the program that focuses mainly on metal and hard rock.

Last week, the Pyro web site rolled out its 2011 list of the most promising metal bands in Norway. What I’m doing in this series is just repeating what I found on the Pyro web site, doing my best (with the lame assistance of Google Translate) to give Pyro’s descriptions of each band they picked as the best new metal bands in Norway, plus the same music from each band that they gave as an example (most of the songs can be found on Amazon mp3 or downloaded from the Urørt site via the links provided in the music descriptions below). Since my verbiage isn’t a professional translation, any fuck-ups are mine, not Pyro’s. I’ve also added some notes of my own, which are in brackets.

So here we go with Part 3. In this part, we’re including  Aristillus, Livstid, The Good the Bad and the Zugly, Blodspor, and The Konsortium. Below the images in the rest of this post, I’ve turned each of the band’s names into links that will take you to their social media sites, in case you want to explore further. Continue reading »

DEATH IS NEVER FINISHED: REMEMBERING CHUCK SCHULDINER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  21 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

On December 13, 2001 — ten years ago today — Chuck Schuldiner died of a brain tumor after a two-year battle to survive. To honor his memory, NPR writer Lars Gotrich persuaded eleven metal musicians to pick their favorite Death song, and write what it and Schuldiner have meant to them. The list of contributors includes three former members of Death — Paul Masvidal (Cynic), Gene Hoglan (Fear Factory), and Richard Christy (Charred Walls of the Damned), all of whom, interestingly, chose songs from the 1991 album, Human.

The list of contributors also includes Arthur von Nagel (Cormorant), Elizabeth Schall (Dreaming Dead), John Dyer Baizley (Baroness), Stephan Gebedi (Hail of Bullets), Matt Harvey (Exhumed), Kevin Conway (East of the Wall), Anthony Buda (Revocation), and Steffen Kummerer (Obscura).

It’s an interesting read (and includes streams of the chosen songs), and I thought Gotrich’s introduction eloquently captured the wonder many of us have experienced as we listened to Death’s music from different albums over time — as an artist, Chuck Schuldiner was not only a great talent, he was also constantly moving in new directions. Here’s an excerpt from Gotrich’s introduction (which continues after the jump). To read the whole thing, go here.

“There’s something to be said for the visionary who dismantles the very movement he’s created or pioneered. . . . For a humble guitarist from Florida named Chuck Schuldiner, his metal band Death (not to be confused with the proto-punk band of the same name) was a mere instrument. Along with the Bay Area’s Possessed, Death not only helped spawn an entire extreme genre around gore and technical guitar wizardry, but like horror movies sometimes do, Death also challenged our notions of life. Continue reading »

BERGEN BANDS: AETERNUS, HELHEIM, SULPHUR, AND VULTURE INDUSTRIES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Dec 122011
 

Every day I discover something that reinforces just how fucking ignorant I am. As if I needed any reminders. Take yesterday for example. Yesterday I learned about a band from Bergen, Norway called Aeternus. They’ve been active since 1993, they released their first album in 1997 (Beyond the Wandering Moon), and five more have followed, with the most recent one (HeXaeon) surfacing in 2006.

Their current line-up includes the band’s founder, Ares (vocals and guitars), who has played with a number of other Norwegian black metal bands over his career, including a stint in Gorgoroth; V’gandr (bass), who’s also a member of Helheim and a live musician with Taake; Phobos (drums), who is also active in a very good band called Gravdal; and Specter (guitars), another member of Gravdal. Despite the pedigree of Aeternus’ members, I’d managed to go through life to this point without ever hearing their music.

What I discovered yesterday was that the band’s label, Dark Essence Records, has uploaded a collection of Aeternus songs to SoundCloud. The music is drawn from throughout the band’s history and includes two songs from HeXaeon (“What I Crave” and “The 9th Revolution”), one from A Darker Monument (2003) (“Sons of War”), one from Ascension of Terror (2001) (“Denial of Salvation”), one from Shadows of Old (1999) (“The Summoning of Shadows”), two from And So the Night Became (1998) (“Warrior of the Crescent Moon” and “Fyrndeheimen”), and one from Beyond the Wandering Moon (“Vind”).

This retrospective is well-timed because after the passage of five years since the last album, the band is now recording their seventh full-length, which should be ready for release sometime in 2012. It allows listeners to trace the path of Aeternus’ music from the early days up to the time of the last release, as a prelude to what will come next. And that’s not all . . . Continue reading »

DAT GRUVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  35 Responses »
Dec 112011
 

Nature or nurture?  Present from birth or learned behavior?  When it comes to the impulse to move to a groove, it’s pretty clear that human beings are hard-wired to do it.  The following video is further evidence of that.

But the following video is evidence of other things, too:  that if exposed to metal at an early age, before their psyches are corrupted by pop music, children will get it immediately; that in addition to the impulse to move to a groove, the impulse to headbang is also hard-wired; and that Vildhjarta’s master plan to take over the world within the space of a single generation is proceeding successfully.

We’ve all seen other examples of this kind of “metal kids” video before, but this is the best one I’ve seen, because this young dude has definitely got some moves . . . and because of the headbang thing.

According to the description below the video clip, the guy who made it had some friends over to his place and decided to play some of his tunes for one of their kids. Watch what happens. Continue reading »

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