METAL ELITISM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  42 Responses »
Jan 012012
 

I’ve been spending more time than usual over the holidays with IntoTheDarkness, one of the two other people who were with me at NCS when we started this site, but one who has found many other things to do with his life than write for NCS, despite my nagging (yeah, amazingly, he has a life). I got an earful from him yesterday. He thinks I’ve become a “metal elitist”, that I’ve fallen sway to the influence of NCS readers, and spend too much of my time listening to things like . . . black metal.

In particular, he thinks I’ve completely turned my back on music I used to like (along with him), such as deathcore. He sends me band names every now and then, and has discovered that I don’t listen to them. I try to explain that my listening time just seems to evaporate. In general, this is the big problem with life: If you really try to live it, instead of letting it live you, there’s just not enough fucking time. This excuse fell on deaf ears.

Well, I’m going to prove him wrong soon. But not at the immediate moment. I’m afraid this post may simply reinforce his conclusions. Except, I do ask myself this: can you really call a mole who burrows deeper into the metal underground an elitist? That doesn’t sound right. There should be a different word for a burrowing metal mole (other than the obvious word — filthy). And besides, what is a metal elitist anyway? I’ve never thought of myself that way. After all, I pop wood for every metal band on the planet. Someone said that about me once.

Where was I?  Oh yeah. So yesterday, a friend asked me for recommendations about metal blogs to read. Two of the many names I gave him were The Living Doorway and From the Dust Returned. These are blogs I don’t read nearly as often as I’d like (see above about not enuf fucking time). They tend to cover metal that’s even deeper underground than my burrowing has yet taken me; I don’t recognize many of the bands they write about, but the writing is so damned good that I like to read them anyway.

I read them yesterday, for example. In doing so, I made two wicked discoveries which got me so enthused that I feel compelled to share: music from Wrathprayer and Antichrist. Mind you, I knew nothing about either of these bands before yesterday. I still don’t know much — except I know I like the music I’ve heard. Continue reading »

CUT YOUR TEETH: “IF IT’S LOUD”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Jan 012012
 

This post comes your way from our friend groverXIII (The Number of the Blog).

Over at TNOTB, I talked about Cut Your Teeth with fair regularity. They originally approached us with a video to a song from their self-titled EP, and I became infatuated with their energetic blend of thrash metal and old-school hardcore. Then, this past year they released their first full-length, CYTII, and that infatuation turned into totally heterosexual, not-at-all gay love. (Okay, maybe a little gay.) CYTII made my end-of-year list (forthcoming in the next few days), and their ‘Stallion’ video is one of my favorites of the year, capturing the raw power of these New Yorkers perfectly.

And then, a few days ago, Cut Your Teeth released a new song and video called ‘If It’s Loud’, and it’s fast, angry, thrashy, and, well, loud. It’s not a long song by any means, clocking in at just a hair under two and a half minutes, but it just plain fucking rips, and that’s what it’s all about. With the thrash revival, there are a lot of bands out there playing thrash metal, but with many of them you kind of wonder if they’re just going through the motions. Cut Your Teeth may not be the most talented band in the world, but their intensity and sheer energy cannot be questioned.

Seriously, metal needs more bands like these guys, toiling away in obscurity but still giving it their all. I’d rather have one band like Cut Your Teeth than five bands like Disturbed, Godsmack, All That Remains, or whatever else passes for radio metal these days. There’s no pretension here, no posturing, just good old-fashioned, kick you in the nuts punk/metal. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

‘If It’s Loud’, like all of their material, can be found at their Bandcamp page, and like all of their material, it’s free. Do yourself a favor and check them out. (video after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

GRIND TIME

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Dec 312011
 

I know that most of you will be like me tonight. You’ll curl up with a romance novel and a box of chocolates and have a quiet, dreamy evening that may or may not last long enough to watch New Year’s Eve fireworks on television before you drift into a restful slumber, awakening cheerful and refreshed on New Year’s Day. For those very few of you who plan to get wrecked, piss yourselves, and wake up bleeding in a pool of your own vomit with a thermonuclear hangover and missing teeth — this post’s for you, motherfuckers!!!!  It’s time to griiiiiiiiiinnnnnndd!!!!!

Today, we’re featuring brand new and recent releases from (respectively) Fuck the Facts and Brutal Truth, but first, what better way to start this special day/night than with a band called

TOTAL VOMIT EXPERIENCE

This band is from — where else? — Finland. I first heard their name (and once you’ve heard it, how could you forget?) when doing a little research about the excellent new death metal band Magenta Harvest for this post last May. Magenta Harvest includes a guitarist named Timo Hanhikangas, who was then a member of Total Vomit Experience, too, and that’s how I heard the name. Eventually, I checked out their online sites and found this list of “artists we also like” on TVE’s facebook page:

Carcass, Napalm Death, Rotten Sound, Repulsion, Entombed, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, Celtic Frost, Hellhammer, Throbbing Gristle, Fields of the Nephilim, Current 93, Discharge, Extreme Noise Terror, Master, Anticimex, Godflesh, Swans

Now, of course, having good taste in metal doesn’t mean you can make metal that tastes good, even if you have an awe-inspiring band name like Total Vomit Experience. But it turns out that TVE definitely can make the tasty metal. Continue reading »

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Dec 282011
 

Last night and this morning I saw two new music videos that made an impression. By chance, both bands are from Russia — Impact Fuze and Welicoruss. Though the videos could hardly be more different from each other, both musically and visually, joining them together here just struck me as the right thing to do (and I haven’t even been hitting the vodka) — two sides of a Russian coin: the urban and the rural, the new and the old, a forest of skyscrapers and a forest of pines, the bustle of mechanization and a clash of swords.

IMPACT FUZE

TheMadIsraeli sent me a link to this band’s video for a song called “Moscow”. Impact Fuze consists of three extremely talented musicians — guitarist Fedor Dosumov, bass-player Anton Davidyants, and a French drummer named Damien Schmitt. “Moscow” isn’t really metal. The musical style is closer to jazz/rock fusion, but the performances are so extraordinary that I couldn’t resist this video.

Dosumov’s guitar playing reaches jaw-dropping levels of dexterity and creativity, reminding me of great ones like Pat Metheny, Allan Holdsworth, and Alex Skolnick (when he’s performing with his Trio). Schmitt is equally amazing, especially when he’s on his feet, hitting the skins while spinning like a top. And Davidyants is a match for them on the bass, bounding but tight as a drumhead.

The black-and-white video for the song is also an amazing achievement. It was produced and directed by Vladimir “voff” Youdanov, Tamara Cengic, and a team from a company called Voffilms. The imagery moves as fast as the performers, with time-lapse film of modern Moscow on the move interspersed with a visual kaleidoscope of the band performing the song. It’s an inspired union of music and film, one of the best videos I’ve seen all year. Continue reading »

KRIEGSMASCHINE GODDAMMIT!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 252011
 

I am so fucking retarded.  I had tomorrow’s first installment of the MOST INFECTIOUS song list all planned out and ready to go. We were going to bolt from the starting gate with a cannon blast of extremity, starting with a band I thought might surprise you since we’ve never mentioned them on this site and they’re a pretty underground act. I’ve been plodding along for the last month trying to winnow down the long master list of selections for the list, but this song was an early and easy choice.

I stupidly assumed the song was released this year because I only found out about it through a post by Cosmo Lee at Invisible Oranges in July. And then, just to be sure, I double-checked the release date a few minutes ago and discovered to my chagrin that it came out in 2010.  FUCK!  FUCK!!  FUCK!!!

So now I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a different way to start the list tomorrow. But I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to leave the song alone. I can’t put it in this year’s MOST INFECTIOUS list, but I can sure as hell create this post as a showcase for it.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard it since July. The song is “Onward Destrudo” and it’s by a Polish black metal band called Kriegsmaschine. It’s one of two songs that Kriegsmaschine contributed to a split with Infernal War called Transfigurations. Like many black metal songs, it’s built around a repeating riff and rhythm. There’s one cool musical digression about 3 minutes in — filled with a massively groaning bass, rancid reverb effects, and what sounds like an increasingly freaked-out harmonica! — but otherwise it’s one continuing, rolling, head-ripping phalanx of swarming infection. And if it’s not firmly rooted in your head by the time it’s over, I’ll be a motherfucker. Continue reading »

MORE NEW MUSIC – ELUVEITIE’S “MEET THE ENEMY”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Dec 242011
 

As we reported previously, Switzerland’s Eluveitie have a new album coming on Nuclear Blast in February. Called Helvetios, it’s a concept album about a time long ago when a Celtic tribe called the Helvetii occupied part of Eluveitie’s homeland. Today, the band released the first song from the album for streaming — “Meet the Enemy”.

Unsurprisingly, it includes a variety of folk instruments and a bit of folk melody — but these contributions are brief. The song is mainly a galloping dash of familiar Scandinavian melodic death metal, albeit with a female warrior playing the hurdy-gurdy with the reins clenched in her teeth. The apparently studious Chrigel Glanzmann (who belts out the lyrics on the new song in full-on harsh mode) had this to say about the track on Eluveitie’s blog:

“We’re happy and proud to already present you “Meet The Enemy” – track 7 off our upcoming album “Helvetios”!

It tells you about the ‘encounter’ the Helvetians had with the roman legions in the year 58 BC – one of the crucial points in their history, for it was basically when the gaulish wars erupted.

So the song is pretty much filled with wrath and rage – upholding the furious spirit you might know from tracks such as “Kingdom Come Undone”, “Bloodstained Ground” or “Lament”.
Furthermore the song’s substantial instrumentation (including fiddle, hurdy gurdy, whistles and uilleann pipes) is also enriched by one of the guest musicians, we had the honour to work with – Fredy Schnyder (from Nucleus Torn) who contributed some amazing parts on the hammered dulcimer.

Hope you enjoy!”

Continue reading »

NAGLFAR FINALLY RELEASE A NEW SONG: “PALE HORSE”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Dec 242011
 

The Friday before Christmas is probably not an ideal day for releasing important news. In fact, as eagle-eyed as I am, I nearly missed this item. I’m so glad I didn’t. When I saw it last night, I became nearly giddy with excitement. Not actually giddy, because giddy is not metal, but nearly giddy. Here are the key elements of this story:

Sweden’s Naglfar has finished recording their new album — the first one since Harvest was released in 2007. It will be called Téras. It will be released by Century Media in March of next year. Sometime between now and then, the band will put out a limited-edition 7″ single that will include one track from Téras and a second song that will be exclusive to the single.

The band’s new line-up is down to vocalist Kristoffer W. Olivius (the band’s original bass player, who become Naglfar’s lead vocalist prior to the recording of Pariah (2005) after the departure of Jens Rydén), guitarist Andreas Nilsson (who has been with the band since its inception), and guitarist Marcus E. Norman (who joined in 2000). The drums for Téras were recorded by Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork, Scarve).

Last but certainly not least, yesterday Century Media made at song from the new album available for streaming. It’s called “Pale Horse”, and you can listen after the jump. If the quality of Naglfar’s previous albums weren’t enough to put Téras on your radar screen, this song should do it. Continue reading »

DEMONIC RESURRECTION LIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 222011
 

It was a good morning on our metallic island. The day here in the Pacific Northwest is dry and bright, I enjoyed BadWolf’s immensely entertaining interview with Arthur Von Nagel (Cormorant), and I’ve been filling my head non-stop with good metal — some cathartic black death from A Hill To Die Upon, a sampling of grindviolence courtesy of Alex Layzell, and a few head-wrecking tracks from Condemned.

I thought briefly about continuing my painful efforts to whittle down the list of most-infectious-song candidates into something less than 100 songs, but decided to put that off a while longer (“Procrastination” being one of my middle names) and instead check out news from the 5,000 bands I follow on Facebook. Turned out to be a wise decision, because in doing that I discovered some extremely high-quality concert video of the mighty Demonic Resurrection performing at the 26th annual Independence Rock festival in Mumbai, India, on November 26.

And by high-quality, I mean (a) it was filmed with about 100 cameras from about 100 different angles (including, like, just underneath the hand of DR’s keyboardist so you get a close-up of his fingers in motion), and (b) it sounds fucking awesome. Also, the stage is festooned with color and smoke and lights and looks killer.

As for the music, it’s over the top. Despite the fact that “Apocalyptic Dawn” is a single song, it almost sounds like a medley (even more so than on DR’s 2005 album, A Darkness Descends), with elements of symphonic black metal, death metal, power metal, and folk metal all effectively fused together — plus a heavy dose of hardcore vocal violence added by guest singer Sunneith Revankar of another Indian band we love around here, Bhayanak Maut. Continue reading »

AN EXCLUSIVE NCS PREMIERE: ABORTED’S “THE ORIGIN OF DISEASE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Dec 212011
 

Instead of being institutionalized for long-term treatment, the psychopaths in Aborted are about to release their seventh full-length album, Global Flatline. This monstrosity will be vomited forth on the unprotected public by Century Media on January 24. Today, we’re as happy as zombies feasting on a putrid corpse to premiere the album’s third track, “The Origin of Disease”.

Over the course of their storied career, Aborted have churned out a grisly body of work that has stood the test of time and amassed a global following of fans who are now hungry for more. From what we’ve heard of the album so far, they won’t be disappointed.

“The Origin of Disease” is on the bleeding forward-edge of speed, propelled by a relentless drum barrage and scalpel-sharp riffing. It’s caustic and crushing, but it’s also loaded with powerful grooves and spiced up with infectious bursts of lead guitar and a solo near the end that spins out in unexpected directions. It features titanic bass lines, explosive bass drops, irresistible chugging, and dual vocals — Sven De Caluwé’s hair-raising shrieks and sink-hole gutturals courtesy of guest vocalist Julien Truchan (Benighted) — which carve quite viciously.

In short, it’s a fully loaded, jet-fueled, razor-sharp head-fucker of a song: a blast of modern death metal from a band who definitely aren’t just regurgitating the gory glories of the past, but who haven’t pulled up their roots from it either. Continue reading »

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC (NEKROMANTHEON, KRODA, AND INTERVALS)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 202011
 

Here are a few things I saw and heard last night and this morning that I thought were worth your time.

Of course, I don’t know exactly what you do with your time, or how valuable your time is, or what potentially horrible consequences might result if you spent time listening to this music instead of doing what you would be doing if you weren’t listening to this music.  So, I guess you could say I’m being presumptuous.  I prefer to believe that I’m enriching your miserable lives with the beauty and joy of good metal, compared to which most things are drab and stultifying, including your lives.

ITEM ONE: NEKROMANTHEON

This item came my way from KevinP, who believes that I do not need erectile dysfunction drugs because I pop wood over almost every metal band on the planet. He sent me a link about a band named Nekromantheon. The fact that I like their music in no way validates his own opinion about it, because my own standards are so low. Perhaps sending me links such as this is KevinP’s subtle way of trying to raise my standards. If so, that’s a mission doomed to failure. I like what I like, and if you don’t like it, fuck you. (I’m not talking about YOU when I say that; I’m referring to that one person who stopped reading NCS because he thought my standards were too low. Of course, there’s only one such person, ever, or ever will be.)

Nekromantheon is from Norway and the style of their music is a certain kind of thrash. But it’s not let’s-get-drunk-and-fuck thrash. It’s more like let’s-find-innocent-children-and-sacrifice-them-to-Cthulhu thrash. Continue reading »

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