DYSCARNATE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Dec 192011
 

I decided I couldn’t leave that last post sitting at the top of this page for the next 15 hours until we start tomorrow’s postings. Someone might get the wrong idea about what this blog is all about or, worse yet, about my sexual prowess. Someone might come away with the impression that I need ED drugs. Ha ha! That would be, like, a total misimpression, 180 degrees off course, really wrong-headed, and just a dumb idea. Wrong.  And dumb.

But still, I decided to put something up here for overnight, and what I picked was a song called “A Drone In the Hive” by a three-piece UK death metal band called Dyscarnate. Their second album, And So It Came To Pass, will be released on Feb 27 by Siege of Amida Records, and this song is from that album. It debuted on their Facebook page.

The album art is very cool. It’s by Valnoir Mortasonge of Metastazis, who has done covers for the likes of The Black Dahlia Murder, Morbid Angel, and Watain. The band recorded the album with Chris Fielding at Foel Studio in Wales, and it was mixed and mastered by Jacob Hansen (Aborted, Xerath) in Denmark.

So after the jump, check out the song and let us know what you think. Continue reading »

CONTINENTAL DRIFT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Dec 192011
 

There’s now extensive evidence that hundreds of millions of years ago, all of Earth’s continents were joined together in one “super-continent” that scientists call Pangaea. Over immense periods of time, Pangaea divided into two smaller super-continents called Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Those giant land masses eventually divided into the continents we see today, and they have been drifting apart ever since, through the operation of plate tectonics.

Less than hundreds of millions of years ago, I listened to a shit-ton of melodic metalcore. In fact, it made up a significant majority of the metal I used to crank up on a daily basis. It was like a big land-mass of music where I lived. Over time, I’ve steadily drifted away from it, to the point where I almost never listen to it at all. I’ve moved away from it, or it moved away from me, and there’s now an ocean between us. The genre became saturated, but in my case, the main explanation is that my tastes changed.

It’s not enough to say that melodic metalcore stagnated, though it has. I now listen to genres of metal that haven’t changed much more than metalcore has changed over the same period of time, or even longer (old-school death metal anyone?). My tastes have simply moved in the direction of more extreme music.

One of the melodic metalcore bands whose albums I used to eagerly consume as they came out was Germany’s Caliban. They’ve been putting out albums since 1999, and they still are. The latest (their 8th) is called I Am Nemesis, and it’s scheduled for a North American release by Century Media on Feb. 28, 2012. This morning, the band released an official music video for the first single, “Memorial”. For Caliban, time has stood still. Continue reading »

ARSAFES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  27 Responses »
Dec 182011
 

Kartikeya is a Russian band we’ve mentioned quite often at this site (use the search box on this page and you’ll see what I mean). They’re very popular among those of us on the NCS staff, and they seem to be popular among our readers and other contributors, too (e.g., see Trollfiend’s list of the year’s best albums posted earlier today). They play an unusual (and unusually appealing) style of heavy-grooved melodic death metal that incorporates elements of traditional Indian music.

The leader of Kartikeya is a dude named Roman “Arsafes” Iskorostenskiy. Quite by accident, while doing some webernet research on Kartikeya for a forthcoming post, I learned that Arsafes is involved in other musical projects besides Kartikeya, and this morning I quickly checked them out.

One is a Russian pagan-metal band called Nevid (Невидь). Nevid have produced four full-length albums, the most of recent of which is 2011’s Agarta, and it appears that Arsafes has been the composer and guitarist for that band over the course of the last two albums. I’ve only listened to a couple of tracks from Agarta, but man is it good. There are some traditional pagan/folk instruments in the mix, but also some of those Meshuggah-esque, Kartikeya-style riffs and really catchy melodies. Nice, harsh, growly vocals, too.

Arsafes has also created a solo EP called A New Way of Creation that appeared in 2010. It includes an instrumental at the start, five original songs, and a cover of “Relentless” by Strapping Young Lad. I haven’t listened to the entire EP either, but what I’ve heard so far is also . . . aces. It’s a blast-furnace combo of progressive death metal with industrial overtones, sweeping melodies and Meshuggah-style hammering, and a mix of bestial death-metal roars and clean vocals. Reminiscent of SYL, Fear Factory, and the afore-mentioned Meshuggah, among other influences. There are some free download links to be found at this forum.

After the jump I’ve got sample songs from each of these two releases, both of which are quite different from each other — and different from Kartikeya, too.  Continue reading »

[INSERT NAME] SCREAM.COM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  28 Responses »
Dec 172011
 

So, this new Metal Injection-conceived web page called Tom Araya Scream has been making the rounds of the interhole since it appeared yesterday. It’s a clever idea, and if Slayer is, like, still your favoritest metal band ever, dude, SLAAAAAAAYER!!!! (while throwing two-handed horns), then you’ll probably be punching this button on your smartphone all weekend to get a few seconds of Tom Araya’s tinny scream.

However, if you’re to the point in your metal-listening life (as I am) when this scream has begun to sound sort of . . . what’s the word? . . . anemic? . . .  by comparison to the kind of really ugly, vicious, bile-vomiting screams and roars you really enjoy, then Tom Araya Scream is more useful as a template for something . . . better.  And no, I’m not talking about Bruce Dickinson or Rob Halford.

Like, how about Lord Worm Scream . . . such as the vein-exploder that starts at about the 3:45 mark of Cryptopsy’s classic “Open Face Surgery”?  (after the jump) Continue reading »

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 »

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