ME, after listening to the randomly selected music you’re about to hear.
THIS
The band is Vindensång, from Pennsylvania. The song is from their 2008 debut, Terminus: Rebirth in Eight Parts. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »
Jul 092011
Jul 082011
I’ve never been a fan of Dir En Grey, even after seeing them live in Seattle, but I forced myself to watch their new video for a song called “Different Sense” when I peeped it at TheNumberOfTheBlog yesterday. The song is a schizophrenic mix of death-grind, proggy instrumentalism, and overly dramatic clean singing. I almost found myself getting into it at the beginning — but failed by the time it ended. Just not my thing.
So, I’m not adding this post because of the music. It’s the video. And all the tentacles. What is the fucking attraction that Japanese pop culture (or is it underground culture?) has for tentacles? Gore + tentacles! Sex + tentacles! Food + tentacles! Tentacles + tentacles! All the time tentacles!
I first discovered this Japanese tentacle fetish courtesy of NCS reader/commenter/occasional-blogger Phro, who is imprisoned in Japan for undisclosed past sins. So Phro, buddy, how ’bout some cultural analysis here? What da fuck is up wit dis?
Jul 072011
Can you guess what the update is? Go ahead, make a guess! I’ll even give you a hint. It involves three mouths, four sets of ears, scales, and horns.
Yes! It’s the just-revealed cover art for Mastodon’s next album, The Hunter. It’s not your typical metal-album style of artwork, and it’s not the work of Paul Romano, who was the artist behind all of Mastodon’s previous cover art. Instead, it was created by AJ Fosik, a wood carver who’s also responsible for the backdrop the band uses in their live shows.
I think it’s damned cool, not only in the composition, but also in the use of vivid colors. You can see some of AJ Fosik’s other work at this location. It’s damned cool, too.
Mastodon is currently in Europe for a summer-long tour that includes all the dates on this year’s Sonisphere festival as well as the Rock Im Park, Rock Am Ring, and Roskilde festivals, among others. The band is also scheduled to play a one-off show at The Gorge near Seattle on July 30, with Soundgarden, Queens of the Stone Age, and the venerable Meat Puppets.
Speaking of the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, after the jump we’ve got some quality fan-filmed video of Mastodon’s July 1, 2011 performance there. Continue reading »
Jul 072011
While feverishly trying to finish a few reviews and features I’m way late on, I still can’t help but listen to new songs as they pop up on the NCS radar screen, and I heard two head-smashers over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth sharing — from Halo of Gunfire (U.S.) and I Chaos (The Netherlands).
Actually, we don’t have radar at NCS, though we do have a foil-lined room designed to pick up alien transmissions from space. I think that’s where I received the subliminal instructions to listen to these songs, along with the instruction to paint my face green before going to work today. I always follow the instructions I hear in that room. I don’t wanna risk more rectal probing in the mothership that periodically hovers over the NCS Island. I couldn’t sit down for a week after the last session.
Actually, I haven’t been feverish either. If I worked feverishly, I might make more headway in completing the various writings I’ve started. I think a more accurate adjective for my work-pace would be fitful. Or maybe somnolent.
Where was I? Oh yeah, new head-smashing songs. Both of them deliver a technically exuberant form of modern death metal that I’m starting to classify in my own mind as “smash with flash” — music that melds technically demanding performance with untrammeled aggression, yet not as atonally brutal as the music of bands like Necrophagist or Hate Eternal; music that’s not part of the increasingly saturated (and often soulless) technical genre of “djent”; music that has progressive and even jazz tendencies but doesn’t feel compelled to wimp out with frequent injections of clean singing. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »
Jul 072011
OK, time to court some (albeit minor) controversy. To compare and contrast with the “Wintermoon Wednesday” piece on post-millennial black metal by Tr00 Nate (unseen at the time of this writing) over at TheNumberOfTheBlog, I’ve decided to list my own picks for the prize.
I’ve left out the obvious choices, so no Satyricon or 1349 – even though the former have transformed themselves post-2000 very successfully, courting both success and controversy in equal measure, while the latter have pushed their hyper-blast style beyond the breaking point, only to discover a new lease on life through their exploration of gnarled, twisted atmospherics.
No Rotting Christ? Or Samael? Nope. I love both of them, but they both had long pre-millennial careers and spent much of the post-2000 stage of their careers exploring less focussed, less black metal sounds — although both have recently released masterful examples of their own focussed and distinctive brands of black metal.
I have left out records which are perhaps less “purely” black metal — records for which a strong case can be put forward that they belong more as “blackened” examples of another genre — so there’s no place for Altar Of Plagues or Withered, both great bands in their own right. No Akercocke either, the sheer weight of their crushing death metal heft disqualifying them for this list.
I have also by choice left out artists/albums I have covered recently. Therefore, no Iskald (though The Sun I Carried Alone IS one of the best black metal albums of the last ten years), or Elite (see HERE for my thoughts) or The Axis Of Perdition (HERE), even though I’d argue that each of them has at least one example under their belt of near perfect post-millennial black metal.
So who have I chosen? Well look upon my choices dear reader, and despair… Continue reading »
Jul 062011
Many death metal and grindcore bands have got great names, the kind of names that are fun to trot out when a non-metalhead asks you what kind of music you listen to, just to see the resulting facial expressions. Dying Fetus and Napalm Death are among the names I like to use. Of course, it helps that I actually really like both bands.
Death metal and grindcore song names are good for this purpose, too — like “Unchallenged Hate”. Now, if a non-metalhead asks you what you’ve been listening to today, you can tell them: Dying Fetus’s cover of Napalm Death’s “Unchallenged Hate” — because that’s what we’ve got for you in this post. It was just put up for streaming by Metal Hammer, via Muzu.tv, and because the player is embeddable, we’ve got it for you after the jump.
This is the second Dying Fetus cover we’ve featured, the first one being their cover of “Unleashed Upon Mankind” by Bolt Thrower (here). Both songs are from Dying Fetus’ cover album, History Repeats…, which will be released by Relapse on July 19 in NorthAm and internationally on July 25.
And in other news, the re-issue of Death’s Human album (which we covered here) is now streaming in full — all 49 tracks. The link for that is also after the jump. Continue reading »
Jul 052011
UK musical comedian Bill Bailey recorded this special message to Metallica during his rehearsals for Sonisphere UK at Knebworth. It made me horn-y:
NCS reader survey question for the day:
What is more metal: Bill Bailey’s performance or St. Anger? Please respond in the Comments.
And, after the jump, you can watch professionally filmed footage of Metallica’s July 3 performance at Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden, which was originally broadcast on the Swedish TV channel SVT. Continue reading »
Jul 042011
I shit you not. This has to be the mother of all happy coincidences.
Four days ago we featured a video update from Fleshgod Apocalypse in one of our posts as a teaser to their appearance on this year’s edition of the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour, and included the news that the band intended to play new songs from their next album on the tour.
Then, the next day we featured a new video of Vader performing in Germany on June 25 and included the news that Nuclear Blast planned to begin streaming a new Vader song on July 15.
And now, Nuclear Blast Europe has just made new songs from each band available for free download! And finally, my slow-as-molasses wireless data card decided to speed up enough that I could actually download the two songs without waiting all day for it to finish. Both of them will blow the top of your head right off into the stratosphere. (more after the jump, including streams of the songs and the download links . . .) Continue reading »
Jul 042011
Almost one month ago, NCS writer Israel Flanders reviewed a 2006 album he loved called Darkday Carnival from a Dutch band called Cypher. That album attracted quite a following when initially released, and the band started work on a follow-up album to be called Tyrian MMVII. They recorded three songs which became available for streaming on Cypher’s MySpace page. In Israel’s opinion, those songs were the foundation for what could have been “the best melodeath record released in the last 10 years”. And then all activity appeared to stop.
As a result of his review, Israel became acquainted with the main-man behind Cyper, Tobias Borra, who confirmed to Israel what fans of the band had suspected — that Cypher is no more. However, a new band is rising from those ashes. Tobias has been joined by Joost van der Graaf (bass) and Koen Herfst (drums) in the successor to Cypher. The new band is working on an album that, with good fortune, will see release before this year is over.
As for Tyrian MMVIII, Tobias explained to Israel that it was intended as a 3-song promo for a new Cypher album, and therefore may never see release. But Tobias provided us a copy, which we made available for download with Israel’s review. Now, thanks to Tobias, we’ve got something even better — a new download package that includes high-quality FLAC versions of the three promo songs, album art for Tyrian MMVII, and a tablature book for the three songs. All that is included in a file you can download from our own high-speed Fileburst account via . . .
Jul 032011
Time to get your tech-metal on. Pick your metaphor: A cocktail blender set to puree, with your brain in there along with the crushed ice; a centrifuge whipping around at max-speed, with your mushy grey matter stuffed into the tubes; a jet engine whining at full-power, with your head sucked into the front end like a wayward goose who couldn’t get out of the way.
Those will all do, but this morning I prefer a breakfast food metaphor: Whipping up your brain with a little milk into a nice froth and then scrambling the mix in a hot pan with some diced onions, chopped tomatoes, shredded cheese, and sliced jalapeños. Yum yum!
You’ll have to supply the ingredients, but Quarter the Villain and RXYZYXR will supply the scrambling action via two music videos we’ve got for you.
QUARTER THE VILLAIN
We first encountered Florida’s Quarter the Villain last October through one of our MISCELLANY expeditions, and the song we featured back then was called “Frontier Justice”. And then just yesterday, I saw that QTV had uploaded an official video for the same song. So all I need to do here is repeat what I wrote before: “This is the soundtrack of daily life in the asylum. It’s got the over-the-borderline insanity of grind, coupled with mind-boggling technical picking, but anchored by a recurrent rhythmic theme executed expertly by the bass and drum lines.” And now we’ve got something pretty cool to watch while we listen to the tech-grind craziness. Continue reading »