METAL FROM MALTA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Feb 192011
 

I think of metal as an island haven in an ocean of musical dreariness. I also like real islands, in addition to metaphorical ones. You probably never would have guessed that.

Malta is an archipelago of real islands, with an incredibly rich history, located in the Mediterranean about 58 miles (93 km) south of Sicily. It’s also an independent nation. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge, it’s total land area is only about 120 square miles (316 square km), making it one of the smallest and most densely populated countries on earth (with a total population of about 410,000).

Simply because of its size, it’s one of those places, among others we’ve covered in the past, that’s probably not an ideal launching pad for a metal band. But that hasn’t stopped the two bands we’re featuring in this post: Abysmal Torment and For the Godless.

Those bands share a drummer — Max Vassallo — with whom we had the pleasure of swapping e-mails recently, and both bands also happen to play badass metal. We’ve got some news about these bands, plus some of their music, after the jump. Continue reading »

NEW DARKEST HOUR VIDEO

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 162011
 

One of our favorite metal bands, Darkest Hour, has a new album set for official release next week. It’s called The Human Romance. From the songs we’ve heard so far, it’s going to be very strong.

Earlier today, ARTISTdirect.com premiered the first official music video for the new album, for the song “Savor the Kill”. ARTISTdirect introduced the video this way (saving our lazy selves the time of doing it for you):

“Against the backdrop of bone liquefying music, the video features a hot chick in a white dress and another hot chick in a magenta dress. Both are in the woods. There are wolves, and footage of the band performing. There is also some blood. It’s almost like a dark, twisted, perverted fairytale, set to metallic riffage that will force you to bang your head involuntarily. That’s all the detail we’ll share – it’s up to you to watch it now and piece together your own perception of what’s going on in the video for ‘Savor the Kill'”.

If you would like to see the video, continue past the jump and check it out. It’s good — and so is the song. Continue reading »

WE TEASING YOU: BECOMING THE ARCHETYPE, MOONSORROW, AND CANNIBAL CORPSE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Feb 152011
 

That eye-catching piece of art above is the cover for Celestial Completion, the next album by Atlanta’s Becoming the Archetype. The original painting was done by Dan Seagrave with art direction from Ryan Clark at Invisible Creature (if that name sounds familiar, that’s the same Ryan Clark who’s the frontman for Demon Hunter). Looks like, when the rapture comes, there will be some interruptions in shipping traffic.

We thought this band’s 2008 album, Dichotomy, was an interesting dish of progressive death metal. The new single they released in 2009 — “Necrotizing Fasciitis” — in addition to being an inventively named piece of music with an unusual metaphor at the core of its lyrics, was a promise of even more interesting things to come. It turned the brutality dial up more than a few notches and jettisoned most of the prog influences, but still included some nice tech-death flourishes.

Now, as a teaser for the next album, the band have released a single for streaming. It sounds almost nothing like “Necrotizing Fasciitis”, but it’s growing on us. And it’s just the first of three teasers we’ve stapled together in this post.

For our second one, we’ve got a mix of the music from the next release by Finland’s awesome Moonsorrow, and to finish off the post, there’s a clip from the forthcoming DVD by Cannibal Corpse. Hey, you can’t say we don’t bend over backwards to bring you variety in metal. (all this stuff is after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THIS DAY HAS TAKEN A TURN FOR THE WORSE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Feb 142011
 

Just when we were feeling unusually upbeat about Valentine’s Day, what with a new Amon Amarth track and yet another new track from Scale the Summit‘s next album (which is called “Gallows” and is streaming here), we got an e-mail from Andy Synn with nothing but “I am in mourning” in the subject line, and a link. A fucking depressing link . . .

. . . to a news item reporting that one of our favorite metal bands on the planet, God Dethroned, is disbanding. Unfortunately, it’s official, and confirmed in a statement by the band’s guitarist/vocalist/songwriter/mastermind/World War I historian, Henri Sattler.

This is particularly surprising since Sattler has been quoted as saying the band’s next album would be the completion of a trilogy about World War I that began with Passiondale and 2010’s amazingly good Under the Sign of the Iron Cross.  (more after the jump, including Sattler’s statement . . . and a song) Continue reading »

AMON AMARTH: “SLAVES OF FEAR”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Feb 142011
 

You can’t say no one gave you a Valentine today. Not only did we give you one, in the form of an Amorphis video and a nice skull-with-flowers card, but Amon Amarth have given you one, too.

It’s evident that Amon Amarth is a huge favorite at this site, so we thought it was worth alerting you to the fact that within the last hour, Metal Blade has released another track from Surtur Rising — the new album due for release on March 29. This one is called “Slaves of Fear”. Here’s what AA’s drummer Fredrik Andersson had to say about the song:

“‘Slaves Of Fear’ is not the all-typical Amon Amarth song. It was one of the last songs we finished for the album and what makes this song a little bit different is the collaboration between me and [guitarist] Olavi [Mikkonen] as songwriters. Usually, most songs are written by Olavi and [guitarist] Johan [Söderberg]. It’s definitely one of the darkest songs we’ve ever written and the main/intro riff is my personal tribute to the passing of Ronnie James Dio as the riff came to me after listening to Holy Diver. Lyrically, it’s about how religions keep people under its control and  from thinking for themselves. It includes some of the most angry lyrics [vocalist] Johan [Hegg] has written and they kind of remind me of ‘The Sound Of Eight Hooves’ [off 2001’s The Crusher full-length] in a way. It works exceptionally well with the melancholic feel of the riffs.”

I sure wish we could stick the song right here for you to hear, but that will have to wait — because for now, it’s streaming exclusively at the Deciblog. But much as we hate to ever send you away from NCS, you really ought to hear this song. So — here is the link.

UPDATE: Now we’ve got the song for you to hear at NCS –right after the jump. Continue reading »

DIVIN’ IN DAT DEATHCORE SHIT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  48 Responses »
Feb 132011
 

How did Deathcore get to be such a lightening rod for controversy within the extreme metal scene? Seems like all you gotta do to ignite a testosterone-fueled, name-calling slagfest on most metal blogs and message boards is mention the word. In some quarters, shitting on deathcore is like a litmus test of metal purity: If you take a big verbal dump on the genre, that’s evidence of sophistication in your musical taste, and if you express enthusiasm for the music, it proves you’re a retard.

All the controversy seems to have moved some deathcore icons (like Job For A Cowboy, Whitechapel, and Carnifex) further away from core and further into straight death, and other bands who have remained true to the template don’t want to be called deathcore bands, even if that’s really what they still are. Even a lot of deathcore fans seem to feel they have to take part in the branding of some bands as no-talent wastes in order to buff up their cred in praising other, almost indistinguishable, bands as the real deal.

Connecticut/NYC band Emmure may be the lightening rod of all lightening rods within the genre. They’ve got an intensely devoted cadre of fans, but man, they’ve got an equally devoted army of haters out there, too. Here at NCS, we’ve been somewhere in the middle, like crouching down in the open space of the floor right before a wall of death is triggered. The three of us who started this site saw them play Seattle as an opening act on their first national tour, and we liked their debut album. On the other hand, we were unanimous in thinking their last release, Felony, was an embarrassment.

They’re on the verge of releasing a new album on Century Media (due February 15) called Speaker of the Dead, and two singles have surfaced so far, including a video for one of them that debuted just a couple days ago. We’ve got both those songs for you after the jump, along with some thoughts about the music. Plus, we’ve also got a brand new song from the forthcoming album by LA’s Winds of Plague, and a fairly new video from another deathcore lightening rod, Chelsea Grin. If you feel like gettin’ your breakdown on, stay with us. Continue reading »

MYTHIC METAL: EAST MEETS WEST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 122011
 

While scanning through Blabbermouth yesterday, I came across items about two bands who are from very different cultures but who both find musical inspiration in myths: Finland’s Crimfall and Singapore’s Rudra. Both bands have new albums on the way, and I thought they’d make an interesting compare-and-contrast feature. So, here we go:

CRIMFALL

Finland’s Crimfall falls into the category of Northern European folk metal, and in particular, a style that uses contrasting vocals — here, Helena Haaparanta‘s clean soprano, which is one source of the music’s folk sound, and Mikko Häkkinen‘s icy black-metal rasp. The band released a debut album in 2009 called As the Path Unfolds . . . as a three-piece unit (those two vocalists plus band-founder Jakke Viitala), with help from session musicians.

Since then, the band has filled out with the addition of a permanent drummer (Janne Jukarainen) and bassist (Miska Sipiläinen), and I remember seeing a performance video by the full band of a song from the debut sometime last year. Crimfall have now completed a second album (The Writ of Sword) due for a March 23 release on Spineform Records.

What drew my attention to the news about the next release was the line-up of guests who appear on the album — Tapio Wilska (Survivors Zero), Ville Sorvali (Moonsorrow), Mathias “Vreth” Lillmåns (Finntroll), Mathias Nygård and Olli Vänskä from Turisas, and Trollhorn (Finntroll, Moonsorrow). Pretty attention-grabbing list, huh?  Also, it was mastered by Sweden’s masterful Jens Bogren (Opeth, Spoilwork, Katatonia, Bloodbath, and many others).  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE DOG SHIT

 IQ Subtraction, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Feb 112011
 

NCS is going to the dogs today. Within an hour of putting up our first post, which featured dog balls and Bury Your Dead, I saw this awesome video. It was like serendipity. Or synchronicity. I can never remember the difference between those words, though I like both of them. Anyway, I felt like someone was trying to tell me something. Someone was saying, “you shall make NCS all about dogs today”. And I am obeying.

The song on this video is by August Burns Red, a band that all three of your NCS co-founders like a bunch. It’s called “The Eleventh Hour” and it’s on the band’s 2007 album, Messengers. It’s a good song. It would be worth hearing again today even if the video image were just an unchanging black screen. But what goes on in this video is funny as shit to watch. The guy who’s operating the dog’s paws is clearly a drummer (though I don’t think it’s ABR’s Matt Greiner, despite a resemblance) and clearly knows the drum track on this song pretty damned well. And the changing expressions on the dog’s face are priceless (particularly the teeth-baring).

You know he’s a good dog, because although you can see that he’d like to bite the shit out of the dude’s hands, he’s holding back.

P.S. Someone out there is going to be offended by this. I’m pretty soft-hearted when it comes to animals and pretty sensitive when it comes to human abuse of animals, but there’s no real harm done here.

CHILDREN OF BODOM: UGLY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 102011
 

We’ve had previous discussions in these pages about the changes in Children of Bodom‘s music over time, and there seems to be a general feeling of nervousness about the quality of the band’s next album, Relentless Reckless Forever, which will be released on March 8 — particularly because the first single, “Was It Worth It?”, was an underwhelming effort.

Today, the band officially put up a second single from the album for streaming on their Facebook page — though as far as I can tell, you have to “share” the thing on your own page in order to hear it. Then, of course, I found out the song has unofficially been up on YouTube for almost a solid week. A few other metal blogs tuned in to that development before we did, but maybe you’re just as slow on the uptake as we are. And just in case you haven’t already heard the song, you can listen to it after the jump.

And just to be clear, no matter whether you think (like we do) that the band’s music has become increasingly formulaic and — dare we say it — more like heavy-metal pop music than we ever thought possible, this is still Children of Bodom and we WILL still listen when they come out with new music.  And, as it happens, this newest song — called “Ugly” — is a big step up from “Was It Worth It?” Continue reading »

NEW VIDEO FROM THE FAMINE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 092011
 

Recently, we reviewed The Famine‘s new album, The Architects of Guilt (here). We liked it. A lot.

Minutes ago, The Famine released their first video of a song from the album. The song is “Ad Mortem”. Damn good song. Really good. It’s already on our list of candidates for 2011’s most infectious songs.

The video is above average, too. It can be seen above. That is all.

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