LEGEND UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 262010
 

Legend is a metalcore band from Michigan whose debut album, Valediction, we reviewed in June (here). At that time, the members of Legend included vocalist Chad Ruhlig (ex-For the Fallen Dreams), bass-player Joe Ellis (also ex-FTFD), and guitarist Aaron “Bubble” Patrick (ex-Bury Your Dead). In the space of the last five months, the line-up has undergone a thorough revision. Ruhlig is still on vocals (thankfully), but Ellis and Patrick are gone, and the new line-up consists of Devan Dickerson (guitar), Matty Harrah (bass and vocals), and Dylan Shippey (drums).

Today’s update was prompted by the revised Legend’s hot-off-the-presses release of a new song called “Proven”. It’s a hot song — heavy as fuck, obliterating as a jackhammer with a mind of its own, synaptically convulsing, and fueled by Chad Ruhlig’s wonderful hardcore howls and death-metal growls. The production has got just the right mix of muddiness and clarity for a brutally downtuned song like this. And to put some sweet icing on this dense cake, Legend’s label (Rise Records) is making the song available for free download at the band’s Pure Volume site (here). We don’t know how long the free download will last, so don’t delay — go get it.

Now, even though it only takes seconds to download this song, you may still want to hear it before allowing it to occupy the precious storage on your hard drive. We can handle that. We can let you hear the song first. And we can even do better than that. We can play you the song while at the same time allowing you to see a time-lapse video of Josh Schroeder, a.k.a. “Metal Josh,” creating new merch artwork for Legend. Josh also runs a professional recording studio (called Random Awesome), and he happens to be the dude who recorded this Legend single (in addition to recording albums for Dagon, For Today, Beneath the Sky, Hester Prynne and many others). Multi-talented people make us insecure.

So, while creating the artwork that you see above, Josh kept the camera rolling and then speeded it up so you can see the creation of the art from beginning to end while you listen to the song. Seriously, it’s so much fun to watch. So, continue past the jump and watch it! Continue reading »

CATCHING UP (Part 2)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 252010
 

Yes, still catching up on developments in the world of metal that happened while I was on vacation. Yes, there’s probably a better-than-even chance that you already saw some of this while I was fucking off, but maybe you didn’t, or maybe you didn’t pay close attention the first time around. So, here are a handful of additional items I thought were interesting as I slogged through the mountains of posts on a few metal blogs and/or Facebook and/or MySpace that appeared while I was away.

Today, we have for you a hot new video by Bloodshedd (The Philippines) and new music from Murder Construct (California), and Exist (Washington, DC).

BLOODSHEDD

In February of this year, we reviewed an album called Spare No One, released in 2009 on the Tower of Doom label by a band from The Philippines called Bloodshedd. We summed up our review with these words: “Trust us on this: If Bloodshedd were in the U.S. instead of the Phillipines, they’d be turning heads far and wide. They’ve sure spun our heads all the way around! This is blazingly creative music played with passion and top-shelf skill.”

Well, while I was off on vacation, the band released their second official music video in support of Spare No One. It’s for a song called “Beast 696”. The video is another one of those band-playing-in-a-warehouse-or-alley concoctions, with fast cut-aways in the editing to keep pace with the blazing music. And oh hell, does it blaze — a buzzsaw of blackened thrash played with top-shelf instrumental skill and a knack for triggering neck-snap’s.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

WIDOW SUNDAY: FOREVER SLEEP

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 242010
 

Back in early September, we reviewed Widow Sunday‘s 2010 album, In These Rusted Veins (here). We were mighty impressed with this band’s range of musical flavors, and mighty happy with how much fun we had listening to the album. Here’s one excerpt from our review:

The instrumental work on In These Rusted Veins is tight and capable, the songs are an infectious brew of shuddering verses and melodic choruses, and the production is top-notch, delivering a powerful punch — clear and defined when it needs to be, and a distorted cacophony when the song calls for it. And in the vocal department, Jacob Falconer proves himself to be a human chameleon with an impressive range — moving from hardcore howls to death-metal growls to almost-melodic yowls.

We added one song in our review for you to stream, and introduced it this way: “You want something with start-stop hammering, a la Meshuggah, with a big hooky chorus, a nice bass sweep, off-kilter machine-gunning on the drums, and an industrial vibe — kind of like Fear Factory or Alien-era Strapping Young Lad, but without the clean singing? Try ‘Forever Sleep’.”

Why are we reprising all this today? Well, it’s because Widow Sunday has just released an official music video for that very same “Forever Sleep” song. The song is just as much fun as it was back in September, and the video is sweet, too — shots of the band performing in a club and a little fatalistic story interspersed with the performance footage. Check out the video after the jump. Continue reading »

GUITAR WIZARDRY (PROOF THAT WE CAN BE MELLOW, ONCE IN A BLUE MOON)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Nov 232010
 

We can be mellow. It’s true! After all, I spent a lot of my vacation staring at clouds, and I wasn’t even high. That’s mellow, isn’t it? Plus, we get really mellow when we’re asleep (except when we’re thrashing around in a fever dream because we can’t get the latest Deathspell Omega album out of our heads).

Okay, to be brutally honest, here at NCS we don’t get mellow with our music very often. We prefer music that’s . . . whatever the opposite of “mellow” is. Wait a minute, let me look that up.

Okay, I looked it up, and the dictionary says the antonym of mellow is “harsh”. That’s the kind of music we prefer here at NCS — harsh music. Loud, harsh music — the kind that makes your hair stand straight up and causes the cat to spontaneously evacuate its bowels. Actually, we don’t like it when the cat does that, and I’m sure he doesn’t like it much either, which is why I usually listen to music through my earbuds, but you know what I’m talking about, right? Music that’s not safe for pets. Or small children. That’s what NCS is about, usually.

But every now and then, once in a blue moon, we stumble into mellowness, usually without meaning to. This morning was one of those times. We thought about just enjoying the brief mellowness phase and not sharing it with you, because we know most of you don’t come here to be dosed with mellow. But then we thought, maybe NCS readers get mellow every now and then, too. It could happen. It’s not likely, but it could. So, we’re sharing.

But to clear up any confusion, mellowness is a relative concept, and what we have for you is only relatively mellow — and it does feature the kind of wizardry that Harry Potter only dreams of, in this case, some genuine, no-bullshit, hot-off-the-presses guitar wizardry from Joe Satriani, and something older but very cool from Buckethead.  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

GOATWHORE LIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Nov 232010
 

The next time your grandma asks you, “honey, what does black ‘n roll, NOLA-style, sound like?”, you can tell her it sounds like this:

(and this is Goatwhore, in a high-quality video of the band performing “In the Narrow Confines of Defilement”, live in Denver on November 10; more videos from this show are available here)

THE BURNING: BAIT THE HOOK

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Nov 222010
 

Last month in one of our MISCELLANY posts, we wrote about a Danish band called The Burning and their then-forthcoming new album, Hail the Horde. We featured a song from the album called “Bait the Hook”, which we described thusly: “It’s a nasty piece of stripped-down, mid-tempo, power-groove with an absolutely killer, headbangingly-compulsive, main riff; a gritty low end that vibrates in the gut; expressive, throaty vocals; and a nice old-school, grinding breakdown that just churns and churns. . . . If you can stay still while listening to this baby, you may have narcolepsy.”

Well, the album is now out — and the band has just released an official music video for that “Bait the Hook” song.  Holy hell, I do love this song. Take firm hold of your chains and prepare to get your fuckin’ groove on.  (Thanks to the excellent Metality blog for the tip on this video.)

A TEASER: NECRONAUT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 202010
 

[Just in case we ran short of quality guest contributions to use while I was away, I wrote a few brief pieces before leaving. They’re called “teasers” because they’re just brief tastes of new albums that I’d like to review for NCS when I get back — because they’re really good. Of course, I have the attention span of a gnat, so there’s a chance I’ll never do that, and these teasers will be all I accomplish.]

This is the fifth teaser. The first one was about The Secret. The second was about Blood of Kingu. The third one was about Melechesh. The fourth one was about The Wretched End. This one is a taste of the new album by:

The Band: Necronaut

The Band’s Location: Sweden

The Album: Necronaut

Label: Regain Records

The Band’s MySpace page:  http://www.myspace.com/necronaut666

Brief notes:  Necronaut is the all-star project of Fred Estby, the former drummer of Dismember and Carnage. He recruited an impressive line-up of guests to help create this album. Shit, “impressive” is really an understatement. Wait and see.

“Old school” is a really over-worked, cliched expression, but given Estby’s personal history and the pedigree of the dudes who are involved in this project, we have to use it: This is old-school death metal, with a hellish current running through it.

Here’s a track — the vocals on this one are supplied by Andreas “Drette” Axelson (Tormented, ex-Edge of Sanity):

Necronaut: Twilight At the Trenches

To see the complete line-up of people that Estby recruited to contribute to this album, click past the jump . . . Continue reading »

THAT WASN’T THEM – VOLUME 2: STEALING FROM CHILDREN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 192010
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we have yet another guest post by ElvisShotJFK — this one being the second installment in a series he created in his last post.]

Don’t you hate it when you hear a good song but don’t know who’s it’s by? Sometimes it’s more frustrating when the song is a cover and you can’t figure out who’s actually playing it. The more obscure the song or band, the harder it is to figure out where to look. Even with the wealth of knowledge to be found online these days, Napster Syndrome is alive and well, making some songs difficult to accurately track down. People still get it wrong, no matter how many times someone who knows what they’re talking about says something.

Like Cradle Of Filth (who I mentioned earlier in Volume 1), Children Of Bodom have recorded several covers over their career, going so far as to release an album’s worth of covers, some of them recorded specifically for the album. Not only that, but they used midgets to help promote the album.


Heavy metal midgets. Awesome.

Where was I? Oh yeah . . . even though they’ve done a fair amount of covers, there are songs that have been credited to them that were actually done by other bands.

Let’s get Blooddrunk and dive right in . . . Continue reading »

A TEASER: THE WRETCHED END

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 182010
 

[Just in case we ran short of quality guest contributions to use while I was away, I wrote a few brief pieces before leaving. They’re called “teasers” because they’re just brief tastes of new albums that I’d like to review for NCS when I get back — because they’re really good. Of course, I have the attention span of a gnat, so there’s a chance I’ll never do that, and these teasers will be all I accomplish.]

This is the fourth teaser. The first one was about The Secret. The second was about Blood of Kingu, The third one was about Melechesh. This one is a taste of the new album by:

The Band: The Wretched End

The Band’s Location: Norway

The Album: Ominous

Label: Nocturnal Art Productions, with marketing and distribution worldwide through Candlelight Records

The Band’s MySpace page:  http://www.myspace.com/thewretchedend

Brief notes:  This band is a collaboration between Samoth (Emperor/ Zyklon) on lead and rhythm guitar, and Cosmo (Mindgrinder) on lead and rhythm guitar plus bass and vocals — those two previously worked together on a deathpunk project called Scum — plus Nils Fjellström (Dark Funeral, In Battle, Aeon) as the drummer. Some very nice death/thrash played by people who know what the fuck they’re doing.

Here’s a track:

The Wretched End: Red Forest Alienation

MUSIC TO xxxxx TO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  19 Responses »
Nov 172010
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Our temporarily Australian correspondent The Artist Formerly Known As Dan has another list for you today. He left out a few activities. We sure hope the comments fill in the holes . . .]

If you are like me (read: a nerd) then you tend to categorize everything, especially music.  Whenever I hear something new, I’m very quick to make a judgement about the overall sound and what type of music it is. Only, I’m not filtering it into one of those sub-genres that are constantly argued about on the internet. I’m thinking about if I like the music enough to listen to it again. If the answer is yes, then I think about when I would listen to the music again, and what the associated activity might be (don’t ask me how or why I do this – I probably have a problem).

Anyway, the point is, I think about music as something to augment my life and its associated activities, like some kind of bizarre “soundtrack to life.” For example, I really really enjoy gaming to Dagoba. I’m not positive how it started, but I think I was playing Guild Wars and I played the entirety of Face the Colossus and it was just fucking awesome.

This post is mostly meant to stimulate discussion, so what is your favorite music to xxxxx to?  I’ll list some examples below of some activities and what I like to hear while doing them.  (after the jump . . . including music to hear) Continue reading »

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