THAT WASN’T THEM – VOLUME 1: ROBBING THE CRADLE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Nov 162010
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we have another guest post by ElvisShotJFK. He has filth for you. As in, Cradle of . . . or maybe not.]

Back when Napster ruled college dorms, it allowed people to download and listen to all kinds of music that they might not have otherwise been able to hear. What started off as a simple idea snowballed into a fight with labels and artists picking sides; some were against the practice, while some embraced what it could do for their exposure.

Most people may remember Metallica’s role in the downfall of Napster, armed with 60,000 pages of user info.To many, the band seemed hypocritical, considering the tape trading that preceded the widespread usage of the internet that fueled the metal masses. However, Metallica did have a good reason to be concerned, but I think they handled it poorly and instead of looking at the immediate problem they faced (a leaked demo of “I Disappear”), they went for the symptom – the users of Napster. Napster’s founder didn’t help matters any when he showed up at the VMA’s wearing a Metallica shirt, then joked that he borrowed it from a friend.

Years have gone by and the Napster of old is long gone, as are some of its alternatives. While peer-to-peer is still around, torrents and hosting sites like Rapidshare, Megaupload and dozens of others serve the same purpose, but without many of the actual benefits. If someone had a bunch of stuff you were familiar with and liked, chances are he or she also had some other stuff that you’d like, not to mention the possibility of finding demos, rare tracks and bootlegs. Plus, not every download means a lost sale, but that’s a matter for another time.

Legal issues aside, there was another dark side to Napster and its kind — people who had no fucking clue who made the songs. “Weird Al” Yankovic was credited to almost every unknown funny song (or parody), while many a metal song were attributed to the big names, Metallica and Megadeth at the top of the heap.

Sadly, this trend continues to this day, and thus I present to you two songs attributed to one band, this band being Cradle Of Filth, who I’ve been a fan of for many years. I’m not here to defend the band, because they don’t need it and I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind about them. That’s not why I’m here, and I don’t mind if you don’t like the band. I do mind some of the attitudes people have toward the band, but there’s not really anything I can do about that.

So, let’s move on to the songs, after the jump. Continue reading »

A TEASER: MELECHESH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 162010
 

[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. So I’m running them now, even though I don’t need to]

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

The Band: Melechesh

The Band’s Location: The Netherlands (ex-Jerusalem)

The Album: Epigenesis

Label: Nuclear Blast

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

Brief notes:  Exotic, eastern, invigorating, black as night, red as fire, and sometimes bright as day. Sounds like nothing else. Here’s a track:

Melechesh: Sacred Geometry

A TEASER: BLOOD OF KINGU

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 142010
 

[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. So I’m running them even though I don’t need to.]

This is the second teaser. The first one was about The Secret. This one is a taste of the new album by:

The Band: Blood of Kingu

The Band’s Location: The Ukraine

The Album: Sun in the House of the Scorpion

Label: Candlelight

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

Brief notes:  This band is the side project of Roman Saenko, the creative force behind Ukrainian cult folk-black metal band Drudkh (as well as Dark Ages), and fellow Drudkh band members Thurios (who also played with Saenko in Hate Forest), Krechet, and Yuriy Sinitskyi.

But this music is a departure from Drudkh. It includes some ethnic drumming and some Tibetan chanting, but apart from those flourishes, this is standing-wave, wall-of-sound black metal that courses through your blood like a superheated injection. Here’s a track:

Blood of Kingu: Those That Wander Amidst the Stars

A TEASER: THE SECRET

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 132010
 

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 first one. As I write this, I’m in a hurry to get my ass out of Dodge, so this will be short and sweet.

The Band: The Secret

The Band’s Location: Trieste, Italy

The Album: Solve et Coagula

Label: Southern Lord Recordings

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

Brief notes:  This music will grind(core) your brain down to a nub and then drag it through a pool of tar. Haven’t heard vocals this hair-raising since the late Makh Daniels (Early Graves). The soundtrack to total loss of control. Here’s a track:

The Secret: Weathermen

P.S. In my half-assed attempt to keep up with what’s happening in the world of metal while on vacation, I saw a feature on MetalSucks about The Secret, which includes another track — and it turns out MetalSucks had done another feature about the band that I missed.  Check it out here if you like this music.

DETRIMENTUM UPDATE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 092010
 

Only a couple weeks ago, we featured news about a new song from one of our favorite UK death metal bands, Detrimentum — which has had their ups and downs but now seems fully on track to produce their first new album (tentatively entitled Inhumanity) since 2008’s Embracing the Deformity. But already, we have more excellent news: Detrimentum has now posted a second new song, called “Pestilence Shared With Worms”.

That new song — clocking in at more than 7 minutes — is just brilliant. It’s plenty brutal, with lots of nasty, unbridled aggression, and raw, bestial vocals. Oh, but there’s much more: huge rhythmic hooks and grooves, riffing that’s technically satisfying and unpredictably morphing, bursts of melodic lead guitar and a gripping — gripping — solo, a phase of tremolo-executed sonic waves, and near the end a a few measures of what sounds like a guitar-picked waltz.

It gallops and hammers and struts and dances. It has the kind of quasi-symphonic feel I get from Fleshgod Apocalpse and Hour of Penance. It’s our kind of modern death metal.  If you follow along with us after the jump, you can hear what we mean . . . Continue reading »

PSY:CODE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 092010
 

The clock is ticking down on my impending temporary disappearance from blogdom. I had ambitious plans for leaving you with an album review, but decided the time would be better spent finishing up the work necessary to get more guest posts ready for publication while I’m gone. So the album review will just have to wait — possibly until the world ends.

But that doesn’t mean we have no music for you today. We do! It started with a recent video from a Danish band called Psy:code, which released a debut album called Delusion this past spring (on a Danish label called Mighty Music). I didn’t know anything about Psy:code before peeping the video, but since then I’ve done a bit of research.

The band has been around since 2002, and in the fall of 2008 it won a contest sponsored by Danish national radio and Live Nation, the prize for which was supporting Slayer at a concert in Copenhagen in November of that year. So after watching the video (which you will eventually see), I visited the band’s MySpace page and listened to a song called “Web of Lies” — a different sound than the video song, and one that was riveting.

So, then, I found a video of the band’s performance at that Slayer concert — and damned if it wasn’t that same “Web of Lies” song — but set to a boisterous live performance. And I thought, this is all too good not to pass on. So, I’m passing it on. All of it. Both videos and the song.  (after the jump, naturally . . .) Continue reading »

RANDOM VIDZ

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Nov 062010
 

I’ve got a shitload of stuff to do in advance of my impending vacation, including advance work on this blog in an effort to keep it from going dark between November 10 and November 20. So what am I doing instead this morning? I’m fucking off, watching metal videos. Typical.

But it’s a hell of a lot more fun than doing all the crap I need to be doing. This is procrastination in action. Actually, I guess procrastination is the opposite of action. Whatever it is, I’m enjoying it, and I thought you might enjoy it, too. In case you feel like procrastinating, I’ve got five videos for you. That’s a lot of procrastinating material, but you can pick and choose if you don’t want to fuck off as much as I’ve been fucking off. The first four are live performances, with very good sound quality (and varying video quality).

WATAIN

The first offering is some quality fan-filmed video footage of WATAIN‘s October 27, 2010 performance of the song “Malfeitor” from Lawless Darkness at a club called the Baroeg in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. That Lawless Darkness album is stunningly good, and getting to watch Watain perform their evil music on stage is cool. Maybe someday I’ll get to see them in person.

(and after the jump, videos from God Dethroned, Asphyx, Pestilence, and The Browning . . .)

Continue reading »

LONG SONGS: AKELEI

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 032010
 

Late last week we started a mini-series of posts on long songs, because coincidentally we came across a group of metal bands with recent releases of music that included longer-than-average songs. And of course it doesn’t take much to launch us off on a tangent.

So far, we’ve featured long songs by Brooklyn’s Hull and Oregon’s Agalloch. Today, we’re venturing overseas with a post about an unsigned Dutch band called Akelei.

The music of Akelei is doom. As you will know if you’re a regular NCS reader, doom metal isn’t a genre we spend much time covering. That’s because we’re not big fans of doom. And since we’re not big fans, we’re pretty ignorant about the genre. Or, to be precise, we’re even more ignorant than we are about everything else.

Akelei have been in existence since 2006, and in that time have produced a 2008 demo, a 2010 single called “Dwaaluur”, and, as of about 3 days ago, a debut full-length album called De Zwaarte Van Het Doorstane, which is Dutch for . . . something.  Google Translate says it means “The Gravity of Weathered”, but we’re pretty sure something got lost in that translation.

What we do know is that the album is almost 55 minutes long — and includes only five songs. In many ways, it’s the opposite of what we usually like — but man, have we been hypnotized by this music.  (more after the jump, including a long song to hear . . .) Continue reading »

LONG SONGS: AGALLOCH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 312010
 

Late last week we decided to start running a series of posts on long songs that actually warrant the time required to consume them.  All of the songs we have in mind are quite recent releases from quite interesting bands.  Our first installment was a 16+ minute song by Hull. Today, we’ve got one that’s almost 12 minutes long. It’s called “The Watcher’s Monolith” and it will appear on the forthcoming album by Oregon’s Agalloch.

Agalloch is a blazingly talented underground band with a global cult following that seems to care very little about self-promotion.  They create their music with devotion to detail, they release it when they’re ready and not before, and they’re constantly exploring. If by chance you’re not familiar with Agalloch, they’re not easy to shove into a genre pigeon-hole, in part because the music has evolved so significantly over the course of their discography. To varying degrees, they incorporate elements of black metal, folk metal, pagan metal, progressive rock, and — well, maybe you get the idea.

Agalloch’s new album, Marrow of the Spirit, will be released on November 23 via Profound Lore Records. This will be the band’s fourth full-length release, and of course it’s highly anticipated in certain circles (including the somewhat oblong circle here at NCS). In the run-up to that release, Agalloch’s John Haughm granted an interview to Stereogum, and in conjunction with that interview, Stereogum debuted “The Watcher’s Monolith” two days ago. In a word, it’s awesome.  (more after the jump, including the song . . .) Continue reading »

CLOUDKICKER

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Oct 312010
 

Yesterday we tossed up a teaser on this site, just a single song for you to hear with no information about the band (other than the mp3 tag that I didn’t know how to eliminate from the file). We did promise to reveal more about the music today, and we don’t lie.

The song we featured yesterday is called “The Discovery”. It’s the seventh track on a debut album that’s also called The Discovery. It was released in July 2008 by a “band” called Cloudkicker, which turns out not to be a band at all.

Cloudkicker came to my attention via a message from my occasional NCS collaborator IntoTheDarkness, which was worded as follows: “Ok, so I know ur not much for instrumental stuff, but i’ve been listening to a lot lately and you need to check these guys out. They are called Cloudkicker and they are hands down the best instrumental band I have ever heard next to AAL. Especially check out the song ‘the discovery.’ Fucking incredible.”

So that certainly got my attention, particularly because “AAL” is Animals As Leaders, and I’ve made quite plain my slavish devotion to that band. I tracked down the song, listened to it, and quickly decided that yes, it is indeed fucking incredible. And it turns out that Cloudkicker has generated a lot more music that’s equally awesome.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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