NEW ATHEIST MUSIC: SECOND TO SUN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 082010
 

Earlier today, Atheist put up the first song for streaming from their forthcoming album Jupiter. If our math is correct, Jupiter will be the first Atheist studio album in 17 years.

Some bands who’ve produced no new music in 17 years should just stay dead.  But this is Atheist, one of the true progenitors of tech-death and experimental metal. We relish the idea of a new album. We relish the thought even more after listening to the new song, “Second To Sun”. It’s a mighty fine piece of ear candy. Hear it for yourself:

SLOW, THEN FAST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Oct 072010
 

Time is fleeting. You can’t stop it. You can’t bank it up and then make withdrawals when you need more. It passes by at an unalterable clip. The sun rises, the sun sets, another day is gone, and however much time you have left on earth is that much shorter.

This somewhat depressing fact of life leads some Type A personalities to search for ways of doing more with the hours allotted to us in each day. They try to speed things up in order to achieve the effect of slowing time down. This has been going on for a long — time. The result is that the pace of life all around us often seems frenzied.

Sometimes, the enveloping frenzy of our environment makes us think life is passing us by. It can create anxiety. It can lead even Type B or C personalities to accelerate the pace of their daily activities, to pack more into the hours they have before time, for them, runs out.

You might think listening to music is one of those activities that can’t be speeded up. Music unfolds at its own pace, at the tempo and for the duration set by its creators. Sure, you can always cut short your listening, but you’ve done nothing to the music. It is what it is, and all you’ve done is tune out of the flow.

That’s what I used to think, but I’m wrong (as I am about so many fucking things). In fact, you can speed up the pace at which music unfolds when you hear it. Yes, if you do that, you’ll be changing the music into something different, and in most cases the result will be garbled and degraded. But not always.  (see what we mean, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

GOBLIN METAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Oct 042010
 

We’re rapidly approaching one of our favorite calendar dates of the year — Halloween. It’s a night when our most frightening superstitions are given free reign, when evil and mischief frolic hand-in-hand through the night, when goblins emerge from their hiding places to create all manner of chaos.

It’s also a night when people dress up in ridiculous costumes, masquerading as cowboys, or nurses, or Lady Gaga. That shit don’t count. That’s not Halloween. Halloween is a night of menace and mayhem, ov fire and the void (yeah, I stole that phrase from somewhere), of phantoms and freaks.

And in celebration of the imminent arrival of All Hallow’s Eve, it’s only fitting that we feature some metal that’s played by, for, and about goblins. What? You didn’t know goblins played metal? Well what else would they play?

NEKROGOBLIKON

Our first example of the goblin-metal sub-genre comes to us via a band with the truly awesome name of Nekrogoblikon that hails from the bleak, dark, dank, craggy fastness that is,  uh,  Santa Barbara, California. Okay, maybe this nearly perfect stretch of SoCal’s coast isn’t the first place you’d think of as a spawning ground for goblin metal, but it just goes to show you how deviously clever goblins are in picking their hiding places. When NCS commentator ElvisShotJFK turned us on to Nekrogoblikon in an e-mail, he wrote this:

“Trolls aren’t the only ones that can play metal. Goblins can kick ass too! Some clean vocals do make their way into some of the material, a bit of keyboard cheese and a touch of light neo-classical. But it all works, because it’s so fucking fun.  And it’s heavy metal goblins, for cube’s sake!”

(more after the jump, including music for your pointy ears . . .)

Continue reading »

MORE FRIDAY VIDZ!!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 242010
 

Well, fuck it. This is clearly new-video Friday. Seems like about every hour of the day so far a new video has popped up on our radar screen. And there’s really no reason why we should stop with those Animals As Leaders videos we put up earlier today. We’ll just continue putting up videos for as long as we see new ones to put up. How ’bout that?

Just tell your boss or your teachers or whoever is attempting to control your lives today to just fuck right off, get yourself a big ol’ fucking bag of popcorn, and just veg out and watch metal videos all day. Because at this rate, we’ll find a dozen more new ones before we call it quits today.

So, here’s what we’ve got so far: A brand new video for the title track from the new album by The Absence (“Enemy Unbound”); a brand new performance video from August Burns Red off their forthcoming live CD/DVD (the song is “Barn Burner”); and a new video from a California black-metal band called Valdur (the song is called “Vicious Existence”). Get the popcorn and go see ’em after the jump . . . (and don’t get faked out by our screen capture up at the top — clicking on that arrow won’t start the video, which is after the jump). Continue reading »

AAL LIVE!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Sep 242010
 

Not long ago, we posted a video retrospective of the meteoric career of multi-instrumentalist Navene Koperweis. When we did that, we had trouble finding a decent performance video of Animals As Leaders — the band in which Koperweis plays drums with the godlike Tosin Abasi on guitar. Now, METAL INJECTION has remedied that problem.

They were on hand when AAL played the Sonar in Baltimore on the SUMMER SLAUGHTER 2010 tour and filmed some of the band’s performance using multiple cameras. The video quality and the sound quality are both far superior to any other videos currently available of AAL playing live.

The one at the top of this post is the song “Tempting Time”, and after the jump, we’ve got a second METAL INJECTION video of “Wave of Babies”. If this doesn’t make you come, then it’s possible you were neutered in your sleep last night.  Plus, when’s the last time you saw a metal guitarist playing in a polo shirt and white shorts? Continue reading »

BANJO METAL

 Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  27 Responses »
Sep 212010
 

A few days ago we published a post about a Chicago band called Demolisher that unexpectedly led to a wide-ranging discussion in the comments that was far more thoughtful and interesting than the post itself. As often seems to happen at this site, the discussion in the comments veered off in directions that couldn’t have been predicted from the subject of the post. We started off talking about breakdowns and bass drops, and by the end we were talking about banjo music — specifically, metal songs that include the banjo.

One reader (byrd36) referred to the banjo intro in a song by Virginia’s King Giant, which is the subject of a brand new video that we included in one of our MISCELLANY posts two days later. Another reader (Andy Synn) thought of a second metal band that had included the banjo in one of its songs.

That was about all it took to send our impulsive selves off in search of more banjo-infused metal, and today we’re sharing the results of our search. Even though my posts usually tend to run on and on (since “wordy” is one of my middle names), this post will require even more of your time than usual, because we’re including five songs. But we hope you’ll hang with us, because there’s some good shit in here, and it just reaffirms what a few of us thought in that earlier comment discussion: Metal needs more banjo!

After the jump, we’ll repeat that King Giant video (cuz that’s where this all started) and follow it with music from The Absence, an early Zakk Wylde project called Pride and Glory, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.

Okay, we cheated there at the end — Béla Fleck’s music isn’t metal, but do keep an open mind, because the music is still stunning. In fact, it may be the most interesting and instrumentally impressive of all the songs we’re featuring today. Continue reading »

BASS DROPPAGE: DEMOLISHER

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  41 Responses »
Sep 172010
 

There’s a time and a place for the simple physical pleasures of life. Ideally, anytime, any place. Don’t worry, we’re not going to start listing our favorite simple physical pleasures. This ain’t that kind of blog. And to be clear, we’re not inviting you to list yours either. Let’s be really clear: please do not list your simple physical pleasures on our web site. Thank you.

We will name one of ours (just one): Listening to big old fucking bass drops. We’re so happy that we know what to call those things now (one of many things we’ve learned from our readers). Just one simple, triggered note detonating someplace in a metal song like the musical equivalent of a sonic boom.

Any band with the right gear and the right sound sample can reproduce the effect. Its only purpose is to produce a kind of mindless, visceral response. So why do we like bass drops so much? Fuck if we know. Why do we like mashed-up black-eyed peas doused in vinegar? Some things just can’t be explained.

Our latest dose of bass droppage came to us by way of Sergeant D over at MetalSucks. A couple days ago he posted a note about a Chicago band called Demolisher, proclaiming that in his opinion they might just be “the heaviest band on the face of the planet.” Exaggeration is the meat and potatoes of all metal blogs (except ours), so we took this with a heaping of salt, but we still couldn’t resist listening to the Demolisher song that Sergeant D featured in his post. It was called “Decimated”.

There’s no point in debating whether Demolisher is in fact the heaviest band on the face of the planet. It’s enough to say that they’re plenty heavy — and that the “Decimated” song is a very nice fix for bass-drop addiction here on a Friday morning.  

(more after the jump, including that song . . . and a vid from Ingested, since we’re now in the right mood, a link for a free music sampler from ARTERY RECORDINGS, and in our latest update, a song from Woe of Tyrants) Continue reading »

THEN, AND NOW

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 072010
 

We’ve splashed our admiration for Navene Koperweis across these pages enough times that it’s verging on stalkerish. If somehow you missed one of our many posts in which we dropped his name, he’s a self-taught drummer from California who’s also strikingly adept at playing all sorts of other instruments, too.

He used to blast the skins for deathcore band Animosity. Now, he plays with Tosin Abasi in the stunningly good Animals As Leaders, and he’s the creative and instrumental force behind Fleshwrought (with Job For A Cowboy’s Jonny Davy on vocals).

It’s not like we think about him all the time, which would be kind of creepy. But a few days ago, we saw a Facebook post by one of the dudes in FXZero that linked to a four-year old video of an Animosity song called “The Black Page” that we’d never seen.

And there was Navene Koperweis, pummeling the crap out of his drums and looking much younger than when we saw him with AAL on the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour a few weeks ago (see our photo above).

So, we thought, what the fuck — let’s put together a little audio-video montage of this dude, then and now. You can see how he’s grown in his playing and his musical interests, and all the songs happen to be fucking great, too.  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

LABOR DAY FUCKING OFF, AND OUR THEORY ABOUT HOW TO LEAD A HAPPY LIFE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Sep 062010
 

Today is Labor Day in the United States. Contrary to what someone might think based on the name of the holiday (which originally was intended as an homage to the labor movement in this country), it is not a day for laboring. It is a day for fucking off. It is not a day for serious thoughts. It is a day for getting tanked up and banging yo head.

With this in mind, we’ve selected a few items to put you in the right mood for a day of fucking off. For those readers in other nations who are unable to fuck off today, or those in the U.S. who are compelled to do something labor-like and serious despite what they might wish, we are really fucking sorry to do this to you. Perhaps you could bookmark this page and come back when you’re in a situation more conducive to fucking off.

And the idea of fucking off has inspired us to inscribe on this site, in this post which almost no one will read, because most of our readers are fucking off today, our lessons for how to lead a happy, successful, and fulfilled life. It requires this:

(1) That, when you need to, you can be serious, focused, and wise in your decisions;

(2) That you are not serious, focused, or wise any more than is absolutely necessary, and that the rest of the time you are free, impulsive, even borderline insane, and constantly expecting that good things will come your way, even when all the evidence points in the other direction; and

(3) That you are the beneficiary of pure dumb luck.

The only problem with this formula is that although (1) and (2) are within your control, number (3) is not. Striking the right balance between (1) and (2) is hard enough, and because of (3), you could still go through life as a human toilet brush. But you still need to focus on (1) and (2), because if you fuck up that balance, all the number (3) in the world won’t save you.

Today, we’re just paying attention to number (2), because it’s Labor Day. And so, after the jump, we have a couple of things to help you get in the right fucking-off mood. Continue reading »

LINKIN PARK?

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Sep 032010
 

Linkin Park has a new album on the way. Due on September 14, it’s called A Thousand Suns. They’re giving away the song “Wretches and Kings” to people who pre-order the album at www.linkinpark.com.

You can listen to “Wretches and Kings” by pressing play:

Yeah, we’re just fuckin’ wit choo. Truth is, we’re late finishing today’s real post and thought we’d put this thing up until it’s done, just to make you say, “What the fuck?”

The new song is aptly titled, because Linkin Park are still kind-of pop music royalty, but the music has become wretched. Your NCS collaborators all used to like the band — back when Hybrid Theory came out and sounded fresh, back when Chester Bennington still shrieked his guts out, back before we got bored shitless with nu-metal. Maybe we were stupid to like the band even then, but we’re just being brutally honest (go ahead, say it with us, “because that’s the only kind of honest we know how to be here at NCS”).

The new song is heavy on the electro-bass, heavy on Mike Shinoda‘s lame rap, but at least Chester’s vocals aren’t completely clean. But really, this is just filler, not killer. Come back in an hour or two and we’ll have something better up here for your amusement.

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