A PHROTASTIC LOVE STORY

 Album Reviews, Phro's Posts  22 Responses »
Nov 042012
 

Written by: Phro
NSFW

It’s a dark and rainy night. The kind of dark and rainy night where you stay home and jerk off your cat with one hand while counting the number of people who love you with the other. (It’s zero people. No one loves you.) Then, when your cat won’t cum and you’re at the darkest depths of despair, you hear a knock at the door. It’s demure,  yet violent; lusty, yet apprehensive. You pretend to sigh as if annoyed at the interruption, but in the shallow, tepid depths of your heart, you know you’re happy.

Removing your sweaty hand from your pet’s raw genitals, you stand and go to open the door and struggle to control your shock and turgid pleasure at seeing this lovely face:

With the heavy breathing of a pedophile learning he’s gotten a job as Naked Bathtime Mickey Mouse at Tokyo Disneyland, you stammer stupidly.

She giggles, takes you by the hand and leads you to your bedroom, where she tells you to strip and remove your clothes. Without pausing, you comply, as eager as a teacher’s pet diving head first and mouth agape into the naked lap of your obese, hairy, sweaty junior high math teacher. Continue reading »

MUSIC FOR SAMHAIN: SATANIC BLOODSPRAYING, VOMITCHAPEL, AND A.M.S.G.

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 312012
 

“Halloween” is a contraction (first used in the 16th century by the Scots) of “All Hallow’s Evening”. It’s the night before a Christian feast day (Nov 1) known as All Hallows or All Saints. How a Christian tradition got wrapped up in ghouls and goblins and spirits of the dead is a long story. But at least a big part of the story is that, like many Christian holidays, this one was intertwined with (and piggy-backed on) a far older pagan celebration known as Samhain (pronounced sah-win or sow-in).

“Samhain” comes from the Old Irish word for “summer’s end”, and in the medieval Gaelic calendar it marked the end of the harvest season and the coming of winter. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge, “In much of the Gaelic world, bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Some of these rituals hint that they may once have involved human sacrifice.” It was “seen as a time when the ‘door’ to the Otherworld opened enough for the souls of the dead, and other beings such as fairies, to come into our world.”

There’s a metric fuckton of metal that would be appropriate to play in commemoration of Samhain tonight, but I thought I’d go with some quite diverse black metal that I heard for the first time over the last 24 hours. The bands are Satanic BloodSpraying (Bolivia), Vomitchapel (U.S.), and Profound Lore’s latest signing,  A.M.S.G. (Canada), and this post includes two EP reviews, so settle in.

SATANIC BLOODSPRAYING

I’ve not been able to find much information about this Bolivian band beyond the fact that Hells Headbangers released their debut album At the Mercy of Satan in July of this year. It’s an 8-song, 24-minute barrage of vicious, swarming riffs, relentless drumbeats, and vocal blood spray. The music is mangling but also imminently headbang-worthy. Continue reading »

RINGS OF SATURN: “DINGIR”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

(We welcome guest writer Tyler Lowery back to NCS with the second of two reviews we’re publishing of the unexpectedly just-released second album by Rings of Saturn. You can find our other one here.)

 When I heard the intro of the new Rings of Saturn album, I had it set in my mind that this would mark their descent into a tired deathcore outing. The almost Whitechapel-esque guitar intro riff that led into the viciously fast riffing and quick-bursting blast beats for the first few moments left dread in my heart. I was expecting the worst to happen at the drop of the bass, leading into a meaningless and redundant breakdown. To my very pleasant surprise, this never occurred.

What did follow was a very well-organized trip through some of the most brutal and technical riffs this side of Obscura’s Omnivium. Rings of Saturn have completely refined and tightened their sound since their debut release in 2009. Focus has pushed all that pure aggression into tight boxes that, once released, wreak utter devastation. In doing this, guitarists Lucas Mann and Joel Omans have spent more time relating their mastery of their art in fine passaging and provocative soloing. The guitars are still top notch, though, and do not flinch for a second. The leads switch often between a very tech-heavy smear of notes and sharply rooted melodic tremolo picking to heavy churning and crushing riffs.

While this is a very fast, very technical album, there is still a good bit of space in between for well-placed and patient guitar work. I wouldn’t call the playing transcendent, but it is certainly very impressive. The first track, “Objective to Harvest”, has an almost spaced-out midsection. “Faces Imploding” breaks for a few phrases toward the end of the track with a Faceless-tinged clean passage that leads into one of the first prevalent breakdowns on the album, which thankfully doesn’t overstay its own welcome. And probably one of the tastiest excerpts is toward the end of the album on “Fruitless Existence”. The song closes with a very groove-oriented clean outro, almost waving goodbye to a passing battlefield. Continue reading »

RINGS OF SATURN: “DINGIR”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

(Today we have not one, but two reviews of the new album by Rings of Saturn, and this one comes to you courtesy of TheMadIsraeli. Check out the second one here.)

Speaking of Br00tz rank, Rings of Saturn just got promoted to fucking grandmaster general McFuck you up prestige levels.  It’s shitty what happened with Dingir getting leaked, so I figured I’d do my part by showing my support for this album, because it’s fucking good. It’s rather odd, considering that I admittedly didn’t think the band’s first album was all that impressive.  Dingir, however, is a monster.  A tentacle raping brain scrambling “oh fuck I think I’ve been sonically anally probed” monster.

Technical deathcore, like deathcore generally, gets as much of a bad rap as anything -core, and usually for good reason.  It’s often just breakdowns with sweeping in between.  Much of it sounds boring as fuck-all to me (the style doesn’t really lend itself to dynamics very well), so it means something that I’m actually reviewing this.  The fact this album has legitimate riffs helps its case quite a bit.  The breakdowns and chugs are here, for sure, but that’s balanced by a plentiful amount of tech-riffing that hits the spot.

Some people might still find this album unsatisfying, because like most tech-deathcore, it isn’t dynamic — but this time that’s not a drawback.  There is a definite intensity going on here that is rather unmatched, except maybe by Infant Annihilator (sans ass-fucking in the woods). Continue reading »

WITCHCRAFT: “LEGEND”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Oct 312012
 

(Here’s BadWolf’s review of the new album by Sweden’s Witchcraft, which is an Exception to our Rule.)

When I started writing for this website in 2010, I really believed in the title of this website—No Clean Singing. Looking back at that year, the best work in metal sat squarely on the extreme side of the spectrum (with a few exceptions, of course). Two years later, I’m in awe of the deluge of great retrospective metal releases coming out of the woodwork—much of its from relatively major labels. Case in point: diehard retro-metal band Witchcraft just released their fourth album, Legend, through Nuclear Blast.

So I suppose this is what certain other blogs would call vest metal—in the pejorative. And while this certainly has been the year for retroactive throwback acts, Witchcraft are in no way part of the femme-doom wave of 2012. Nor are they some sort of cash grab band trying to ride the coattails of Ghost. On the contrary—Witchcraft as a band go back nearly a decade.

I got into Witchcraft in 2007, immediately after the release of their third album, The Alchemist, which was my gateway into Pentagram, St Vitus, and other such baroque doom. After five years of silence, I thought they’d broken up—in fairness, the band go through lineup changes like a machinegun spits bullets. The only really consistent member is vocalist Magnus Pelander, who had gone on to record a solo record. The solo debut is still cooking, but Legend comes out of the oven with a sharper production job backing Pelander’s still-incredible voice through nine excellent tracks. Continue reading »

CRYPTOPSY: SELF-TITLED

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

Fuck.

A review by: TheMadIsraeli

There is no other word.  I mean, I’ve tried to figure out other words to use concerning this album. It hasn’t gotten its proper due praise here at NCS since it came out.  “Cryptopsy’s best album since And Then You’ll Beg…” only begins to understate it.  For me, this might even be their best since fucking None So Vile.

I mean, I’m pretty sure we all thought this band was just done when The Unspoken King came out.  That album was made of so much shit and piss that it literally could’ve formed its own land mass from the concentration.  It might’ve even been a livable landmass of piss and shit, but still… when you listen to music, do you want piss and shit, or the sonic equivalent of thundering punishment from the metal gods that channels and focuses the most powerful and ferocious aspects of humanity? Phro might (with enthusiasm) beg for the former, but I’m pretty sure 99.99% of us want the latter.

Cryptopsy’s new self-titled is the first bout of new material since founding guitarist Jon Levasseur rejoined the band, and boy is this album a kick in the teeth, balls, solar plexus, whatever fucking else sounds brutal.

Every single moment of this album pretty much dictates that you listen to it with a permanently affixed Jens Kidman face as you butcher your entire city’s population.  You get back that alien, angular riffing that’s pure trademark Cryptopsy, combined with those interspersed moments of random lounge jazz and blast furnace melodeath.  Tempo changes abound, the slams are boulder-splitting, the technicality is fret-blazing, and the vocals of Matt McGachy this time are FUCKING DISGUSTING. Continue reading »

DRUG HONKEY: “GHOST IN THE FIRE”

 Album Reviews  25 Responses »
Oct 302012
 

(photo by Burton Rast)

Surly, don’t-fuck-with-me poses are a dime a dozen when a metal band holds still for a promo shoot. I’m pretty sure that in Drug Honkey’s case, this is no pose. And if you think these dudes look like badasses, their expressions are downright friendly compared to the music on their latest album, Ghost In the Fire.

This album is the fourth for them and the first for me, so I won’t be comparing it to their previous work. That would be pointless anyway, since diehard fans of the band have undoubtedly worn out their earholes with the music by now (Ghost was released in May) and have drawn their own comparisons. Instead, this very tardy review is for people like me in my pre-Ghost state — people who haven’t yet exposed themselves to what Drug Honkey do.

And what they do is manufacture atmosphere — blasted, burned, and black. They suck all the air out of the room and fill the void with a psychoactive fog that’s the stuff of nightmares.

They make the sound of a gutted city whose lifeless buildings are crumbling, imploding, and burning like giant waste bins beneath the bridges of catastrophe. It’s the noise of giant earth movers digging mass graves. It’s the soundtrack to the sun burning out and the planet freezing in utter darkness. It’s a recording of demons convulsed in the throes of insanity. Continue reading »

KONKEROR: “THE ABYSMAL HORIZONS”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Oct 292012
 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut album by a Michigan band known as Konkeror.)

Sometimes it just baffles me how a breakout band doesn’t get noticed when their debut absolutely slays, like, everything.  Konkeror are definitely one of these bands. Not only have they released a debut of extremely rare killer-quality material, they very well may have one of the best albums of the whole year.

Konkeror are extremely no bullshit, no frills, ballsy, thrashy, Middle Eastern death metal from the outskirts of Detroit who bring riffs that tame serpents, create sand storms, and slay prophets of old, accompanied by feral snarling vocals and a killer drummer whose got a sense of regality and Middle Eastern groove in his work.  It’s an album loaded with influences from Melechesh, Nile, Vader, Obituary, and Immolation.

To repeat: It’s a wonder to me how a debut as killer as The Abysmal Horizons has flown under so many people’s radars.  These guys are the real deal.

All of this is immediately apparent in the ass kicker of an opener, “I, Monolithic”.  A foreboding acoustic intro followed by a doom riff with badass solo work ushers in a torrent of blackened death metal ferocity.  The riffs here just catch your ear, attach to your memory like leeches, and mummify you from the inside out. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BISONHAMMER III

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Oct 252012
 

Let’s begin with the most immediately apparent accolade for the new EP by Bisonhammer (which is entitled Bisonhammer III): The cover art rules. In fact, I recommend that you click on the image above in order to see a larger version of the art, which was created by Loren Fetterman. I’ll wait.

Okay, now let’s move on to the music: It’s awfully impressive, too.

Bisonhammer are from Manchester, England, and Bisonhammer III is (duh) the third EP they’ve created so far. All three are available for streaming and download on Bandcamp (with the first two available for free or pay-what-you-want).

The new one consists of four songs, and they run roughshod through your cranium in a tidy 16 minutes total. However, they resist tidy genre classification. The music is part thrash, part raunchy death metal, part sludgy Southern rock, part groove metal, part stoner. What pulls all of these influences together is the band’s knack for writing some big-ass riffs and loading up the songs with some mighty sharp hooks. Continue reading »

RAGE NUCLÉAIRE: “UNRELENTING FUCKING HATRED”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Oct 242012
 

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli reviews the unrelenting fucking hatred unleashed by the debut album from Canada’s Rage Nucléaire.)

Getting sonically fucked up is about the only way any true, sane metalhead finds any peace in this life full of shit.  What better possible recipe for achieving this catharsis than a furious combination of black metal and grindcore?

What if said blackened grind mixture was fronted by the almighty Lord Worm, one of the most brutal vocalists and most eloquent poets to exist in metal’s history?

What if I told you it’s fucking awesome?  Cause it is.

Rage Nucléaire’s debut Unrelenting Fucking Hatred is about as close to channeling its own title as you’re ever going to get.  It has all the makings of a great extreme metal album.  It’s fast as fuck; it’s atonal yet also brings epic melodies to bear when needed; it sounds like total fucking shit in the most legit badass kvlt way possible; and it makes me feel like my jaw bone is being disassembled with a hammer.

Also, it feels like my flesh is being filleted, like I’m being prepared for an exquisite meal; an exquisite meal with a side of curb-stomping, eye-gouging ear rape. Continue reading »

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