VASALLO: “MONUMENTS EMERGE”

 Album Reviews, Off Topic  5 Responses »
Aug 302012
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli brings us a fascinating change of pace, with a review of classical music composed by Nick Vasallo.)

Today we aren’t reviewing a metal album.  Today we’re reviewing a classical album.  We at NCS are classy men anyhow, so why not?

Though in all seriousness, classical music has been (dare I say it) the foundation of metal (not rock) as we know it.  Yes, there is no doubt that Blues was as integral to metal’s development, but I think classical is an even bigger part of the equation.  You can take even brutal tech-death like Cryptopsy or Suffocation and find a way to draw parallels with baroque, classical, or even romantic-era music.  This shit flows through the veins of the most brutal of music, so in my mind it actually seems entirely relevant that this kind of music should be reviewed here.

Of course, I didn’t just go and pick something out of the blue; this album is even more related to metal than most of its genre.  Why?  Because the Vasallo in question is Nick Vasallo — one-third of up-and-coming tech-deathers Oblivion (whose three-song demo I reviewed in February — it fucking owned).  I was quite surprised to find out that he’s a classical composer and that this is actually his musical forté (maybe even over metal?), although it’s quite obvious in his work that he tries to incorporate his love of metal into this niche, as well as both Western and Asian classical music.

This creates an interesting dynamic.  Usually we humans take the old, the established, and try to find ways to keep them fresh, yet grounded in convention.  Vasallo does the opposite, taking a tried and true ancient form of music that brought us some of the greatest masterpieces ever written and breathing new life into it by reversing the roles, where the orchestral instrumentation is made a student of the metal.  I realize that sentence sounds garbled as fuck, it may not even make much sense, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.

So, in essence, what does metal have to bring to this table?  I suppose it should be noted that in my dialogues with Vasallo, death metal seems to really be his thing.  So, to rephrase the question, what does death metal offer?  What does it capture that’s relevant to these compositions? Continue reading »

MURDER CONSTRUCT: “RESULTS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 282012
 

 

The fucking brutals are everywhere again.

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli provides a pithy review of the second album by Murder Construct, which is officially out today.)

We’ve talked about this band and this album quite a bit at NCS (e.g., here).  Why?  Because the line-up of this band is pretty stellar.  Among other luminaries, it has Travis the-fucking-man Ryan on the vocal spot, and the music is sludgy, crusty, filthy, fucking foam at the mouth deathgrind of intestine vaporizing proportions.  Murder Construct’s sophomore album Results will decimate you into a fine bloody mist. the kind of which is usually radiated only from the most putrid of freshly undead skin-eaters.

I MEAN FUCKING LISTEN TO THAT:


 
Continue reading »

OAK PANTHEON: “FROM A WHISPER” (A REVIEW AND A SONG PREMIERE)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  15 Responses »
Aug 272012
 

Our relationship with Oak Pantheon goes back to a post I wrote in June 2011 about three new bands I’d come across who had less than 100 Facebook “likes”, but whose music I thought was really worth hearing. At that time, Oak Pantheon had officially premiered only one song, “In the Dead of Winter Night”, but it made a strong impression. When the band’s first EP, The Void, appeared not long after, it confirmed that “In the Dead of Winter Night” was no fluke; Oak Pantheon were a band to watch closely.

Now Oak Pantheon are less than a month away from release of their debut album, From A Whisper. In short order, it has become one of my favorite releases of 2012. As much as I enjoyed The Void, the album represents a big step up in the quality and sophistication of the songwriting, and the performances of this Minneapolis duo are truly excellent from beginning to end. The music is also quite varied, drawing together multi-faceted strands of metal (and non-metal) into more than 60 minutes of music that resists simplified genre classification.

At the end of this review, we’ll be premiering a song from the album that demonstrates how far Oak Pantheon have come in a very short time. It’s called . . . “It” . . . and like the rest of the album, it’s remarkably good.

The Void drew frequent comparisons with the musical style of Agalloch, and the influence of that band’s fusion of neo-folk and black metal is still in evidence on From A Whisper. The opening track, “Descend Into Winter”, is a prime example. The song combines memorable melodies, carried by layered guitars and piercing leads, with hard-driving rhythms, and this time Oak Pantheon have even incorporated emotionally subdued clean vocals (by Tanner Swenson) in much the way Agalloch do, creating an effective contrast with the harsh, mid-ranged rasps of Sami Sati. Continue reading »

THE FACELESS: “AUTOTHEISM”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Aug 272012
 

(The new album by The Faceless has generated heated discussion among metalheads, and now its our turn to wade into the fray with this review by DGR.)

It’s hard to believe that we’re four years removed from the last Faceless disc and we’re finally looking at a new one. For a while, the band’s habit of being incredibly quiet became something of a punchline for jackasses like myself, running stories about how there was either no one left in the band because everybody on the planet had quit or, more likely, everyone in California had been added to a list of persons to be moved into the band’s ranks when the next person departed.

Background drama aside though, you can’t argue with the fact that with Akeldama and Planetary Duality, The Faceless put out two incredible albums, so much so that they don’t feel like time capsules. I could listen to either one of those now and it would still sound as good as the day when I first heard it. That helped make the passage of time easier, for sure, so that even the elapse of four years between albums didn’t feel that bad (and we never reached Wintersun levels of delay). However, after taking their dear sweet goddamned time, The Faceless have finally managed to kick out another release called Autotheism, and without revealing too much too soon, man is it a bit of an oddball.

One of the first things people will likely realize when they fire up Autotheism is that this isn’t the same Faceless that they fell in love with. Across the space of only three discs, there’s been a revolving door of musicians, with Autotheism representing a massive lineup shift. Point being, there’s quite a bit of new blood in this particular iteration of the band and only two guys left from the days of Planetary Duality. While I’ll admit that I, too, was pretty hyped for anything with The Faceless’ brand on it after Planetary Duality, as we found ourselves more and more removed from their previous works and as more guys excused themselves from the lineup, my interest in the band changed more from when were they were going to put out another amazing disc to whether anything more would come, and to the even bigger question: what the hell was it going to sound like? Continue reading »

STEALING AXION: “MOMENTS” (A REVIEW)

 Album Reviews  17 Responses »
Aug 242012
 

(TheMadIsraeli follows up our full-album stream of the debut album by Stealing Axion with this review.) 

I have been so hyped for this album it’s hard for me to even quantify.  Stealing Axion absolutely wowed me with their self-titled free EP (which I reviewed here); it combined progressivism, the best groove in the Meshuggah/Textures school of thought, and a refined sense of dynamics between brutality and melody.  The band demonstrated that they knew how to write really fucking good metal and how to hit a broad spectrum of notes while carrying all of it off equally well.

In my mind, Moments is the quintessential modern metal album, demonstrating the best of what modern groove has become in heavy music.  I am going to warn NCS readers, this album is DEFINITELY an exception to the rule, with close to a 50/50 split of brutal and clean vocals going on here.  As with all exceptions to the rule though, I TRY NOT to review something that breaks our mantra unless it’s really fucking good.  Moments IS really fucking good, I assure you (unless you’re just a kvrmudgeon).

A few facts you need to know about this album before I begin: It’s a concept album about the end of the world.  Because of its particular story, the song flow is a bit askew from what you might expect (e.g., the album starts with one of the softest songs).  It is LONG (77 minutes), and a lot of the longer songs are peculiarly structured.  You won’t get the payoffs you’d typically expect on what feels like a buildup, and songs don’t end on the notes you’re absolutely convinced are coming, but by the same token some of the moments of brutality on this album completely wreck your intestines when you least expect them to pop up.  This is a truly progressive album. Continue reading »

RAPED BY PIGS: “GUSHING ORGASM 2”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Aug 242012
 

(Phro reviews the new EP from Raped By Pigs, who are from Peru. If memory serves, this is the first review of music by a Peruvian band at NCS.)

Sometimes bands choose weird, offensive names just to be…well, weird and offensive. Other times, bands choose those names because they embody the music so well. Peru’s Raped by Pigs is definitely in the latter group. As you can probably imagine, they would be most accurately pigeon-holed as a slam/brutal death metal band, if one wanted to get all taxonomical and shit.

But, as much as I love grouping band into genres, sub-genres, and penis size, I couldn’t find any pictures of these guys’ dangly bits (kinda makes you question their metal cred, doesn’t it?), so we’ll have to actually talk about their music instead. Damnit.

Gushing Orgasms 2 is not the music of the apocalypse, but the music of the survivors’ great grandchildren sitting around a campfire of dried out human shit. These unfortunate descendents swing back and forth between the mad, ecstatic joy of surviving as the world slowly burns itself out like a dying sun and the slow, furious sobs of remorse at the loss of deep dish pizza only glimpsed in half-forgotten ancestral memory. (“WHY?” they scream, “WHY DIDN’T THEY SAVE THE PIZZA??”)

But, pizza-lamentations aside, this music is basically just heaviness. It’s like falling asleep at the beach and waking up to two, bulbous, blubbery sea lions making sea lion babies on top of your chest, their sea lion sex juices splattering all over your face as they grunt and heave, pounding away on top of you. The fat fucks don’t even notice you gasping as your rib cage cracks and collapses around your lungs and you slowly suffocate. Continue reading »

TYRANT OF DEATH: “CYANIDE”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Aug 212012
 

(In this post, DGR reviews the latest release from Toronto’s Tyrant of Death.)

The Tyrant Of Death name should probably be familiar to a lot of you by now, especially since I’ve started making appearances at the lovely NCS. Tyrant Of Death is an industrial death machine that occasionally drifts into grind-filled territory, made up of two musicians. One provides the vocal work and the other, by the name of Alex Rise, handles the musicianship and most of the footwork.

For a long time Tyrant Of Death was an instrumental guitar project. Some of the releases (and there have been a ton) have come to include a lot of vocal work provided by musician Lucem Fero. Lately they’ve seemingly rotated, one instrumental, one more vocals-based. Also, until recently, the Tyrant Of Death stuff has been free (and occasionally still is) as a show of good faith. That changed with the last disc, ReConnect, which I thought was a good album but not necessarily the best of their work.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that the Tyrant Of Death project is still prolific, releasing a flood of material, although not quite at the breakneck pace of previous years. Only five months have passed since ReConnect, yet here we are again with another album called Cyanide. This one is largely instrumental, with the occasional vocalization (if you can even call it that) to provide atmosphere. As such, it’s something of a return to previous sounds and at the same time a combination of many older elements into something new.

Because of this I have to apologize that this review may be shorter than what I usually write (I know some of you are already looking for the nearest razor) due to the fact that Cyanide is Tyrant Of Death boiled down to its very essence. It is a disc consisting of a giant wall of loud guitars, relentlessly fast drumming, and eerie-as-hell song structure. Continue reading »

GIANT OF THE MOUNTAIN: “VALLEY OF THE ROGUE”

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  15 Responses »
Aug 212012
 

It’s so damned nice to hear a relatively new band you like move from strength to strength from one release to the next, and Giant of the Mountain have done that. Their new release, Valley of the Rogue, is their best work yet, but it’s more than that. It’s an unusual and unusually good song that should open a forest of eyes.

Yes, the new release by this Texas two-piece is one song — but it’s also a nearly 20-minute long song. Although I haven’t done any scientific surveying, I’d guess that the idea of a 20-minute long song produces more groans than squeals of anticipation among most metal-lovers. And, no doubt, it takes some grapefruit-sized cojones (and ovaries) to attempt something of that magnitude. There are certainly far easier ways to go, especially if you haven’t yet so firmly embedded your place in metal history that you can do whatever the fuck you wish.

But I’m here to tell you that Giant of the Mountain have pulled it off. I suppose that a talented musician could go back through this song and syphon off riffs and motifs and figure out some way to convert it into multiple songs, but this really sounds like a work that was conceived – and works extremely well — as a unitary experience. It isn’t cleanly divided into movements, and it occupies its length naturally. It’s one fascinating head-rush of music, a chaotic symphony of the damned. Continue reading »

BLOODRED HOURGLASS

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  20 Responses »
Aug 182012
 

Finland continues to spawn excellent new metal. I know that’s not a revelation, but it’s in the front of my mind because I’ve been listening to my own latest Finnish discovery — a band from Mikkeli named Bloodred Hourglass. After a few demos, they recorded their debut album Lifebound last year and then succeeded in forming a relationship with the Finnish label Spinefarm, which is set to release the album on August 24.

I first got curious about Bloodred Hourglass after seeing a review of Lifebound by Madame X at the Angry Metal Guy blog (is she still a “probationary scribe”?). And then yesterday I noticed that the entire album was streaming at Finland’s Inferno magazine website, and I let it run roughshod through my head over the ether.

The music represents a confluence of styles. Thrash is the dominant ingredient, but it would be misleading to brand this a thrash album, because (as Madame X noted) it’s almost equally freighted with groove metal in the vein of Lamb of God, and there are hardcore and melodic death metal elements in the mix, too.

And then in addition to all that, the album includes unexpected instrumentals that don’t fit with any of those other genre references — sometimes as standalone songs (“We Lived Like Kings” and “Ghost Wounds”) and sometimes cropping up in the middle of something else (as in “Arcadia”). The instrumental music is so divergent from the band’s dominant motif that I can’t begin to explain it. But if I tried, I’d say it’s like being teleported to an alien mother ship for unnatural impregnation right in the middle of Breaking Bad.

I don’t know about you, but I happen to like surprises when going through an album, and taking a sharp left turn into a parallel dimension can fire different neurons and produce a greater “fuck yeah” sensation about the album as a whole. Which it does here.

Continue reading »

HERESIARCH, NICK KELLER, AND DARK DESCENT

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers, SHORT BUT SWEET  11 Responses »
Aug 172012
 

I saw this stunning painting long before I knew what it was or that it had any connection to metal. Only yesterday did I find the connection. The artist is a New Zealander named Nick Keller, and the painting is the gatefold interior artwork for an EP named Hammer of Intransigence by a New Zealand band named Heresiarch. To see any even higher-res version, click on the image.

The cover art for the EP, also painted by Nick Keller, is also amazing (and you can again click on it to see a larger version):

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about Hammer of Intransigence — though I’ll be coming back to Nick Keller shortly. Continue reading »

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