LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR: EVIL POWER

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Apr 192010
 

Sometimes simple, blunt-force trauma works just fine.

Evil Power, the recently-released album by Chicago’s Lair of the Minotaur, is a grab-bag of different musical styles. But the songs do have some things in common: They’re all nasty, stripped-down, unpretentious, in-your-face headbangers, and the album as a whole is a real bright spot in the year’s new releases to date.

The songs have one other important thing in common: They’re packed with more heavy, grinding bass and guitar riffs and power-hooks than any one band ought to be allowed.

As for those stylistic variations, the album includes thrash-metal stylings, sometimes mixed with hard-rock chords and drum fills (“Attack the Gods”), metal-infused punk rock rhythms (“Let’s Kill These Motherfuckers”), old-school death-metal riffs that could be straight out of Metalocalypse or Wolverine Blues-era Entombed (“Riders of Skullhammer”), stripped-down, blackened metal with plenty of tremolo-picked chords (“Goatstorm”), and sometimes combinations of almost all the above (“Blood From the Witch’s Vein,” “We Are Hades”).  (more after the jump, including a song to stream . . .) Continue reading »

ODEM ARCARUM

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Apr 172010
 

Some people think physical CDs and album artwork have become, or soon will become, an anachronism, as the unstoppable movement to digital downloads continues to surge ahead. Some of your NCS Co-Authors are in that camp. But not me. Whenever possible, even when I’ve already listened to a download of music, I try to get my hands on a physical CD. Lots of reasons for that, but one reason is that I like to see all the album art and any text content that may be included. And sometimes, seeing an image of album art on the webz draws me to the music, when otherwise I might never have listened to it.

A recent case in point: German black-metal band Odem Arcarum‘s new album, Outrageous Reverie Above The Erosion Of Barren Earth. I saw the amazing cover art for that album by Bulgarian artist Haate Kaate and put up a short post on it not too long ago. (You really should go check out that post to see what I’m talking about.) At that time, I had only listened to one song from the album on Odem Arcarum’s MySpace page — and did that solely because I thought the art was cool. But it didn’t take me long to buy the CD, which I now have in my grimy claws.

For me, the album art would have been worth the price of the CD. But as an added bonus, the music is also strikingly impressive — one of the coolest examples of progressive black metal I’ve yet heard.  (and we’ll tell you why after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MELT BANANA

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Apr 102010
 

Name of the band, Melt Banana. Country of origin, seems to be Japan. Latest studio release, Bambi’s Dilemma. Not really new (came out in 2007), but new to me, so that makes it new, right? 18 songs on the album. Average length per song: 01:94. Thoughts while listening:

Not metal. But extreme, for sure. So maybe I could write about it.

Definitely not clean singing. Vocalist sounds like a 12-year old girl, screaming. Or maybe Alvin from the Chipmunks. No, it’s a girl (Yasuko). (That’s her picture over there to the right.) Oh well.  A singing chipmunk woulda been cool.

Pretty damned fast. This is throw-back punk music.  Like Buzzcocks or Sex Pistols.  No, wait. Weird electronic noises. Outer Limits-style keyboards. And a dog barking. Yeah, pretty sure that was a dog.

Wholly shit, but that guitarist can get a lot of different sounds out of his axe. Name is Agata. When he hits those loud punk riffs, it really rocks! Dude can fucking play.

Drummer can hit the shit out of the snares and cymbals. Clattering and crashing — but fast. Man, that guitarist can shred, too! But he’s doing something weird to his guitar. How many dozen pedals is this dude using?

Is that song really called “Cat Brain Land”? Now the vocalist is talking — like a 12-year old girl. I take that back — like a 6-year old girl. Or like Alvin from the Chipmunks. Like when he was a really young chipmunk. Oh good! Here comes that crazy-ass guitar again!   (more after the jump, and just maybe, we might get to a point . . .) Continue reading »

MONUMENT TO THIEVES

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Apr 092010
 

Anger plays an important role in extreme metal music. It’s a motivating force in the creative process of many bands. It works its way through the lyrics of many songs. And even when the lyrics don’t reflect anger, a lot of the music just sounds pissed-off. A while back, we got a comment on one of our posts from a guy who described himself as “an old fart.” He wrote this:

“The whole scary-metal scene is confusing to me. You all seem like very literate and intelligent folks, yet you seem to find pleasure in art that celebrates darkness and pain. Do you do it to be ironic or to make a point about how you feel that you have been treated by the world? I saw the word cathartic used – is this music a way of healing some pain that you feel?”

We wrote our own answer to those questions following his comment here, but we don’t pretend to speak for all extreme metalheads. We will make a few other points now: Some bands are angry and probably don’t know exactly why. Some bands pretend to be angry, on the theory that being über bad-ass is one of the keys to success. Some bands are angry about shit that really doesn’t matter.

And some bands really are fucking pissed about important shit, they use the sound of their music to express those feelings (as only extreme music can do most powerfully), and they write lyrics that articulate what they’re angry about.

And then some bands do all that in an even more nuanced way, joining to their anger feelings of rebellion, remorse, resignation, compassion, and solidarity.  Monument to Thieves is one of those bands, and their new self-titled album is worth hearing.  (read more after the jump, and listen to a song . . .) Continue reading »

MAMMOTH GRINDER

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Apr 062010
 

In “Leviathan,” the philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously wrote that the life of man is “nasty, brutish, and short.” And that pretty much sums up the new LP from Austin’s Mammoth Grinder. Extinction of Humanity is 21 minutes of  distorted, stripped-down, feedback-accented, in-your-face, slash-and-sludge mayhem.

If you knew nothing about the band other than its name and that awesome, smoking, skull-faced, album cover above, you’d prudently prepare yourself for some ass-kicking, and you’d be right. Mammoth Grinder has thrown an unusual grab-bag of ingredients into the blender — garage-punk drum rhythms, a mash-up of grindcore pacing and sludgy trudging, harsh vocals somewhere between a hardcore howl and a death-metal growl, and a smorgasboard of heavy, fuzzed-out guitar stylings.

The resulting concoction is massively intoxicating. If you could really drink this venomous brew, it would lead you on the kind of romping binge that leaves you wondering at daylight what the hell you’d done the night before and where all that blood on your hands came from.

To find an analogue to what Extinction of Humanity delivers, scroll back through your catalogue and listen to Wolverine Blues (1993) from Entombed or (not quite as close a fit) Dismember‘s Like An Ever Flowing Stream (1991). Extinction is not strictly old-school death metal, but more like old-school, Swedish-style death ‘n’ roll — except maybe even more visceral in its appeal.  (read more after the jump, and listen to a song . . .) Continue reading »

HOUR OF PENANCE: PARADOGMA

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Apr 042010
 

Rome’s Hour of Penance have just released their fourth album. Entitled Paradogma, it’s a worthy follow-up to this collective’s widely praised third offering, The Vile Conception.

The band’s modus operandi on Paradogma is straight-forward, but no less compelling for its simplicity: Play blackened death metal, play it really fast, and make the music vicious. Which is not to say that the album falls prey to monotony — far from it. The songs most assuredly do not all sound alike. They are creatively structured to feed your need for brutality while striking that primordial chord in your brain stem that makes you want to jump and move.

Paradogma swallows you up in a miasma of dark fury that seethes in its intensity, yet infects you with hooks and melodies that will cause the songs to re-play in your head long after the music stops. It’s simply one of the best modern death-metal albums we’ve heard so far this year.  (read on after the jump, and hear a massively infectious track from the album . . .) Continue reading »

I DIVINE

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Apr 032010
 

This week we received a message from a band in Hungary called I Divine, inviting us to check out their new music. They described it as experimental black metal featuring a trombone.

If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you know how many of our buttons that little message pushed. We’re suckers for upstart bands from places not known here in the U.S. for their metal scenes. We’re also increasingly becoming suckers for black metal. And anything that calls itself “experimental” appeals to our hunger for outside-the-box music. But what cinched the deal, of course, was the trombone.

So we reacted to that message like Pavlov’s dog at the dinner bell, and hustled over to I Divine‘s MySpace page for a listen. Only two songs are currently streaming there (and we’ll show you how to download them), but those two are definitely worth a listen.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SOREPTION: DETERIORATION OF MINDS

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Apr 022010
 

Here at NCS, little whispery things nag at the back of our diseased brains. We’re not talking about the transmissions from space — that’s another story. We’re talking about things we’re supposed to remember. Like paying some fucking bill, or feeding the cat, or checking in with the parole officer, or seeing if some new album we wanted to hear has finally been released (because we’re not hot-shit enough for labels to send us advance review copies of everything we’re interested in).

Half the time we don’t remember stuff like this until it’s too late. But sometimes the truly important items break through the cranial fog. Case in point: Soreption. We wrote here about Soreption’s ass-kicking 2008 EP Illuminate the Excessive. And then we wrote two more updates here and here about the band’s progress on their debut album. Guess it’s evident we’re a tad obsessive about this band.

And so earlier this week we remembered that Soreption was supposed to release their debut album in March. We checked, and sure enough — it’s now available (iTunes and Amazon MP3). And now we’ve heard it.

A few days ago, we got immersed in exotically melodic new metal from Romania’s Negura Bunget, and we waxed rhapsodic about its powerful allure. But Soreption’s new album, Deterioration of Minds, isn’t about melody. It’s all about the rhythm. Therefore, we need to change our vocabulary to talk about this carnivorous beast of technical death metal. How about this:

It. Fucking. Rules.

(more after the jump, including a song to stream . . .) Continue reading »

NEGURĂ BUNGET: VÎRSTELE PĂMÎNTULUI

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Mar 302010
 

In the spring of 2009, undisclosed disagreements led to the departure of two of the three members of Romanian black metal band Negură Bunget. But although founding member Hupogrammos and Sol Faur were on their way out the door, they finished working with co-founder Negru on a re-recording of the band’s 2000 album, Măiastru Sfetnic. The new work, called Măiestrit, was recently released, and as we wrote yesterday, it’s a remarkably impressive work.

With Hupogrammos and Sol Faur gone, Negru set about recruiting a new line-up, including a guitarist and vocalist called Corb and a guitarist called Spin. In all, the new Negură Bunget is a six-piece band constructed to give even more attention to traditional folk instruments. And the new line-up has just released its debut album, Vîrstele Pămîntului (now available on iTunes).

We listened to Măiestrit first, and then wondered how Vîrstele Pămîntului would compare, both in musical style and in quality.

The answer to the first question is that the latter album has moved even further away from black-metal stylings and deeper into the territory of progressive folk metal. But in terms of quality, the re-constituted Negură Bunget has taken no steps backward. The new album is a passionate and entrancing combination of extreme metal and traditional folk melodies and instruments, and we like it a lot.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NEGURĂ BUNGET: MĂIESTRIT

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Mar 292010
 

I’ve said before that I’m a latecomer to the charms of black metal, and I’m trying to educate myself. Romania’s Negură Bunget has been on my list of bands to check out, but I decided to wait for two new releases that were forecast for this year. Those albums — Măiestrit and Vîrstele Pămîntului — have recently become available, though the bands that produced them are not entirely the same.

Up until the spring of 2009, Negură Bunget consisted of drummer Negru, vocalist/keyboardist Hupogrammos, and guitarist/bassist Sol Faur (all pictured above). At that point, the latter two members left the band (and are now involved in a project called Dordeduh), and Negru recruited new artists to continue creating music under the Negură Bunget banner.

The first of the two new releases, Măiestrit, is a re-recording of the band’s 2000 album called Măiastru Sfetnic, and the new production was completed in 2009 by the three original members of the band. The second album is the work of Negru and his new bandmates. Today we’ll write about Măiestrit and tomorrow we’ll come to Vîrstele Pămîntului.

We haven’t listened to the 2000 recording of Măiastru Sfetnic, but Negru explained in a recent Decibel magazine interview (May 2010 issue) that the new release is both an enhancement in production and a re-imagined interpretation of the music, prompted by the band’s complete dissatisfaction with the 2000 album.

Obviously, we can’t comment on the previous release or contrast the old with the new. But considered as a stand-alone effort, Măiestrit is completely captivating in its emotional power and is one of the most impressive albums we’ve heard this year. (more after the jump, including a track to stream from Măiestrit . . .) Continue reading »

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