BLACK METAL MONDAY

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Mar 082010
 

I’ve been a latecomer to black metal, but it’s been growing on me, sorta like rash that just spreads the more I scratch it. I’ve been trying to further my black-metal education (though still, I haven’t read Hideous Gnosis) while at the same time trying to keep up with interesting new releases across many extreme metal genres — which hasn’t been easy. Only so many hours in the day, unfortunately.

Basically, when it comes to black metal, I feel like a small child. In black diapers. Actually, I gave up the black diapers last week.  Figured it was time.  Because they weren’t black when I started wearing them.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to get educated. One thing I’ve learned is that the term “black metal,” standing alone, really doesn’t tell you very much. Bands that work under that banner can sound remarkably different from each other. I suppose I still associate that genre label with tremolo picking, blast beats, and evil-sounding shrieking in the vocals — but I’m discovering that’s a gross generalization that fails to capture the musical variety of “black metal.”

For example, I’ve listened to three new/forthcoming releases in the last couple weeks that are all classifiable as “black metal” but that sound dramatically different from each other — one from a legendary Norwegian band whose members are pictured above and whose name will be found in every history of the genre that has been or will be written — Darkthrone — and one from a band that is painfully obscure outside their home country (and maybe even within their home country) — Nydvind.

I really like both releases, though they sound nothing alike. Collecting some thoughts about each of them in this roundup and allowing you to stream some excerpts is as good a way as any to illustrate the variety in black metal, even as it’s being practiced today. (read on, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

ROTTING CHRIST: AEALO

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Mar 032010
 

Aealo, the 10th full-length offering from Greek extreme metal band Rotting Christ, is by far the most interesting listening experience we’ve encountered to date in 2010. It’s a coherent compilation of lush, passionate, densely layered songs that establishes a new milepost in Rotting Christ’s fascinating musical evolution. When the year ends, something tells us this album will still be in the forefront of our memory.

Thematically, Aealo is organized around concepts of battle, destruction, death, and mourning. And in exploring those subjects, songwriter (and vocalist/guitarist) Sakis Tolis has tapped into ancient Hellenic culture and events. More than any other Rotting Christ production, Aealo incorporates the sounds, rich musical traditions, and mythic history of the band’s homeland.

It accomplishes this feat in part by the use of guest artists, including a female choir from Ipiros called Pilades, Greek-American performance artist Diamanda Galas, and musicians from Greek pagan folk band Daemonia Nymphe. But while incorporating the sounds and ancient musical traditions of their homeland, Rotting Christ have not forsaken the powerful, signature style of their previous discography. Aealo is an intensely emotional and wholly remarkable blend of traditions, and we venture to say the result is like nothing else you will hear this year.  (read more after the jump, and listen to a track from Aealo . . .) Continue reading »

SARCOLYTIC

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Mar 012010
 

Austin, Texas, has always had a vibrant music scene, but so many years have passed since I grew up there that I’ve lost any personal knowledge of how underground metal has evolved, Central Texas-style. All I can do now is judge from a distance, but based on the output of bands like Averse Sefira, Iron Age, Mammoth Grinder, and The Sword, I assume the scene is alive and well.  Now I can add to the growing pile of evidence the debut full-length from Sarcolytic.

Recently released by Unique Leader Records (also home to Arkaik, the sick California tech-death band whose new album we reviewed yesterday), Thee Arcane Progeny channels a shotgun marriage (and I mean the bride and groom have both got em) of black metal and brutal death metal, with the liturgy prescribed by translated Sumerian texts that tell of humanity’s genesis at the hands of godlike extraterrestrials from a tenth planet. Ancient extraterrestrials aside (for the moment), the music Sarcolytic unleashes is elemental and unadorned in its grim fury. (read more after the jump, and listen to a cut from the album . . .) Continue reading »

ARKAIK

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Feb 282010
 

What have we here? It’s another Par Olofsson album cover! And just a few days after we showcased some other album covers by this prolific Swedish artist (here).

Wonder what’s inside? Hey, whaddaya know!  It’s a CD!  Wonder what it sounds like? (putting CD in music player . . . and listening)

Fuck yeah! (pumping fist in air) This is some sick shit!

(Strike that. This is supposed to be a high-brow extreme metal site, rendering sophisticated musical analysis in literate journalistic prose. Start over.)

The band is called Arkaik. They’re from beautiful Riverside County, California. They’ve shared the stage with the likes of Suffocation, Necrophagist, Dying Fetus, and Decrepit Birth. Their just-released debut album on Unique Leader Records is called Reflections Within Dissonance. And what’s the music like? Fuck yeah! This is some sick shit!

Damn. We gotta do better than that. Let’s use some adjectives besides “sick.” How about: insanely fast, technical, pummeling, rhythmically dynamic. How about some metaphors? Like standing right next to a jet turbine already spooled up to a full roar while an assault squad is blasting at your head with M4s on full auto — in a hurricane. (read more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SUFFOKATE

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Feb 272010
 

“bamf”

That’s the one-word review our NCS Co-Author IntoTheDarkness conveyed about Suffokate‘s just-released new album, No Mercy No Forgiveness. Actually, I guess that’s really three words. Anyway, to justify our existence, I thought I probably needed to flesh out that review just a bit. So here goes:

Bad ass motherfucker.

Not enough fleshing out? Yeah, you’re probably right. So lemme try again.

It’s deathcore.

And now that I’ve said that, I’m guessing about 75% of our readers are reaching for their mouses to move on with their web surfing. But hold your horses! Our bro IntoTheDarkness has listened to just about every deathcore release known to the civilized and uncivilized world, and he dismisses much of it as formulaic, no-talent crapola. But he said No Mercy was bamf. So there must be something here. So I’m listening to it. What do I hear?

Down-tuned, palm muted, hardcore guitar rhythms. Check. Jackhammer drumming, heavy on the blast beats and double bass.  Check. Roof-collapsing breakdowns that you can feel in your lower GI. Check. A combo of deep-throated death metal growling and vicious, demonic shrieking (often double-tracked in unison). Check. Lyrics? Yes, they have them. Enough said about that (who listens to deathcore for lyrical content?) But wait, there’s more — isn’t there? (don’t give up — continue reading after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MISERATION

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Feb 242010
 

Miseration‘s new album, The Mirroring Shadow, is not at all what we were expecting — but it’s a most welcome surprise.

Our expectations were based on the band’s first album, 2007’s Your Demons – Their Angels. That album was a particularly melodic rendering of melodic death metal, marked by the same mixture of clean singing and harsh growling that vocalist Christian Älvestam brought to his former band, Scar Symmetry. In fact, the similarities to Scar Symmetry were far more dominant than the differences.

That wasn’t a bad thing (cuz we liked the old Scar Symmetry just fine), but it seemed to us that Älvestam’s partnership in Miseration with guitarist/drummer Jani Stefanovic had become less a catalyst for change than a vehicle for continuing on with the songwriting style and musical sound of the band Älvestam had just left.

But on The Mirroring Shadow, Miseration has become a different breed of cat altogether. And we mean something like a prehistoric sabretooth — big, fast, powerful, vicious, and with teeth the size of carving knives. (more after the jump, including songs to hear and a digression about album artwork. . .) Continue reading »

MESHUGGASM

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Feb 222010
 

Spastic headbangers rejoice! Meshuggah‘s live performance DVD/CD Alive is out and available for purchase.

We’re guessing the odds that (a) you care enough about extreme metal to visit sites like ours, but (b) have never listened to Meshuggah, are (c) pretty fucking small. If by some tiny chance you haven’t given Meshuggah a serious listen, then this would be a very good time to do it. If, as is likely, you already know the music, you’re going to have a meshuggasm watching and listening to Alive.

[From the NCS Dictionary: meshuggasm: intense or paroxysmal excitement; especially: an explosive discharge of neuromuscular tensions at the height of arousal produced by listening to Meshuggah.]

The Alive DVD includes live performance footage from Meshuggah concerts during 2009 in Montreal, Toronto, and New York City, and from a 2008 festival performance in Tokyo. The decision to compile and alternate performance cuts from different venues rather than show one concert from start to finish keeps the video visually interesting, and presumably allowed the band and the director to pick the best live performances of each song.

The video includes 12 songs performed live, 5 from the latest full-length ObZen (“Pravus”, “Bleed”, “Electric Red”, “Lethargica”, and “Combustion”), 4 from Nothing (“Perpetual Black Second”, “Stengah”, “Rational Gaze”, and “Straws Pulled At Random”), 2 from Chaosphere (“New Millenium Cyanide Christ” and “The Mouth Licking What You’ve Bled”), and 1 from Contradictions Collapse (“Humiliative”). (more after the jump, including a track from the CD . . .) Continue reading »

RANDOM RECOMMENDATIONS (Part 3): PSYCHOFAGIST

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Feb 182010
 

Earlier this week we began a 3-part post about some technically proficient bands we’ve discovered in the last few months who’ve pushed the extreme metal envelope by incorporating unusual elements into their music.  They’re not well known in the U.S., but we think they’re worth your time. In Part 1, we wrote about a mind-blowing band from Rome called Carnal Rapture. We devoted Part 2 to a head-turning band from the Phillipines called Bloodshedd. Today we return to Italy for Psychofagist.

PSYCHOFAGIST

Last week we wrote about a Norwegian band called Shining and their latest album called Blackjazz.  We thought that collection of songs was wild in every sense of the word. We thought it would be a long time before we encountered anything quite so inventively insane. Well, we were wrong. It only took a week. During that week, we stumbled on II secondo tragico, the second full-length release by Psychofagist on the Subordinate label.

How to describe this? Imagine that extreme metal is a river all its own, with branching tributaries.  The main current is fast and strong, fed with snow melt or heavy rain and rushing with power beneath overhanging trees that shroud it in darkness most of the time. (continue reading after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

RANDOM RECOMMENDATIONS (Part 2): BLOODSHEDD

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Feb 172010
 

Yesterday we began a 3-part post about some technically proficient bands we’ve discovered in the last few months who’ve pushed the extreme metal envelope by incorporating some unusual elements into their music.  They’re not well known in the U.S., but we think they’re worth your time. In Part 1, we wrote about a mind-blowing band from Rome called Carnal Rapture. Today our subject is the equally mind-blowing Bloodshedd.

This band from the Phillipines has been making music since 1996 (with a few line-up changes over time), but didn’t release a full-length album until 2007’s Eye of the Pessimist.  Late last year, the band released its second album, Spare No One, on Tower of Doom Records, and it’s an honest-to-god, no-bullshit, jaw-dropper.

For starters, we can say it’s a blending of thrash and death metal, but that really is just the bare beginning. Whatever aural images that conjures in your brains, add to the mix that all of the instrumentalists — Bong Ecat and Bike Buick (since replaced by Darwin Venus) on guitars, MC Santiago on bass, and Toots Book on drums — are technically superb and they play (a) really fast, (b) really tight, and (c) really well. And they’re amazingly inventive.

Jojo Book supplies the vocals, and he’s got the kind of raspy, higher-range shrieking tone that brings to mind Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) or Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates) — and we don’t drop those names casually. So far, so good — but there’s a helluva lot more.  (read on, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

RANDOM RECOMMENDATIONS (Part 1): CARNAL RAPTURE

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Feb 162010
 

Those of you who’ve been visiting us regularly know that we tend to write more about little known bands than about the household names. By doing that, we hope to turn you on to music you might not otherwise find, which would be one of the few genuinely useful things we could do for you (other than make you smile every now and then).

Some of our recommendations have been more off the beaten path than others. The more we listen to extreme metal, the more we want a taste of something different and innovative. We haven’t let go of the more conventional shit (and in extreme metal, “conventional” is necessarily a relative term). But as time passes, we’re just moving further out into the gnarly frontier where weird beasts roam a surreal landscape, and sometimes our recommendations reflect that.

A few random cases in point: Carnal Rapture, Bloodshedd, and Psychofagist. These are technically proficient bands we’ve discovered in the last few months who’ve pushed the extreme metal envelope by incorporating some unusual elements into their music.  You might not have heard of them before, but we think they’re worth your consideration. We’ll focus on one band per day for the next three days, and as usual, we’ll stream some cuts so you don’t have to just take our word for it.

CARNAL RAPTURE

This unsigned band from Rome has been around under different names and with different personnel since 1992. The latest output from the latest line-up is an astonishing five-track EP called promo 2008.

Vince Neilstein at Metal Sucks has been carrying the flag for this band in the U.S., writing in December that the 2008 promo EP “still stands as the best demo I’ve heard all year from any independent metal band, anywhere in the world.” In the same month, Chris Catharsis at Spinelanguage also published a truly fascinating interview with the only original member, vocalist/guitarist Emilio Trilló.

Despite this attention, the band is still unsigned, and we still fucking love the music. So it’s only fair that we add our small voice to the chorus. (much more, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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