SUMMER BREEZE 2013 — DAY 2

 Concert Reviews  12 Responses »
Sep 042013
 

(Andy Synn delivers this review of the second day at the recently completed Summer Breeze festival in Germany, and again provides video of the performances. To see his review of the festival’s first day, go here. We’ll have Part 3 of his review tomorrow.)

Day 2 of the festival kicked off (for me at least) with some pure blackened misanthropy courtesy of France’s Merrimack who proceeded to shake the cobwebs out of everyone’s brains with an esoteric take on panzerfaust black metal blasting that recalls Deathspell Omega in places (though considerably more focussed and violent).

The band’s frontman Vestal was a particularly difficult figure to look away from, screeching his savage hymns of depravity whilst physically flagellating himself with both his mic and his bare fists. Combine this with the band’s relentless delivery – all jagged edges and harsh, ecliptic angles, and you get one singularly uncomfortable, yet incredibly compelling, live experience. Continue reading »

SUMMER BREEZE 2013 — DAY 0/1

 Concert Reviews  5 Responses »
Sep 022013
 

(Our roving reporter Andy Synn was fortunate enough to take in the 2013 edition of the Summer Breeze open air festival in Germany last month and has prepared a multi-part review accompanied by videos that he shot during the festival. Today we bring you Part 1 of his write-up.)

Apologies to anyone who might have been waiting for my SB review this year. The trip to Seattle took up 99% of my time since, so I didn’t really have much chance to write things up before now!

Let me tell you though, leaving your house at 1am and driving to Dinkelsbuhl (where the festival is located), arriving at around half 7 in the evening, is a LONG drive. I did the first stretch in one relatively unbroken 10 hour stint, but after that it was a case of frequent stops to rest every time I started feeling my eyes getting heavy. Urgh.

DAY 0

As it was, though, I made it to the festival in time to see Vader… well, some of Vader. Because one minor issue with having the opening night festivities situated in the 3rd stage tent is that you end up trying to pack an entire festival’s worth of people into a venue that, while large in itself, was definitely not designed for that purpose! Thus my Vader viewing experience became a curious mix of long-range appreciation and video-screen voyeurism. Continue reading »

RANDOM DISCOVERIES FROM DUBLIN

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Aug 282013
 

(We welcome first-time guest writer Leperkahn, who introduces us to a couple of discoveries from Dublin — Ilenkus and Gacys Threads.)

Hello fellow NCSers. This is my first guest post for you all, hopefully the first of many, depending on whether I can get enough inspiration to get off my lazy ass and actually write things. As a bit of background, I live in San Diego, where weather does not exist, and promoters expect us to drive to feckin’ Los Angeles for 80% of our live metal, with the other 20% being at venues young’uns like me can’t get into.

That said, this post has nothing to do with San Diego. It has to do with unexpected metallic discoveries I found in Dublin, where I have been visiting family for the past couple of weeks. My aunt decided to show me a metal bar called Fibber Magee’s, where she had apparently been a regular years before. We happened on a little event called the Unleashed Festival, which was to go on all weekend.

Among the recognizable bands at the festival were Irish thrashers Gama Bomb, who headlined the first night. I, however, caught two of the bands performing on the second of three nights. Both kicked my ass and reduced my brain to corned beef, but each did so in somewhat different ways. Continue reading »

WINTERSUN / FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE / ARSIS: LIVE AT STUDIO SEVEN, SEATTLE, AUG 23, 2013

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 272013
 

(All of the regular NCS staffers have been together in Seattle since last week and collectively took in the performances by Wintersun, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Arsis at Studio Seven on August 23. In this post Andy Synn reviews the show and shares with us some video clips that he filmed that night.)

So… we may have missed Starkill. Apologies all. We were busy having drinks across town at The Oak (very cool place by the way) and ended up staying a bit later than we’d anticipated.

No worries though, because we made it to the venue just in time for Arsis who were, for me, at least, the most anticipated band of the night.

ARSIS

I’ve never seen James Malone and his melodeath marauders before, but I’ve been a fan of the band ever since they released A Celebration of Guilt, so this was a big moment for me, and the band did not disappoint at all.

Malone himself is both a fantastic guitarist and a vicious vocalist, shredding and riffing away flawlessly while barking his venomous, diseased lyrics. Continue reading »

MUSINGS

 Concert Reviews  12 Responses »
Aug 242013
 

This is a photo by Jun Tiangja of rice terraces in the Philippines. It has nothing to do with anything else in this post. I just think it’s beautiful.

I forewarned you that there would be a drop in NCS content for about one week beginning yesterday because I planned to confer, converse, and otherwise hob-nob with my brother wizards here in the Emerald City. And if you’re now laughing at the notion of yours truly and my fellow NCS scribes being characterized as wizards, you’re welcome.

All of us have indeed congregated in Seattle, with BadWolf arriving yesterday afternoon and TheMadIsraeli, Andy Synn, and DGR swooping in at various times on Thursday. And though I expected our collective blog time would dwindle drastically, I didn’t foresee that we wouldn’t post a goddamn thing yesterday, not even a notice saying we wouldn’t be posting a goddamned thing yesterday.

We’ve fallen down on the job because I think we’ve been enjoying each other’s company. I say “I think” because I’m not a mind-reader and am mainly speaking for myself, and speaking for myself, I am happy to learn that people who seemed like cool dudes over the internet have turned out to be cool dudes in person, too. Continue reading »

ANIMALS AS LEADERS, NAVENE-K, LEGION’S REQUIEM, JOURNAL, BISPORA: LIVE AT ACE OF SPADES 8-21-13

 Concert Reviews  4 Responses »
Aug 242013
 

(DGR reviews the August 21, 2013 show in Sacramento, California, put on by Animals As Leaders, Navene-K, Journal, Legion’s Requiem, and Bispora.)

It’s so odd being outside of the home city right now, especially considering that just three days ago I was out in front of a venue there waiting for a show. This jet-setting lifestyle creates some cognitive dissonance with the brain for sure. On Wednesday Animals As Leaders made the incredibly cool gesture of coming to Sacramento after their time on the Summer Slaughter tour had already wrapped up. The guys chose to soldier on and play a few more shows, and one of them took place in my stomping ground.

So it came to pass that I found myself standing out front in what began as a very small line outside of Ace Of Spades, which would grow to a pretty good-sized crowd over the span of the night. It was somewhat of a local social event as well since the whole support came from local groups, with the exception of Navene-K, who would eventually go on to surprise me as one of my favorite things that I saw that night.

I tried to find videos of every band from that evening and managed to do so for three of the five. We have a new group out here called RealityCheck Sacramento who are proving to be very cool, so look them up, and SickDrummer uploaded some drum-cam footage of Navene doing the song “Microcosm”. I haven’t found anything from Animals As Leaders yet. but the previous two uploaders are amazing people and I love them. Continue reading »

A WEEK TO REMEMBER

 Concert Reviews  4 Responses »
Jun 012013
 


(Bolt Thrower — photo credit Fred Pessaro and Invisible Oranges)

Live metal was all up in Seattle this past week. I can’t remember another week like it. I went to shows on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I could have seen Kylesa and Blood Ceremony on Tuesday night and Hate Eternal and Fear Factory, or Bell Witch and Usnea, on Thursday night if I’d wanted to. But in theory I had a day job I was supposed to tend to, so I tried to moderate things just a bit. The shows I did see were fantastic, ranging from killer sets by a group of local bands to the likes of Bolt Thrower, Benediction, and Gorod.

Old fart that I am, I’m exhausted from all those late nights and early mornings, suffering from a weeklong hangover/bangover, and black and blue from being caught in a couple of mosh pits, but this was definitely a week to remember. I didn’t take my camera to any of the shows I saw, so I’m using other images to pretty up this post. I’m mainly writing this to thank all the bands for killing it this week, and to introduce you to a few new names along the way.

MONDAY, May 27

On Monday night I went to the 2 Bit Saloon to catch the latest show by Seattle’s Carnotaurus (I’ve written about them before). Normally a three-man combine, they were missing their bass player due to a miscommunication about transportation to the venue, but that didn’t stop vocalist/guitarist Travis “The Virus” Helton and drummer Brad Navratil from tearing everyone a new asshole with a blast of vicious Mesozoic death metal. Travis gets so much low-end radioactivity out of his Jackson Kelly guitar and his riffing and soloing are so fast that the absence of the bass wasn’t a deal breaker. Carnotaurus are working on a new album that should be out this summer. Stoked for that. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, THE FACELESS, ROYAL THUNDER, AND JOURNAL (Sacramento, May 18, 2013)

 Concert Reviews  9 Responses »
May 222013
 

(DGR bears witness to the May 18 performances in Sacramento of The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Faceless, Royal Thunder, and Journal.)

It’s been a bit of an odd concert season so far this year. I heaped tons of praise on the Sacramento music scene last year because it seemed like there was show after show, after show, hitting within the span of a few months, to the point that between seeing local bands and bigger acts I actually wound up doing something like seven shows in one month – which was fucking awesome. This year though, work has overtaken a lot of what I’ve been up to. The year has just devolved into an endless stream of overnighters on the job, which have insured that in the span of five months….I’ve seen a whopping three concerts.

This one in particular was very exciting because it meant I’d get to see The Dillinger Escape Plan again. I’d seen them once before with Mastodon, which was a very weird experience. That time it seemed like a lot of people were there because they wanted to hear that one song that Mastodon had on the radio, so something like Dillinger was going to sail right over folks’ heads. This time though, you had a crowd who really wanted to see them and were enthusiastic as hell about it — and no band can create a feedback loop of energy quite like Dillinger can.

Of course, there were other groups on the bill, and whilst I had no idea what I was in for with Royal Thunder outside of the basic description from their Facebook, I did want to see Journal (again) and The Faceless for the first time on this end. Continue reading »

SUFFOCATION / CEPHALIC CARNAGE / HAVOK / FALLUJAH — NQ LIVE, MANCHESTER, MAY 15, 2013

 Concert Reviews  3 Responses »
May 172013
 

(Our man in the UK, Andy Synn, witnessed a night of death metal fun in Manchester on May 15 and files this report, with video.)

Tonight’s show was courtesy of my good friend Gary of Bite Radius Designs, who recently did some work for Cephalic Carnage on their Crucifreak t-shirt design. Thanks to him we were both put on guestlist and got a chance to enjoy a night of heavy, techy, thrashy, grindy, pummelling death metal fun.

FALLUJAH

Opening band Fallujah were the youngest and most inexperienced band on the bill, but still gave it their best shot at warming up the steadily growing crowd. Unfortunately, although their spacey, technical death metal works incredibly well on record, it lacks a little something live.

The mix didn’t help their cause, with the rhythm guitar and bass almost entirely inaudible, leaving the band to contend with a mix consisting purely of vocals, leads, and drums. Thankfully, the proggy, cosmic guitar leads are one of the band’s biggest strengths and offer a captivating glimpse of the band’s future potential. They just need to work on a bit more of a distinctive identity for themselves beyond this one aspect of their sound. Continue reading »

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