NO CLEAN SINGING

“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 89)

That's Metal -- But It's Not Music 12 Responses »

Jul 062014

I hang my head in shame: Almost two whole months have passed since my last THAT’S METAL! post. Even by my own lazy standards, that’s pretty terrible. I have excuses, but they’re not very good ones. I’ll just keep them to myself and get on with it.

Because so much time has passed and I’ve collected so many items, this will be a super-sized edition. And if you’re stumbling into this series for the first time, it’s devoted to images, videos, and news items that I think are metal even though they’re not metal music.

ITEM ONE

As usual, we begin with a photo. Actually, the first six items in this collection involve photos. The first one is above. It was taken by Russian photographer Denis Budko inside a cave near the Mutnovsky volcano in Kamchatka, Russia. The unusual visual patterns were created as snow inside the rock tunnel melted. Here are a couple more (and still more images can be viewed at Neatorama, which is where I found them). Fire + ice = metal.

NEW MUSIC ON THE WAY FROM FAITH NO MORE AND PINK FLOYD (!!)

Jul 062014

The news in this post is guaranteed to elicit a chorus of FUCK YEAHs from old farts like me, as well as younger farts who know what’s up: it appears that both Faith No More and Pink Floyd are recording new music.

FAITH NO MORE

On Friday, July 4, the reactivated Faith No More performed live at Hyde Park in London, wearing the garb of priests. According to eye-witnesses, they played two new songs, one at the conclusion of their regular set (right after “Ashes To Ashes”) and a second at the end of their two-song encore (the first of which was “We Care A Lot”).

A variety of fan-filmed videos have surfaced, highlighting the new songs. Most of the videos aren’t very good, but I’ve gathered up the ones I’ve seen so far and have embedded them after the jump.

It stands to reason that if Faith No More are playing new songs, they will soon be recording new songs. Am I right? Yes, I am right.

More details can be found here and here. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: STRIKER, BYZANTINE, 1349, DROWNED, DEATHEMBER, JUCIFER

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Jul 052014

Happy Fourth of July Hangover Day. Hope none of you American readers lost any fingers in a gunpowder accident, put out an eye with an errant sparkler, or lit off a bottle rocket in your ass. I have some news items and new metal for you that I spotted over the least 24 hours. This is a big collection, but what else have you got to do?

STRIKER

Striker are from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Metal Archives says they are a power metal band. This means the odds are very high that I won’t be able to stand their music. However, the cover art for their new album City of Gold is so goddamned awesome that I may be forced to listen to at least one song whenever the first advance track appears. You can click the image above to view a larger version of the piece, which is by one of my favorite metal artists, Berlin-based Eliran Kantor.

The album is due from Napalm Records on September 9 in North America (Aug 29 in Europe, September 1 in the UK). If anyone can give me a reason to bury my prejudices and listen to a Striker song, I will try to keep an open mind.

https://www.facebook.com/strikermetal Continue reading »

FIREWORKS FOR THE FOURTH: PANTHEON I, MAN MUST DIE, BOTANIST, THE RAGNAROK PROPHECY

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 12 Responses »

Jul 042014

Google Analytics tells me that over the last 30 days 40.10% of the visitors to our site were located in the United States. Because we math like some motherfuckers, we are able to determine that 59.90% of visitors over the last 30 days were from other nations. For them, today is just another day. So we’ll get the obligatory USA! USA! USA! chant out of the way by celebrating one of our nation’s greatest accomplishments on this July 4th via the video above.

Okie dokie, now that we’ve had our Fourth of July celebration, let’s move along to some musical fireworks. Here are four recommended new metal songs that appeared over the last 48 hours.

PANTHEON I

As we’ve previously reported, Oslo’s Pantheon I have a new album entitled From the Abyss They Rise that’s due for release on August 14 by Non Serviam Records. It includes both an EP’s worth of new songs plus older compositions, including their first demo tracks from a decade ago. Yesterday I caught up to a stream of one of the new songs that appeared on July 2. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM NECROS CHRISTOS: “NINE GRAVES”

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Jul 032014

I was caught napping. In an April round-up of new music, I included just a snippet of a song from the then-forthcoming EP Nine Graves by Germany’s Necros Christos — a release I’ve really been looking forward to. And then about 15 minutes ago I noticed that Nine Graves is now out and available for order on CD from Sepulchral Voice Records and Ván Records.

What’s more, I noticed that the album’s cover art (above) had been released (I’m trying to determine who created it) — and after a bit more poking around I found a stream of the album’s title song in its entirety.

Nine Graves includes nine tracks, described as “two new exclusive songs [the title track and “Black Bone Crucifix”], re-recorded yet totally new arranged versions of two old band classics [“Va Koram Do Rex Satan” and “Baptized By The Black Urine Of The Deceased”], plus four interludes [Temples I – IV] and one huge, persian influenced midtro… [the latter named “Gate”]”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CROSS VAULT

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Jul 032014

(Our Russian contributor Comrade Aleks brings us this interview he conducted with “M.” of the German doom band Cross Vault, whose debut album appeared earlier this year.)

The split-ups of some bands are really sad events. I still miss Earthcorpse and Aphotic, and a lot of doom-heads still find the fact of Warning’s disbanding quite dissapointing. But new bands raise their voice here and there and sometimes they become a good replacement for those who have gone.

Germany’s Cross Vault, with their debut album Spectres of Revocable Loss, is like a bitter balm for the wounds of those who miss Warning. These two Germans follow the path of Patrick Walker’s band and do their best to enrich the original sound of old’n’good doom metal with their own ideas. Their first work is a very successful and masterful monument to all the things we love in this genre. This interview with M. of Cross Vault sheds some light upon the past, present, and future of this promising project. Continue reading »

R.I.P. DEATH GRIPS (AND SOMETHING TO CHEER US UP TOO)

Metal News 5 Responses »

Jul 032014

We were early supporters of Death Grips, and have written about them repeatedly since the beginning. They were “metal”, even though they weren’t metal. They’ve always gone their own way, not only in their unusual approach to making music but also in refusing to conform to expected behavior in the music industry (remember when they gave a big FUCK YOU to the Epic/Columbia label by releasing No Love Deep Web for free download in advance of the label’s official release?). And now they’ve done it again — disbanding at the height of their popularity, with an announcement late yesterday that was just as unexpected as the timing of their album releases.

Above is a photo of a farewell note that they posted on their FB page. It promises one last double-album later this year. Many bands have announced their break-ups only to resurrect themselves later. I don’t think this band will do that. Here’s the text of the hand-scrawled note:

“we are now at our best and so Death Grips is over. we have officially stopped. all currently scheduled live dates are canceled. our upcoming double album “the powers that b” will still be delivered worldwide later this year via Harvest/Third Worlds Records. Death Grips was and always has been a conceptual art exhibition anchored by sound and vision. above and beyond a “band”. to our truest fans, please stay legend.” Continue reading »

AVOIDING SHAME: FUNEREAL PRESENCE (“THE TOWER FALLS”) AND SHORES OF NULL (“KINGS OF NULL”)

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Jul 032014

I’m mainly putting these two songs here so that, six months from now, when I include them in our list of 2014’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, I won’t have to cringe in shame and admit that I never wrote about them.

FUNEREAL PRESENCE

This New York band’s debut album The Archer Takes Aim was released in March by The Ajna Offensive. It’s “only” four tracks long, but those songs add up to nearly 50 minutes of music. The opening song is “The Tower Falls”. It’s 12 1/2 minutes long and still ends too soon, as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t need to tell you that some of the best metal songs in creation are long-form creations. But our Most Infectious list isn’t necessarily about the best songs. The songs have to be good, mind you, but the main criteria is that they have to be catchy, hard to forget, addictive — and those aren’t the first qualities that principally come to mind (or at least my addled mind) when you think about epic-length music.

No doubt, long jams can have more powerful and lasting effects on your mental and emotional states than short blasts of hook-filled, neck-throttling energy. But you often live in them “in the moment”. They don’t necessarily drift back into your mind and start replaying themselves without any conscious volition of your own. But “The Tower Falls” does that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORTALS — “CURSED TO SEE THE FUTURE”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Jul 022014

Brooklyn’s Mortals have been turning a lot of heads as advance tracks from their new album, Cursed To See the Future, have been appearing around the web over the last month. But the time has finally come to unveil the album in its full power, as we bring you a stream of the work from start to finish.

The reason heads have been turning is that Mortals are so successful at unifying disparate strands of heavy metal into highly memorable — and viscerally potent — songs. Woven into their dark tapestries you will find strands of sludge, doom, black metal, and thrash. The result is music that’s massively heavy, massively headbangable, and almost always decimating to the core.

Elizabeth Cline clearly has a genius for concocting riffs, and Cursed gives her the chance to show the range of her talents. Bassist Lesley Wolf gets plenty of opportunities to shine as well, because her nimble yet concrete-heavy rumbling is never out of ear shot — and her voice rakes with steel claws. Not to be outdone, drummer Caryn Havlik turns in a highly varied (but always spine-shaking) performance that’s a big part of why this music is so damned interesting.

BLACK THRASH: TRIUMPHANT, SLAUGHTER MESSIAH, DRUIDUS, GOATHAMMER

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 10 Responses »

Jul 022014

Relatively late in my life as a metalhead I’m discovering that I like thrash/speed-metal riffs best when they’re served up black on the outside and bloody on the inside. In this post I’ve collected some music from four underground bands that have been feeding that particular hunger.

TRIUMPHANT

Triumphant is the name of a band from Innsbruck, Austria, that used to be called Manic Disease. Their debut album, Herald the Unsung, was released in March of this year in vinyl by Heavy Forces Records and on CD by Cyclone-Empire.

My pal KevinP recently sent me a link to the album’s title track, and I was hooked from the opening seconds by the highly infectious and caustically blistering riffs that propel the music like a rocket. The song does have its off-speed moments, which are drenched in dark melody and surrounded by an aura of doom, and they’re part of what makes this long song so appealing. The vocalist, by the way, sounds like he has rabies — unhinged and biting. Continue reading »

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