AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARCH ENEMY — “NO MORE REGRETS”

 Premieres  27 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

Arch Enemy live at Sweden Rock — photo by Am. Creations, used with permission.

The new album from Arch Enemy, War Eternal, is being released today in North America by Century Media and to celebrate the occasion we bring you the premiere of the band’s official video for the album’s fifth track, “No More Regrets”.

For a genre of music that at its core is about wrecking convention, metal has a surprising number of fans who tend to resist change. Arch Enemy, of course, experienced a big change this year with the end of the Angela Gossow era and her replacement by new frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz. That has led to some upheaval in the ranks of the Arch Enemy faithful — an upheaval that has sometimes seemed to overshadow the music on War Eternal itself, which happens to be excellent.

As our writer Andy Synn put it in his review of the new album, “[T]he recent changes to the band’s line-up really are a blessing in disguise. Throughout War Eternal the new Arch Enemy sound renewed and re-energised, a band firing on all cylinders and with something to prove – to themselves as much as to everyone else…. [The album] succeeds in taking the by-now familiar formula of the Arch Enemy sound and sharpening it, strengthening it, giving it teeth and claws and a fresh appetite for destruction.” Continue reading »

SPANISH DEATH METAL: DOMAINS, BOKLUK, MORBID FLESH, APOSENTO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

(In this post our guest Kunal Choksi (Transcending Obscurity) puts the spotlight on new releases by four death metal bands from Spain.)

Here are some rather new and interesting, but most importantly effective, Death Metal bands from Spain to check out. The originality is questionable but these guys are doing it better than most out there – Domains is a worthy competitor of Dead Congregation’s latest one released in the same year, Bokluk is playing devastatingly raw but catchy and old school Death Metal, Morbid Flesh is sticking to its tried-and-tested but concrete old school Death Metal, and lastly, you have the comeback album, in a sense, of the old Spanish legend Aposento, who have been around since the early ‘90s and only now unleashed a debut full-length. Let’s delve more into the bands, shall we?

Domains – Sinister Ceremonies (The Sinister Flame)
http://www.thesinisterflame.com/

Sinister Ceremonies is only the debut album but it’s thorough and comprehensive in its sound and aesthetics. Unlike the usual Immolation–Incantation worship or Blasphemy added to the sound, Domains creates its own template of music, borrowing or rather incorporating influences of bands like Krisiun, Behemoth, and even Deathspell Omega to create something that is rooted in dark Death Metal but is also reaching out to different styles and traditions. Continue reading »

MDF XIII: MARK YOUR CALENDARS

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Jun 102014
 

A metal friend of mine from Denmark e-mailed me recently that “Reading your MDF travelogues were a joy because they were so non jaded, they kinda read like the experience of a child in a candy store :).”  I think that pretty accurately nailed the way I felt about attending Maryland Deathfest XII. It was not only my first MDF experience, it was my first-ever metal festival of any kind, and it could hardly have been more perfect.

How do you improve on perfection? I guess, by definition, you can’t. But you can achieve something equally wonderful, but also different. And so I’m already excited about the 13th edition of this festival, the dates of which have now been announced: May 21-24, 2015. And the first round of bands, plus info about early-bird ticket sales, will be announced by August 1.

I’m well aware that for a great many people this festival is out of reach — too far away, too expensive to attend, falling on dates that don’t work. I’m not even sure I can go again. But I’m already fantasizing about it.

Part of the fantasizing involves wishful thinking about the bands who might attend next year. There’s an event page for the festival on Facebook that’s filled with people’s wish lists. Reading them (at least the serious ones) makes me salivate — in part because it really does seem possible that anything you wish for could actually come to pass.  Given MDF’s track record, you don’t even have to limit yourself to bands who are still active; even bands who’ve been dead for decades could come back to life for one last hurrah in Baltimore. Continue reading »

ANATHEMA: “DISTANT SATELLITES”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  22 Responses »
Jun 092014
 

(Andy Synn wrote this review of the new album by Liverpool’s Anathema.)

Let’s start things off by getting a few things out of the way first, shall we? If your initial reaction to this post is:

“That’s a stupid name. I won’t listen to what any site named No Clean Singing has to say!”

Or:

“What is this? This is not metal! This site is stupid!”

Then there’s the door. Feel free to let it hit you on the way out.

For those of you who’re still reading (hopefully that’s most of you, because our readership here at NCS is, in the majority, pretty open-minded and interested in the albums/bands we elect to cover), thank you for sticking around, and I hope to make it worth your while. Continue reading »

ORCHESTRAL MOVEMENTS IN THE ‘HOOD

 Off Topic  4 Responses »
Jun 092014
 

This is off-topic. No metal here. I’m just killing time until I can come up with something else to post today, if my fuckin’ day job will leave me alone long enough to do that. In the meantime, here’s something that happened in my home town of Seattle last Friday, June 7:

Seattle’s own Sir Mix-A-Lot performed “Baby Got Back” with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and about two-dozen butts (attached to about two dozen ladies from the audience).

This was done as part of the symphony’s “Sonic Evolution” project, in which composers are commissioned to write orchestral world premieres inspired by bands and other artists from (or in some way related to) Seattle. In this instance, composer Gabriel Prokofiev wrote and conducted an original piece inspired by Sir Mix-A-Lot. Did not see that coming.

Also, as you’re about to witness, he also arranged an orchestral accompaniment to “Baby Got Back”, the second best-selling song in the U.S. in 1992 and controversial enough to be banned from MTV back then (briefly). I guess you could say times have changed. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: ORGONE, HARDCORE ANAL HYDROGEN, TERRACIDE, SUPER MASSIVE BLACK HOLES

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 092014
 

(Austin Weber returns to NCS with recommendations of new underground releases. There are four bands covered in this post and tomorrow there will be three more.)

Whenever I do get around to writing various articles or reviews, I typically find myself instantly sidetracked and sucked into more new music that inevitably deserves to be written about as well. Which leads to more articles like this, and while it’s not clear to me if anyone cares, I will keep churning them out anyways! The bands that follow below span an eclectic range of styles, so I hope you the reader will find something you enjoy in the mix.

ORGONE

Pittsburgh extreme death metal act Orgone came to fruition at the right time in tech-death’s growth during the mid 2000s. During that period there seemed to be a bit more experimentation, versus the largely codified style and sound of what we expect when we hear that term now. Orgone released a stupefying near-impenetrable debut called The Goliath in 2007 and then disappeared. Now they’ve returned with The Joyless Parson, a further test in pushing the boundaries of death metal.

It’s a uniquely experimental effort that thrives on lengthy, lumbering builds and abruptly vacillating tempo shifts. In fact, The Joyless Parson spends more time at a menacing, pained crawl than it does in roaring, fast-paced tempo territory. Some may have heard of the band through Patron Of The Rotting Gate’s cover of “Caress Of Vines”, before this album came out. But that’s a long story related to the album being released on the internet in 2011 in pre-production form, and not subsequently being mixed and mastered until last year, leading to its current new official release status. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DEATH GRIPS DROPS A NEW ALBUM, ZETRO SOUZA RETURNS TO EXODUS, HAMISH GLENCROSS LEAVES MY DYING BRIDE, AND HOUR OF PENANCE FALLS OFF THE CONQUERORS OF THE WORLD TOUR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 092014
 

Here are four startling new events that happened over the weekend.

DEATH GRIPS

Death Grips released the first half of a new album last night. As is their want, there was no advance notice, or at least none that I saw. The name is niggas on the moon. It’s 8 tracks long, it’s streaming in full on Soundcloud and YouTube, and it’s free to download. And all 8 songs feature Björk. Seriously.

The band’s announcement says this 8-song release is the first half of a double album, the name of which is the powers that b. They say it will be released later this year on Harvest/Third Worlds Records.

I haven’t started listening to the music as I write this on a Sunday night, so I’ll save any thoughts about it for a later update. Or maybe someone else around here will provide some thoughts. I’m expecting weirdness.

To download the music, click this link:

http://thirdworlds.net/files/niggas-on-the-moon.zip

Stream it below. Continue reading »

WATCH EMPEROR PERFORM LIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2007

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jun 082014
 

On June 7, 2014, Norway’s legendary Emperor performed at the Sweden Rock festival in Solvesborg, which was arranged as part of the band’s commemoration of the 20th anniversary of In the Nightside Eclipse. For this show, the band consisted of Ihsahn, Samoth, Faust, and two live session members — bassist Tony “Secthdamon” Ingebrigtsen and keyboardist Einar Solberg.

A video surfaced today which shows the end of the introductory music and the band playing “Into the Infinity of Thoughts”, the second track from In the Nightside Eclipse. The video quality is excellent, and the audio quality is good enough. And hell, it’s Emperor live in 2014 and what are you waiting for? Watch and listen next… Continue reading »

SPLITS: RUINS/USNEA AND SHUDDER/SECTIONED

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 082014
 

Maybe sometime soon I will attempt to review a full-length album by someone, but this weekend I’ve been trying to catch up on shorter works. I have two recent split releases to recommend, with full music streams accompanying the following reviews.

RUINS / USNEA

This two-song split makes for an interesting juxtaposition of styles and a good introduction to two bands who deserve more notoriety.

Ruins make their home in Bielefeld, Germany, and this split is their most recent release following a 2013 album (Incidents) and a couple of other shorter recordings. Their track is named “Discrimen”. The band start ratcheting the tension immediately with a buzzing hornet swarm of guitars and the rhythmic thunder of a heavy bass line and tumbling drums. It’s a galvanizing start, and the music grows even more energized and potent as the song progresses and the vocalist’s gritty howls join the fray. Just as the slashing riffs start to really get their hooks into your head, the music veers off the road briefly before getting traction again in an intense finish.

The music fuels a blood lust, but the fist-swinging hardcore aggression is balanced by the band’s talent for interweaving rhythmic dynamism and subtly infectious melodies that have a way of hanging around your head after the song ends. Good stuff.

*** Continue reading »

GENOCIDE PACT AND GRUESOME

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jun 072014
 

I was in a death metal mood this morning and spent some time exploring music from death metal bands I hadn’t heard before. From that foray, I surfaced with two offerings that I’d like to recommend.

GENOCIDE PACT

Genocide Pact are from Washington, DC. Two of their members (Tim and Nolan) also play in a grind core band named Disciples of Christ, and the third (the drummer, Connor) is a member of other bands as well. To date, Genocide Pact have recorded a demo that was released in 2013 by Malokul, which I discovered because A389 Recordings is distributing it on 7″ vinyl with cover art by Joshy of DC’s Ilsa.

The four songs on the demo are stripped-down and devoid of frills or fads. They lumber and crunch like a phalanx of huge earth-moving machines that haven’t had a tune-up in decades, belching the smoke of distortion and periodically squealing with feedback as the gears come close to locking up. The rhythms alternately bolt forward in a d-beat-driven rush, chug like a hellish locomotive, and stagger like a dying giant, with the crash of cymbals and the vocalist’s hoarse growls cutting through the cacophony of this brute-force demolition project. Continue reading »

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