NO CLEAN SINGING

TOURISM: KING CRIMSON MOUNTS A U.S. TOUR

Jun 042014

The last time King Crimson mounted a tour was in 2008, and I’m sure many people thought that would be the last reunion (and the last hurrah). But founder Robert Fripp has decided to do it at least once again. He has assembled a new King Crimson roster for a group of select U.S. dates this coming September and October, starting in Albany, NY, and finishing in Seattle (be still my beating heart!).

This time, Fripp has assembled three (!) drummers — Gavin Harrison, Bill Rieflin, and Pat Mastelotto — and a bassist-singer (Tony Levin) in what Fripp has called the “front line”. And in the “back line” will be two guitarists (Fripp and Jakko Jakszyk) and a flutist-saxophonist (Mel Collins). This should be… interesting, to say the least. Continue reading »

A NEW ANIMATED VIDEO FROM “CASUALTIES OF COOL”: DEVIN TOWNSEND AND CHÉ AIMEE DORVAL REACH THE MOUNTAINTOP

Jun 042014

When our man Andy Synn reviewed Casualties of Cool, the new album by Devin Townsend and Ché Aimee Dorval, he called the music “Canadian Space Country”. I thought that was a clever turn of phrase, but also an apt description of the songs. And when he came to the album’s second track, “Mountaintop”, he wrote that it generated an “earthy, alien-country vibe”, the “ghostly strumming and phantom background radiation conjuring a series of strange, synchestrated visions out of simple sound and silence”. Only today did I realize that “synchestrated” isn’t in the dictionary. But it too somehow sounds… apt.

And I’m thinking about “Mountaintop” because today the UK’s Independent premiered an animated video for the song. The artwork is by Jessica Cope, who also created the fantastic video for Steven Wilson’s “The Raven That Refused To Sing” (which you should watch here if you haven’t already). Here’s the description from the Independent: “It follows the story of a traveller who is lured to a sentient planet which feeds off of the fears of its inhabitants. He finds solace in old objects he finds there, including a vintage radio and a phonograph, and eventually confronts his fears. In turn, his actions free a woman trapped inside the planet.” Continue reading »

WRETCHED: “CANNIBAL”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Jun 032014

(DGR reviews the new album by Wretched from North Carolina, and at the end we have a brand new video from the album.)

My history with Wretched is a spotty one at best. I discovered The Exodus Of Autonomy way too late for my own good, on the insistence of a fellow writer at a previous website, and really enjoyed it — but it was one of those situations where I felt I had really missed the zeitgeist on the band. Thus, when Beyond The Gate hit, that was my legit starting point with Wretched and I found a group who had gone really far into the melodeath spectrum of things, which I still feel was so odd given Victory Records’ slate of artists at the time.

In fact, they still feel like they were then one of the more intense groups on Victory’s roster, not prone to overindulgence on breakdowns and instead an intensely guitar-heavy, straightforward band who bounced between the various spectra of death metal at the drop of a hat. They were a band who were hard to pin down, moving between a variety of genres and landing them with tags like “progressive death core”, “tech-death”, “thrash”, and everything else that could have “death” suffixed or prefixed to it.

Son Of Perdition, on the other hand, is the brand of Wretched that I absolutely fell in love with. Joined by new vocalist Adam Cody (of Columns, Vehemence, Glass Casket, and a handful of other bands), the group took a turn for the absolutely manic. Continue reading »

ARSAFES: “RATOCRACY”

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Jun 032014

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by the Russian artist Arsafes, whose work with Kartikeya and other projects we’ve covered frequently at NCS)

I WAS going to review the new Crowbar, but something much more exciting to me (no insult to Crowbar, it’s fucking good) landed on my proverbial desk. It would be accurate to say that Arsafes and I are friends to some extent. We talk a good deal, we share music with each other, and I’m constantly nagging him about when Kartikeya’s gonna release Samudra. But right now, what matters is that he’s decided to revisit the idea of solo material.

There is one previous EP under the Arsafes moniker (discussed here), a blistering EP of industrial death metal with some Meshuggah-isms that was really impressive. Now he’s decided to revisit this idea and do a ful- length album. Not only has he decided to redo all the songs from the mentioned EP, he’s gotten quite a bit of new material together as well. Continue reading »

ENABLER: “LA FIN ABSOLUE DU MONDE”

Album Reviews 10 Responses »

Jun 022014

(BadWolf reviews the new album by Enabler.)

“We all pay for life with death so everything between should be free.”

So begins “Balance of Terror,” one of the many tracks I adore on La Fin Absolue Du Monde, the newest album by midwestern metalcore outfit Enabler. It’s a direct, ideological and emotional piece of language—the kind that vocalist/guitarist Jeff Lohrber excels at. Every well-articulated roar that issues from his maw feels anthemic. Which is funny, considering that Enabler’s particular brand of crusty, noisy, grind-length metalcore doesn’t typically focus on recognizable words, or songs at all for that matter. Lohrber doesn’t conform to expectations. He’s an honest-to-god songwriter in a genre that praises drive-by firebombings over experiences that one wants to dissect and revisit. His songs, each a cry for some sort of justice or sensibility, convey a genuine emotionality that much extreme music lacks.

Enabler is every bit his baby, and what a baby it is. 2012’s All Hail The Void would have been a high point of my year-end list had I given it a spin the year it came out. Last year, Enabler released two EP’s, Shift of Redemption and Flies, both of which produced at least one incredible song (“Live Low” and “Sickened by the Wake”, respectively). To say I was excited for La Fin Absolue Du Monde, would be an understatement—but I had no idea I would love it this much this quickly. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST: MY TAKE

Mosh Pit 16 Responses »

Jun 022014

(In this post NCS guest contributor Kevin P, who I had the pleasure of meeting in person for the first time at this year’s edition of Maryland Deathfest, provides his thoughts about the 12th installment of this amazing U.S. festival.)

This was my third MDF and the first one I planned on attending all four days. In 2011 I went Friday through Sunday, and last year on Thursday only (yes, I flew out simply for Bolt Thrower). As luck would have it, Triptykon cancelled three days before their scheduled performance on Thursday, which made me rethink my plans.

We have a brand new baby in our house (three months old) along with a ten-year-old, so the wife wasn’t what I would call “pleased” that I was going to be away for almost five days while she played the single parent game. The only bands that really mattered to me on Friday were Necros Christos, The Ruins of Beverast, and At the Gates (who I’d just seen twice on Barge to Hell in Dec 2012), so once Triptykon made Thursday utterly useless for me (yeah, Coffins are cool and all, but nothing that gets me all chubbed up at night), I decided to cut my trip to only Saturday and Sunday (ya know, help out around the house, make the wife happy, all that kinda shit).

Then, in their infinite wisdom (and possibly me gently nudging and requesting it on their Facebook page), the organizers decided to add a second Bölzer set on Friday night (in place of Aeturnus, who had visa issues at the airport). Bölzer was originally scheduled to play Saturday night, opposite Dark Angel, which was my sole pain point for the whole festival. I don’t live and die everything Dark Angel, but they are a legendary band I enjoy and have never seen. But when the hell am I going to get a chance to see Bölzer again? So once they added a second Bölzer set on Friday night (opposite At the Gates’ time slot), the wife said “go, why not at this point”. So at 11:50pm Thursday night I rebooked my flight AGAIN to arrive on Friday early afternoon. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DE PROFUNDIS — “FREQUENCIES”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Jun 022014

(Andy Synn reviews the forthcoming EP by the UK’s De Profundis.)

De Profundis have always been one of the more… unique… bands on the UK metal scene. And that’s something that’s been both a blessing and a curse for the band, as their diverse and distinctive style of Progressive Extreme Metal has long been both instantly recognisable and yet frustratingly hard to pin down.

Over the years the band’s sound – doomy, progressive, blackened, deathly – has changed and mutated in a number of ways, yet their artful amalgamation of disparate influences – coupled to an always impressive, intricate instrumental flair – has always remained constant. Despite this, though, many people, myself included, have struggled to define or describe the band in any useful way, without simply resorting to an array of vague references to a multitude of other bands.

And trying to fully elaborate and elucidate precisely what it is that makes the band so special, without falling back on the crutch of these predictable, often ill-defined, comparisons, has been a problem for a while now.

But I can confidently say that Frequencies solves this problem with aplomb, and it does so without sacrificing any of the band’s carefully crafted identity or hard-won credibility. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DESULTOR, SAMAEL, CORONAL MASS EJECTION

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

Jun 012014

I’ve been attending a two-day picnic with friends and co-workers, this Sunday being the second day. On the one hand, it’s been a shitload of fun. On the other hand, it has diverted from me from catching up on new metal, and I was really far behind even before the weekend began. But I hate to let a day go by without posting something, so I grabbed a few things to throw your way. This is a truly random assortment, but perhaps it will prove entertaining anyway.

DESULTOR

My NCS comrade Andy Synn sent me a link to a debut album entitled Masters of Hate by a Swedish duo named Desultor that’s streaming in full on YouTube. I’ve been listening to it with half an ear while doing some other things, which is hardly a good way to listen to an album. And this obviously isn’t a review. But the album is so striking that I thought I would at least pass it along.

The first track is a two-minute introduction that sounds a bit like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It makes the songs that follow all the more surprising. The music is an explosion of extravagant melodic death metal. The blazing instrumental work is almost completely overpowering, with massive jet-fueled riffs and off-the-hook percussion roaring like a silo on fire (Hour of Penance and Fleshgod Apocalypse came to mind as I listened). The songs are hugely infectious while also unleashing an obliterating sonic assault. Continue reading »

JUST BEFORE DAWN: “OUTNUMBERED”

SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

May 312014

Earlier this month we featured a brand new song named “Counterbattery” from Sweden’s Just Before Dawn. It turns out that “Counterbattery” was just the first track on a two-song single that will be released later this summer on vinyl and cassette via Prowler Records, and a few days ago Just Before Dawn put the second track up on the web for streaming and free download.

The new song is named “Outnumbered”. Anders Biazzi once again wrote and performed the music (with Brynjar Helgetun on drums), and on this track the vocals were recorded by Rogga Johansson and Jonny Petterson.

Like everything else this project has delivered to date, the lyrical subject matter concerns warfare, in this instance the fate of an outnumbered unit of soldiers surrounded by the enemy in a ruined city, lying in wait for one last strike and a final grasp at redemption. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PILLORY — “MASS ENMITY”

Premieres 4 Responses »

May 302014

Boston’s Pillory will soon be releasing their second album Evolutionary Miscarriage via the Unique Leader label. If you’re familiar with other bands on the Unique Leader roster, then you’ll probably be able to make a good guess about the particular type of mayhem that Pillory deliver, but we’re going to remove the guesswork by premiering a stream of the new album’s second track, “Mass Enmity”.

If you aren’t intrigued by the instrumental introduction, I’ll be surprised, because it’s very enticing. But the song just grows more and more interesting, the kind of music that simultaneously activates the reptile part of the brain while engrossing the higher faculties as well. Parts of the track sound like a conflict raging on some futuristic battlefield. Parts of it surf on cosmic space lanes. Other parts sound like the soundtrack to the work of a big mainframe solving an immensely complex mathematical formula. Continue reading »

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