YOUR MESHUGGAH FIXES FOR THE DAY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 312013
 

Maybe you don’t realize that you need a Meshuggah fix, but you do. In fact, needing it and not knowing you need it could be the source of many of your mental and emotional instabilities. If you watch these two videos, you could become a happier and more well-adjusted person. And by “happier and more well-adjusted”, I mean vacant-eyed, slack-jawed, and slobbery.

I almost didn’t post the first video. I almost didn’t even watch it. I don’t like being the last metal blogger in creation to post about things, so when I see a video that has already made the rounds, I kind of assume that everyone who cares has seen it and I should spend my time on something else. But I got an e-mail today from Johan, an NCS reader who was actually at the club in Sweden where the video was filmed, watching the performance as it happened, and he changed my mind.

As he explained in his message, “Last year Toontrack (creators of drum-software and sample-libraries) decided to throw a staff party/PR stunt by having Periphery and Meshuggah play gigs at Scharinska villan in Meshuggah’s hometown of Umeå. Nothing special right? Except for the fact that Scharinska is a tiny club fitting 300 people in total, maybe 200 in the actual concert room, and that only 100 tickets were released to the public. The rest were given away to employees and partners. Needless to say, the gig was tremendous and the crowd was boiling (literally, it was insanely hot)….  The camera that is shooting straight towards the stage is pretty much where the back of the room is, it’s that tiny.” Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: WEREWOLF (PROMISCUITY)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Oct 312013
 

Last Sunday I reviewed the latest EP (Basic Instinct) by a three-man Israeli band named Promiscuity. In a nutshell, I liked the shit out of it. It’s the kind of infernal rock ‘n’ roll that makes a direct connection to the spirit of early Venom, Celtic Frost, and Bathory, without just aping any of those bands. The review led to a conversation with the band’s founder, bass player, and lyricist, who calls himself Werewolf (the other two members are one hell of a vocalist/guitarist named Butcher and the formidable drummer from Sonne Adam, Steel)

I don’t do many interviews. Time is too short, given what else I try to do with this blog, and I don’t hold myself in terribly high esteem as an interviewer.  But this one I couldn’t resist, not only because I’m so high on the music but also because this would be my first direct contact with a metal band from Israel, which is a musical scene I know next to nothing about.

And so, beginning early one morning (for me), Werewolf and I messaged each other back and forth on Facebook, taking unsynchronized breaks for snatches of sleep (the time zone difference is pretty significant) and to pay attention to our respective day jobs. We finished yesterday, and you’re about to read the conversation.

It’s a long, wide-ranging discussion (which includes tips about some other Israeli bands), because it turns out that my interview subject is bright, articulate, thoughtful, and funny — especially for a werewolf. And for those of you who like to listen to music while you read, I’m going to help you out.
Continue reading »

BAND NAME FODDER

 Band Name Fodder  28 Responses »
Oct 302013
 

We may have another post for you today, a full-album stream of a recently reviewed album, but this depends on the whims of the technology gods. In the meantime, below is what purports to be a list of reasons for admission to an insane asylum in the late 1800s, sent to me by a friend (thank you Patrick). Exactly why he thought this would interest me, I’m not completely sure. But of course it interests me intensely, mainly because the vast majority of these reasons look like metal band names.

Actually, I’m pretty sure some of these ARE metal band names. Continue reading »

GWAR, WHITECHAPEL, IRON REAGAN, A BAND OF ORCS: LIVE AT THE ACE OF SPADES, SACRAMENTO (Oct 19, 2013)

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Oct 302013
 

(Our man DGR do know how to write a fuckin’ show review, and this is his latest.)

I apologize for dragging ass as long as I did with the review on this one. I had hoped that some good quality video would be out by the time I wrote this, but as time continued on, it became more evident that this would likely be a text-only review. Flash back to October 19th, the day after my birthday. This show would be my personal celebration. I was going to go see one of the most ridiculous shows out there and I was going to drunkenly enjoy every second of it — that there might be some good music happening that night would only be a bonus.

This being a Saturday show, I knew that the crowd would be huge, and that prophecy was fulfilled pretty quickly when I showed up a full twenty-five minutes before doors, and for the first time ever, wound up waiting in line around the block. Other times I’ve been to shows, I’m usually within the first fifty or so people and then the crowd forms about ten minutes before doors. Not so in this case, and that’ll learn me for when/if Gwar come around again.

They’ve played Sacramento before, with Cancer Bats and Devildriver, but I sadly wound up missing that show due to work and I was determined not to do so this time, subjecting myself to weeks of graveyard shifts in order to insure that I had that Saturday evening off. It was an exciting as hell evening in a packed as hell venue, with one of the most energetic crowds I have seen in this city in some time. Continue reading »

AMIENSUS AND OAK PANTHEON: “GATHERING” (A Review and a Musical Preview)

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHORT BUT SWEET  21 Responses »
Oct 302013
 

Amiensus and Oak Pantheon are two Minnesota bands we watch closely at this site. Both of them produced debut albums in 2012 that we praised in our reviews — Restoration by Amiensus (reviewed here) and From A Whisper by Oak Pantheon (reviewed here). Both of them can be considered black metal bands, but both of them have incorporated so many other musical elements that diverge from the Scandinavian orthodoxy that one day we will have to concoct a new genre name for what they are doing. “American black metal” isn’t specific enough, and although both bands come far closer to Agalloch than they do Marduk or Taake, “Cascadian black metal” isn’t right either.

While we continue to ponder just what shorthand to use in describing what each of these bands are doing, we can now consider their latest creations, which come conveniently packaged together in a new forthcoming split release entitled Gathering. Before I heard a note, I had a good feeling, because both the main album cover (“The Plains of Heaven”) and the alternate cover (“The Great Day of His Wrath”) were crafted from 1849 paintings by John Martin, and that just exudes good taste, as does the decision to have both tracks mastered by Arsafes (Kartikeya, Above the Earth) (and he mixed the Amiensus track too). Those good feelings proved to be prescient, because both bands’ contributions to the split are stellar. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL! — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 83.5): “MUTE”

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  1 Response »
Oct 302013
 

Our frequent guest contributor Leperkahn sent me a link to a recent video last night, urging me to use it in the next installment of our THAT’S METAL! series, in which we feature videos, photos, and news items that are metal even if they’re not music. I refused — because, having seen the video, I can’t wait that long. I need to share it right now, all by itself. The title is “Mute”.

It’s clever as hell standing all by itself, but as I watched it I thought it was also a metaphor for metal (though conceivably I’m so metal-obsessed I’m predisposed to see the meanings I want to see). It’s not just that the video is weird and twisted, it’s the idea that the sharpness of a knife edge, the slash of violence, and the blood of wounds sums up an awful lot of what makes metal . . . metal . . . and what makes it such a powerful way of expressing what we feel.

As Leperkahn pointed out, the video manages to be really metal while at the same time being “light-spirited, uplifting, and happy”. But even though the process may be painful, that’s how you feel when you find your voice, isn’t it?

I smiled all the way through this, but got one genuinely laugh-out-loud moment from it. You’ll probably guess when that happened after you see it. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: SKELETONWITCH, CHTHONIC, SAKTMÓÐIGUR, AND HATSUNE MIKU

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 292013
 

In this post we bring you three globe-spanning videos that premiered either yesterday or today, with our performers hailing from the exotic locales of Ohio, Taiwan, Iceland, and Japan.

SKELETONWITCH

The lyrics to the title track from Serpents Unleashed tell you a lot about what you hear in the song: “Demonic, defiant, eyes of burning chaos / With darkness at our side / Evil at our command / Crush the weak and feeble, their place within the dust / Rain fire from the shadows / Striking hard and fast / Vomiting the blackest hate / The spawn of wickedness…”

The new video for the song strikes hard and fast, too. Rapidly strobing between shots as the band deliver the goods, the film makes effective use of light and shadow, slo-mo interludes, and split-screen views. Check it out next: Continue reading »

EAST OF THE WALL: “REDACTION ARTIFACTS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Oct 292013
 

(NCS contributor Austin Weber reviews the new album by New Jersey’s East of the Wall.)

I first heard about East Of The Wall a few years ago while talking to their old bass player Brett Bamberger in Indianapolis. I talked to him after The Binary Code set when he proceeded to tell me he was merely a touring bass player and his actual band was called East Of The Wall. He ended up giving me their debut because I had spent all my money on merch. I listened to Farmer’s Almanac several times on the way home and became an instant fan. Now a few years later, and times have changed, yet East Of The Wall have only grown stronger with age. Since Farmer’s Almanac, they added vocals to their music and dropped several more albums, each a different snapshot of a multi-faceted style always in flux. This new album Redaction Artifacts is no different in that regard and is yet another welcome change sonically for the group.

A series of recent line-up shifts has seen Brett Bamberger leave and their guitarist/harsh vocalist Chris Alfano switch to bass in his absence. Guitarist Kevin Conway left as well, which made room for two new guitarists⎯Ray Suhy and Greg Kuter. While this did inevitably change some of their sound, the music here is no less experimental or tastefully complex than before. Redaction Artifacts includes the most clean singing of any album, as new guitarist Greg Kuter sings frequently in addition to an enhanced singing output from longtime guitarist Matt Lupo. Their combined range hits everywhere from what Tommy Rogers to what Chino Moreno sounds like, and then some. For a truly progressive band such as East Of The Wall, all this new blood and focus on singing are just more tools in the shed for them to use in making their music even more eclectic and captivating. Continue reading »

I’LL EAT YOUR FACE IS DEAD… LONG LIVE I’LL EAT YOUR FACE

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Oct 292013
 

(We are honored to bring you this review, epitaph, and fictional imagining from Professor D. Grover the XIIIth in honor of the last gasp of Ireland’s I’ll Eat Your Face.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. Your Esteemed Professor has returned, albeit briefly, to mourn the passing of a personal favorite band, that dastardly Irish prog/grind duo known as I’ll Eat Your Face. A few of you, peering back through the mists of time to the heyday of The Number Of The Blog, will recall that the band’s 2010 release Irritant appeared, almost from the æther, and promptly seized the top spot on my year-end album list. Since that day, I have kept in touch with The Boy and Barrytron, the two miscreants whose cartoonish musical misadventures fill the brief discography of I’ll Eat Your Face, and thus was saddened to receive notice from the both of them that they were laying their project to rest and going their separate ways.

Now, I suspect this won’t be the last that we hear from these fanciful lads. Barrytron is, to my knowledge, still manning the skins in [r]evolution of a sun and also drumming for the delightfully odd StreisBAND, a hardcore band that does Streisand covers with only drums and vocals. And The Boy, well, he’s currently pursuing his PhD, but I suspect that he may pick up his guitar again somewhere down the line. Continue reading »

LUMBAR: “THE FIRST AND LAST DAYS OF UNWELCOME”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Oct 282013
 

There’s an unusual story behind the making of his album, one that’s both painful and inspiring. If you know the story, it can’t help but affect the way you hear the music. And that’s as it should be, because the story is at the heart of the writing and the recording of the music, too. That story has been told elsewhere, through our own interview of the music’s creator Aaron Edge, and an even more in-depth interview that appeared last week at The Obelisk. But even if you were ignorant about the album’s deeper significance, it would still hit with tremendous force.

For an album that consists of seven tracks totaling only about 25 minutes of music, there’s a temptation to say that it flies by. It does, and it doesn’t. You can read first-hand accounts of combat or other traumatic events, in which time seems to slow down. The intensity of Lumbar’s album plays a similar trick on the mind. The music itself moves in slow time, the massive distorted chords flowing like magma, groaning like titanic drawbridges being raised with rusted chains, pounding like a wrecking ball. But the slow rhythms are only part of the explanation for the music’s time-warping effect.

The sound is incredibly dense and contaminated, the guitars fuzz-bombed to the max, the music vibrating with radioactive decay, almost every second shrouded in a storm of static. The black, hallucinatory aura of the music is intensified by the layering of shrill, skittering electronic noise, shimmering cymbals, and a mega-dose of reverb. The harrowing sense of things falling apart, which pervades the album, reaches its apotheosis in “Day Five”, where rhythms and even the rudiments of melody are abandoned, leaving only the sounds of distant thunder growing into a battlefield bombardment and the howling of demented voices. Continue reading »

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