NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD: MASTODON, CULT OF LUNA, IMPUREZA, UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION, YEAR OF NO LIGHT

Oct 282013

Oh joy! Rapture! Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ’t!

Okay, I’m just trying to put a good face on another goddamn Monday that blows, like a noxious wind coming off a tire fire. At least we still have beauteous metal, flights of fallen angels to sing us to our rest at nightfall. Here’s a collection of things, in no particular order, seen and heard over the last 24 hours.

MASTODON

I saw that on December 10 Warner Bros. Records will be releasing Mastodon Live At Brixton, a digital-only recording of the band’s live performance at London’s O2 Academy in Brixton on February 11, 2012. That show was part of the band’s world tour in support of their last album The Hunter. I caught another stop on that tour in Seattle, and it was a powerhouse performance.

Interestingly, the digital-only release (which will be sold through Amazon and iTunes) will come in two versions, one that’s audio-only and one that’s a live video version of the 97-minute show. Here’s the set list: Continue reading »

A PANOPTICON UPDATE: NEW ALBUM DETAILS

Metal News 7 Responses »

Oct 282013

I didn’t discover Panopticon until Kentucky, but that’s all it took to turn me into a big fan. I distinctly remember my mouth falling open in wonder more than once as I made my way through it the first time, hearing the movement of the songs between the metal and the bluegrass, recognizing the samples from Harlan County U.S.A., understanding what the album was about. It connected with me on many levels, some of them opening up distant memories of the music my grandparents used to play when I was growing up in central Texas.

I didn’t really need any more reasons to start following Panopticon’s doings, but I got more when I heard the three tracks that Panopticon contributed to a split with Vestiges earlier this year. At least I wrote about that split, even though I fell down on the job with Kentucky; that split is one of the best releases I’ve heard this year.

All of that is by way of background, to explain why I’m writing now about an announcement that appeared on Panopticon’s Facebook page last night. It provides a lot of information about the next Panopticon album, to which I’ll add a few other tidbits of information I’ve picked up. Here’s the announcement: Continue reading »

SECTIONED: “REPEATER”

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Oct 272013

Your humble editor is going to be taking a blog break for the rest of the day, but before leaving I wanted to throw one more piece of music your way, and in this case it’s sort of like throwing a grenade after pulling the pin.

Sectioned are a band from Edinburgh, Scotland. I first came across them in May 2012 through a MISCELLANY excursion, which turned into a review of their second EP, Monotonne. Earlier this year they then finished work on another EP by the name of Outlier, and I wrote about a song from that EP named “Trismus”, which they debuted on Valentine’s Day. Both of those EPs are available on Bandcamp as “name your price” downloads.

Sectioned have been working on an album, but in the meantime they’ve discharged a new single just in time for Halloween. Like everything else they’ve done, this is up on Bandcamp for free (though they’ll gladly accept a donation toward their future efforts). The song’s name is “Repeater”, and when I first heard it, it blew some of my brains out through my nose. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 83)

That's Metal -- But It's Not Music 6 Responses »

Oct 272013

Yeah, it’s that time again — time to present our latest collection of images and videos that are metal even though they’re not music. Today we have seven collections of items for you.

ITEM ONE

We’re just days away from Halloween, so it seemed only fitting to begin with that ugly fucker up there. It’s a photo of Artibeus planirostris made by scientists from Conservation International during a recent survey of an Amazon rainforest in the northern South American country of Suriname. During the survey, 60 new species were discovered, including six new species of frogs, one snake, 11 fishes, and many insects. Artibeus plairostris is not a new species, merely the most abundant species of bat seen during the expedition.

Those large teeth are used for seizing and eating large . . . fruits. Yeah, sorry to disappoint you. The common name for this creature is the “Larger Fruit-eating Bat”, not the “Larger Blood Sucker”. But hey, let me make it up to you with this photo of a juvenile planthopper that was also taken during the expedition: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: PROMISCUITY – “BASIC INSTINCT”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Oct 272013

Israel’s Promiscuity proudly wear their influences like patches on the vest: Right there on the third track of their hellaciously romping EP Basic Instinct is a cover of Celtic Frost’s “Into the Crypts of Rays” from 1984’s Morbid Tales. That album, we know now, was a pivot point in the history of heavy music, along with rough contemporaries such as Bathory’s first full-length and Venom’s Black Metal, and Promiscuity are quite unabashedly happy to plant their flag in the same ground, albeit 30 years later.

Basic Instinct is an unholy stew of punk, speed metal, NWOBHM, and sulfuric acid — the kind of primitive, proto-black-thrash that conjures images of whisky-splashed moshpits in Lucifer’s favorite dive bar. With fairly simple, straight-ahead song structures, Promiscuity rely on the infernal infectiousness of their riffs and an array of screaming, unhinged guitar solos as the main source of their appeal — along with some truly venomous, echo-drenched vocals, the kind you can imagine came from gargling with a cocktail of crushed glass and lye. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SUM OF R, CHAOS MOON, GRUE, AND WITCHRIST

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 2 Responses »

Oct 262013

I’ve heard a lot of new music in the last couple of days, mostly isolated songs and videos from fairly deep underground. From those I compiled this mix, which I thought deserved that “Shades of Black” preface that I’ve used before. Despite the fact that the first and last offerings aren’t black metal, they’re still black as a moonless night.

SUM OF R

Sum of R is a Swiss band that since 2012 has consisted of Reto Mäder (bass, drums, percussion, synthesizer, piano, effects) and Julia Wolf (guitar, effects). Their most recent work is an album entitled Ride Out the Waves, which was released in late 2012 by Storm As He Walks. It’s also now available on Bandcamp. The last song on the album is “Alarming”, and in 2012 it was released in advance of the album as a music video. The video is a montage of film clips edited and assembled by Francesca Marongiu, an Italian multi-instrumentalist and visual artist, in her alter ego as Agartthacave.

This was my first exposure to Sum of R (thanks to our supporter KevinP’s posting of a link to the video on FB today), and the combined audio and visual synthesis floored me. The music is a glacial floe of funereal doom and drone, shrouded in caustic distortion and punctuated by cataclysmic percussive downbeats and shrill electronic noises. Withering harsh shrieks and the sound of a siren ratchet the tension until everything falls apart beneath the final mallet blows. It’s completely crushing. Continue reading »

THE BEST OF OLD SCHOOL SWEDISH DEATH METAL PLAYED BY NEWER BANDS: THE LAST FIVE YEARS

LISTMANIA 2013 42 Responses »

Oct 262013

Earlier this week I reviewed a great new album by Blood Mortized that’s in the vein of old school Swedish death metal, which happens to be one of my favorite metal sub-genres. One of our frequent commenters suggested that I consider compiling a list of my favorite “regurgitated” Swedish death metal albums since 2000 — and by “regurgitated” I took him to mean albums released by bands who weren’t actually in existence back when that old school was being constructed by the likes of Carnage, Nihilist, Dismember, Entombed, Unleashed, and Grave (to name only some of the ground-breakers).

I’m not very good at making lists. I have a hard time ranking bands and albums and I’m always afraid I’m going to forget something. Also, trying to make a list of albums that have come out over the last 13 years seemed like an especially daunting task for my feeble mind. But I did decide to create the list you’re about to see. Though it’s quite long, I’m still afraid I’ve forgotten something, or simply never heard an album that deserves to be mentioned. So I’m encouraging readers to add their own favorites in the Comments if I left any of them out. But first, I want to be clear about the criteria I used — and I want to provide some caveats, too.

1. I limited the list to albums that were released from 2008-2013 (the last 5 years). Apart from the fact that this was easier, I think it’s also the period when we’ve seen the biggest resurgence in this style of metal among newly released albums and EPs.

2. I excluded bands who existed back in the late 80’s and early 90’s when this style of music was being born, even if they’re still around (e.g., Grave) and even if they broke up and then later re-formed (e.g., Evocation, Interment). On the other hand, I didn’t exclude newer bands just because their line-ups might include people who were involved in other bands during that era.

3. I tried to limit the list to bands whose sound is significantly influenced by that old school SWEDISH style, as exemplified by the bands mentioned above (though the listed bands are from all over the world).

MAN MUST DIE: “PEACE WAS NEVER AN OPTION”

Album Reviews 10 Responses »

Oct 252013

(In mid-September we posted the first of two reviews of the new album by Scotland’s Man Must Die, and now we bring you the second one, by Andy Synn. Some albums just just demand this kind of attention.)

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Hard times make the heart grow harder.

It’s been four years since these Scottish bruisers last brutalised our eardrums with their sickening sonic stew. Four long fucking years of pain and struggle and bloody-minded perseverance. So it’s no surprise that the fourth album by the Scottish juggernauts might just be their most abrasive, most lethally focussed, and most viscerally aggressive release yet.

To those unfamiliar with the band, their sound is a devastating mix of Cryptopsian chaos and Kataklysmic groove, delivered in a manner so utterly merciless, so utterly unforgiving, that its use in certain countries has been declared a war crime.

Fuelled by fire and frustration, each song is a demanding (at times exhausting) sequence of technical, pandemic death metal riffs, frenzied and punishing drums, and rabid, venomous vocals, all tied together by a subtle undercurrent of seditious melody and a grim atmosphere of malevolence and paranoia. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: GLORIOR BELLI, SEPULTURA, AND PROFANATICA

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Oct 252013

The subjects of this post are three full-album streams now available for listening.

The first is Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls by the French band Glorior Belli. It will be released on November 12 by Agonia Records. Our man BadWolf gave it a favorable review here. Three of your five regular NCS writers consider it one of the year’s best albums (and the other two haven’t weighed in). The full stream premiered yesterday at Stereogum, but you can also listen to it here, after the jump.

The second is a full stream of the new album by Sepultura, The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must be the Heart, which will be released in NorthAm by Nuclear Blast on October 29. In the US, the album is streaming exclusively at Metal Sucks, so you’ll need to go here to listen.

In light of certain accusations leveled at Nuclear Blast for not playing nice with web sites who don’t favorably review their releases, I thought it interesting that MS was selected for this stream, since their reviewer didn’t treat the album very well. We haven’t reviewed the album yet, and I haven’t heard it. But it’s Sepultura, and I thought that fact alone made the stream newsworthy. Here, by the way, is the album cover: Continue reading »

NEW TRIPTYKON ALBUM COMING IN 2014

Metal News 4 Responses »

Oct 252013

This morning my comrade Andy Synn passed along a link to this press release from a few days ago. You can of course read it for yourselves, but here’s an executive summary, because we are your humble servants and you are our executives.

Triptykon, for those executives who have been living in caves since 2008, is the band formed by ex-Hellhammer/Celtic Frost singer, guitarist, and main songwriter Tom G Warrior, and its lineup also includes V Santura (Dark Fortress). To date, they’ve released one album, 2010’s Eparistera Daimones. Today the band announced that a second album, entitled Melana Chasmata, will be released on April 14, 2014, in Europe and April 15 in North America, through a collaboration between the group’s own label, Prowling Death Records Ltd., and Century Media Records.

The album has been recorded “intermittently” since 2011, with engineering handled by V Santura. According to the press release, “The album’s title may be translated, approximately, as ‘black, deep depressions/valleys'”. And here’s a quote about the album from Tom G Warrior: Continue reading »

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