NO CLEAN SINGING

YOUR BEHEMOTH ROUND-UP FOR TODAY

Oct 162013

I came across the three things in this post and they just seemed to go together. I really don’t know what else to say by way of introduction, so I’m not even going to try. Let’s just get on with it . . .

“THE BEHEMOTH PROJECT”

Are you like me? When you listen to Behemoth’s “Alas, Lord Is Upon Me”, do you feel like thrusting your pelvis, twerking, and trying to strangle yourself with your hair? Yeah, I thought so. It’s a common reaction. But not all of us are willing to get in front of a camera while we’re doing that. Thank goodness that Aneta, Katarzyna, and Izabela felt no such inhibitions.

Here they are, performing their dance routine to Behemoth’s classic at the Modelarnia fitness center in Bielsko-Biała, Poland. I feel sure that in no time “Alas, Lord Is Upon Me” will rapidly become a part of fitness routines worldwide, right up there with Deicide’s “Fuck Your God”. Continue reading »

HIGH ON FIRE: “SLAVE THE HIVE”

Metal News 4 Responses »

Oct 152013

Scion A/V does it again. Today they’ve made available for free download a new single by High On Fire. Entitled “Slave the Hive”, it’s the first new HoF music since De Vermis Mysteriis (2012). The single will also be distributed as a limited edition 7″ vinyl on the band’s upcoming, Scion A/V-sponsored North American tour, which begins November 10 in Atlanta and finishes in Los Angeles on December 12. Kvelertak will be along for that ride, with Doomriders, Pack of Wolves, and Windhand each opening on segments of the tour. All the tour dates are at the end of this post.

“Slave the Hive” is a thrashy speed demon of a song, trailing smoke and leaving skid marks on the pavement — and it includes a howling guitar solo that will set your hair on fire. Matt Pike’s vocals are high-octane, too. Very fuckin’ good metal. Listen next, and go HERE to download it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THE MELVINS, SANNHET, BEYOND MORTAL DREAMS, GIFT OF GODS, GOWL

Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News 8 Responses »

Oct 152013

I’ll be straight with you: I have about 500 new albums I want to review, a few hundred more I’d like to hear, a couple of interviews I said I would do, and instead I’m sitting here surfing the interhole, looking for new things, with so many tabs now open on my computer that it’s too bogged down to stream the music I’m looking for. Time passes, and I fall farther and farther behind. But I might as well put up a batch things I’ve seen and heard today so I can close some of those tabs. Here you go:

THE MELVINS

I saw an interview, published today, that Buzz Osborne of the Melvins gave to Noisey. He talked about the new Melvins album, Tres Cabrones (three dumbasses), which features the band’s original drummer Mike Dillard returning for the first time since 1983 and the band’s long-time drummer Dale Crover moving over to bass. The interview also included a bunch of other subjects, including these (which made me chuckle):

So you’ve been around for a while, what’s the biggest change in the music industry that’s impacted you as a band?
Nothing’s changed, really. Honestly, I don’t think there’s really any golden era of music. I like about as much new music now as I ever did, which isn’t much.

…

You were talking about new music earlier. At Noisey, we’re constantly dominated by news of Drake and Miley Cyrus. Curious if you had opinions on either.
Well, I don’t know who Drake is, first off. Continue reading »

YIN AND YANG: KUOLEMANLAAKSO AND HEAVY HOEMPA

Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Oct 152013

Musta aurinko nousee — cover art by Markus Räisänen

Yesterday I discovered some new music, quite a lot of it actually. I picked two of those new discoveries as a pair for this post, but not because they are anything alike. In fact, they could hardly be more different — and that’s why I’ve paired them together.

KUOLEMANLAAKSO

This band’s Finnish name means “Death’s Valley” or “Valley of Death”. It began as a one-man project of guitarist Markus Laakso (Chaosweaver). After recording a handful of demo tracks, he recruited a group of talented comrades to flesh out the band: vocalist Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun, Barren Earth), guitarist Savon Surma (“Kouta”) (Chaosweaver, ex-Verjnuarmu), bassist Tuomo Räisänen (“Usva”) (Elenium, The Nibiruan), and drummer Toni Ronkainen (“Tiera”) (Discard, Cult of Endtime).

Together they recorded an album at Woodshed Studio in Germany with V. Santura of Triptykon and Dark Fortress fame, who also mixed and mastered the music. The album is named Uljas uusi maailma (“Brave New World”) and it was released by Svart Records in November 2012. It was very good.

In August of this year the band recorded a second album with V. Santura, this time convening in a cabin in the Finnish woods near the shores of a lake. This morning I spent time I didn’t have reading Markus Laakso’s day-by-day studio diary, because it was both interesting and entertaining (and mouth-watering — this group ate well while together in the woods). If you have the time, and even if you don’t, I recommend it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SOUL REMNANTS, SPECTRAL LORE, SCARECROW, AND MALTHUSIAN

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Oct 142013

We all have our own recipes for dealing with the grimness of Mondays, even if those recipes simply involve falling into a state of clinical depression or foul surliness. My own recipe today was to go in search of fearsome new metal, the kind that would put a shot of adrenaline into the old brainstem or open a door into the pitiless void. The search proved to be highly successful, as you shall see. Here are four new songs from forthcoming releases that brightened up my Monday (and by “brightened” I mean “darkened”).

SOUL REMNANTS

Soul Remnants make their home in the Boston area, and their second album Black and Blood is slated for release on October 31 by a Philadelphia label named Horror Pain Gore Death Productions (by coincidence, this band is the first of two in this post whose new releases are being handled by that label). This morning I listened to two recently unveiled advance tracks from the album that are worth your time — “Incinerator” and “No Afterlife”.

The music is a hot shot of adrenaline straight into the bloodstream, a burst of ripping riffage and furious drumming, segmented by powerful pneumatic grooves and fleet-fingered soloing and flavored with seductive melodies. The caustic harsh vocals are aces too, and the production gives the music the sharp edge of scalpels at work. It’s a bracing brew of melodic death metal, tech-death, and even black metal stylings. Very nice. Continue reading »

CIRCLES: “INFINITAS”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 4 Responses »

Oct 142013

(Victimized by technological unreliability, TheMadIsraeli has been absent from our pages recently, but returns with this review of the new album by Australia’s Circles, which is out today via Basick Records.)

I’m finally back after experiencing another hard-drive crash and trying to get back on my feet with school and all. Thankfully I have all this week off, so expect fuck tons of shit coming your way.

This band, and this album, represent what may very well be the epitome of the dirty word/guilty pleasure/shit you just shouldn’t like as a metalhead. I have three dreaded genre names, and these guys are in all three. Ready?

Djent, Nu metal, and Alt metal.

I know. But bear with me.

I’ve talked about Circles before, when I reviewed their debut EP here on NCS. For me to appropriately address this album I think I need to go into a bit of surmising. It’s safe to say that a lot of metal heads, whether they want to admit it or not, can appreciate a good pop metal record once in awhile (think Mercenary’s Darker Days Ahead, which appeared earlier this year), though more often than not we tend to be unwilling to admit this. Sometimes you just want something that’s heavy enough, but has the hooks and melodies that will stay in your head for days. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BOG OF THE INFIDEL — “TO CORRUPT YOUR SONS AND LUST AFTER YOUR DAUGHTERS”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 10 Responses »

Oct 142013

The mail came. It included a soft brown package with an unexpected CD inside, the CD adorned with the cover you see above. I gazed upon it, I read the band’s name and the album’s title, and the tumblers in my mind fell into a certain configuration. I felt sure I knew what the music would sound like: guitars like razors scraping glass, an unceasing barrage of muffled blasting drums, vocals sulfurous enough to kill all the insects in my house, a lo-fi torrent of raw and ripping black metal. And that would have been fine, but maybe not worth writing about.

But this four-song EP by Bog of the Infidel (from Providence, Rhode Island) proved to be more than I was expecting. It is indeed black metal, and the vocals did indeed save me the cost of an exterminator, though they are more in the vein of hoarse, harsh roars and howls than demonic shrieking. But I sure wasn’t expecting that the opening track would be a bright, vivid, classically influenced acoustic guitar instrumental. And that was just the start of the surprises. Continue reading »

CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE, FALLUJAH, AWAITING THE APOCALYPSE, SOMA RAS, ALTERBEAST, LIFEFORMS: LIVE AT THE BOARDWALK (Oct 5, 2013)

Concert Reviews 8 Responses »

Oct 132013

(In this post DGR reviews the CD release show of Conducting From the Grave (with friends) at The Boardwalk venue in Orangevale, California, on October 5, 2013.)

Saturday (Oct 5) was exciting for a several reasons. First, it was my chance to see Conducting From The Grave take the stage fresh off the release of their new disc. Second, I also got to see Soma Ras again. Third, I’d get to see the newly christened Alterbeast and find out if my generally high opinion of them from their GBAA days would still hold up. And finally, and I swear this is true, I would finally get to see Fallujah — more on that later.

The whole show was basically a celebration for the Conducting guys, and they were treated like conquering heroes the whole night, with a pretty packed Boardwalk venue and a crowd receptive to every band who took the stage. Also, holy shit, were there a lot of cameras at the venue too; I guess quite a few people wanted to have their own bootlegs of the show that night.

One of them was right next to me for the whole show, someone who I would later find out was working for clothing/media company Atrocious Works (Home site and Facebook page) and has been posting the material online as he has uploaded it. You should obviously check them out because they’re adding to the huge archive of live shows on the net that are out of Sacramento venues, and a huge thanks to them for that. Right now, the videos consist of front-row views (and damn good sound quality) of Alterbeast, Lifeforms, and Conducting From The Grave. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: A PREGNANT LIGHT — “STARS WILL FALL”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 5 Responses »

Oct 132013

I knew nothing about A Pregnant Light before listening (repeatedly) to the band’s latest two-song release, Stars Will Fall. What I had to go on, besides the recommendation of NCS supporter Utmu, was artwork consisting of a photo of Hedy Lamarr from Ziegfeld Girl, the band’s self-chosen genre label of “purple metal”, and lyrics that although poetic and mysterious were also emotional and angst-ridden, speaking of “panic and love”, falling stars, being caught between the sun and the moon. I nearly made a fast U-turn back toward the realms of the eviscerating and destructive music where I usually dwell, because I interpreted these signposts as warnings of a possible trainwreck ahead.

But I thought, it’s only two songs, and although they’re longer than average, I can make my U-turn at any point before getting far enough into the wreckage to do permanent damage. Forging ahead turned out to be a really smart move.

Those two songs blur the lines between black metal, hardcore, post-metal, punk, and post-punk — and who knew all those lines were close enough together to be blurred? The music rides on rocking rhythms, with “Stars Will Fall” the more hard-driving and rambunctious of the two and “My Life Outside the Party” somewhat moodier. But the key to both of them is that they’re tremendously infectious, with melodic hooks and compelling rhythms that exert a strong magnetic pull. Continue reading »

POISONBLACK: “LYIJY”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Oct 122013

(DGR reviews the new album by Finland’s Poisonblack, which is out now on the Warner Music Finland label.)

We’re in a weird back half of the year as releases taper off in preparation for the mighty internet explosion of Top Ten lists. At the moment, it’s been a quiet lull with the occasional thunderclap of strong releases (see, for example, recent reviews for Glorior Belli, Otargos, and Skeletonwitch), and on this end, it’s afforded me time to really look at stuff outside of the general sphere of metal that we usually cover. I’ve been a longtime fan of the Finnish band Poisonblack, ever since 2006, so when the group put out a new CD this year I couldn’t help but check it out.

The band are not the heaviest thing we’ve covered, but for some reason a review of their new disc Lyijy (according to Google Translate: finnish for “Lead”) has been half-forming in the back of my head for some time. The group have, as of their last few releases, become something of a heavy rock band with a large blues influence in their riffs, drinking music for depressed bikers with a heavy layer of sleaze on top of it. Even though they’ve been around for a decade now, the name may not be overwhelmingly familiar to this side of the net since they aren’t our usual niche. However, Poisonblack are really good at what they do, and I have enjoyed everything they have put out. They’re one of my go-to bands when I want something more rock-feeling and less of the crushing heavy metal to which we willingly submit ourselves on a day-to-day basis.

Previously, I’ve rotated between the group’s latest three releases — A Dead Heavy Day, Of Rust and Bones, and Drive — but with Lyijy out now, does it qualify to join those discs for that rock mood? Continue reading »

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