NO CLEAN SINGING

JEFF HANNEMAN HAS PASSED AWAY

May 022013

Slayer guitarist and founding member Jeff Hanneman died earlier today near his Southern California home. He had been forced to pull out of live performances after contracting necrotizing fasciitis, most likely from a spider bite. But the cause of death has been identified as liver failure. From a press report:

Slayer guitarist and founding member Jeff Hanneman died earlier today of liver failure. He was 49.

“Slayer is devastated to inform that their bandmate and brother, Jeff Hanneman, passed away at about 11AM this morning near his Southern California home,” the band’s longtime publicist said in a statement. “Hanneman was in an area hospital when he suffered liver failure.”

Hanneman co-founded the thrash metal greats with Kerry King in 1981; their breakthrough came in 1986 with the brutalist album “Reign in Blood.” Hanneman wrote or co-wrote the set’s standout tracks, “Angel of Death” and “Raining Blood.”

Hanneman is survived by his wife Kathy, his sister Kathy and his brothers Michael and Larry.

This is sad news. Jeff Hanneman is gone but his name will be remembered in the community of metal for a very long time.

NO PEACE: LISTEN TO ALL OF “TETRAGRAMMATON” BY THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT

Metal News 6 Responses »

May 022013

There is really no need for you to listen to Tetragrammaton before acquiring it. After all, we have been singing its praises for months, culminating in the full-fledged worship ceremony (also known as a “review“) presided over by the Rev. Andy Synn, and what right-thinking metalheads would require anything more than our word before spending their money? Speaking of which, we will be passing the alms plate at the end of this post, so please donate handsomely. Thank you.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, your not needing anything but our word to pick up Tetragrammaton. Well, in every flock there are wayward sheep who just will not do what they are told by their shepherd and insist on learning for themselves where the green pastures lie. For the wayward among you, therefore, we provide this link to Metal Sucks, where you may hear the entirety of Tetragrammaton in all its bombastic glory.

Here endeth the lesson. Please remember to leave your donation after the jump. Go in . . . NO PEACE!

MISCELLANY NO. 54: HEBOSAGIL, SUFFIX, BELGRADO

MISCELLANY, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

May 022013

I am so far behind in so many ways, perhaps most far behind in completing album reviews. So what am I doing? Listening to music from bands I’ve never heard of. I suppose this could be a form of procrastination, but instead I think it’s just my hunger for new things, which appears to be insatiable and uncontrollable.

So much time has passed since my last MISCELLANY experiment, that I ought to provide a reminder about my self-imposed rules: I pick bands at random whose music I’ve never heard; I listen to one song (sometimes I cheat and listen to more); I write my impressions; and I stream what I heard so you can judge for yourselves. The bands selected for this test are Hebosagil (Finland), Suffix (Sweden), and Belgrado (Spain).

HEBOSAGIL

As noted, these dudes are from Finland, so I already knew there was a better than even chance they would be good. I found out about them via a press release announcing that they have a new album named Lähtö that’s due for release by Ektro Records on May 17. The seventh track on that album is “Valmis mihin vaan” (yes, Hebosagil’s songs are in Finnish), and it happens to be streaming on Soundcloud, so that’s what I picked for purposes of this experiment. Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE . . . UNFAIRLY MALIGNED ALBUMS

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 27 Responses »

May 022013

(Here’s another in Andy Synn’s irregular series of things that come in five’s.)

That’s right, with this edition of the column I’m going to try and convince you that your opinions are wrong, and break the Pavlovian conditioning that has led you all to unfairly loathe some genuinely fine albums.

But… this is the internet… so none of that’s probably going to happen.

A little context first off though. A couple of days back I was listening to the new Cryptopsy album (still stunning btw) and suddenly thought to myself, “You know what, I haven’t listened to The Unspoken King in forever… surely it’s not as bad as I remember?”.

And you know what… it is. Ok, so it has a couple of solid songs, and a few that would be pretty good if they weren’t Cryptopsy songs, but overall… wow… it really is bad.

But it did get me thinking about albums towards which the general public consensus is largely negative (often influenced strongly by prevailing media portrayals, and sometimes out and out misrepresentations) but which I think deserve a renaissance, now that the initial furore has died down.

So here I present five of my picks for albums which have been castigated and criticised by the metal community at large, sometimes seemingly without even listening to the actual music, but which I think are actually pretty brilliant, once you get past all the politics and preconceptions. In fact, having spoken to several people about some of these albums, it seems a lot of folks “remember” the albums as being bad, but can’t tell you much about when, or even if, they’ve actually listened to them. So here I intend to rectify that. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 73)

That's Metal -- But It's Not Music 9 Responses »

May 022013

I haven’t put together a “That’s Metal!” post in a solid month. And I still haven’t, not really. Despite the title, I only have one item to share instead of 7 or 8, but this item is so stupendous that it deserves a post all by itself.

In the video after the jump, you will see a cheetah becoming the most metal of all cheetahs . . . and that’s all I’m saying about it.

Thank you Phro for this link. Nothing else that happens to me today could make it a bad day.

CULT OF LUNA: “VERTIKAL”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

May 022013

(Andy Synn reviews the latest album from Sweden’s Cult of Luna.)

To our shame we almost missed this one. I don’t know why. I’d conjecture that it was simply one of those cases where everyone here at NCS assumed that SOMEONE must be doing a review, right? And hence no-one did a review, a situation which, if left unremedied, would have been a huge failure on our part, and would have led (quite possibly) to many of you missing out on one of 2013’s densest and most rewarding musical experiences.

Loosely inspired and influenced by Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”, the album manifests as a seething monolith of despair and discordance, incorporating sections of sublime beauty and haunting ambience (both trademarks of the Cult of Luna sound) into its grinding cacophony of heaving aggression and backbreaking heaviness.

The rigours of a concept album are often demanding, and have broken many a lesser band. That Cult of Luna succeed (and succeed they most certainly do) attests to just how perfectly their sound and vision fits the themes at hand.

Life as a mechanism. Existence as industry. Loneliness. Alienation. Dehumanisation. These are themes that the band have either flirted with before, or been slowly drifting towards for some time – depending on where you stand and how you look at things. Continue reading »

A MORNING ROUND-UP: SYNAPSES, BÖLZER, MUMAKIL, AND DEAFHEAVEN

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

May 022013

Here are some things I heard yesterday that grabbed me. I’m starting with two bands who were new to me and finishing with two of whom I was already a fan.

SYNAPSES

Yesterday we posted Andy Synn’s engaging and informative interview with Alan Cassidy, The Black Dahlia Murder’s talented new drummer and formerly the hitter for Abigail Williams. If you haven’t read that yet, you should. At the end of the interview, Andy asked him for musical recommendations, and Alan made a pitch for an Italian band named Synapses. The name was new to me so I investigated.

It turns out that Synapses are a relatively new band whose debut album Expiation was released by Deepsend Records in February 2012, and they’re currently at work on a follow-up. Some tracks from the album are on YouTube and I listened to one called “Assault of the Weak”.

I can understand why Alan Cassidy thinks these dudes are awesome. It’s because they are indeed awesome, and a big reason why is drummer Riccardo “Cannibale” Fanara. “Assault of the Weak” is a fairly brutal form of highly percussive, fleet-fingered death metal with rapid-fire guitar and bass riffing and roaring vox. But as balls-out blazing as the hi-tech music is, it incorporates some mighty grooves and some inventive (and acrobatic) drumming. I’m particularly digging the snare hits, which come in unexpected places and punctuate the blasting in creative ways. Continue reading »

QUEST OF AIDANCE: “MISANTHROPIC PROPAGANDA”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

May 012013

(DGR wrote this review of the new album by Swedish group Quest of Aidance. It’s scheduled for release on June 3 by Pulverised Records.)

Quest Of Aidance’s Misanthropic Propaganda is one of the few albums out there that can effectively be described as a blur. It’s a sometimes incomprehensible, speed-focused chunk of deathgrind that at fourteen tracks still feels incredibly short – if not just because pretty much every song on it moves at breakneck speed and rarely slows down for anything.

Most of us are probably familiar with the 40-second smash-and-grab of a song known as “Anyx” that was the band’s recent premiere (outside of a couple of demos), but it hardly represents the rest of this disc. In fact, it feels almost like no one song really represents Misanthropic Propaganda. It feels like fourteen different, really fast experiments in death metal with the occasional leaning toward grind. It’s an album that at times can feel a little too familiar to those who know the roster of musicians that make up the band, but is still interesting and varied enough to be appealing.

Misanthropic Propaganda is a rare breed because it is one of those albums that doesn’t make an immediate first impression. Most albums you can get a spin or two in and you’ll find yourself in love-it-or-hate-it mode by that point, but I found myself acknowledging that the music was enjoyable but not settling on a lasting opinion. However, I have been drawn back to the disc because something about it hinted at far greater things, as if buried beneath those layers of blasts and walls of guitars there would always be something new to discover. It has – for lack of a better term – pulled me into its grip. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ALAN CASSIDY (THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER)

Interviews 3 Responses »

May 012013

(In this post, our own Andy Synn turns in an interview with Alan Cassidy, formerly of Abigail Williams and now the designated hitter for The Black Dahlia Murder, whose new album Everblack is coming to North America on June 11 via Metal Blade.)

Hello Alan. So to start things off, please, introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Alan and I like to party… I also play drums for The Black Dahlia Murder.

Ok, simple enough! Let’s keep on with some basic background information. When did you first start playing drums, and who were your earliest inspirations behind the kit?

I’ve been playing drums ever since I was a baby. I used to grab toys and piece together makeshift kits to bang on. I grew up listening to the Beatles cause of my dad so Ringo was there from the start but my early influences on drums were mainly Travis Barker and Joey Jordison. I loved the speed Travis had with all the interesting fills and drum beats he would put into songs and Joey had a cool style too but he was one of the first guys I heard playing double bass.

What bands were you involved with prior to being picked up by Abigail Williams/The Black Dahlia Murder?

I started out playing for a band called The Breathing Process in 2008 then I joined a band out of Ohio called Karen Page that had some guys from another band I had met there while I was in The Breathing Process. After that I joined Abigail and then Dahlia. Continue reading »

FULL ALBUM STREAM OF “DIDACT” BY MEANS END

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 6 Responses »

May 012013

(In this post we deliver unto you a full-stream of the new album by Sweden’s Means End, which we preface with the following introduction by NCS writer TheMadIsraeli. And yes, it’s an exception to our usual rule . . . the one about singing.)

Yes, it’s that time again. It’s time for more thall.

Means End are the final link in a triad of bands who are all conjoined by “that word”, mainly because Vildhjarta, Uneven Structure, and Means End have all shared members at some point or another. Something about this seems to have produced a certain magic that’s undeniable. All three bands have taken a style of metal that at this point, in other hands, has become trite, overdone, and less appealing than chugging a jug of smegma and rotten milk, and somehow managed to rejuvenate it while establishing distinctive identities for themselves. Means End certainly have a sound all their own. Yes, they have recognizable influences (and who doesn’t in this day and age?), but what they do with those influences really shines and stands out.

The Didact is fifty-one minutes of jazzy, funky, rhythm-driven, progressive groove metal with one of the best vocalists in metal right now. The music is cinematic, enigmatic, but still seething, with fangs dripping in battery acid. It’s this band’s sense of dynamics, moving between the gorgeous and moments when they bring the hammer of thall down upon you, that really stands out. The soft parts don’t really feel “soft” per se, because this band’s tendency toward ever-evolving key transitions produces more a sense of unease than a simple break from the heaviness. However, when the heaviness does hit, it pretty much implodes your intestines. Continue reading »

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