THE NORTHERN DARKNESS FESTIVAL 2013: CAN SOMEONE GIVE ME A RIDE TO NORTHUMBRIA?

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Apr 172013
 

Damn, this caught me off guard. As announced yesterday (but not yet with much fanfare): On December 8, 2013, at an institution of higher learning named Northumbria University in the town of Newcastle on Tyne in England, a tremendous line-up of metal bands will be performing on two stages. The event is named The Northern Darkness Extreme Music Festival 2013, which is a good name, because it’s definitely northern and it will most likely be dark there in December . . . and the bands are pretty damned dark, too. Check this line-up, which isn’t even complete yet:

Napalm Death (UK)
Graveworm (Italy)
Ragnarok (Norway)
Enthroned (Belgium)
Melechesh (Jerusalem)
Unfathomable Ruination (UK)
Hour of Penance (Italy)
Primitive Graven Image (UK)
Dyscarnate (UK)
Xerath (UK)

I’ve heard of Newcastle Brown Ale, but being a halfwit from Seattle I had no idea where Newcastle on Tyne was located, so I looked it up. It’s way the hell up in the northeast of England, about eight miles from the North Sea and not far from the Scottish border. Did you know that Venom came from Newcastle? Continue reading »

THE BEST REVENGE

 Off Topic  22 Responses »
Apr 172013
 

Here’s a thing that happened yesterday in Seattle, the city where I work: Shortly after 10 a.m., Seattle police responded to a report of a suspicious item near 3rd and Yesler in downtown Seattle. It was a backpack left at the entrance to a bus tunnel near the county courthouse, and guards reported they had seen wires in the backpack.

The courthouse — a very busy one — was closed, and the entire area was blocked off to pedestrians and vehicles for more than an hour. The police department’s Arson Bomb Unit was dispatched to the scene.

The backpack contained a hair dryer. And no explosives.

The police department said in a blotter post: “While the Seattle Police Department has not received any information about a threat to Seattle following Monday’s tragic events in Boston, MA, the department is taking reasonable precautions to protect our community, and has increased patrols in our neighborhoods and around critical infrastructure.”

And you ain’t seen nothing yet, but if you live in the United States, you will. Continue reading »

THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT PREMIERE ANOTHER NEW SONG: “TODESNACHT VON STAMMHEIM”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 162013
 

We have been looking forward to the release of many albums in 2013, but perhaps none so eagerly as Tetragrammaton, the new sonic assault by the 6th most popular and almost-award-winning Supreme Avantgarde Deathmetal band from Kampen, The Netherlands, THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT. In the hope of earning a swift and relatively painless death when the album is unleashed, we dutifully featured the lyric video for the album’s first single, “Gods Amongst Insects”. To hedge our bets even further, we now present to you our humble and barely articulate feature about the album’s second song.

The song’s title is “Todesnacht von Stammhein”, and like much of the music TMDC creates, a history lesson lies behind the lyrics. The title refers to the so-called “Death Night of Stammhein” (October 18, 1977) on which three members of the Red Army Faction imprisoned in Stammheim Prison were found dead in their cells. You can learn more about these events via this link to The Font of All Human Knowledge. There will not be a test — at least not one that we will administer — but when the album comes out on May 10 (May 14 in the U.S.), assimilation of such learning may be all that stands between you and the uncontrollable destruction of the Deathcult.

Shit, where was I?

Oh yeah . . . these dudes have a new song available for listening. Continue reading »

A TASTE OF DEAFHEAVEN’S NEW ALBUM: “SUNBATHER”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 162013
 

I don’t know if it’s ever been right to call deafheaven a black metal band. They’ve always worn their hearts on their sleeves, and although their music can be searing, it may not be quite vicious enough to warrant the label. But I don’t spend a lot of time wrangling over the right label to apply — I’ve just always really liked the music. And I’m really looking forward to their next album, Sunbather, which is coming on June 11, 2013 from Deathwish Inc.

Today brings us a taste of the music via a studio video that includes samples of different songs while guitarist Kerry McCoy, vocalist George Clarke, and new drummer Daniel Tracy track their stuff. I do like what I hear.

Check out the video below, and if you’re moved to explore further, you can find George Clarke’s detailed thoughts about the meaning behind each of the album’s songs at this location. Continue reading »

A LIFE ONCE LOST, AUTHOR AND PUNISHER, ENCRUST: LIVE IN TOLEDO, MICKEY FINN’S, MARCH 21, 2013

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 162013
 

(In this post NCS writer BadWolf reviews a live show by A Life Once Lost, Author and Punisher, and Encrust last month, and Nicholas Vechery provides some killer pics.)

 

I was walking through JC Penny with a friend the other day—he had a gift certificate and wanted to spend it, which proved harder than we anticipated. Because fuck JC Penny. He decided to look through clearance dress shoes. He tried a pair on, put it back and said:

‘It fits alright but I don’t like that metal band on the top.’

To which I said.

‘I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use those two words literally like that in years.’

It’s easy to take the origin of metal, as a genre-describing-word, out of context. It’s become self-referential. Suppose your friend took a spill while skateboarding and cut his forehead open—you might see the blood streaming over his eye and say ‘that’s so metal,’ like the genre’s content. But really that’s not metal at all. Metal cannot bleed.

Metal is machine-music. It’s hard as industry. I cannot conceive of an acoustic metal band—unlike rock and roll, we need electricity and amplification to make metal. Though not necessarily guitars, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.

The Man Machine Tour, featuring A Life Once Lost, Author and Punisher, and Encrust, was an inspired lineup: not only did each band have its own distinct flavor, but each, in its own way, embodied those mechanical, industrial aspects of the genre. Continue reading »

BLAKE JUDD SAYS NACHTMYSTIUM IS NOT DEAD; NEW ALBUM TO BE RELEASED IN 2013

 Metal News  7 Responses »
Apr 162013
 

Yesterday I reported that Chicago’s Nachtmystium had called it quits, deciding to go on hiatus for the foreseeable future after parting ways with its longtime lead guitarist Andrew Markuszewski and recording engineer/synth player Sanford Parker. My post was picked up by a lot of other on-line metal outlets. It appears I was wrong. This morning, Blabbermouth reported that Blake Judd had posted the following statement on his personal Facebook page:

“Apparently, some metal news sites have reported today that NACHTMYSTIUM has either ‘broken up’ or is on ‘indefinite hiatus’. Neither of these things are true. The band has gone through some personnel changes in the last few months and I’ve made the decision to cancel all of our summer tour / festival plans while the band regroups. Instead of touring, we will be writing and recording our next full-length album in the coming months, to be released on Century Media worldwide sometime in late 2013. Also, we have pulled our Facebook page offline to revise and update it (giving it a full overhaul with new photos from the past and the present, scans of interviews from magazines throughout the band’s 13 years of existence, etc.) … For the last time and for the record, NACHTMYSTIUM has NOT disbanded and is only on a hiatus in regards to playing shows.“

I make it a point not to report rumors on this site; we’re not into gossip or band drama. I based what I wrote yesterday on a statement Blake Judd had made to Stereogum in March (saying that Nachtmystium was “on somewhat of a hiatus for the time being”), on an “official statement” from the band that appeared on the Facebook page of the Belgian metal festival Metal Méan (stating that “The remaining three bandmembers of NACHTMYSTIUM as of today are going to bring the band to a state of hiatus”), on the fact that Nachtmystium had pulled out of a number of European festivals and other concert appearances scheduled for this summer, and on the fact that Nachtmystium’s Facebook page had disappeared without explanation. Continue reading »

PTAHIL, COLISEUM, AND PUSHMEN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 162013
 

Last night I took my net and waded into the swamp of the interhole looking to catch some fresh fish to serve up for you on a platter this morning. Turns out, I caught a bunch of damned piranha, which suited me just fine, since I was in a foul mood over the carnage in Boston and was having fantasies about feeding the gutless, life-taking perpetrators to something carnivorous.

All three of the new songs I found have something in common — there’s some punk down at the core of each of them, and varying degrees of 666 charred into their skins with a hot brand. They’re all also catchy as fuck. We’ll start with the nastiest piranha in this group.

PTAHIL

If you don’t know about Indiana’s Ptahil, then you haven’t been paying close enough attention to my babbling. They give no fucks, they do what they please, and what pleases them is singing about Satan in a way that will burn out your brain but leave a grin on your melted face. Both of their albums (reviewed here and here) have fired me up like an arson job, and now they’ve released a new single on Bandcamp named “Lamashtu”. In no time flat, it’s become one of my favorite things they’ve done yet. Continue reading »

AN ARCHSPIRE UPDATE

 Metal News  1 Response »
Apr 152013
 

I’ve been following Archspire for a long time, since December 2010 to be exact, when I came across their debut EP in one of my MISCELLANY excursions. Here’s part of what I wrote back then:

“This is a truly eye-popping convulsion of tech-death, with schizophrenic rhythms, astounding technical riffing and drumwork, and tiny threads of reappearing melody that stitch the songs together into cohesive wholes. And I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a death-metal vocalist bark out the lyrics faster than Archspire’s . . . . This is most definitely a band to keep your eyes on; you will hear more about them.”

Take it from me, it’s nice to be clairvoyant. We have indeed heard a lot more from this band — their 2011 debut album All Shall Align kicked a lot of ass and it landed them on a bunch of Canadian and European tours. But 2013 is turning out to be their most promising year yet. In early March, they signed with Season of Mist, and they’re now recording their SoM debut (and second album overall), which should appear later this year.

Today I saw a new studio video from the band’s sessions at Rain City Recorders. There appears to have been beer involved, but you wouldn’t know it to watch and listen to drummer Spencer Prewett. Holy fuck. We’re talking hyper-fast human blur activity. Continue reading »

DARK TRANQUILLITY PREMIERE A NEW SONG: “FOR BROKEN WORDS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Apr 152013
 

As previously reported here in late March, the new album from Sweden’s Dark Tranquillity, Construct, will be released by Century Media on May 27 in Europe and May 28 in North America. At the time of our last report, we only had a snippet of music from the album as part of a video trailer, but it sounded pleasingly vicious. In the last half hour, however, the band have premiered the first complete cut from the album — a song named “For Broken Words”.

It’s mid-paced, dark, doom-y, atmospheric, with a mellow, melodic instrumental segment, a catchy drumbeat, and nasty, cracked-ice vocals for contrast.

I suspect this song is going to draw very mixed reactions as a choice for the first full track premiere. It’s neither galvanizing nor particularly vicious and it may be closer to doom than to DT’s usual style of melodic death metal. But I’m liking it, and I suspect the album is going to be musically varied, with “For Broken Words” being merely one kind of taste of what’s coming.

Have a listen after the jump. Continue reading »

EASTFRISIAN TERROR: “LEVER DOOD AS SLAV”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Apr 152013
 

There’s so much to like about Eastfrisian Terror’s debut EP, Lever dood as Slav, that I decided to make a list of the good things:

1.  Eastfrisia! Now there’s a name . . .

2.  Sounds grimy as fuck.

3.  Grinding, uber-distorted guitar tone.

4.  Skull-smashing groove.

5.  Old-school, maggoty death metal + brutal slamming death metal + death/grind mayhem = sweetness

6.  Eastfrisia! Continue reading »

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