A LENGTHY EXCURSION

 Mosh Pit  47 Responses »
Apr 122013
 

(Occasional NCS contributor Mike Yost has kindly allowed us to re-publish this recent piece he wrote about the importance of metal on long road trips.)

Denver, Colorado to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  About 1,638 miles.   That’s 2,882,880 yards of asphalt.  Burning through almost 200 gallons of diesel fuel.  Passing what must have been over 1,000,000,000 fucking construction cones.  The vehicle:  A 22 foot-long Penske moving van with a dolly towing a car.  12 foot, 7 inch height clearance.  Ten tires on the road.  Total weight of about 30,000lbs.

Yes, this was (dare I say) an epic trip.  And an expedition of this magnitude required tunes.  Lots of tunes.   Lots of metal.  With almost 30 hours of drive time, silence for that long would have driven me into a bridge.   Or rather, I would have driven willfully into a bridge, laughing manically while beating my head against the steering wheel.

Combine the claustrophobia of a truck cab, the inability to sleep while occupying such a contraption, the stomach aches from eating shitty gas-station sandwiches made with meat shaved from the hind-end of a decaying maggot-infested human carcass laying out back, the traffic jams in the middle of fucking nowhere due to construction, the congested cities you must fight your way through, and just the general mind-numbing tedium of miles and miles of road rolling out in front of you—endless and without mercy or conscience—then you understand the function and importance of metal to sooth nerves and subdue the urge to suddenly veer into oncoming traffic. Continue reading »

HEAVEN SHALL BURN: “VETO”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Apr 112013
 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews the new album by Heaven Shall Burn, which will be released on April 30 in North America by Century Media.)

Heaven Shall Burn… Heaven Shall Burn… what can I say? After 6 full length albums, countless split-releases, and one phenomenal live DVD, they still seem in no danger of running out of steam or righteous fury.

Heaven Shall Burn are what you get when you force Earth Crisis and Bolt Thrower to conceive a child, and then have that child raised by At The Gates and Carcass, while supplementing their intellectual development with a steady diet of Kant, Marx, and Baudrillard.

Their distinctive mix of death metal brutality, singular hardcore focus, and knack for captivating melody makes the band, to my mind at least, one of the most quintessentially “METAL” of all metal bands, with a foot (or a toe) in almost every sub-genre – yet retaining a sound that is both entirely their own and instantly recognisable.

Devastatingly metallic and furiously hardcore, without falling prey to stumbling cliché (no bone-headed breakdowns or tacked-on clean choruses here, thank you very much), their early work helped define what would become the European “MetalCore” (capitals very much intended) movement while simultaneously stepping beyond it. These days “Melodic Death Metal” or “Melodeath” are the most common terms attributed to the band, but above and beyond that they’re simply Heaven Shall Burn – with a well-defined and singular style all their own. Continue reading »

YOUR UPDATES FROM THE WORLD OF WARFARE: MURDER MADE GOD, HATE MEDITATION, AND CROCELL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 112013
 

I think we’re very broad-minded around here. For example, in our last post we let Andy Synn talk about five excellent bands, most of whom integrate clean singing into their music. However, balance must be maintained. And therefore in this post we return to news and new music from the frontlines of sonic obliteration, with Murder Made God (Greece), Hate Meditation (multi-national), and Crocell (Denmark).

MURDER MADE GOD

This Greek band have recorded a new album named Irreverence, which is emblazoned with that eye-catching cover art you see above, and as of today it became available for pre-order from the Brutal Bands label (here). Also, I’ve learned that package orders placed with Brutal Bands before May 31 will be fulfilled with a free “Throne of Derision” shirt designed by Mike Majewski of Devourment. Check out his piece of nasty work, big as life, right after the jump: Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE . . . BANDS WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN HUGE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  39 Responses »
Apr 112013
 

(Andy Synn is back with yet another of his five-item lists of favorite things.)

TheMadIsraeli’s review of the newest Killswitch album (which I still haven’t actually gotten around to listening to) got me thinking, mostly about missed chances and wasted potential. As a fan of KsE, even I have to acknowledge that, due to a variety of factors, some beyond their control, some due to their own decision-making, the band may have squandered some of their early potential.

That may sound rather harsh; it’s not meant to be but it may sound it. But I think it’s unfortunately an accurate assessment of things as they stand. Losing Jesse, the stalling of their initial momentum while they recruited Howard, the more simplistic, mainstream leanings that sanitised their most recent work… all these combined with the general state of the music industry and some unfortunate timing, have meant that the band never reached the “megastar” status which was, however fleetingly, hinted at by their early potential.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Killswitch Engage are pretty damn mainstream, at least by metal standards, right? Well that’s kind of my point… we often forget, we proud underground warriors, that for most bands, being part of the metal “mainstream” means fuck all to the “actual” mainstream. Bands with legitimate underground cred who get the merest sniff of wider exposure are immediately attacked for “selling-out” even when they’ve not changed a thing, they just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

But what I’m talking about here are five bands who had the possibility, however slight, of achieving real recognition (mainstream or otherwise), real status, without sacrificing their integrity or identity, but for whom it never quite “happened”. Continue reading »

WATCH SUFFOCATION, EXHUMED, JUNGLE ROT, RINGS OF SATURN, AND ADIMIRON LIVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 112013
 

I’m really slow in spreading the word about this event — my man Vonlughlio tipped me to it the day it happened. In a nutshell, Suffocation, Exhumed, Jungle Rot, Rings of Saturn, and Adimiron performed live at the Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, NY, on the night of April 5. That was the second night of the Despise the World 2013 North American Tour, which is still in progress. The Saint Vitus show was webcast live, as it happened, on Gander.tv.

But the show was also recorded as it was happening, and the entire thing can still be streamed.

Even better, the stream of the live performance is embeddable, which means I can stick it right here at NCS for as long as the stream lasts — all 5 hours of it.

I don’t know how many people would choose to watch the entire show — I skipped around, myself — but it’s pretty damned cool just to have it available. Also, Exhumed played a new song called “The Rotting” from their next album, which should be out in the summer. Check out the show right after the jump. Continue reading »

YOUR GOREGRIND BAND NAME

 Mosh Pit  65 Responses »
Apr 112013
 

I am humbled on a daily basis by the creativity of others. Fortunately, this hasn’t made me bitter, because I just steal all that creativity and slap it up here on this site, and that makes me feel like I’ve done a good deed, and that makes me feel less like hunting down the creators and setting them on fire because they’re more creative than I am.

Except for the thing I’m writing about in this post. This is so fuckin’ choice that it makes me bitter because I didn’t think of it first. So while you enjoy it I’ll be tracking down the creators with a backpack full of gasoline and a road flare.

Here’s how this works: Think about your initials (yeah, this means you have to fuckin’ sober up to play this game). Then, use your initials to pick a name from each column in the chart above, and voila, you have your very own goregrind band name!

Don’t worry, you don’t have to squint at the chart because I’m putting a much bigger version of it after the jump. Continue reading »

BOB MALMSTRÖM, BLOOD RED THRONE, AND SVARTSYN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 102013
 

Now that I have your attention, thanks to that new album cover above, I have three more random pieces of new music to share with you today.

BOB MALMSTRÖM

It’s been way too long since we’ve featured anything by Finland’s Bob Malmström here at NCS. I first tumbled to them in December 2011 after catching their official music video for a song called “Eliten”, which was a kind of searing, headbanging, thrash/hardcore/punk onslaught, as rendered by a bunch of dudes in suits sipping champagne. For a fair amount of background about the band’s politically incorrect philosophies and interests, you might check out the post I wrote at that time.

Today brought a fresh reminder of how much ass this band kick: the debut of a lyric video for the title track from a new Bob Malmström album entitled Punkens framtid, which, according to Google Translate, means “Punk future” in Swedish. The new song rocks so hard it nearly knocked me flat, but I somehow kept my feet despite bouncing around in a solo mosh pit of my own making. Continue reading »

HIGHER CRITICISM: PESTILENCE — “DYSENTARY” AND “THE PENANCE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 102013
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli continues his retrospective assessment of the metal contributions of Pestilence. To read the introduction, go HERE.)

So here we are, starting the Pestilence series in earnest.  Pestilence in their early years played surprisingly primitive death-thrash compared to what they would become.  Pestilence were also one of the first notable bands out of the Dutch scene, an area that has become a diverse hotbed of some of metal’s most interesting bands, evolving to the point where Textures may now be the best known.  Not having been around at the time when Pestilence released Dysentery and The Penance, I can’t say how well-known the band was at that time.

These two demo’s were released in the same year, and both had a sound that really feels like it has nothing to do with the band’s infamous debut Malleus Maleficarum.  With that said, let’s start with the very first recorded output, Dysentry.

If that tape cover isn’t old school as fuck I don’t know what is.  Dysentry appeared in 1987, a blossoming period for the burgeoning death-thrash movement that was beginning to erupt.  This was the era of Sepultura, Devastation, and Protector, an era of vomity putrid vocals of a raw primal nature, detuned guitars in most cases, and frantic riffing that paid more tribute in its tone and aesthetic to a grimy frantic hardcore mood that merely channeled the technicality and speed of thrash metal as it had developed up to that point.  Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HANG THE BASTARD (“SWEET MOTHER”), ABIOTIC (THE “FACADES” VIDEO), AND SUMMONING (“OLD MORNINGS DAWN” TRAILER)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 102013
 

Here’s a round-up of a few of the things I saw and heard in the last 24 hours.

HANG THE BASTARD

I heard a new song by a London-based band named Hang the Bastard. NCS writer Andy Synn sent me a link to this song. I love this song with a deep and abiding love, not a platonic kind of love but a rough, messy, sweat-and-fluid-drenched, up-against-the-wall kind of love, with clothes ripped off and strewn around the floor and some blood smear left on the paint from all the scratches.

The name of the song is “Sweet Mother”, and Hang the Bastard released it a couple of weeks ago. It has huge, beefy, fuzzed-as-hell riffs coming out of every orifice. It squalls and crushes and lacerates. It maketh my head to bang so vigorously that I’ve been left in a permanent bobble-head condition.

The vocalist sounds like he gargled with gasoline and then ate a lit match before tracking his part; I hope the other guys had the decency to stick a fire extinguisher down his throat when he was done. Continue reading »

FUCK SPAM, AND THEN BUTCHER ITS CHILDREN

 IQ Subtraction  17 Responses »
Apr 102013
 

March 2, 2010: I wrote a rare, completely off-topic post about a movie — Crazy Heart.

April 9, 2012: A new comment appeared on that post. No one would have seen this comment, except possibly for Phro, since he left the only other comment on the post — in March 2011.

Here is the recent comment by a smear of living diarrhea whose spam-bot created the name qr5mer, with my interspersed responses in yellow, since that is the color of the piss in which I would like to drown this jackass:

“Let it end up being. ‘If a cyst is smaller than average discreet, whether or not this doesn injured or perhaps scratch in case this isn reddish colored and also soft, then you could only get out only, Inches states that Jack H. Any hands-off plan is the best for any cyst.”

Pardon me for being less than average discreet, but I disagree. A hands-off plan for the cyst that you are would be the worst plan. I would like to injure you, by scratching you until you are nothing but a big reddish color, and also soft. Continue reading »

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