THE MADISRAELI’S TOP 21 OF 2012: PART 3 (THE OL’ RELIABLES)

 Listmania, LISTMANIA 2012  No Responses »
Jan 062013
 

(Here’s the third part of TheMadIsraeli’s multi-part rollout of his list of 2012′s best metal. Sample songs are at the end of the post. And you can find the first 10 albums on his list here and here. Despite the numbering, the albums are presented in no particular order.)

The ol’ reliables.  I’m pretty sure even if you don’t agree with these albums being the top of the top, we all knew they were going to be good.  The bands in this part of the list have established catalogues  showcasing a consistent excellency throughout.  Without further ado…  Also, the list is getting bumped up to top 21.

11: Meshuggah – Koloss

I was SO psyched for this album it isn’t even funny.  I’ll admit, I had trepidations concerning how the djent fad had taken off.  I worried maybe this would in turn psychologically effect my perception of Meshuggah’s music in hindsight, but in fact it did not.  Meshuggah proved they are still at the top of their game here, bringing in an album that combined elements of all their eras while creating their most varied release to date.  It doesn’t matter whether it is the atmospheric and tribal nature of “I Am Colossus”, the balls to the wall thrash attack of “The Hurt That Finds You First”, or the oddly adventurous doomy territory of “Behind The Sun”, this band know they are the owners, the masters, and the creators of their craft.  No amount of 8-string-toting core bros will ever impose on that. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SCORDATURA’S “NEUROTIC ABERRATION”

 Premieres  10 Responses »
Jan 062013
 

The world turns, time marches on, and good things from the past rise again.

Scordatura are a five-piece death metal band from Glasgow, Scotland, who we first wrote about early last year in a piece on Scottish metal. They’ve now finished recording their debut album, Torment of the Weak, which is set for on-line release on February 1, 2013, and today we’re pleased to give you an exclusive premiere of the album’s third track, “Neurotic Aberration”.

If you let your mind turn to the idea of a blender filled with scoops of Hate Eternal, Suffocation, Dying Fetus, and Origin, set to puree, then you’ll have an advance idea of “Neurotic Aberration”. Though it may be your brain that gets pureed.

Scordatura twist and turn and slice and dice in a whipping fury of technically oriented brutality. And by “technically oriented”, I don’t mean a flurry of prog-minded note-wanking. I mean the whirring teeth of a meat grinder turning slabs of beef into finely carved tartar. It’s raw, red, and delicious. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 8

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  6 Responses »
Jan 052013
 

This is Part 8 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the two we’re announcing today, click here.

Well, it’s time for some fucking death metal, also known as death fucking metal and metal of fucking death, depending on how excited you are or how much you’ve had to drink. I’m pretty excited about both of today’s bands. They’re both from the UK and both of them produced 2012 albums that vaulted them onto lots of people’s radar screens. They both churn out music that’s the aural equivalent of sticking your head in a blast furnace, and as a side note, their album covers remain among my favorites of the past year.

BLOODSHOT DAWN

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve written about this band and their self-titled 2012 album, which remains one of my favorite releases of the year (as explained in my January review). In April,we featured an official video for a track from the album called “Visions”, and in August we followed that with their video for “Godless”, which is the song I picked for this list. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CANDLEMASS, ENTOMBED, LIVING SACRIFICE, AND XENOSIS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 052013
 

We’ve picked up a lot of new readers over the last couple of weeks, so for their benefit let me explain what others have already figured out about our news reporting: We make no effort to be comprehensive. We don’t cut and paste every press release we get. Actually, we don’t cut and paste any news releases. We write our own thoughts, and what we write about is filtered through my mind and occasionally the minds of our other writers when they message me about something they think is interesting.

So, for better or worse, what you see here is what we think is interesting, according to our tastes. And here are a few items I saw and heard over the last 24 hours that interested me.

CANDLEMASS vs ENTOMBED

Candlemass and Entombed are two Swedish bands who have reached near-legendary status in distinctly different corners of the metal spectrum, Candlemass in the realms of doom and Entombed in the fields of death metal and death ‘n’ roll (though over time Entombed has plowed other fields as well).

Someone at Sweden Rock Magazine, the country’s top-selling music magazine, had the bright idea of asking each band to cover one of the other band’s songs. The result will be a CD single exclusively included with the magazine’s 100th issue that will be sent to subscribers on January 8. For now at least, it won’t be available elsewhere. But fortunately, as of today both tracks are up on YouTube. Continue reading »

KATAKLYSM: “SERENITY IN FIRE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 052013
 

(TheMadIsraeli continues his reconsideration of the music of Kataklysm. To see what this is all about, check out his introduction to the series here. Previous installments can be found via this link.)

Serenity in Fire (2004) is the first of newer Kataklysm albums I heard in full, and I have to say it still holds up as one of the best and most consistent representations of their modern sound.  It benefits immensely from an almost perfect combination of melody and ballsy groove on songs like “As I Slither” (a song which musically fits its name) or the album’s extremely infectious opener “Ambassador Of Pain”, which has a Slipknot-ish feel in a good way.

There are other songs on this particular album that also really get me going, such as the blackened melodic death like fury of “For All Our Sins” or the outright blistering chaos of “Blood On The Swans”.  The closing track “Under the Bleeding Sun” is also quite good, invoking Dark Tranquillity a bit.

This is a good album and it’s a fun album.  Definitely worth a listen.  Music after the jump. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LAGO, FREYA, SATYROS, AND NYLITHIA

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jan 042013
 

Herein: an assortment of new music and one new video I discovered over the last 24 hours from a couple of bands previously featured at NCS and a couple of newcomers.  Varied and interesting stuff all the way around.

LAGO

This band from Phoenix is one of the newcomers. According to Metal Archives, they released a five-song EP (Marianas) via Pale Horse Recordings in 2010, which I haven’t heard yet, and then last month they released a new two-song demo entitled Tyranny. Last night I saw a recommendation of Tyranny from one of my Facebook friends and decided to give it a spin. Sure glad I did.

On Tyranny, Lago deliver something that sounds like a cross between old-school Morbid Angel and late-stage Behemoth, plus interesting elements that you won’t find in the music of either of those bands, such as the noodling bass notes and incredible guitar solo in “The Tyranny of Men”.  Both songs are rhythmically dynamic (and rhythmically compulsive) and expertly played. And the vocals are also deep as ocean trenches and monstrous, in the vein of something like Disma’s Craig Pillard (though some banshee shrieking also makes a brief appearance in the second song).

This is really fuckin’ impressive stuff! Continue reading »

STUFF I HAD TO FIND ON MY OWN IN 2012 ‘CAUSE ISLANDER & HIS CRONIES MISSED IT

 Free Shit, Listmania, LISTMANIA 2012  19 Responses »
Jan 042013
 

(Um, I guess it’s obvious that neither I nor my NCS cronies wrote this.  Guest contributor KevinP did.)

MYRAETH — In Glorious Death

Kudos to the “Facebook Stalker box” on this one.  Saw a friend comment on a band status,  so I took a look.  Death/doom from Sydney, Australia.  Picture My Dying Bride, with all-male harsh vocals, clean female vocals, less wrist-slashing depression, and a tad more upbeat.  Mighty good stuff indeed (I blame the salted yeast laced with B vitamins).

http://www.facebook.com/Myraeth

http://myraeth.bandcamp.com/   (digitial & CD available here)

http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Myraeth/3540306195

Continue reading »

BROOKLYN VEGAN TAKES OVER INVISIBLE ORANGES

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Jan 042013
 

As of today, the Invisible Oranges metal blog will be run by Brooklyn Vegan. So says a statement published today at the IO site by its founder and still-owner Cosmo Lee.

According to the statement, Lee’s move was prompted by the decision of Aaron Lariviere to step down as IO’s editor and the fact that “no successors to Aaron were readily in sight”. Effective immediately, Brooklyn Vegan’s Fred Pessaro, who is responsible for BV’s metal content, will become IO’s editor-in-chief.

According to Lee, “The InvisibleOranges.com URL will stay intact” and “IO will remain a site dedicated to metal, as it should be.” However, the site will now combine Brooklyn Vegan’s own metal news content with IO’s editorial content.

From my perspective, this seems like a union that should work. Although metal has only been one part of Brooklyn Vegan’s focus, with indie rock commanding the lion’s share of the site’s musical attention, the metal content at BV has been excellent. And to get a sense of Fred Pessaro’s metal tastes, check out his personal year-end list here. Continue reading »

ROTTEN SOUND: “SPECIES AT WAR”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Jan 042013
 

Rotten Sound’s new six-song EP Species At War is scheduled for release by Relapse Records on January 22 in North America. Yesterday TheMadIsraeli and I had the privilege of listening to the EP, and after calmly reflecting upon it, we each had some thoughts about the experience that we wish to share with you.

TheMadIsraeli

Some collections of music serve as nothing else but a vessel through which the hand of God himself smites you with a swarm of cannibalistic locusts with teeth soaked in battery acid.  This EP is literally the sonic equivalent of being punished for your sins.

I mean, you think you’re some tough motherfucker right?  You ain’t above punchin’ rats.  You don’t give two fucks.  I’m afraid, however, Rotten Sound begs to differ.  From the opening salvo of “Cause”, which turns itself into weaponized audio, filling the listener full of holes and eventually obliterating you like an AA12 (for those who don’t know, that’s a fucking fully automatic shotgun), Species At War serves more as an epic-length single song by grindcore standards, split into parts, eight minutes in total of total fucking… I don’t even.

First must-own EP of 2013. Get it. We all deserve this kind of beatdown once in awhile. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 7

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  3 Responses »
Jan 032013
 

This is Part 7 of our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. To see the selections that preceded the two we’re announcing today, click here.

When I started the rollout of this list, I explained that I had expanded the range of my metal listening during 2012. I even opened my mind to more music in the stoner/doom vein despite (gasp!) the presence of clean vocals, because there’s so much meat on those riff bones, and I do love a pulverizing riff.

Genre boundaries blur, and I don’t think either of the bands whose songs I’m adding to our list today clearly fit into that stoner/doom category, though there’s some kinship.  Their classic riffs bring the beef in truckloads and their vocals are (sort of) clean. In fact, ironically, for me the vocals have been a main draw for both of these bands.

VENOMOUS MAXIMUS

Houston-based Venomous Maximus are yet another band with a superb 2012 album that we never got around to reviewing. I feel especially guilty about that, given how many aural orgasms Beg Upon the Light has given me. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries