TR00 NATE’S LIST: THE TOP 30 OF 2012

 Listmania, LISTMANIA 2012  12 Responses »
Dec 242012
 

(At my invitation, former metal blogger Tr00 Nate shares with us his list of 2012’s best albums, and a kvlt list it is.)

Hello everyone, it’s me Tr00 Nate, of the former Number of the Blog. It’s been awhile since I last wrote something for the internet (the last thing I wrote was my 2011 list actually), so please excuse me if I’m more incoherant than usual.

So despite the fact that there’s a ton of shit I still want to listen to, I have managed to sit down and assemble a list of my favorite 30 albums of 2012. However, I’ve only felt composed enough to actually write shit out for the top ten. So yeah, whatever. Each Band – Album Title thingy should take you to a song from that album, because honestly, the music does these albums much more justice than any words that I could say.

#30. Necrovation – Necrovation [Death]
#29. Morbid Saint – Thrashaholic [Thrash]
#28. Desaster – The Arts of Destruction [Black/Thrash]
#27. Entrapment – The Obscurity Within [Death]
#26. Desolate Shrine – The Sanctum of Human Darkness [Finn Death]
#25. Ultra Beast – Out For Too Long [Speed]
#24. Rottrevore – Blind Sided Attack [Death]
#23. Lustre – They Awoke to the Scent of Spring [Black/Ambient]
#22. Deiphago – Satan Alpha Omega [Black]
#21. Aluk Todolo – Occult Rock [Black/Drone]
#20. Seven Kingdoms – The Fire is Mine [Power] Continue reading »

KATAKLYSM: “VICTIMS OF THIS FALLEN WORLD”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Dec 232012
 

(TheMadIsraeli continues his reconsideration of the music of Kataklysm. To see what this is all about, check out his introduction to the series here.)

Yes. That’s really the album cover.

I can just imagine what it must have been like for a fan of Kataklysm to buy this album upon its release in 1998. Because of the more limited channels for disseminating information (compared to now), people who weren’t local and in touch with the band probably didn’t know that vocalist Sylvain Houde wasn’t in Kataklysm anymore, and didn’t know that with the exception of Iacano and Dagenais, the lineup was completely new. They probably weren’t prepared for this album.

You start the first track “As the World Burns” and a resounding “what in the fuck?” permeates every fiber of your being. It’s a melodic death metal riff. One of the most insane, feral death metal bands from the Great White North begins their opening song with a mid-paced melodic death metal riff that you would have heard a million times already, if you had caught wind of anything from Sweden in the 90’s.

I mean, the riff is good, really good actually. It’s got a triumphant marching-into-battle feel and a memorable progression, but still, this probably wasn’t what you bought this album to hear. Continue reading »

DAEMONICUS, HUMANITY DELETE, YELLOWTOOTH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 232012
 

I’m still catching up on new music and videos that I noticed over the last week. The songs from the three bands that I’ve collected in this post share a certain something, a death metal kinship, a bond forged with massive hammers and tempered in the fires of a crematorium. It’s music that is un-tempted by the flash and fireworks of modernity, quite happy to simply smash bones into splinters and scatter blood spray like a driving rain.

But although all of the songs have a primarily primal appeal, they’re all really good, really powerful, highly capable of awakening the reptile brain that dozes in all of us and getting it moving and shaking. And they each bring a special flair and style that elevates them above your standard old-school pummeling. Hope you enjoy these holiday goodies from Daemonicus (Sweden), Humanity Delete (the one-man project of Sweden’s Rogga Johansson), and Yellowtooth (U.S.) as much as I have.

DAEMONICUS

Daemonicus came together in 2006, and have recently released their second album, Deadwork, via Abyss Records. Stupid me, I’ve had the promo for this album since September but failed to pay attention until yesterday, when I heard two of the album’s tracks via the internet — an official video that debuted at the end of November for “Nothing But Death” and another song named “The Grandeur of Total Termination”. I fear that I may never manage a proper review given how backlogged I am, but I’m at least going to say something about these two songs. Continue reading »

METAL KVLTVRE

 Mosh Pit  43 Responses »
Dec 232012
 

(Here we have an NCS first. We’re delighted to publish an academic paper prepared for college credit by one of our long-time supporters, a frequent commenter, and a regular source of excellent musical recommendations: His NCS moniker is Utmu. Both Phro and your humble editor happily agreed to be interviewed for Utmu’s project. Usually we only see our names cited in police reports, so this is a refreshing change.)

See what I did there with that title? Yeah, I know, it’s corny. Anyway, I recently took a sociology class and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and luckily for me one of the choices for a final project was a research paper, and I decided to cover heavy metal culture. Also luckily for me, my teacher was quite lenient about sources and other things regarding this paper, and I don’t normally enjoy this sort of thing. Also fortunately for me, I have friends who are metalheads and those friends have opinions and experiences regarding metal culture; both Islander and Phro were very cooperative in the interviews on which I based this project, and I’d like to thank them for their help!

I really enjoyed interviewing them and I also enjoyed writing my paper (even if I did get about 98% of it done from around 2:30 AM to 5 AM the morning of its due date) and I think I did pretty well. I wish I had put more analysis in it, but sadly I had to be able to fit information into 5 or 6 pages — I couldn’t even include everything from the interviews. Also, I realized after reading the project that I utilized in-text citations frequently, but I’m afraid I’m a bit paranoid when it comes to such things.

I sent this in to Islander for a number of reasons: It’s the first academic paper on NCS, I get to help the blog out by contributing something, and maybe this can spark a good discussion (if it does I’d like to send this in to my instructor). Anyway, here is my paper, simply titled “On Metal Culture”. Continue reading »

THE BEST OF 2012: A LIST BY SEAN GOLYER (OAK PANTHEON)

 Listmania, LISTMANIA 2012  19 Responses »
Dec 232012
 

(I again twisted the arm of recording engineer and musician Sean Golyer (Oak Pantheon) to get his year-end list of personal favorites because I had a feeling it would be an interesting one, and he relented.  I hope he doesn’t need both arms for his work.)

I was originally going to go a more traditional route this year and write a bunch of nonsense reviews about why I like each of these releases. However, even I don’t like seeing myself ramble on trying to quantify reasons why I like band “x” over band “y”. I’ve come to realize I can’t explain my taste in a way that would make sense to anybody but me. I listen and I either like it or I don’t. This year also saw a lot of big changes for me and my bandmates regarding what we enjoy listening to now. This includes a lot of non-heavy music, but important none-the-less. They’re each “metal” in their own way.

So, I’ll continue my own tradition as I did last year by simply posting my favorite songs from my favorite releases with a brief description, all in no particular order. Feel free to discuss or debate the music below with me, or discuss something entirely different. That’s cool too.

Porta Nigra – Fin de Siècle

One of my favorite releases of the year. A unique blend of black metal and rock, Porta Nigra’s debut is total debauchery with a late 19th century spin. Full of memorable hooks, varied vocal performances, and solid song structure, all with just a hint of opium-induced insanity. Continue reading »

NEW DEEDS OF FLESH: “RISE OF THE VIRVUM JUGGERNAUT”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Dec 222012
 

January 1, 2012. That’s the date on which I first saw the album cover for the next full-length release (the 8th) by California’s Deeds of Flesh, Portals To Canaan. Naturally, I posted about it immediately in an installment of our EYE-CATCHERS series. The artist is Raymond Swanland.

At the time of that post, the only music we had was a “pre-production teaser” for the new album — just Guitar 1 and “drum mapping” (no 2nd guitar, leads, or vocals). Now we’re almost a year down the road, and finally today brought us the debut of the first song from the album — “Rise of the Virvum Juggernaut”.

It’s been a very long wait for new music from this band, especially with the first album teaser being released almost one full year ago. But yes indeed, the wait has been worthwhile. “Rise of the Virvum Juggernaut” is a mechanized slaughterhouse of crushing brutality combined with a brain-centrifuging swirl of start-stop technical acrobatics. It seethes and swarms with alien energy and gnashes its sharp teeth in voracious hunger. It sounds already like the tech-death monster to beat in 2013. Continue reading »

KATAKLYSM: “TEMPLE OF KNOWLEDGE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 222012
 

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli continues his reconsideration of the music of Kataklysm. To see what this is all about, check out his introduction to the series here.)

Temple Of Knowledge (Kataklysm Part III) (1996) is a fucking intense low tuned flesh stripping cacophony of almost demonic overflow that you either love or hate. There are reasons to dislike this album for sure. The mix, while well rounded on the frequency front, kind of blows. It isn’t very loud; the guitars, while sludgy, don’t have a lot of life to them; and Houde’s vocal phrasing is kind of off the wall with extremely mixed results. The style on this album is very reminiscent of the feral hyperblast insanity contained on The Mystical Gate of Reincarnation, but taken to a whole new level.

The drummer on this particular album is also worthy of note. Nick Miller (who as far as I can gather only played on this album) has a really intense style. If he’s not blasting or grinding the grooves he does have a jazz fusion technical style attack that makes even the more reserved moments on this album froth at the mouth.

This album also cements what would become part of Kataklysm’s identity from here on — tuning their guitars down to B. While I will admit that the songwriting on Temple Of Knowledge is sketchy, what can’t be denied is that, so far in my Kataklysm listening, this is the best album on the guitar front. Jean Dagenais writes some downright sinister stuff this time around, blending styles of melodic death metal, tech death, black metal, grindcore, and even a bit of hardcore during the groovier parts. Continue reading »

VIDEOSLAUGHTER FOR YOUR SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, OBLIVION, AND EXHALE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Dec 222012
 

I’ve been distracted for days and consequently have fallen behind in taking note of new music and videos. The catching up begins now. So does the sonic slaughtering, with three ear-grabbing and eye-catching new videos.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

This Italian band is one of our site’s true favorites, and their 2011 album Agony was a big hit around here, as it was just about anywhere else you might have looked in the world of metal last year. 2011 was a breakout year for FA. Extensive touring was one reason for the band’s sky-rocketing profile, but their fantastic official video for “The Violation” had a lot to do with that, too.

As of this morning, we now have a second official video for Agony. This time the song is “The Forsaken”. The video was again directed by Salvatore Perrone, and it’s another winner. It’s ingeniously conceived and beautifully filmed, and it captures the quasi-gothic, neo-classical drama of the song, which is one of Agony’s best. It’s right after the jump. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA CONTINUES: NPR’S TOP 10 METAL ALBUMS OF 2012

 Listmania, LISTMANIA 2012  20 Responses »
Dec 222012
 

Although we’re far along in our own series of Listmania posts by NCS staff and guests (and have more to come this weekend and throughout next week), we’ve continued to keep an eye out for lists appearing at “big platform” sites around the net. Today brought one more we’ve been expecting: a list of the Top 10 Metal Albums of 2012 by NPR.

Once again the NPR list was compiled by Lars Gotrich, who has a good ear for metal and a nice way with words, too. Last year, NPR’s list was 25 names long, so this year’s list reflects even greater selectivity. However, although NPR apparently insisted on 10 and 10 only, Lars included 15 more on his personal blog. So, it’s still really 25. Actually, Lars also named the five best splits on his blog, and that list is worth seeing, too.

The Top 10 aren’t ranked numerically, but alphabetically, and links to full-album streams were provided where available.  I think you have to say this is a highly personal list, rather than an attempt to cover a genre waterfront. And although NPR’s audience is predominantly not-metal, the Top 10 list isn’t an attempt to pander to cosmopolitan (or hipster) tastes.

The list includes veteran names such as Asphyx (pictured above) and Testament, Pig Destroyer earns yet another high finish, and there’s a healthy dose of doom-influenced metal to be found as well. In addition, I was interested to see the appearance of a band I’ve heard about only recently through recommendations by multiple sources — Pittsburgh’s Derketa. In fact, I was writing about them for a post that will appear later today when I saw the NPR list. Continue reading »

TOURISM: MARDUK, TODAY IS THE DAY, AND CRADLE OF FILTH

 Metal News  1 Response »
Dec 222012
 

Much earlier this month we reported the announcement of the VOICES FROM THE DARK tour of North America, co-headlined by Marduk (Sweden) and Moonspell (Portugal) and including the talents of Inquisition (U.S.), The Foreshadowing (Italy), and Death Wolf (Sweden) (which features members of Marduk). At the time of our earlier report, no dates had yet been announced. Now they have.

I’m gratified to see that it will be stopping in Seattle. I know this will make you happy, because I know you want me to be happy and I am indeed happy about this tour, especially because of the chance it will give me (finally) to see Marduk and Inquisition. Maybe you will be able to see this tour, too. But if not, I will still be happy, and therefore you will still be happy.

FEBRUARY

2/20 Springfield, VA @ Empire
2/21 Poughkeepsie, NY @ The Chance
2/22 Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
2/23 New York, NY @ Gramercy Theatre
2/24 Montreal, QC @ Club Soda
2/25 Toronto, ON @ Wreck Room
2/26 Millvale, PA @ Mr. Small’s Theatre
2/27 Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s
2/28 Saint Paul, MN @ Station 4 Continue reading »

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