MITCH LUCKER OF SUICIDE SILENCE PASSES AWAY AT AGE 28

 Metal News  11 Responses »
Nov 012012
 

I just received this press release from Nuclear Blast, which floored me:

It is with great sadness and regret this morning that we have to report that Mitch Lucker, vocalist of SUICIDE SILENCE, passed away a few hours ago due to injuries sustained during a motorcycle accident.

NUCLEAR BLAST would like to offer our condolences to his family, friends, band members and fans worldwide who are affected by this loss.

He left us doing what he loved to do most. He was 28 years old and will be sorely missed.

Fans are encouraged to share their memories, photos of Mitch and condolences on the band’s official Facebook page: www.facebook.com/SuicideSilence

A few more details that I found in a local newspaper report are after the jump. Continue reading »

TOURISM: NILE AND SCAR SYMMETRY

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Nov 012012
 

Here are some quick notes about a couple of noteworthy tours announced over the last 24 hours.

Nile has announced that it will tour the U.S. next March and April with 28 dates around the country. There are two interesting aspects to this tour. First, the band will be playing two full sets with only a brief intermission, which means fans are going to get a lethal dose of Nile, with time for the band to provide a thorough selection from their discography.

Second, Nile aren’t taking any supporting bands along for this ride. Instead, they’re asking promoters to pick the three best local bands from each locale the tour will visit. As Karl Sanders explained in a press statement:

Supporting local bands in each city is a way for us to give something back to younger bands and the metal scene.  We’ve asked promoters to keep ticket prices low, so that fans of all ages can come and join us for an evening of metal.  In these difficult times of our recessionary economy, an evening of killer metal shouldn’t have to break the bank

This is a cool idea, and of course it provides an opportunity for local bands to get some great exposure. Exclusive pre-sale tickets are available now at EnterTheVault.com. I checked the prices, and they range from $10 to $20, depending on the city. The price in Seattle is $18. The schedule is right after the jump. Continue reading »

VENOM: “BLACK METAL” TURNS 30

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Nov 012012
 

I learned through a post this morning by Full Metal Attorney that today — November 1 — is the 30th anniversary of the release of Black Metal by Venom. Here’s my own story about discovering the album.

I came to Black Metal very late in my education as a metalhead — as in about four years ago. I had only recently started listening seriously to black metal (the music genre, not the album), after having failed to appreciate the music when I first dabbled in it. At some point during my black metal explorations, I learned that the roots of the genre name could be traced back to Venom’s 1982 album.

So I listened to the album, and became confused — because it didn’t sound much like the black metal bands whose music I was exploring at the time — bands such as Immortal, Emperor, Gorgoroth, Darkthrone, Satyricon, and Rotting Christ. It was rough and raw and filthy enough, but much of it sounded like a mix of speed metal and punk with sneering growly vocals, the kind of music that seemed more connected to the development of thrash and more in line with Motörhead-style heavy metal, or even Morbid Angel-style death metal, than what I thought of at the time as “black metal”. I was missing the connection.

I also didn’t love the album. I tend to agree with Full Metal Attorney’s assessment — that it’s a real hit-and-miss affair. I’m sure my reaction was influenced by the fact that I was hearing the album so long after it made its early mark, but a lot of it sounded cheesy as hell, even annoying. As Full Metal Attorney writes in his post, “It is absolutely essential, but listening to the whole thing is not”: Continue reading »

THE DAY AFTER, WITH EYE OF SOLITUDE, FUNK VIGILANTE, BLAST RITES, AND LOKURAH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Nov 012012
 

As I always do, I geared up for trick-or-treaters at the NCS headquarters last night. I filled a bowl with nasty death metal band stickers to hand out, because candy is apparently bad for children. To enhance the spooky atmosphere of the night, I bought lengths of pig entrails from an unlicensed butcher and draped them from tree limbs. I shut off all the exterior lights so the kids and their parents would experience the thrill of seeing dozens of large glowing eyes in the loris compound when they hit them with their flashlights.

To provide a full sensory experience, I lit bags of burning dog shit that I’ve been collecting from local parks over the last few months and strategically placed them along the dirt driveway, which has been turned into a mud pit from three straight days of heavy rain in the Seattle area. Above the burning shit bags, I impaled simulated goat corpses on spikes so they would be lit from below and look extra spooky. Cool idea, huh?  I even rigged up a couple of boom boxes outside so they’d start blasting Mayhem when activated by motion sensors.

And then I waited. And waited. And waited. And once again, no trick-or-treaters arrived. I don’t get it. Don’t kids trick or treat any more?

While I waited for those timid knocks on the door, I watched a lengthy series of news reports about the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York and got my own Halloween shocks from that. Really awful stuff, seeing the most densely populated part of the U.S. completely fucked, with massive flooding, fires, homes lost, dozens dead, 6 million people still without power, sewage and toxic chemicals floating in flooded streets, and the prospect that storms like this are going to happen more frequently in the years ahead.

To cheer myself up and block out the impatient gibbering from the loris compound, I also watched four new metal videos, to while away the hours while waiting for the non-existent trick-or-treaters. The bands are: Eye of Solitude (UK), Funk Vigilante (Canada), Blast Rites (Poland), and Lokurah (France). Continue reading »

DEATH GRIPS BLOWS THE COVER OFF ITS PISSING MATCH WITH EPIC RECORDS

 Metal News  12 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

On the morning of October 1, in a surprising move that we reported soon after it happened, Death Grips put up their newest album, No Love Deep Web, for streaming and free download. Why was that surprising? Well, they had signed a contract with Epic/Columbia to release two albums this year, and No Love Deep Web was supposed to be the second one.

Releasing it for free download didn’t seem like something your average big-name record label would approve. But Death Grips apparently wasn’t happy with the label’s decision to postpone release of the album until sometime in 2013, so they just self-released it anyway. At the time this happened, I wondered whether Death Grips really had given a big-time FUCK YOU to Epic, or instead had just launched a really clever marketing campaign that the label might have even known about and condoned.

Well, we got our answer to that question not long ago, because Death Grips posted on their Facebook page an image of a confidential e-mail dated October 1 from Epic’s chief in-house corporate counsel to the man who appears to be Death Grips’ manager, accusing the band of breaching their contract and demanding that the free download be stopped and that masters of No Love Deep Web be turned over to Epic immediately. To get a better look at the e-mail, click on the image above and you’ll see a bigger copy.

As we know, Epic’s demands weren’t met. So what are we to make of this? And where does this scuffle stand now? Continue reading »

MUSIC FOR SAMHAIN: SATANIC BLOODSPRAYING, VOMITCHAPEL, AND A.M.S.G.

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 312012
 

“Halloween” is a contraction (first used in the 16th century by the Scots) of “All Hallow’s Evening”. It’s the night before a Christian feast day (Nov 1) known as All Hallows or All Saints. How a Christian tradition got wrapped up in ghouls and goblins and spirits of the dead is a long story. But at least a big part of the story is that, like many Christian holidays, this one was intertwined with (and piggy-backed on) a far older pagan celebration known as Samhain (pronounced sah-win or sow-in).

“Samhain” comes from the Old Irish word for “summer’s end”, and in the medieval Gaelic calendar it marked the end of the harvest season and the coming of winter. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge, “In much of the Gaelic world, bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Some of these rituals hint that they may once have involved human sacrifice.” It was “seen as a time when the ‘door’ to the Otherworld opened enough for the souls of the dead, and other beings such as fairies, to come into our world.”

There’s a metric fuckton of metal that would be appropriate to play in commemoration of Samhain tonight, but I thought I’d go with some quite diverse black metal that I heard for the first time over the last 24 hours. The bands are Satanic BloodSpraying (Bolivia), Vomitchapel (U.S.), and Profound Lore’s latest signing,  A.M.S.G. (Canada), and this post includes two EP reviews, so settle in.

SATANIC BLOODSPRAYING

I’ve not been able to find much information about this Bolivian band beyond the fact that Hells Headbangers released their debut album At the Mercy of Satan in July of this year. It’s an 8-song, 24-minute barrage of vicious, swarming riffs, relentless drumbeats, and vocal blood spray. The music is mangling but also imminently headbang-worthy. Continue reading »

RINGS OF SATURN: “DINGIR”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

(We welcome guest writer Tyler Lowery back to NCS with the second of two reviews we’re publishing of the unexpectedly just-released second album by Rings of Saturn. You can find our other one here.)

 When I heard the intro of the new Rings of Saturn album, I had it set in my mind that this would mark their descent into a tired deathcore outing. The almost Whitechapel-esque guitar intro riff that led into the viciously fast riffing and quick-bursting blast beats for the first few moments left dread in my heart. I was expecting the worst to happen at the drop of the bass, leading into a meaningless and redundant breakdown. To my very pleasant surprise, this never occurred.

What did follow was a very well-organized trip through some of the most brutal and technical riffs this side of Obscura’s Omnivium. Rings of Saturn have completely refined and tightened their sound since their debut release in 2009. Focus has pushed all that pure aggression into tight boxes that, once released, wreak utter devastation. In doing this, guitarists Lucas Mann and Joel Omans have spent more time relating their mastery of their art in fine passaging and provocative soloing. The guitars are still top notch, though, and do not flinch for a second. The leads switch often between a very tech-heavy smear of notes and sharply rooted melodic tremolo picking to heavy churning and crushing riffs.

While this is a very fast, very technical album, there is still a good bit of space in between for well-placed and patient guitar work. I wouldn’t call the playing transcendent, but it is certainly very impressive. The first track, “Objective to Harvest”, has an almost spaced-out midsection. “Faces Imploding” breaks for a few phrases toward the end of the track with a Faceless-tinged clean passage that leads into one of the first prevalent breakdowns on the album, which thankfully doesn’t overstay its own welcome. And probably one of the tastiest excerpts is toward the end of the album on “Fruitless Existence”. The song closes with a very groove-oriented clean outro, almost waving goodbye to a passing battlefield. Continue reading »

RINGS OF SATURN: “DINGIR”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

(Today we have not one, but two reviews of the new album by Rings of Saturn, and this one comes to you courtesy of TheMadIsraeli. Check out the second one here.)

Speaking of Br00tz rank, Rings of Saturn just got promoted to fucking grandmaster general McFuck you up prestige levels.  It’s shitty what happened with Dingir getting leaked, so I figured I’d do my part by showing my support for this album, because it’s fucking good. It’s rather odd, considering that I admittedly didn’t think the band’s first album was all that impressive.  Dingir, however, is a monster.  A tentacle raping brain scrambling “oh fuck I think I’ve been sonically anally probed” monster.

Technical deathcore, like deathcore generally, gets as much of a bad rap as anything -core, and usually for good reason.  It’s often just breakdowns with sweeping in between.  Much of it sounds boring as fuck-all to me (the style doesn’t really lend itself to dynamics very well), so it means something that I’m actually reviewing this.  The fact this album has legitimate riffs helps its case quite a bit.  The breakdowns and chugs are here, for sure, but that’s balanced by a plentiful amount of tech-riffing that hits the spot.

Some people might still find this album unsatisfying, because like most tech-deathcore, it isn’t dynamic — but this time that’s not a drawback.  There is a definite intensity going on here that is rather unmatched, except maybe by Infant Annihilator (sans ass-fucking in the woods). Continue reading »

WITCHCRAFT: “LEGEND”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Oct 312012
 

(Here’s BadWolf’s review of the new album by Sweden’s Witchcraft, which is an Exception to our Rule.)

When I started writing for this website in 2010, I really believed in the title of this website—No Clean Singing. Looking back at that year, the best work in metal sat squarely on the extreme side of the spectrum (with a few exceptions, of course). Two years later, I’m in awe of the deluge of great retrospective metal releases coming out of the woodwork—much of its from relatively major labels. Case in point: diehard retro-metal band Witchcraft just released their fourth album, Legend, through Nuclear Blast.

So I suppose this is what certain other blogs would call vest metal—in the pejorative. And while this certainly has been the year for retroactive throwback acts, Witchcraft are in no way part of the femme-doom wave of 2012. Nor are they some sort of cash grab band trying to ride the coattails of Ghost. On the contrary—Witchcraft as a band go back nearly a decade.

I got into Witchcraft in 2007, immediately after the release of their third album, The Alchemist, which was my gateway into Pentagram, St Vitus, and other such baroque doom. After five years of silence, I thought they’d broken up—in fairness, the band go through lineup changes like a machinegun spits bullets. The only really consistent member is vocalist Magnus Pelander, who had gone on to record a solo record. The solo debut is still cooking, but Legend comes out of the oven with a sharper production job backing Pelander’s still-incredible voice through nine excellent tracks. Continue reading »

CRYPTOPSY: SELF-TITLED

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

Fuck.

A review by: TheMadIsraeli

There is no other word.  I mean, I’ve tried to figure out other words to use concerning this album. It hasn’t gotten its proper due praise here at NCS since it came out.  “Cryptopsy’s best album since And Then You’ll Beg…” only begins to understate it.  For me, this might even be their best since fucking None So Vile.

I mean, I’m pretty sure we all thought this band was just done when The Unspoken King came out.  That album was made of so much shit and piss that it literally could’ve formed its own land mass from the concentration.  It might’ve even been a livable landmass of piss and shit, but still… when you listen to music, do you want piss and shit, or the sonic equivalent of thundering punishment from the metal gods that channels and focuses the most powerful and ferocious aspects of humanity? Phro might (with enthusiasm) beg for the former, but I’m pretty sure 99.99% of us want the latter.

Cryptopsy’s new self-titled is the first bout of new material since founding guitarist Jon Levasseur rejoined the band, and boy is this album a kick in the teeth, balls, solar plexus, whatever fucking else sounds brutal.

Every single moment of this album pretty much dictates that you listen to it with a permanently affixed Jens Kidman face as you butcher your entire city’s population.  You get back that alien, angular riffing that’s pure trademark Cryptopsy, combined with those interspersed moments of random lounge jazz and blast furnace melodeath.  Tempo changes abound, the slams are boulder-splitting, the technicality is fret-blazing, and the vocals of Matt McGachy this time are FUCKING DISGUSTING. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries