OUR LIST OF 2012’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE COMPLETE LIST

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2012  15 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

Last week I finally finished rolling out our list of 2012’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. The list mushroomed in comparison to my lists from 2011 and 2010 because last year I listened to more metal and a greater variety of it than ever before. Also, I’m really bad at choosing among things I like.

As long as the list turned out to be, I still wasn’t able to include everything I wanted to include, but I really felt it was time to stop before February began. I actually put a lot of time into making the list — time spent re-listening to hundreds of songs, time spent wrestling with myself over choices, time spent writing about each track. Since then I’ve started going back to reviewing new things and writing the regular NCS  features that I’ve been neglecting for most of the last two months.

But I’ve also made time to collect all the song streams (56 of them!) here in this post, in the order in which they appeared in the series from start to finish. I don’t claim that this represents a thorough survey of all metal genres or anyone else’s idea of which songs were the most infectious. It’s one person’s opinion reflecting one person’s tastes. Still, I hope it will be a good reminder of what a fuckin’ great year in metal 2012 turned out to be. Continue reading »

BARKS AT THE MOON – BRIEF REVIEWS

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 072013
 

(Our man BadWolf is trying a new review format with these quick takes on new releases by Portal (which I reviewed at length here yesterday), Head of the Demon, and Shai Hulud. Leave a comment and let us know what you think of this idea.)

 

Portal – Vexovoid

By this time many of you are already familiar with Australia’s Portal. They play a technical, alienating brand of death metal, a bit like Pyrrhon but sludgier, with more blunted riffage. The band’s imagery–hooded members and vocalist wearing a clock on his head—made a big splash at Maryland Deathfest. So big an impact, in fact, that I’d wager more people are familiar with the band’s image than their music—Portal is the only death metal band I can say that about, come to think of it. I found their 2011 album, Swarth, pretty unremarkable—another substance-free death metal record that sounds like it’s coated in mucus. That Swarth came out on Profound Lore, normally the best label I can think of, irked me more.

Now Portal’s back with Vexovoid, and maybe I was wrong to dismiss them. A little clarity in the production really shows off the technical aspects of their music—my inner Deathspell Omega fanatic did a little backflip while listening. I especially liked the song “Plasm,” which opens with a flurry of hypnotic blasting,  then degenerates into foghorn distortion. I still hold some qualms: the titles and vocals still sound essentially like word-vomit, and Portal are aware that HP Lovecraft wrote fiction, not prophecy, right? Still, Vexovoid impressed me enough to warrant giving Swarth a second chance. Continue reading »

PORTAL: “VEXOVOID”

 Album Reviews  19 Responses »
Feb 062013
 

Portal’s new album Vexovoid comes more than three years after their last album Swarth, which was my introduction to the band. At that time, I had heard nothing like Swarth. My reactions, of course, were a product of my tastes at the time and what, in retrospect, was the limited range of metal to which I’d been exposed up to that point in my education as a metal lover. I found the album deeply disturbing and yet transfixing. I can’t say I immediately liked it, but I couldn’t stay away from it either.

Since then, my tastes have expanded, as has the range of extreme music I’ve heard. Among other things, I’ve listened to a lot more blackened death metal (a micro-genre I also think of as apocalyptic death metal or atmospheric death metal, some of which also gets labeled “war metal”). Which is to say, I’m no longer the innocent virgin who was violated by Swarth. Having been violated by many other rough beasts in the intervening years, I wondered how the new me would react to Vexovoid.

The new me likes Vexovoid very much. It doesn’t have the shock value that Swarth delivered to my unprepared ears more than three years ago, but even to these now mangled and punctured ear drums Portal haven’t lost their ability to create vivid, catastrophic atmospheres of horror and doom. Vexovoid is both disturbing and mesmerizing. It will detonate a highly radioactive bomb in your head, grind up the remains like hamburger, and send your soul into the void. Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM DEBUT THEIR OFFICIAL VIDEO FOR “THE UNKNOWING” . . . AND IT’S ALL BEAUTIFUL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 062013
 

Sadistic bastards that we are, we published three different glowing reviews of Beyond, the forthcoming album by Finland’s Omnium Gatherum, months before the album’s scheduled release dates (Feb 25 in Europe and Mar 5 in the U.S.). We had no music we could share with you then, but Omnium Gatherum eventually started streaming one of the album’s numerous stand-out tracks, “New Dynamic” (which you can hear at this location). And as of this morning Metal Hammer premiered an official video for a second one — “The Unknowing”.

In addition, the same song is now available on iTunes.

The imagery in this new video was an inspired choice as accompaniment for the music. Along with close-up film of the band performing the song, it depicts the majesty, power, and sublime beauty of a sunlit coastal sea from dawn until dusk. And that pretty much captures the spirit of the song — majestic, powerful, beautiful. It’s one of many tracks from the album that I’ve already put on our list of candidates for our list of 2013’s most infectious extreme metal songs.

Check out the video after the jump, and give thanks to Olli-Pekka Lappalainen, who directed and edited the video, and to director of photography, Tapio Aulu. Continue reading »

VREID: “WELCOME FAREWELL”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 062013
 

(Below, Andy Synn reviews the forthcoming sixth album by Norway’s Vreid.)

To me a new Vreid album is a very… sexual experience…

First we have the announcement that a new album is in the works, the enticing promise of something special to come, a reward for being good boys and girls…

Then comes the build of anticipation, the flirting glimpses of the artwork, the teasing interviews where the band stoke our ardour with their verbal prowess and come-hither eyes…

Then there’s the foreplay, the premiere of a song, the release date announcement, the booking of tours, all designed to get you all primed up and ready to go…

Then, finally, you get to the main event. The album is released and all that pent up frustration and energy finally reaches… climax.

Sorry everyone, I got a bit worked up there.

Anyway, Welcome Farewell is an awesome record, it really is. Continue reading »

OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY: GORGUTS, SHINING, MALIGNANT MONSTER, AND TALANAS

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Feb 052013
 

Allow me to share with you a collection of findings that I happened upon over the last 24 hours, most of it breaking news, some of it new music I think is worth spreading around like life-giving manure, and some of it videographic in nature. News first:

GORGUTS

Thanks to a tip from Vonlughlio, I discovered that Gorguts have signed with Season of Mist and will be releasing their extremely long-awaited fifth studio album later this year. Guitarist/vocalist Luc Lemay is quoted in a press release we received as follows:

“Everything from writing these new songs, traveling to NYC for rehearsals, developing a new friendship with John, Kevin and Colin, three of the most talented people I ever jammed with…everything from this project was beyond stimulating artistically.

From this experience was born a new GORGUTS record, a concept record which is going to last over an hour. An hour of epic, ambient, dark music which doesn’t compromise its Death Metal roots. As a composer, by exploring different kind of music, it was always my goal to integrate the same writing tools in Death Metal as if I would be writing a piece of chamber music for instance.

Well, I’m really eager to share this new record with you!” Continue reading »

VOIGHT KAMPFF: “MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Feb 052013
 

(Named for the polygraph-like test that Blade Runners use to determine whether a subject is a replicant, Voight Kampff are a French metal band who released their debut album late last year. In this post TheMadIsraeli gives it a brief review.)

I figured it was time to start digging into the depths of the internet and find really obscure shit.  Voight Kampff certainly caught me with the stupid, almost borderline shitty cover art you see above, labeling their music as “Progressive death/thrash metal” and boasting Blade Runner references out the ass.  To say the least, I was intrigued.

Contrary to the feeble but futuristic cover art, this album is a surprising old school kick in the teeth.  Voight Kampff are an odd band, playing a style that never hit it off with many people at its time, with a production that sounds straight out of the early 90’s or late 80’s.

You see, Voight Kampff appear to be huge fans of that really awkward phase around the 80’s going into the 90’s when thrash metal and death metal were coming to be almost the same thing.  You had the technicality of death metal, and that genre’s vocal stylings as well, but the speed and composition sense of thrash metal.  We saw this with bands like Pestilence on Testimony of the Ancients, Coroner on Mind Vortex, or Death on Human. Continue reading »

HOWLING: “A BEAST CONCEIVED”

 Album Reviews  11 Responses »
Feb 052013
 

I hear someone’s voice, sometimes I get a vivid mental picture of what they look like. I hear Vanessa Nocera’s vocals on the debut album by Howling, I see her clearly:  two stories tall, covered in dense black fur matted with blood, teeth made for tearing and chewing, claws made for gutting, blood-red eyes like windows into Hell.

I could be wrong. She might only be one story tall. But I’m pretty confident about the rest of it, at least when there’s a full moon.

Of course, there’s more to A Beast Conceived than Ms. Nocera’s inhuman vocals. She’s joined in Howling by Tony Proffer (Beyond Hell) on guitar and bass, and by drummer Elektrokutioner (Scaremaker, Wooden Stake, Beyond Hell, Encoffination, Father Befouled, etc.). Together, this trio are about as locked in to a shared vision of their music as you could possibly ask for. Together, they kick up a mad, thrashing, garage-band racket that pulls from more diverse genres than you might guess from what I’ve written so far — and what they’ve cooked up is fuckin’ brilliant.

Vanessa Nocera’s vocals require that the prefix “death” be added to any attempt at a genre description for A Beast Conceived. The word “horror” could be added because of the lyrical themes (not to mention the album art). But despite these markers, the music isn’t down-tuned, distortion-pedaled old-school death metal, or corpse-ridden death/doom, or goregrind, or even crusty d-beat. What it is, is something quite refreshing and insanely addictive. Continue reading »

REMNANTS OF 2012 THAT I HEARD IN 2013: HIVESMASHER, PERHAPS, DISKORD, II II II

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Free Shit  7 Responses »
Feb 052013
 

(Welcome back Louisville-based music writer Austin Weber with some thoughts about a diverse array of artists and albums from 2012 that he missed in his year-end list for NCS. Might be some new discoveries in here for you, too.)

Last year there were a few bands who released absolutely stunning albums that even I forgot about….until now.

Hivesmasher– Gutter Choir

Pig Destroyer’s Book Burner was rightly hyped as grind album of the year, and while I loved the hell out of it, Hivesmasher does something very different for me. Theirs is a grimey, nastier kind of grind, similar to the utterly hopeless filth Crowpath used to conjure up.

This is on a whole other level, better written and better played than most who reside within the hyper-focus on speed and punk atittude to cover up weak songwriting and poor instrumental capability. The tropes that now consume the genre have led me to try and find those groups who are trying to elevate grindcore instead of just being a barrage of (albeit awesome) sound.

Hivesmasher knocked me on my ass from the first track, which made abundantly clear how good these guys are. Continue reading »

MESHUGGAH: “PITCH BLACK” IS NOW OUT!

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Feb 042013
 

Last week when I caught wind that Scion AV would be releasing something new from Meshuggah tomorrow, I ventured a guess that it would be a new Meshuggah song, perhaps as part of a two-track EP, maybe with a live track included along with the new song. Well, it turns out I was right.

Yes, Pitch Black is a two-song release with a previously unreleased studio recording from 2003 — “Pitch Black” — and a live track. The second track is a previously unreleased, live version of “Dancers To A Discordant System” from obZen. Both songs are very much worth hearing and having.

What do these songs bring? Here’s a partial list: brute, bruising, chugs with that reliable Meshuggah tone; spacey cosmic ambience; near-spoken-word vocals, some of it positively robotic; a fidgety, squirming guitar solo in the title track; and funky bass lines as the foundation for what sure as fuck sound like sax solos (or a guitar tuned to sound identical to one) on both songs. Continue reading »

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