“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 64)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  34 Responses »
Oct 052012
 

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Welcome back, one and all, to this latest installment of THAT’S METAL!, in which we collect recent sightings of photos, videos, and news items that we thought were metal, even though they aren’t music.

ITEM ONE

The first item is really multiple items, just a few photos that caught my eye. The one above is a picture of Rex, one of the world’s largest crocodiles, as he prepares to chow down on some beef ribs at WILD LIFE Sydney Zoo on October 3, 2012, in Sydney, Australia. Rex weighs more than 1500 pounds and he’s more than 16 feet long, and this was his first meal after three months in hibernation.

I didn’t know that crocodiles hibernated. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to come within 10 miles of a 1500-pound reptile that hasn’t eaten in three months. Fuck.

Of course, Rex has his own Facebook page. I like the status he posted there on Christmas Eve last year: “Dear Children of the world. I ate Santa last night. Sorry about that.” This sounds like my kind of zoo.

The next photo is Neptune. Not the god, but the planet. I haven’t seen photos of the god that are good enough to share. I don’t know what was done to produce the colors in the photo of the planet, but the pic is really fuckin’ cool. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT — AN UPDATE (No. 3)

 THE SYNN REPORT  No Responses »
Oct 042012
 

(Our UK-based writer Andy Synn provides this update on the doings of certain bands featured in previous editions of THE SYNN REPORT: Vesania, Emeth, and Crocell.)

So we’ve almost reached a milestone of 30 SYNN REPORTS (plus a few more varied entries). That’s 30 new, or underappreciated, bands I’ve tried my best to bring into the cold embrace of the NCS bosom. But before we reach the hollowed ‘Big 30’ (who it’s going to be I still haven’t decided), how about we catch up with a few quick updates on past SYNN REPORT alumni?

VESANIA

Well first of all, we have the little teasing image above from Polish symphonic black metal maestros Vesania, which shows their drummer Daray in the studio. Which means they’ve already started work recording a new album. This was kept pretty quiet, but I for one am already salivating at the prospect of more crushing blackened-death metal with a lunatic, symphonic twist.

EMETH

Secondly, the fine young Belgian gents in Emeth have posted a slew of updates regarding the gear and the songwriting from their upcoming fourth album: Continue reading »

SWIMMING WITH THE STREAMS: JEFF LOOMIS, MY DYING BRIDE, AND NIDINGR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 042012
 

 

Look what I found! New song streams! They crash and froth in rapids, they meander slowly through dark canyons, and they explode in white water again. They are new songs by Jeff Loomis (U.S.), My Dying Bride (UK), and Nidingr (Norway).

JEFF LOOMIS

Have you listened to the new solo release by Jeff Loomis, Plains of Oblivion? Well, it turns out that Jeff Loomis is already writing and recording new songs, and he plans to roll out three of them through online debuts. The first one premiered today on Metal Hammer’s web site, and it may come as a surprise to those who have Plains of Oblivion still ringing in their heads. Loomis recorded “A Liar’s Chain” with his current touring band, and they’ve been performing the song on tour this year. Guitarist Joe Nurre provides the vocals.

The hard-charging song is as extreme as anything on Plains of Oblivion, or more so. The central riff is a hammering, quasi-industrial beast; Nurre’s vocals vary between death-metal growls and paint-stripping screams (with something like a nu-metal styling in some of the vocal rhythms); and Loomis’ inevitable extended solo brings a dose of satisfying spitfire flash. Cool shit. It’s right here: Continue reading »

CONVERGE: “ALL WE LOVE WE LEAVE BEHIND”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Oct 042012
 

Late yesterday I discovered that Converge had launched a full-album stream for All We Love We Leave Behind on YouTube. Originally, I intended only to include that piece of news in a post I was putting together with other new music streams that surfaced yesterday. But as I listened to the album and began attempting to describe briefly what I was hearing, the post began to take the shape of a review.

It’s not the kind of review I would normally write — I haven’t listened to the album multiple times, or made notes about what I was hearing, or sat back and attempted to collect my thoughts after putting some space between me and the music. Hell, I’m not even 100% sure that I’m matching up the songs with their correct titles, because there’s no index to the album stream that tells you for sure when one song stops and the next one starts — and given the dynamics within the songs and the nearly seamless flow from one to the next, it’s not always patently obvious (though the changing artwork is a signal).

But fuck it, I’m so caught up in what I’ve heard that I’m going with my near-stream-of-consciousness first impressions, and that’s that.

********

All We Love We Leave Behind will be released by Epitaph Records on October 9. In its “deluxe” limited-edition CD format, there are 17 songs (14 songs on the regular release), and that deluxe edition also includes a hardcover, clothbound book with 48 pages of full-color original art by vocalist Jacob Bannon. Honestly, I’ve been looking forward to this release almost as much for the artwork as for the music. In fact, I pre-ordered that expensive limited edition copy because of anticipation over the artwork, having heard nothing of the music. (You can see the variety of bundles and formats for the album at this location, where they can also be pre-ordered.)

But because of this full-album stream, the music is now available for all of us to hear in advance of the official release, and I unwittingly made a wise call in pre-ordering this baby. The stream not only includes the music, it also includes much of the individualized artwork that Jacob Bannon created for each song, and the art is amazing, as I suspected it would be. And the music? It’s equally amazing. Continue reading »

MAN MUST DIE: “ANTISOCIAL NETWORK”

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Oct 032012
 

Scotland’s Man Must Die have been an NCS favorite going back to the early months of our existence in 2009; type the band’s name into the NCS search box and you’ll see the history of our MMD coverage. Following the massive head trauma inflicted by The Human Condition (2007) and No Tolerance For Imperfection (2009), I was greedily expecting a new album from these death metal brutes last year. Unfortunately, this statement by the band greeted my sorrowful eyes in September 2011:

“Hey all, we are getting so many questions about a new release so we feel its best to level with you all, at the moment we are without label, we have found ourselves in the surreal position after our most sucessful year and after gaining so many thousands of fans, our efforts to land a deal have fallen on deaf ears, and its very frustrating as we have such a killer album waiting to record, keep you all posted and we hope that we have better news soon :/ cheers – MMD”

We did get a demo version of a killer new song called “Hiding In Plain Sight” last fall (which you can stream here), but then the well seemed to run dry. Last spring there were rumblings of a new single and a new video in the works, but the months passed without either one surfacing . . . until today.

And praise be, now we have both. The single is “Antisocial Network”, it’s available for free download, and it delivers a crippling beating. Continue reading »

CNOC AN TURSA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 032012
 

Put this album on your radar screen: The Giants of Auld by Cnoc An Tursa.

As announced today, this Scottish band from Falkirk are the latest signing by Candlelight Records. Their debut album was recorded at Foel Studios in Wales by noted producer Chris Fielding, who has also produced albums by Winterfylleth and Primordial, among many others.

After doing a bit of reading about the band and listening to all of their music I could find this morning, Winterfylleth and Primordial were the two bands I thought of even before learning about Chris Fielding’s participation in the Cnoc An Tursa recording. Both of those bands have drawn on the heritage of their respective nations (England and Ireland) in crafting music that draws on both black metal and folk traditions. Cnoc An Tursa seem to be following a similar path with respect to their native Scotland, though their music differs from those other two collectives.

Cnoc An Tursa have wrapped their music around old Scottish poetry. One song I found, for example, bears the title “Winter, A Dirge”, which also happens to be the name of a poem by Robert Burns. A second song is named “Bannockburn”, which is the title of yet another Burns poem, in addition to being the site of one of the decisive battles in the first war of Scottish independence from England in 1314. A third, “Hail Land of My Fathers”, is the name of a poem written in the 1800’s by John Stuart Blackie. And a fourth, “Ettrick Forest In November”, was the name of a poem by Sir Walter Scott.

From what I can hear in the YouTube clips I found, the songs do appear to take the poems’ verses for their lyrics. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: GOSPEL OF THE HORNS – “CEREMONIAL CONJURATION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Oct 032012
 

Sometimes I think that if a hateful supreme being brought his fist down on an astral kill-switch for metal and stopped the flow of new music forever, thundering “THOU HAST ENOUGH, AND THERE WILL BE NO MORE!”, we’d all still be fine. I listen to a lot of music, but every week I discover some new band I’d never heard of before, with a history and a discography unknown to me who prove to be worth the time. After many years of listening, I know I’ve still barely scratched the surface.

Take Gospel of the Horns as an example — and by the way, isn’t that a fine, fine band name? It even turns into the acronym G.O.T.H. This band trace their roots to Melbourne, Australia, in the year 1993. They’ve toiled in the darkness for nearly 20 years (with the inevitable changes in line-up), producing a couple of demos, a couple of EPs, two albums, and a compilation, and yet they are new to me.

My introduction to G.O.T.H. came through a five-song 12″ vinyl EP released a bit earlier this year under the name Ceremonial Conjuration, with the music waiting behind the venomous gaze of that goat creature on the cover. What I got was a fistful of slashing, guitar-driven black thrash ‘n’ roll.

G.O.T.H. know how to riff your face like a barbed flail, snapping your head back and forth with one galvanizing chord after another. Trading off between punk rhythms, speed-metal fury, and mid-paced head-busters, G.O.T.H. have created one purulent mass of filth encrusted infection, each song bent on domination and every one very damned effective in accomplishing the mission. Continue reading »

RUMBLINGS OF THE BEAST: DEAD BEYOND BURIED, GHOULGOTHA, SHADES OF RETRIBUTION

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 032012
 

This is another “Seen and Heard” post. I just got tired of calling them “Seen and Heard”. I thought about spelling it “Scene and Herd”, just to fuck with people a bit, except those words would really send the wrong message about today’s bands.

Dead Beyond Buried (UK), Ghoulgotha (U.S.), and Shades of Retribution (India) are underground collectives who are each doing their own thing their own way (and by my lights, the right way). They will draw fans not from scene kids or those who travel in herds but from metalheads with discerning taste. You’ll see (and hear) what I mean. Their music makes me want to do my part to help elevate their visibility.

So without further ado, here are the items I came across yesterday via e-mails to NCS and perusal of the interhole that I thought were worth spreading around.

DEAD BEYOND BURIED

I really liked this London-based band’s last album on the Seige of Amida label, Inheritors of Hell (2010), but I had kind of forgotten about them. Their name popped up on my radar screen again recently as one of the bands highly recommended by Ageless Oblivion guitarist David Porter in the Porter interview conducted by our Andy Synn not long ago. Not much later I saw that they would be self-releasing a new album (The Dark Era) in the near future, and that was welcome news. And then I saw that they had released a music video a few days ago for one of the new tracks, “Cold Black Stars”, and I got even more interested.

Man, what a surprise! The video, which was filmed, animated and edited by Joe Slatter (www.thedarkpower.co.uk), is one of the best I’ve seen this year. The animation, and how it alternates and eventually merges with the band performance, is fascinating. And the song itself . . . Continue reading »

HATEBREED / WHITECHAPEL / ALL SHALL PERISH — ACE OF SPADES, SEPT 27, 2012

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 022012
 

(In this post DGR reviews the Sacramento show of the current Hatebreed-Whitechapel-All Shall Perish tour on September 27.)

Here’s the thing about a show like this. I know that I am not the hugest fan of the hardcore scene and I’ll be the first to admit that I was really only there to see All Shall Perish and Whitechapel (for the 2nd and 3rd times, respectively), and if Deez Nuts turned out to be great, fine. If Hatebreed were awesome, then that would be great, too. However, I found myself a little more excited when it finally hit me that this was what they were calling the Ten Years Of Perseverance tour and that Hatebreed would be playing pretty much all of that disc front to back, with some of their other songs interspersed throughout. Now, if you’re going to go see Hatebreed it may as well be during this tour because man, Perseverance is kind of THE Hatebreed album and everything after that was more for fans.

I managed to get some good parking and they already had the doors open, which was a little odd since the flyer said 6:30 doors, 7:00 start time. Little did I know that they would actually start the show about half an hour early and end it really early and pack a ton of music in between. Seriously, I got home at 10:44, which is nuts. I usually don’t expect to get home from one of these until 11:30-ish. Also, I bumped into the folks from RockHardLive, one of the local video companies, so any footage comes from them. You should check them out and follow their YouTube channel, because they do some damn good concert footage from around this area. Continue reading »

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