NO CLEAN SINGING

RATTENFÄNGER

Aug 262012

Rattenfänger is a new band from Ukraine, but the band’s four members have already established their kvlt cred: They are also the four members of Drudkh and Old Silver Key (along with Neige from Alcest), and three of them are also members of Blood of Kingu. If those band names don’t mean anything to you, then you got some ‘splainin’ to do.

If you are familiar with those other bands, however, I think you’re going to be surprised by what Rattenfänger sounds like. This isn’t black metal or pagan/folk metal or depressive indie rock. This is voracious death metal, of the death/doom variety, and the one song I’ve heard so far is outstanding. An album’s worth of material, entitled Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, will be released by the Norwegian label Dark Essence Records in late October/early November of this year.

The band take their name from the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (in German, Rattenfänger von Hameln). You remember that tale, don’t you? The townspeople hire the rat-catcher to rid their town of rats, but then stiff him on the bill after he succeeds, and he then uses his magical pipe to lure the town’s children away, never to be seen again. According to a press release, “the lyrics for Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum are in Latin and are written in style of the medieval poets, the thinkers and the troubadours/minstrels of old.”

Being the curious sort, I did a bit of poking around and discovered via The Font of All Human Knowledge that Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum was “a celebrated collection of satirical Latin letters which appeared in 1515-1519 in Hagenau, Germany . . . mock[ing] the doctrines and modes of living of the scholastics and monks, mainly by pretending to be letters from fanatic Christian theologians discussing whether all Jewish books should be burned as un-Christian or not.” Pope Leo X was not amused and excommunicated the authors, readers, and disseminators of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum in 1517. Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 61)

That's Metal -- But It's Not Music 5 Responses »

Aug 262012

Greetings to one and all and welcome to the 61st installment of THAT’S METAL!, in which we pause from our headbanging long enough to hunt through the slimy bowels of the interhole for images, videos, and news items that we think are metal, even if they’re not music (or at least not metal music). Today we have 7 items for you.

ITEM ONE

As usual, our first item is staring you in the face at the top of this post. But to understand why it’s metal, you have to stare back at it. You may have to stare at it a long time. I did (though I tend to stare blankly at all sorts of things for a long time, usually with a sagging jaw and a slow stream of drool leaking out my gob).

At first glance (and at second, third, and fourth glances) you will see coffers, which is a term for sunken decorative door panels. But there are in fact 16 circles in that image, set against the background. I’m not sure why our brains’ first impulse is to tell us we are seeing rectangles, instead of to see the circles first and then the rectangles. But as illusions go, this one is pretty fuckin’ cool.

It was created by Anthony Norcia, and was a finalist in the 2006 Best Illusion of the Year contest I’ll give you a hint at the end of this post that may make it easier to see the circles if you get stumped. (via TYWKIWDBI) Continue reading »

MY DYING BRIDE: “KNEEL TILL DOOMSDAY”

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

Aug 252012

October 15 is the appointed date for Peaceville Records’ release of A Map of All Our Failures, the 12th studio album from My Dying Bride, in this, the 22nd year of their existence. I’ve previously quoted guitarist Andrew Craighan’s memorable description of the album as “a controlled demolition of all your hopes”. My hope at the moment is that the album will be demolishing. There is some reason to believe it will be.

Today, via an e-mail from Peaceville, I heard an edited version of the first track on the album, “Kneel till Doomsday”. Not only is Peaceville streaming the song, they’re also making it available as a free download to fans who sign up for the band’s mailing list. There hasn’t been much fanfare about this yet on a Saturday, but I did manage to find an embed code for the player so you can listen to the song after the jump. I also found it on My Dying Bride’s official web site, which you can access via this link.

The demolition of hope, indeed. This edited version of the song is about five minutes long, and even in that abbreviated length it’s a dynamic, riveting piece of music. At the outset it’s ponderous, bleak, and crushing, but it begins to move with increasing speed — without losing the black aura of hopelessness — before fading out following a return to the chain-dragging weight of the beginning. The vocals are both clean and harsh, the riffs infectious, the atmosphere doomed (of course). Have a listen . . . Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: INCANTATION, SHINING, MEANKIND, AND EVIL ENTOURAGE

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

Aug 252012

The ol’ fucking day job has had its claws in my viscera the last couple of days, and I haven’t been able to focus my bloodshot eyes on happenings in the metal world as keenly as I’d like. But that vice-like grip has eased somewhat, so it’s time to begin catching up. Here are some items of interest I saw and heard yesterday.

ITEM ONE: INCANTATION

I saw the news that Incantation (pictured above) is at work on their eighth album, to be entitled Vanquish in Vengeance, which is projected for a November release on Listenable Records. I saw this statement by John McAfee:

“The title track is about the massacre of Saxons in the town of Verdun in 782, called on by order of King Charlemagne. As an album title it has a different meaning to me. Vanquish in Vengeance symbolizes the long history of the band. We have fought many battles over the years to keep things going. We have always stayed true to our original vision and have never caved into trends. After a long wait between albums we are back with a vengeance with some of our darkest and heaviest material to date.”

“Darkest and heaviest material to date”? That would take some doing. “We have always stayed true to our original vision and have never caved into trends”? True dat. I’m ready for new Incantation.

ITEM TWO: SHINING

I like the music of Sweden’s Shining. I saw that Shining have a new album coming. Instead of persisting with the Roman numerals as on previous albums, this eighth one has a name: Redefining Darkness.

I also saw that Shining’s main man Niklas Kvarforth recorded two teaser videos for the album. In one, he’s having a rub-a-dub-in-the-tub using the favored lubricant of all trve black metallists. He’s also licking something that looks vaguely familiar. I’d say this one is not safe for work, but you’re not working now, are you? In the second video he multitasks, explaining Shining’s self-mutilating mission while taking a shit. Continue reading »

STEALING AXION: “MOMENTS” (A REVIEW)

Album Reviews 17 Responses »

Aug 242012

(TheMadIsraeli follows up our full-album stream of the debut album by Stealing Axion with this review.)

I have been so hyped for this album it’s hard for me to even quantify. Stealing Axion absolutely wowed me with their self-titled free EP (which I reviewed here); it combined progressivism, the best groove in the Meshuggah/Textures school of thought, and a refined sense of dynamics between brutality and melody. The band demonstrated that they knew how to write really fucking good metal and how to hit a broad spectrum of notes while carrying all of it off equally well.

In my mind, Moments is the quintessential modern metal album, demonstrating the best of what modern groove has become in heavy music. I am going to warn NCS readers, this album is DEFINITELY an exception to the rule, with close to a 50/50 split of brutal and clean vocals going on here. As with all exceptions to the rule though, I TRY NOT to review something that breaks our mantra unless it’s really fucking good. Moments IS really fucking good, I assure you (unless you’re just a kvrmudgeon).

A few facts you need to know about this album before I begin: It’s a concept album about the end of the world. Because of its particular story, the song flow is a bit askew from what you might expect (e.g., the album starts with one of the softest songs). It is LONG (77 minutes), and a lot of the longer songs are peculiarly structured. You won’t get the payoffs you’d typically expect on what feels like a buildup, and songs don’t end on the notes you’re absolutely convinced are coming, but by the same token some of the moments of brutality on this album completely wreck your intestines when you least expect them to pop up. This is a truly progressive album. Continue reading »

AN NCS FULL-ALBUM PREMIERE: “MOMENTS” BY STEALING AXION

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Aug 242012

We’ve been watching the rise of Tacoma’s Stealing Axion since first hearing their sweet 2010 self-titled EP (reviewed at NCS here). Now the band are on the verge of seeing the release of their full-length debut by Inside Out Music and Century Media. Entitled Moments, the album will hit the streets on August 28 in the U.S. and a day earlier in Europe — and we’re giving you a stream of the entire work beginning today.

Stealing Axion join together a variety of musical components — off-kilter, jack-hammering rhythms; intricate and often mesmerizing guitar performances; memorable, beautiful melodies; and an effective contrast between abrasive, harsh vocals and clean, clear singing that echoes and soars. (And for those newcomers to the site, despite our name we do make exceptions when the metal is as good as what’s on Moments.)

The music weaves together brute-force aggressiveness, higher-order complexity, and shimmering atmospherics, delivering a blend of piston-driven body-movers and progressive stylings that send the mind surfing on astral waves. The songwriting is excellent, and the musical performances are all top-shelf. The album was mixed and mastered by TesseracT guitarist/producer Acle Kahney, and it sounds fantastic, producing the clarity and separation that best suits this kind of progressive, technically demanding music.

Moments is a long, ambitious work that demands serious attention, but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun to hear. Fans of bands such as Textures should find it especially appealing, but we recommend that every devotee of metal give this a try. The stream begins next . . . Continue reading »

RAPED BY PIGS: “GUSHING ORGASM 2”

Album Reviews 10 Responses »

Aug 242012

(Phro reviews the new EP from Raped By Pigs, who are from Peru. If memory serves, this is the first review of music by a Peruvian band at NCS.)

Sometimes bands choose weird, offensive names just to be…well, weird and offensive. Other times, bands choose those names because they embody the music so well. Peru’s Raped by Pigs is definitely in the latter group. As you can probably imagine, they would be most accurately pigeon-holed as a slam/brutal death metal band, if one wanted to get all taxonomical and shit.

But, as much as I love grouping band into genres, sub-genres, and penis size, I couldn’t find any pictures of these guys’ dangly bits (kinda makes you question their metal cred, doesn’t it?), so we’ll have to actually talk about their music instead. Damnit.

Gushing Orgasms 2 is not the music of the apocalypse, but the music of the survivors’ great grandchildren sitting around a campfire of dried out human shit. These unfortunate descendents swing back and forth between the mad, ecstatic joy of surviving as the world slowly burns itself out like a dying sun and the slow, furious sobs of remorse at the loss of deep dish pizza only glimpsed in half-forgotten ancestral memory. (“WHY?” they scream, “WHY DIDN’T THEY SAVE THE PIZZA??”)

But, pizza-lamentations aside, this music is basically just heaviness. It’s like falling asleep at the beach and waking up to two, bulbous, blubbery sea lions making sea lion babies on top of your chest, their sea lion sex juices splattering all over your face as they grunt and heave, pounding away on top of you. The fat fucks don’t even notice you gasping as your rib cage cracks and collapses around your lungs and you slowly suffocate. Continue reading »

THINGS SEEN AND HEARD: haarp, SKÁLMÖLD, BLOODRED HOURGLASS, AND GOBLIN

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Aug 232012

I thought this artwork was cool. It’s name is “Ocean In Motion” and it was created by Oana Cambrea. It has nothing to do with the rest of this post. I just wanted to put it someplace where I wouldn’t lose it. It did make me think of synchronized swimming, though something like this would have been much more fun than the event as it’s performed at the Olympics. Anyway, at the end of this post I have the only example I know of where synchronized swimming was metal. But onward to other new metal things I saw and heard recently.

haarp

Speaking of cool album art, I saw the cover of the next album from NOLA’s haarp. It’s called Husks and it’s set for release on September 18, 2012 through Housecore Records. I didn’t really dive deeply into this band’s last album (2010’s Filth). I remember listening to one track at a time when I was in a hurry, I didn’t immediately fall in love with it, and I moved on to something else.

This new one was recorded by Housecore’s Phil Anselmo (Down, Pantera) and mastered by Pig Destroyer’s Scott Hull, and that gets me interested in giving this band a second chance. Based on a press release, it appears there may be some new twists in this album, in addition to the band’s core mix of hate-filled sludge and grind. Check out the cover after the jump, and one more piece of related artwork created for haarp. Continue reading »

MASACHIST: “SCORNED” ON THE WAY

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

Aug 232012

Masachist is a Polish band I feel I should have known about before now, given that they include two members of Vesania — drummer Dariusz “Daray” Brzozowski (formerly with Vader, and live drummer for Dimmu Borgir) and bassist Filip “Heinrich” Halucha — and two former members of Decapitated — vocalist Wojciech “Pig”/”Sauron” Wasowicz (Anal Stench) and bassist Heinrich again — in addition to whirlwind guitarists Thrufel (ex-Azarath) and Aro (Shadows Land, Torquemada).

The band released their debut album (Death March Fury) in 2009, and they have a follow-up entitled Scorned due for release on September 3 via Selfmadegod Records. Yesterday the band released a song from the new album called “Opposing Normality”, which follows a previously released track, “The Process of Elimination”. Both songs are definitely worth hearing.

The music is bone-jarring death metal, fast and technical but somewhat unorthodox in its approach, with scale-leaping, minor-key riffs, unexpected ambient passages, and eerie soloing. There’s an alien quality to the songs, both machine-like and insectile, like the scurrying and swarming of a hive of bio-mech centipedes the size of mastiffs. It’s both brutal and otherworldly, like a death metal version of Blotted Science.

I’m digging this strange brew, but I’m curious what you make of it. Check out the two songs after the jump and leave some comments. Continue reading »

AUTHOR AND PUNISHER: “TERRORBIRD” (THE VIDEO)

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 5 Responses »

Aug 222012

In March of this year, BadWolf introduced us to Author and Punisher via this post about the artist and his new album Ursus Americanus, which was released in April by Seventh Rule Records (and is available for streaming and purchase here). For those who missed that, Author and Punisher is the industrial solo project of one Tristan Shone, who has become something of a geek hero by creating his own bizarre machine instruments.

To quote BadWolf: “Author and Punisher pulls influences from the more drone/groove oriented Industrial of Godflesh, as opposed to the thrashier (and poppier) Ministry school. . . . The songs on Ursus Americanus roll over the listener with heft and weight sorely lacking in most modern Industrial music. . . . I wager Tristan Shone could make a decent living off science fiction and horror film composing if he weren’t an employee at the National Center for Microscopy. . . . During my second run-through, I closed my eyes and imagined technological carnage unfolding against the movie screen that is the inside of my eyelids.”

Well, BadWolf doesn’t have to rely solely on his imagination any more. Thanks to the awesome DECIBLOG, I discovered this morning that Author and Punishment has released a new music video for a song from the latest album called “Terrorbirds”. BadWolf streamed a live version of the song with his March review, but this new video provides a horror story to go with the music. It was directed by Augustine Arredondo and stars Rob Crow (Pinback, Goblin Cock), and it’s delicious. Now we know what a Terrorbird is.

Watch it after the jump. Continue reading »

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