Apr 082013
 

In this post are three new things I found yesterday and this morning that I found interesting. The first is a brand new video by Norway’s Shining and the next two are new tracks released as teasers for new albums by Aborym (Italy/Norway) and Zolle (Italy).

SHINING

Shining’s new album One One One is out today in Norway and will be released in North America and Europe in late May or early June, but will be available digitally beginning April 23. Today also saw the premiere of the band’s official video for “I Won’t Forget”. The sharp-edged, industrial-tinged song rocks really fuckin’ hard, and of course it includes a 21st century schizoid sax solo.

The video is also fantastic. The colors, the lighting, the editing, the headbanging, the boobs, they’re all just excellent. Watch it right after the jump. Continue reading »

Apr 082013
 

(Andy Synn wrote this post. I obviously need to give Andy some lessons in blatant self-promotion, since he devotes most of this post to plugging the competition!)

So here we go again… time for a blatant plug to abuse my position here at NCS for the benefit of my band. Deal with it. Also, please go here and vote for Bloodguard because we would quite like to play Bloodstock this year, and this is one way for us to attract attention from the individuals responsible for booking the bands!

Now one of the issues to navigate with being in this competition is balancing my role as a “musician” (parentheses intended) with my role as a “journalist/critic” (parentheses probably even more intended). So I have to try and separate these two sides of myself. There’s an issue that being critical about other bands (warranted as it may sometimes be) might reflect badly on me and my band mates, and might adversely affect our chances.  But why let that fear strangle honest opinion and debate? Do you agree? Disagree? Don’t care either way?

Still, looking through the veritable host of bands signed up to the competition, a few trends have become clear (mentioned some of them last time around as well). Continue reading »

Apr 072013
 

Blood and Thunder’s new album A Reality In Ruins is a blood-pumping romp from beginning to end. The killer album cover by Jorge Gutierrez could hardly be more fitting: Listening to the music is like vaulting onto the back of  red-eyed stallion in full gallop, with a battle ax in one hand and a fistful of mane in the other.

I’ve been following this Seattle-area band since catching their live show in April 2010 as the local opener for The Finnish Metal Tour.  Those were relatively early days for the band, but something about their energy and budding talent caught me up, and they turned out to be really nice people to boot.

I’ve seen many more of their live shows since then (most recently at their album release show last night at the Seattle stop of the Ensiferum-headlining Paganfest America tour) and I’ve spent hours talking with them after their sets. As a completely DIY band, they’ve had more than their fair share of hurdles to overcome in the last three years, including losing two of their original members last summer. But they’ve not only persevered, they’ve grown. Their story is one of steady progress despite pitfalls, and with this new album (their second) they’re really hitting their stride and solidifying their musical identity. Continue reading »

Apr 062013
 

San Antonio’s HOD have been rumbling in the underground since 2007. Their 2009 album Serpent was a vicious debut that marked them in my book as a band to watch. More eyes should be drawn to them as a result of their new demo The Uncreated, in part because two of its three songs recently premiered on the likes of Invisible Oranges and DECIBEL’s online site, but mainly because the music is awfully damned impressive.

The three songs on The Uncreated are multi-layered. At one level, they discharge an electrifying display of heat lightning, powered by blackened, flesh-charring thrash riffs and blasts of machine-gun drumming. The croaking, poison-spitting, mid-range vocals are no less venomous than the instrumentals. At this level, the songs rake flesh like a whirlwind of razors while triggering the headbang reflex quite effectively.

At another level, however, a group of very talented musicians are showing off their technical chops in ways that make this music interesting and mentally engaging as well as physically galvanizing. Rhythms and tempos change frequently. Fret-jumping guitar leads move up and down and all around in an array of alien-sounding arpeggios. The drummer keeps things interesting with a changing array of beats and percussive progressions.  Continue reading »

Apr 062013
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Yeah, we’ve already published multiple reviews of The Living Infinite, but this isn’t exactly a new one. This is what DGR cooked up when he ran his own review, originally published on our site here, through Gizoogle.net. He gizoogled the Comments on his original review, too. They’re at the bottom of this thing. I’m thinking that henceforth we’ll just do this with all of DGR’s reviews before we publish them the first time.]

(In dis post we present DGR’s take on tha freshly smoked up double-album by Sweden’s Soilwork.)

When it was initially announced dat Soilwork would be releasin a thugged-out double mixtape I be thinkin dat a pimpin’ phat chunk of our asses metal bloggin morons did a cold-ass lil collectizzle half groan all up in tha prospect of dat much Soilwork noize hittin all up in tha same time. With they last two mixtapes – Sworn To A Great Divide n’ Da Panic Broadcast – it seemed dat tha crew had become tha straight-up paragon of consistency. Yo ass could put on either disc n’ catch a gangbangin’ few pretty phat joints yo, but most either felt as if they had been freestyled entirely fo’ tha choral hook part or came off as interchangeable.

Not dat dis was some sort of wack atrocitizzle yo, but you can peep how tha fuck there would be a sense of burnout up in some quartas whenever tha group’s name was brought up – especially since you can’t fault tha band’s work ethic when it seems like a freshly smoked up Soilwork disc hits every last muthafuckin two muthafuckin years like clockwork, no matter what tha fuck chizzlez happen within tha band.

Imagine then our erection when Soilwork busted out “Spectrum Of Eternity” as tha lead-off cold lil’ woo wop from Da Livin Infinite. It was exciting. Not only did tha crew sound rejuvenated yo, but there was some seriously heavy noize goin on there – suttin’ dat previously had just been reserved ta a lil’ small-ass batch of joints like “Blind Eye Halo”. It was weird n’ refreshin as a muthafucka ta do suttin’ dat our crazy asses hadn’t done up in a incredibly long time, which was ta move a Soilwork release high up on da most thugged-out anticipated mixtapes list. Continue reading »

Apr 052013
 

(This is the second part of a feature by NCS contributor Austin Weber that we began yesterday (here). Today he reviews new releases by Okular (Norway) and Teramobil (Canada), and one older one from  Diascorium (UK).) 

It was me, I let the dogs out.

Here are a few more reviews and music not only from two groups not previously featured at NCS, but also one (Okular) whose debut album Probiotic was reviewed by Islander way back in the olden days of 2011.

Okular – SexForce

For those unfamiliar, Okular are a Melodic Death Metal band from Oslo, Norway who make elegant yet aggressive death metal with a blend of acoustic playing and folk-styled clean singing.  SexForce is a continuation and evolution of the technical progressive mold Okular created for themselves on their debut, Probiotic. This time around they have reached further, going as far as black metal on some tracks, most notably the opener “House Full of Colors”, which is a terrifying introduction that offers a riff-packed taste of what lays ahead. Another pissed-off-as-hell track follows in “No Separation”, which packs a feral punch similar to getting struck by lightning. Continue reading »

Apr 052013
 

What you are looking at above is the just-released poster for Maryland Deathfest the Movie III, with artwork created by Bite Radius Designs of Nottingham, England. May I say that it’s fuckin’ sick? Why yes, I believe I just did.

And yes, there will indeed be an MDF the Movie III, though it will be the last MDF movie (or at least the last one by talented filmmaker David Hall). If you have a long memory, you may recall reading back in 2011 (here, for example) a statement by Hall that his footage of MDF 9 (2011) would never see the light of day, in part because Hall was getting screwed over by an ex-business partner and the partner’s associates who were holding much of the footage hostage.

It doesn’t appear that this situation ever got resolved — Hall stated on the Handshake Inc. Facebook page in January that although he had salvaged film of 8 bands, “the rest of the footage from MDF 9 was irretrievable and thanks to the herpetic piece of human garbage who stole the rest of the footage, neurosis, voivod, orange goblin, in solitude and countless others won’t be in the film.”

However, in addition to the footage that Hall did salvage from MDF 9, it appears the MDF III movie will also include footage of performances from MDF 10 in 2012. Continue reading »

Apr 052013
 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews the new EP by multi-national band Against the Plagues.)

You may not have heard of Against The Plagues before [though NCS did first take note of them here back in August 2010], but their pedigree can’t be denied: This multi-national, Chicago-based quartet features former members of Vader, Forest of Impaled, and Malevolent Creation within their ranks.

Their previous release, 2010’s Decoding The Mainframe, was an impressive slice of death/black metal, whose symphonic audacity and brutal riffery trod a thin line between Puritania-era Dimmu Borgir and Covenant-era Morbid Angel, and saw the band making tentative beginnings at carving out a niche for themselves in a very populated, often very fractious, field.

Now although I am definitely a big fan of the album, at times it seemed to draw its character a little too directly from its influences, with an update in sound here and there to keep things interesting. The band themselves, the Against The Plagues I knew, were in there somewhere, but simply hadn’t fully established a separate identity outside of the confines and constrictions of their chosen genre. The band kicked all sorts of metallic ass, but remained disciples, not innovators. Continue reading »

Apr 052013
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn has returned from Oslo’s Inferno Festival, held on March 27-30, 2013, and brings us a multi-part report of what he saw and heard, along with photos. This is the final installment. Check out the three previous parts here.)

Well here we are, the final day of the festival. With fatigue setting in (wallet-fatigue as well as physical fatigue) this was also – fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you chose to look at it – the day with the fewest bands who I really wanted to check out.

The first band of the evening I was lucky enough to see were underground black metal legends Hades Almighty (pictured above). Though the Norwegian triumvirate describe themselves on their website as “The heaviest black metal three-piece in the world”, after seeing them live I’m far more inclined to agree with the assessment of the immortal Metal-Archives and say that the group are more of a Progressive black metal band than they are a particularly heavy one.

Their distinctly old-school vibe is coloured and individuated by twisty-turny song-structures and liberal applications of atonal, semi-melodic riffs that strangely enough put me firmly in mind of American tech-thrashers Believer. Continue reading »

Apr 052013
 

Well, we’re way past the point where I could make fun of this floating, alcohol-soaked mosh pit like I did the first year it launched. 70,000 TONS OF METAL is now a proven success, maybe even on its way to becoming an institution. The question now is what can the organizers do to make a solid experience even solider? [hey, I found an online dictionary where solider is a word, so there]

They’ve thought of something. For the fourth edition of this heavy metal cruise, everyone who becomes a ticketed and paid passenger before July 27, 2013 will be able to vote on where the cruise will go.

The ship will depart Miami on January 27, 2014 and return on January 31. So I exaggerated in saying it will go wherever the fuck you want to go; this is called “editorial license”. For example, I suppose Krakatoa is out of the question. It has to be someplace the Royal Caribbean “Majesty of the Seas” luxury cruise ship can get to and return from in 4 nights and five days.

I think I’d vote for Cuba, which sounds more exotic than Biloxi, Mississippi or Muscle Shoals, Alabama, though it would probably be equally interesting to see how the residents of those places would react to a seaborne invasion by 2,000 metalheads.

Once again, there will be 40 bands on board, 7 of which have been announced so far. Check out the first 7: Continue reading »