MAGOA BRING THE GROOVE AND KVELERTAK BRING THE DRAGON

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 252012
 

To start this Monday off in style, we have two videos, one new and one that has become new again because it won a prize. And starting off a Monday in fine style is always a good goal, because I ain’t feelin’ too fuckin’ stylin’ on a Monday, and any kind of Monday style is a big goddamn plus, don’t you think?

MAGOA

This French band’s last song and video jumped me up like an electrode in the bunghole. Not that I would know what that feels like, mind you, but it seems like a fitting metaphor. Magoa’s “Animal” video is one of the best of the year, and if you haven’t seen it yet, by all means please go visit our earlier post about it. But as of yesterday, Magoa have a new song + video that is a bunghole insertion with extra voltage.

If there’s another modern band doing old-school groove metal with as much punch as Magoa, then I really want to hear about it. Their new song, “Enemy”, is like a brigade of machinists punching rivets through the steel girders of your thick skull. It really is the archetypal convulsive headbanger, a cleverly calculated formula for making people go into paroxysms of spastic neck-snapping.

And if that weren’t enough, it includes a hooky chorus and an old-school breakdown — by which I mean a breakdown that isn’t announced by a big fucking bass drop and one or two atonal chords. The production is just about perfect for this kind of metal — powerful, cathartic, and man, when the double bass comes alive, you’ll want to ram your head into the nearest wall. Even better, the song is a free download. Continue reading »

THIS SHIT WILL BLOW UP YOUR ASS

 That's Music -- But It's Not Metal  5 Responses »
Jun 242012
 

It appears we’ve driven the NCS funky train right off the rails today. I would offer apologies, but apologizing isn’t metal. The metal thing to say when you feel the impulse to apologize for something is “Fuck you, bitch”. So, fuck you, bitch.

Phro started this. To begin our day, he jumped the rails with that Head Asplody thing. Since the train is already barreling through the sticky underbrush of metalicized J-pop and red pandas, I feel entitled to bring you “Delorean” by FM Belfast before we get our engine back on the road to Hell.

Although the stainless-steel, gull-winged Delorean was actually manufactured in Belfast, FM Belfast are not from Belfast, nor even from Northern Ireland. They are from Iceland, which by itself may be enough to make this metal. There are other aspects of the band’s video for “Delorean” (which premiered on June 21 via IFC) that are kinda metal, such as the massively nerded-out collection of figures in the protagonist’s room (don’t blink or you’ll miss our on the Michelin man). I also couldn’t help but like the idea of this massive, bearded dude (portrayed by Njörður Njarðarson) collecting . . . well, you’ll see what he collects.

And then there’s the song itself. It’s synth-driven electro stuff that’s just fucked up enough to be intriguing, and man does it have a devilish hook embedded in it. Also, the first time I heard the chorus, I thought they were singing, “This shit will blow up your ass”. Continue reading »

HEAD ASPLODY

 Phro's Posts, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Jun 242012
 

“Metal Kitty” by bloodspit.

(This post was written by Phro. He brings us head asplody things.)

In the metal world, there seems to be a lot of anger, hate, filth, and skullfucking. I approve of this. In fact, I approve of this so hard that I sometimes get rage boners for no other reason than that I love how much negativity there is in the metal world. That said, a bit of humor goes a long way to making a good band a great band. And a shitty band an almost tolerable band.

But what we don’t have (for better or for worse) is much cuteness.

Now, that’s to be expected when you get a lot of misanthropes, bitter assholes, badasses, and posers all in the same general area. (I’ll let you decide for yourself which one of the four you are.) But, hey, it’s the weekend, so you have some free time to remove the corpse paint, take off the studded bracelets, hide in your room, and indulge in a little childish, high-pitched squealing and giggling.

BABY METAL

Baby Metal has released a new video. I love it. I’m not being ironic, sarcastic, or coy. It’s just fucking absolutely nothing more than shitty Jpop with a few rejected riffs and some random douchebag doing “death metal growls” in the background. But I still love it. (I may have brain damage.) Continue reading »

FESTIVAL-DEPRIVED METALHEADS REJOICE: GRASPOP IS STREAMING LIVE!

 Metal News  No Responses »
Jun 232012
 

More than once in NCS posts, I’ve bemoaned the fact that the good ole U.S. of A. is largely lacking in the kind of big, multi-day outdoor metal festivals that happen during the summer elsewhere in the world, and mainly in Europe. One of these days, I’m going to make the trek and take in the experience up close and personal. Until then, I’ll just bitch.

One of the biggest Euro festivals is going on right now in Dessel, Belgium: the Graspop Metal Meeting, 2012 edition. And earlier today I discovered the next best thing to being there: watching the festival on my computer in real time.

Yep, the Skynet.be web site is streaming most of the performances in high quality, as it happens, with multiple camera angles on the stage and in the audience. Just before pausing to write this post, I was watching All Shall Perish fuck shit up. Still to come tonight (based on the schedule I found at that site): Exodus, Comeback Kid, My Dying Bride, Fear Factory, and Pennywise. Dimmu Borgir is also on the schedule tonight, but it looks like that show won’t be streamed.

But check this out: At 7:50 pm (19:50) tomorrow night (June 24), Belgium time, Gojira will be performing! That’s 10:50 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.  Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET (AND FREE): VOID FORGER – “RUINED”

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jun 232012
 

Void Forger are a relatively new three-person band based in Bucharest, Romania, who contacted us recently with a request that we give their music a spin. They have a three-song demo called Ruined that’s available for streaming and free download at Bandcamp — and it’s a very pleasant surprise. The music has gravity, in two senses: (a) it’s heavier than a semi-truck loaded with concrete girders; and (b) both in its compositional elements and in its performance, it’s serious work that’s worthy of respect.

The music is also difficult to categorize. It’s a dark storm of doom and sludge punctuated with flashes of up-tempo grind, crust, and freaked-out noize, with the bleak atmospherics enhanced by cavernous, roaring vocals that barely sound human.

“Pointless Media” moves from doomy pound and crash to a rolling gait, interrupted by a flaming burst of grindcore-like mayhem before settling back into that black, grungy roll, the distorted guitars moaning  a diseased melody.

I’m a sucker for a heavy-assed bass solo, and we get one right near the beginning of “Relief” and then again later in the song. The music staggers and lurches and erupts in whirling frenzy, with a variety of guitar leads and solo’s enhancing the changes in momentum. It’s the most melodic of the three songs, and has become my favorite. Continue reading »

PRETTY PICTURES

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  9 Responses »
Jun 222012
 

Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I suppose people in our community have as varied a set of tastes in artwork as the rest of society at large, but when it comes to album art in particular, we’re off in a world unto ourselves. What we find “beautiful” in album art tends to fall on the ugly side of things. I think that’s because we look for album art that represents the dissonant, frequently voracious, often bleak sound of the music.

But even within the realm of extreme metal album art, there’s good and bad. Today I came across a collection of new artwork for forthcoming albums that I’d put on the good end of the scale . . . plus some works in progress by a well-known metal artist for album covers that are in the making.

The first example is the one you see above. It’s the just-disclosed artwork for the next album by long-running Swedish death metal band Grave, who happen to be one of my perennial favorites. The next album will be their 10th and is titled Endless Procession of Souls. It’s due for release in Europe on August 27 by Century Media. The artwork is by Costin Chioreanu, who also created the art for Grave’s last two albums. If you know anything about Grave’s music, you’ll appreciate how perfectly appropriate this creation is for their style of music. Beautiful. Continue reading »

VINTERSORG: “ORKAN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  11 Responses »
Jun 222012
 

(In the following review, Andy Synn assesses the new album by Sweden’s Vintersorg, which is set for North American release on July 10 by Napalm Records.)

A new Vintersorg album? Already? Well that’s always good news. And what’s even better is that Orkan continues the blackened folk vibe re-established first on Solens Rotter and then carried over to Jordpuls.

To be brutally honest with you, back when Vintersorg announced his participation in Borknagar (for 2001’s Empiricism) I was becoming concerned that the line between the two bands was starting to blur – the shinier, proggier stylings of Cosmic Genesis (still one of my all-time favourite albums) and its two successors weren’t all that far removed from the sounds of Empiricism and Epic. It didn’t help that Mr V’s vocals are amongst the most instantly recognisable in metal, often dominating proceedings and serving to tie the two groups a little too tightly to one another, giving neither the necessary room to breathe.

But all that changed with the release of Solens Rotter. A three-year break between albums saw the duo of Vintersorg and Marklund redefine their priorities to produce the first in what has turned out to be a return to the more rustic, folk-ish melodies and earthen black metal atmosphere of their earlier works,  musical miles away from the soaring, Pink Floydian blackened prog of Borknagar. Last year’s phenomenal Jordpuls continued the trend, actively improving on Solens Rotter in nearly every way, and now we are once more gifted with a new piece of blackened folk art in the form of Orkan. Continue reading »

LIVE AT THE BOARDWALK (June 15, 2012): BISPORA, JOURNAL, TAUNIS YEAR ONE, SYMBOLIK, AND EXTIRPATE

 Concert Reviews, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Jun 222012
 

(DemiGodRaven reviews another recent show at The Boardwalk in Sacramento, and again uses the write-up to introduce music from a group of up-and-coming bands who might hook you.)

You know, sometimes the internet has a habit of inflating your sense of how popular you think a band really is. I say this mainly because lately it seems like we’ve become something of a heavy metal echo chamber in which one person says, “Hey! You should check this band out!” and then two more pick up on it, and so on. Surely, that means somebody must’ve picked up on it because everyone is talking about it.

Then you actually go to the show and it occurs to you that, yes, this is still a small local band show. It’s a group of guys busting their asses and slumming it out to try and get someone to pay attention to them, even if the big name on the bill couldn’t make it due to a family emergency (that’s 2 for 2, Fallujah, Sacramento remembers the dates that stand it up) and one of the other death metal bands couldn’t make it, so a smaller group had to step in. It’s a show that maybe fifty to sixty people made it out to, including the other bands.

There was a weird sort of hopeful energy, where no one knew who I was (well, except for the one guy who was playing that night who I played with in a band for about two months…) and they were just excited to have someone interested in what they were doing. It’s probably the most hipster and, ‘Oh you’ve probably never heard of them’ that I’ll ever get to be.

The internet is also amazing because it really does widen a band’s reach. Can you believe we had someone from Australia complaining in the comments for the Soma Ras demo review that they couldn’t go to this specific show? How strange is that? You have bands who have anywhere from 800 to 2000 likes on Facebook playing what should be a hometown show to a small crowd, yet you have people 3,000 miles away mad because they couldn’t see it. Continue reading »

AN EXCLUSIVE NCS PREMIERE: “THE HORRORS OF HOME” BY KARTIKEYA

 Premieres  13 Responses »
Jun 212012
 

At NCS, we follow Moscow’s Kartikeya like hawks, because their music is excellent, because they don’t sound quite like anyone else, and because they don’t stand still. The band are at work on a new album, to be called Samudra, which we understand should be ready for release later this year, and they’ve been teasing their fans about a new single from the album to be released June 22.

Well, it may only be June 21 in the U.S., but it’s June 22 in Russia — and so the song is ready for release now. And to our very happy surprise, we get to premiere it!

The single is called “The Horrors of Home”, and the artwork features the photography of Greg Shanta. The song itself also includes some noteworthy guests, in addition to the members of Kartikeya: NCS favorite Keith Merrow, who contributes a winding, rippling guitar solo, and vocalist Aleksandra Radosavljevic.

“The Horrors of Home” may be the most multi-faceted piece of music that Kartikeya have yet created, combining complex hammering rhythms, passages of ethnically-influenced dreamlike ambience (made even more otherworldly by Aleksandra Radosavljevic’s wordless vocals), a soaring chorus, sections that put me in mind of the dark melodic death metal of bands such as Insomnium, and maybe even a flavor of Devin Townsend and Machina-era Smashing Pumpkins. And the male vocals on the album really provide an array of tones — from bestial death metal howls to blackened shrieks to rousing cleans.

Do listen to this piece of dark, transfixing music right after the jump . . . and then we’ll tell you how to get it for yourself. Continue reading »

GREAT ALBUM – SHAME ABOUT THE ARTWORK

 Eye-Catchers  8 Responses »
Jun 212012
 

(Andy Synn gives us examples of reverse-Eye-Catchers.)

In between reviews (at the moment I have pieces on the new Vintersorg, Gojira, Ihsahn, and De Profundis in gestation) and work on future editions of The Synn Report (for which I have a vague outline of what bands I want to cover, and in what order), I’d like to drop in little columns on bits of metal culture tangentially connected with the music. It’s fun to do, and it gives me a bit of breathing space and a place to clear my head.

Now, while I have a long-running piece on metal lyrics and the art of writing them (and then setting them to music) in the works, I thought for now I’d do a short, irreverent piece on metal artwork.  More precisely, bad metal artwork.

Ok, so clearly I could have filled this entire list with bad black metal artwork… although similarly I could easily have filled it with bad death metal artwork (any number of covers featuring zombies, rape, or zombie rape would do) or bad thrash artwork (robots, tanks, robot-tanks, etc). But I’ve gone for a cross-genre approach to make things a little fairer, and to allow me to fit in some real stinkers.

All these examples have been chosen from my own collection, and I’ve selected a few pieces of artwork that have unfortunately been latched onto otherwise great albums. Not all of them are utterly terrible, but none of them do justice to the music contained within. Continue reading »

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