SATURDAY SOUNDINGS: CAUSEMOS, TYRANT OF DEATH, CALIGULA’S HORSE, AND DEATHEMBER

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Oct 062012
 

Here’s another round-up of new musical discoveries from the last 24 hours. NCS writer DGR delivered the first two of these items to my in-box, for which I bow down in gratitude. NCS reader Austin S-K brought me the third one, for which I bow down in gratitude. I came up with the fourth one on my own, but I’m now unable to straighten up so you could bow down in gratitude to me. Not as limber as I used to be. I’ll be spending the rest of the day staring at the floor. And headbanging.

CAUSEMOS

Causemos are a Finnish band who yesterday released their debut album, Infinite Event, as a pay-what-you-want (or pay nothing) download on Bandcamp. (I suppose you might also call this an EP, since the songs only total about 25 minutes of music.) Causemos brand their music as “cosmic space metal”, which is not a bad description. I would elaborate on that description as follows:

Causemos weave together symphonic keyboards and technically demanding melodic death metal, with vocals that move seamlessly between brutish howling/growling and really nice soaring cleans that reminded me a bit of Dave Hunt’s clean ceiling-busters for Anaal Nathrakh. The music is intricate and vitally dynamic, ranging from bombastic hammering to astral streams of progressive ambience. The music has a grandiose and sometimes spacey quality, but not at the expense of headbanging rhythms or infectious melodies — of which there are many. Continue reading »

WHITE SOCKS ARE IN AGAIN

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Oct 062012
 

In your formative years, you learn some things that stay with you. In my formative years, I learned that if you wore white socks and black shoes to school, you were just asking for abuse. Only helpless nerds whose mommas dressed them wore white socks and black shoes. Poor motherfuckers, it was even worse than duct-taped glasses and using pocket protectors with a half-dozen pens. Yeah, that’s how fuckin’ old I am.

At some point, it looked like Michael Jackson would make white socks cool, back before it came out that he was sleeping with little boys. But I think you needed to have patent leather shoes and a white glove to pull that off, and you needed to be cool in all sorts of other ways, too. And honestly, I thought he was still pushing his luck with that shit, even when he was at the height of his powers.

Well, motherfuckin’ Death Grips may succeed where Michael Jackson failed. That pic up there is the new alternate album cover for No Love Deep Web, the new Death Grips album that has become a case study in how to viral-market your music. In case you missed our earlier post about this album and didn’t see the news elsewhere, this is the album that Death Grips released for free download earlier this week despite the fact that they’re signed to the mainstream Epic/Columbia label, who presumably has rights to the music — and used a picture of an erect dick as the album cover.

Supposedly, something about that album art led to the band’s site being shut down, though that still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Web hosts don’t give  fuck what you put on your own web site and I can’t fathom how the band’s label could unilaterally have it shut down since the site pre-dated the band’s signing with them and presumably is paid for by the band.

But in any event, per a post on their Facebook page, Death Grips seem to have created a new alternate album cover, which is at the top of this post. Continue reading »

TIME TO BUST SHIT UP: NEW MUSIC FROM BEHEADED, MALEVOLENCE, UNDEAD CREEP, AND 7 H.TARGET

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 052012
 

Here’s another round-up of music I came across over the last 24 hours that I want to recommend. By my lights, it’s a good way to charge into the weekend, because it helps get in the mood for destroying shit. And isn’t what weekends are for? To destroy all the things you spent the work week building, including your reputation?

Here’s a helping of viciously destructive music from Beheaded (Malta), Malevolence (Portugal), Undead Creep (Italy), and 7 H.Target (Russia).

BEHEADED

Beheaded are from the island nation of Malta in the Mediterranean. Having heard some of their new music, I’m surprised Malta hasn’t imploded and sunk beneath the waves in a titanic geyser.

Beheaded have recorded their third album, Never To Dawn, for release by Unique Leader on November 6. Based on a very old MySpace blog entry by the band, the fantastic cover art appears to have been created by an artist named Yang Guang (click on the image to see a bigger copy of it).

A few days ago Beheaded released an advance track from the album called “Where Hours Etch Their Name”, and it made me hungry not only for the whole album but also for human flesh. It’s a monstrous, and monstrously groovy, behemoth of death metal might that reminded me of Immolation and Hate.

The riffs have a booming, cataclysmic quality, spiced with rapid techy jabbing and whirlwinds of dark melody. The vocals are a paragon of bestiality, and the fuckin’ percussion is explosively off the hook. Beheaded definitely have the knack for forging relentlessly brutal music that’s also groovy and memorable. I’m in lust for this album. Here’s the song: Continue reading »

THAT RAW FEELING IN YOUR BUNGHOLE IS FACEBOOK WORKING ON YOU AGAIN WITHOUT THE LUBE

 Off Topic  24 Responses »
Oct 052012
 

Yes, I’m afraid it’s time for another rant about Facebook. The pressure was building, and I needed to vent for fear that otherwise I’d have an attack of explosive diarrhea.

The last time I had to resort to this kind of diarrhea remedy was in June, when the subject was an exploration of the algorithms that Facebook uses to determine who gets to see Page posts and the rollout of Facebook’s Promoted Posts feature. In a nutshell, if you’re the admin of a Facebook Page and you add a Page post, Facebook doesn’t deliver your post to the news feeds of all your Page fans. At one point, Facebook reported that on average only 16% of your fans will see any given post.

Facebook does give you the option of paying them to expand the distribution of your posts. That’s the Promoted Posts feature. We’ve used that feature only for certain posts at the NCS FB Page — when we want to spread the word about a song premiere or new album stream here at the site — and, unsurprisingly, it definitely does work. The stats we get from FB show that our posts reach a much larger percentage of our FB fans, as well as FB Friends of our fans, though the reach is still not 100%.

But we’re not a business, we get no revenue from anyone for running NCS, and so there’s a limit to how much money we’re willing to spend to spread our content around the FB community. Impecunious metal bands aren’t any more likely to fatten up Facebook’s bank account in order to reach more of their fans either.

But it turns out that with Promoted Posts, Facebook was only getting warmed up. On Wednesday of this week Facebook rolled out a new “test” in the U.S. (they’ve been doing it longer than that in other countries). Now, even individuals get the awesome opportunity to pay FB in order to increase the visibility of shit like your wedding photos, pics of your newborn brat, where your band is playing next weekend, and big news like what you ate for breakfast. Wheeeeeee!!! Continue reading »

“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 »

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