WAKING UP WITH KEN BEDENE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
May 232012
 

Last night I didn’t quite finish the review with which I had planned to start our posting day at NCS before running out of gas. The fact that I spent most of the night drowning my sorrows in whiskey with some friends may have had something to do with that. So, I need a little time to (a) pound coffee, (b) continue writing my review, (c) pound coffee, and (d) pound more coffee.

In the meantime, please amuse yourselves by watching Ken Bedene. He used to be the drummer for Abigail Williams and is now the drummer for Belgium’s Aborted. The two videos after the jump were originally posted by Sick Drummer magazine. They were filmed during Aborted’s performance at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco on May 8. The two songs are “Источник Болезни (The Origin Of Disease)” from Aborted’s 2012 album, Global Flatline, and “The Holocaust Incarnate” from Engineering the Dead (2001).

Ken Bedene is amazing. He appears to be part cybernetic metronome, part wolverine in full attack mode, and part Zen monk. Watching these videos means I need less coffee to wake up, which means less time peeing, which means more time pounding the keyboard, which means I should be back soon with that review. Enjoy Ken Bedene and Aborted.
Continue reading »

MORE AGALLOCH SUMMER TOUR DETAILS

 Metal News  9 Responses »
May 222012
 

The last time I posted about Agalloch’s summer North American tour with Taurus, I only had 10 dates.  Now the band have made an official announcement, and virtually the entire schedule has become available. In the comments to the last post, a few of you were bemoaning the lack of Denver and Phillie dates, among others. Well, fret no more. Those cities are included, along with a bunch more.

Here’s the official announcement, and the schedule is after the jump.

“AGALLOCH have announced a massive North American tour this summer that they will be embarking on. Support on all dates will come from Taurus which features Stevie Floyd of DARK CASTLE.  The band have also been confirmed to play this year’s Noctis Fest which will be taking place on Sept 28th/29th in Calgary, Alberta. A statement from the band reads as follows:

“This tour will mark the release of our recently recorded EP “Faustian Echoes” on both LP and CD.  We have taken great care in the design of this release.  Sometime before the tour we will have both a streaming and digital download option available.  However, the LP and CD versions will only be available at the shows during the dates on the tour and will be available via mail order after the tour.  We will be adding material (both new and old) to our set list and depending on stage time we anticipate playing between 90-120 minutes.  The set will rotate each night.  We have carefully selected local openers whose music fits the environment of an Agalloch show.  Where there are no openers selected, we will play nearly 120 minutes.  We are all personal fans of the openers and encourage everyone to show up early to see them.  We will have a variety of merchandise for sale including: 2 new shirt designs, our back catalog, “The Demonstration Archive,” “Marrow of the Spirit” vinyl, a tour poster by Stevie Floyd, original photographic prints by Veleda Thorsson, and various other odds and ends.”

“The dates go as follows and the TBA’s will be updated once things are finalized: Continue reading »

METAL IN KENTUCKY: THEORIES OF THE APOCALYPSE, TOMBSTALKER, AND SUCCUMB TO DEMISE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
May 222012
 

(NCS reader Black Shuck, who has introduced us to some great bands in the past, does it again in this guest post.)

Since I left home to get my edjumucation and make my way in the wide world, I’ve been very fortunate to have lived in places with good local metal scenes. I’ve previously written (here) about two bands from my college town (Ashes of Avarice and Awaking Leviathan), and two others from the surrounding area have also been featured here (The Horde and A Hill to Die Upon). I graduated from college about a year ago, and am now doing grad school in Lexington, Kentucky. I didn’t expect there to be any kind of metal scene when I moved here. I grew up in West Virginia, two hours away from Lexington, and aside from Byzantine, Appalachian Terror Unit, and one slightly insane security guard I knew at one of my jobs there, the place wasn’t exactly a hotbed of metal activity. So I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from the neighboring state.

I was quite wrong. There is most definitely a scene in Lexington, full of talented musicians dedicated heart and soul to metal. Here are three bands who kick quite a bit of ass.

THEORIES OF THE APOCALPYSE

Taking a page from the playbooks of some of the better re-thrash bands like Lazarus A.D. and Warbringer, Theories of the Apocalypse (shown above) showcase some pretty excellent riffing. I’ve seen them play about four times now, and each time I wake up with a sore neck the next morning. If there’s one problem thrash has, it’s that it’s repetitive to the point of being boring, but Theories manages to keep things interesting, combining traditional thrash riffs with earwormy little licks that will please your brain even as it’s rattled around from the headbanging. Continue reading »

A STORM OF LIGHT: THE VIOLITIONIST SESSIONS

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 222012
 

We’ve mentioned The Violitionist Sessions before, but you may have forgotten. In the words of the site’s proprietors: “The Violitionist Sessions are 3 questions and 3 songs with bands from Denton and passing through Denton, Texas. The sessions are all recorded live in a living room with no overdubs and no fancy tricks. The goal is to document a moment in time. This is what happened in Denton, Texas.”

Yesterday, The Violitionist Sessions put up videos of the three songs recently performed in that living room by Brooklyn’s A Storm of Light. They also made the live recordings available for free download (in exchange for an e-mail address).

This is a band I lost track of. I got their debut album, And We Wept the Black Ocean Within (2008), after reading raves about it when it debuted. Somehow, I missed their next two full-lengths, including 2011’s Profound Lore release, As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade. What a dumbass I’ve been. Continue reading »

SHOW REPORT: THE DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR – IN SOLITUDE, THE DEVIL’S BLOOD, BEHEMOTH (COLUMBUS, OH, 4.11.12)

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
May 222012
 

(Last month, BadWolf was on hand for the launch of Decibel magazine’s inaugural sponsored tour, and Nicholas Vechery was there to record the event for NCS in the photos accompanying BadWolf’s review.)

The first Decibel tour held its first date at a house of death. The original venue backed out all too predictably, unwilling to let Watain play. As it turned out, passport issues kept Watain from playing anyway. Either way, the show transplanted to the infamous Alrosa Villa, site of Dimebag Darrel’s murder. In the same room where one guitar hero died, another announced his resolution to live.

Nergal’s cancer ordeal matters more than much of the typical borderline-TMZ banter circulating in the metal community—his success is the exception to the rule. Metal fans are accustomed to tragedy. Once-great heroes make crappy music. Visionary musicians die young. Rats steal gear. Border patrol stops tours. Those examples represent par for the course. Compare them to Nergal: more-extreme-than-thou metal guitarist achieves some level of ‘mainstream’ success in his home country and abroad, contracts terminal illness, then beats it. “Inspiring” is the watchword.

The Decibel tour was Nergal’s first chance to cash the check his personal narrative wrote. Beginning at the Villa Rosa was tantamount to sticking his tongue out at the pale horseman. The tour as a whole flew in the face of ‘modern’ marketing sensibility. Who besides Decibel has the audacity to book four of the most satanic bands on the planet, with styles ranging from highly accessible to incredibly brutal? Continue reading »

KEITH MERROW: “RETROSPECIAL”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 222012
 

(Here’s TheMadIsraeli’s review of the latest collection of music from that creative dynamo, Keith Merrow.)

I think we need to establish one thing before we start here:  Keith Merrow is the fucking shit.

Not only is the man an exceptional example of a DIY tour de force, an excellent composer, and a terrific guy, he writes some of the most intelligent metal to be found right now.  It’s been a minute since we’ve heard anything new from him, and fortunately, new shit is here in the form of his latest EP, Retrospecial.

You all might remember my review of the debut album of his death metal project Demisery.  Well, it appears that a good deal of Demisery’s old school death metal leanings have rubbed off on Merrow here.  You will still find a ton of the trademark groove and the particular technicality his music has been known for, but it’s distinctly less melodic and groovy this time around.  Song structures are also quite a bit more progressive than before.

The EP is a mixed bag of goodies with five new songs, two re-recordings of older songs from his catalog, and a Castlevania cover.  I am only going to focus on the new songs that are entirely original on this release. I really don’t see a point in speaking about the re-recorded songs, except to say that they still rule and the new mix befits them quite nicely.  (He redid “Andromeda” as well as recording a new version of “Pillars of Creation” called “Pillars of Re-creation”.) Continue reading »

MONDAY SONG ROUND-UP: FROM EXILE, NIGHTRAGE, THE STRANDED, AND THE NEOLOGIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
May 212012
 

This morning our buddy DemiGodRaven delivered a short round-up of new songs or videos that struck his fancy, and it came at a time when I was trying to figure out how to publicize a new song and video that I had also recently discovered. So I decided to lead with the one I found and then finish with DGR’s contributions.

FROM EXILE: “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement” Video

From Exile is an Atlanta band we’ve written about frequently at NCS. You can see a collection of all our previous features via this link. Having said that, a year has passed since our last post about the band. That time, the occasion was an amazing music video (featuring guest guitarist Emil Werstler) for a song called “A Warm Place” that appeared on Just Like You Imagined, which was a collection of Nine Inch Nails songs covered by From Exile.

Now, a year later, I’m happy to report that we have a new From Exile song called “A Desperate and Willing Enslavement” and a new music video to go along with it. The video is a live performance of the band filmed at the studios of Digital Arts Entertainment Lab on the Georgia State University campus in downtown Atlanta. It was filmed as part of a video series focusing largely on Atlanta-based bands called indieATL (check out their web site here).

From Exile is a three-guitar outfit, and on this song guitarist Eric Guenther steps up to provide lead vocals. They’re all clean, but this qualifies as an Exception to the Rule around here, not only because the vocals are quite good but also because the song itself is so damned excellent — and you can download the live track for free, on top of everything else. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SVYATOGOR’S “DOCTOR VERITAS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 212012
 

I suspect that when the words “experimental” or “avant garde” are mentioned in connection with metal, most people’s reactions fall into one of two categories: Some stifle a gag reflex and feel the impulse to run for the hills, and others experience a quickening of the pulse at the prospect of finding something new and different in a musical landscape saturated with sameness. I’m in the latter group — but at the same time I’ve learned the hard way that those “experimental” and “avant garde” labels can cover a multitude of musical sins, encompassing a lot of dreck as well as some true gems.

In the case of Doctor Veritas, the recently released third album from Ukraine’s Svyatogor, we have gems. You may remember that in early April, I included a recently released song from the album (“Work Hard. Eat. Watch.”) in an NCS post (here), though conceivably it may have escaped attention since it was preceded in the post by videos of . . . flying penguins and a deluge of guns.

I’m not taking any chances this time. This time, Svyatogor get a post all to themselves as we assist in the international premiering of a second track from the album — the title song, “Doctor Veritas”. Thanks to the band’s label, Svarga Music, a CD-quality file of the song is also available for free download. Continue reading »

NE OBLIVISCARIS: “PORTAL OF I”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
May 212012
 

(Our friend groverXIII reviews one of the best albums of 2012, the long-awaited, eagerly anticipated full-length debut by Ne Obliviscaris.)

[EXCEPTION TO THE RULE WARNING]

Five years. Five very long years have passed since the release of Ne Obliviscaris’ impressive 3-song demo, The Aurora Veil, one of the most polished demos I’ve ever heard. The impressive mix of black, death, and progressive metal displayed there had me yearning for more, and finally, the band have released Portal Of I. The album features the three tracks from the demo (re-recorded, albeit very faithfully to the originals) and four new songs, all of which fit together perfectly to create one of the year’s best progressive metal albums.

Musically, Ne Obliviscaris (Latin for “lest we forget”) bear certain similarities to Ihsahn’s solo work as well as Enslaved’s more recent material, but that comparison doesn’t really do the band justice, because they don’t really sound a great deal like either band. There is the basic framework of black metal, with scads of lightning-fast double-kick drumming (courtesy of drummer Daniel “Mortuary” Presland, who has previously been named as the Fastest Feet in Australia) and tremolo-picked riffs, along with the throaty roar of vocalist Xenoyr, but that’s only part of the story.

For starters, there’s the interplay of guitarists Benjamin Baret (leads) and Matt Klavins. Baret and Klavins play off one another almost constantly, with Klavins generally laying down base riffs and Baret providing counter-melodies and lead flourishes. There’s the clean vocals and violins, both performed ably by Tim Charles, who adds another layer of melody alongside Baret and Klavins. And then there’s bassist Brendan “Cygnus” Brown, whose work on the low end isn’t limited to simply following the riffs. Brown makes sure that his bass plays as much a role as the other instruments, allowing him to add to the sonic tapestry while still maintaining the foundation of the songs. And the aforementioned Mr. Presland does an excellent job keeping things interesting, no small thing when most of his beats are over the top of his ever-present double-kick. Continue reading »

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