NACHTMYSTIUM: “SILENCING MACHINE”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Aug 032012
 

(In this review, BadWolf provides his take on the new album by Chicago’s Nachtmystium.)

What does it mean when Nachtmystium, a band whose success has sprung from breaking convention, releases a return-to-form? Silencing Machine, portentous title and all, disposes of the psychedelic and dance-rock elements of its predecessors, as well as much of frontman Blake Judd’s morbid introspection. Rather, its constant aggression and meditation on worldly issues recalls more of classic Metallica and Marduk than, say, Marillion.

I will say first that Nachtmystium mean a great deal to me personally—Black Meddle‘s One (Assassins) and Two (Addicts) both saw me through great personal tumult — and second, that my favorite thing about Blake Judd and his band of crusty ne’er-do-wells is their ability to take one sound per record and twist it into several unique permutations. A good psychedelic album takes you someplace—a good Nachtmystium album takes you several places.

So when I first heard Silencing Machine, I found it toothless. Most of the songs on Silencing Machine follow the general formula of Assassins’ title track: black metal intro, transition to groove section, optional return to black metal section, end. Nothing stuck with me besides the big, juicy chorus on the title track. For the first time, Nachtmystium bored me, and I anticipate it will bore many on first listen.

I urge you to listen several times—Blake Judd writes albums that take some digging to sink in. Silencing Machine proved a compelling ride when I gave it the opportunity. This year Nachtmystium took their lessons in atmosphere and rhythm from the previous two albums and applied them to an aggro black metal template. Continue reading »

THE HOWLING WIND: “OF BABALON”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 032012
 

(In this post, our UK-based writer Andy Synn reviews the new album by the bi-coastal due known as The Howling Wind.)

“The Howling Wind?”, I hear you cry (somehow, from behind the dubious safety of my keyboard), “that sounds like some sort of black metal band to me!”.

Well shame on you for making an assumption based purely on the band’s name. How do you know they aren’t the latest leaders in progressive post-core, or the new face of technical instrudjental metal, hmm? For shame.

But you’re right. The Howling Wind are most definitely black metal. Of a particularly dark and forbidding kind. Of a particularly American kind, in fact.

The term “American black metal” has been thrown around a fair bit in recent years, often thoughtlessly so. Personally I think that while it is not a strict genre term (being applied rather widely as it is), there is a noticeable underlying style which links “American black metal” together – a cultural background and a certain form of approach to the style which is neurologically different from its European forebears.

Partially this is because American attempts at a pure emulation of the European style usually end up as hideous amalgams of cliché and misunderstanding (Averse Sefira and Martriden are, off the top of my head, two of the few bands whose style is particularly Trans-Atlantic), but equally black metal is often best as a representation of cultural roots. Not in a folk-style (though a good number of them utilise folk melodies and themes), but as an extrapolation of culture and its extremities. That’s why there’s a difference between the paragons of Swedish and Norwegian black metal, for example. Similar in style, vastly different in approach. And so the same holds true for American black metal, of which Of Babalon is a near perfect example. Continue reading »

CAN YOU WORK TO “THE FILTHY”?

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  57 Responses »
Aug 032012
 

So yesterday one of my good friends, who also happens to be a co-worker at my fucking day job, sent me a link to a story in the online edition of The Washington Post under the headline, “Is Listening To Music Making You Worse At Your Job?” It reported on the results of recent psychology research about whether people perform better or worse on the job while listening to music.

Researchers found that when people performed “cognitive tasks”, they did worse when listening on headphones to music they like. And then the article said this:

“Not ready to ditch your headphones quite yet? There is one fix: The researchers found that participants listening to music they decidedly did not enjoy – in this case, a song from “grind core metal band” Repulsion – actually did better than those tuning into music they liked. The researchers chalk that up to a lack of ‘acoustical variation’ in the music, which likely made it less distracting.”

My first thought was “Fuck yeah! Proof that listening to grind improves job performance!” And then I read that paragraph more slowly. Apparently, listening to grind only improves your performance if you don’t like grind.

So I decided to root around some more and I found a more detailed article about the study, which compared the performance effect of “Acid Bath” by Repulsion to a pop song by a band called Infernal. Here’s what it said: Continue reading »

CLOUDKICKER’S “FADE” IS NOW OUT, AND THERE’S A SONG ABOUT SEATTLE ON THERE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 022012
 

Well, hell, that didn’t take long. On July 31 I reported the news from Ben Sharp’s tumblr that a new Cloudkicker album would be released in August, and today it was released. It is August, after all, and who needs to mess with a big, protracted run-up to a release anyway, with teasers and studio reports and singles and hints all over the social media? I mean, other than every metal label and 99% of all metal bands.

Anyway, yes, the album is up on Bandcamp now where it can be downloaded for the unfuckwithable price of $WhateverFeelsRight.

It consists of seven tracks. I’m in such a rush to spread the word about the release than I only paused long enough to listen to one song, because the song is named “Seattle”. I don’t often see a song by a metal band I like that’s named for this beautiful, cool place where I live. Actually, I’ve never seen one.

“Seattle” is more than 10 minutes long. It makes me really curious to hear the rest of this album, because there’s a blackened/doom feel to this song, which I wasn’t expecting. It rolls through phases, the intensity building and subsiding, and I really liked the drum programming on this song, too. Continue reading »

MINISTRY: “RELAPSE”

 Album Reviews  19 Responses »
Aug 022012
 

 

(As he explains in this review, BadWolf is not happy with the comeback album by Ministry.)

I reacted, somewhat seriously, to “Ghouldiggers,” the introductory track on Ministry’s would-be comeback album, Relapse. Partway through the song, Al Jorgenson breaks into a skit wherein he calls his manager, only to be handled by an aloof secretary—her accent lies somewhere between Sheffield and Valley Girl, her actress did not deserve whatever pay she received—and placed on hold. What is wrong with these people, Jorgenson asks, what is their major malfunction?

A Ministry song actually irked me, right there—with a skit, no less.

In my waking life I work as, among other things, a receptionist. The success of my job depends partially on how well I shield my employer from his or her own clients. I walk into a Ministry album and expect to hear about “thieves and liars.” Not petty annoyances such as myself. And yet I continued spinning “Ghouldiggers” and the tracks that follow it for a period of weeks, despite not actively liking them. What is my major malfunction?

Well, among other things, that I’m listening to a post-Filth Pig Ministry record wherein Jorgenson sings like Larry the Cable Guy. To any musicians reading this: do not write a comeback album called Relapse that relies, heavily, on an unnatural accent. It did not work for Ministry. It did not work for Eminem. It will not work for anyone. Continue reading »

RECENT HEARINGS AND SIGHTINGS: DEVOLVED, TROLL BENDS FIR, MECHINA, AND YOU-TAB

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Aug 022012
 

Here are some things I saw and heard this morning.

DEVOLVED

I heard a new song by Devolved. They’re a band I’ve been following for more than two years here at NCS. They have a new album (their fourth) entitled Reprisal that’s due for release by Unique Leader on November 20. Drummer and lyricist John Stankey is still at the helm, but the rest of the line-up is new. As we reported last December, he’s now joined by guitarist Mark Hawkins (who is also handling the bass parts) and vocalist Mark Haggblad.

We’re told that the album will include a guest vocal appearance by Tony Campos (Soulfly, Prong, Ministry, Asesino, ex-Static X) plus guest solos by Francesco Artusato (All Shall Perish), Nate
Vennarucc (Ontogeny, Anomalous), Malcolm Pugh (Diskreet, A Loathing Requiem), and Vishal Singh (Hawkins’ bandmate in Robots Pulling Levers).

We featured a demo version of a new track the last time we wrote about Devolved, but as of this morning we now have the first finished song from the album — “Supremacy Enforced”. Holy hell, is it a face-shredder! Continue reading »

ZONARIA: “ARRIVAL OF THE RED SUN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 022012
 

(In this post, DGR reviews the new album by Sweden’s Zonaria.)

Zonaria are one of the first bands I have ever found myself waiting for a long time to produce a new album. The four-year gap between the group’s latest release Arrival Of The Red Sun and their previous disc The Cancer Empire was almost painful. I cannot fathom what it is like being a fan of Necrophagist or Wintersun by this point (I still don’t believe Time exists) and just constantly waiting for that new release to come out.

I got into Zonaria after randomly stumbling upon the group’s video for the song “At War With The Inferior”, which is a pretty slow yet epic-sounding song that picks up a bit at the end. I was overjoyed when I got a hold of The Cancer Empire and found that the band had the chops to go incredibly fast as well, and were a huge-sounding collective who had the melo-death speed but seemed heavily influenced by Hypocrisy. The similarity is commonly pointed out by this point, and yeah, it is very much there, especially if you listen to Hypocrisy’s latest, but Zonaria have nonetheless always felt like their own band anyway.

They’re a young group from Umea, Sweden, who have just nailed it from the get-go, with the only real roadblock being the gap between this latest release and the previous one. I’ve been chomping at the bit for the new one and was excited as hell when I heard the few songs they had released in advance. The music was different enough, and the guitars seemed a little thinner, but it still retained the band’s massive, apocalyptic sound. However, those were only two songs, and there are ten on Arrival Of The Red Sun. So how does the rest of the album hold up? Continue reading »

GRAVE: “ENDLESS PROCESSION OF SOULS”

 Album Reviews  11 Responses »
Aug 022012
 

In a year that has delivered a hearty helping of very good old-school, Swedish-style death metal produced by a phalanx of newer bands, the tenth album by Grave is still the one I’ve been most eagerly anticipating. Not that the newer bands can’t grasp and execute on the basic blueprint, but after all, Grave helped draw the blueprint in the first place more than 20 years ago and they’ve been turning out solid albums ever since.

Only Ola Lindgren is left from the original line-up that gave the world Into the Grave in 1991, but he ‘s been the heart and soul of the band for such a long time that it doesn’t much matter. On Endless Procession of Souls, which marks the band’s return to the Century Media label after a two-album dalliance with the now-defunct Regain Records, Lindgren is joined again by drummer Ronnie Bergerstål, who’s been the hitter since 2008’s Dominion VIII. Two new faces round out the current line-up — second guitarist Mika Lagrén and bass-player Tobias Cristiansson.

Together, they’ve created 10 new songs that will cause most die-hard fans to salivate, though it may not be without controversy for some. For my money, Endless Procession of Souls is one of the best old-school death metal albums of 2012 and a worthy addition to this legendary band’s evil discography. Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE . . . BANDS YOU WOULDN’T EXPECT ME TO LIKE

 Off Topic  38 Responses »
Aug 022012
 

(Here we have another of our UK scribe Andy Synn’s collections of five favorite things. The last such post was about five of his favorite guitar solos. This one is going to take us outside our usual stomping grounds.)

Ok, so if you follow the site at all closely, I’m sure you’ve got at least a vague idea of the areas each of the regular writers tends to specialise in. You might even be able to make reasonable predictions about what bands we listen to, and what bands/albums coming up we’d be expected to like and give coverage to.

You’d know, for example, that my bread and butter these days is black metal, the more interesting the better, with a side helping of more melodically inclined (but still heavy as hell) death metal. I’m not so much of a thrash or hardcore guy as I was when I first started my metal journey, and while I still have a soft spot for some metalcore (and its ilk), that’s very much on a band-by-band basis. Overall though, I like metal for its variety, for its honesty and integrity, and for the skill and effort it takes to compose.

So what I’m thinking is that I’ll throw away any remaining kvlt or tr00 cred I have left, and namecheck 5 bands – all peripherally related to rock/metal – who I absolutely love, but who I don’t think any of you would guess at in a million years. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT FROM THE PHOENIX

 Free Shit  3 Responses »
Aug 012012
 

The Boston Phoenix is one of many “alternative” weeklies around the country published by the Phoenix Media/Communications Group. The Boston weekly goes back a long way — all the way back to 1966, when it was started under the name Boston After Dark. Today, the parent company announced that it is going to combine The Boston Phoenix and another local publication into a glossy weekly mag simply called The Phoenix.

More or less to commemorate the event, The Phoenix did something pretty awesome: It released a 17-track compilation of music for free digital download. It’s called “Vol. 2” because unbeknownst to me they released another comp last year. This new one looks killer.

It includes a track (“Weight of the World”) from Shadows Fall off their May 2012 album, Fire From the Sky, as well as Doomriders covering Devo (“Girl You Want”) and that awesome “Trucker Bombed” song from Sexcrement’s 2012 album Sloppy Seconds. It also includes a song from Abnormality (“Schismatic”), whose new album DGR reviewed for us just two days ago. It includes songs from Morne, Tenebrae, Wormwood, and a whole lot more.

I’m not familiar with more than half the bands on the comp, but the ones I do know I like — which tells me this whole comp is probably worth checking out. Besides, you can download it for free off Bandcamp right now, and that makes it pretty much a no-brainer.

Stream all the tracks after the jump if you’d like to get a taste before you leap over to The Phoenix Bandcamp page. Continue reading »

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