HIT AND RUN: DARKTHRONE, OMNIUM GATHERUM, TESTAMENT, AND INDESINENCE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jul 142012
 

Yesterday I started putting up short posts during brief windows of time permitted by my fucking day job, just trying to spread the word, for your entertainment and edification, about new videos, new music, and news that I’d seen yesterday. I got two of those posts up on the site and ran out of time before I could finish the third one. So here it is, a day late but no dollars short.

DARKTHRONE

I saw on the Terrorizer web site that this Norwegian duo have finished recording their next album, the first one since 2010’s Circle the Wagons, and that it’s scheduled for release later this year. You can bet that it will make waves and draw lots of attention, because it’s Darkthrone. What I wouldn’t venture to predict is what it will sound like, except it won’t be black metal, because Fenriz has kind of a “been there, done that” attitude about the band’s musical roots. The Terrorizer report did quote guitarist/vocalist Nocturno Culto, as follows:

“The album will be called The Underground Resistance. I can’t speak for Fenriz, but I think he’s going for more epic lyrics. I can only speak for myself and this time around they are very personal lyrics. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried this and it’s difficult to do it nicely and put it into good words. There was a lot of hate and people trying to ruin your day and I had stuff to say for my sake.”

Of the album, he adds: “Our music now is basically just metal, it will be a step away from the last album as usual.” Yup.

While I’m on the subject of Darkthrone, I’ll mention that the Peaceville label has re-issued the band’s 2001 album Plaguewielder as a special 2-CD set, with the second CD consisting of lengthy track-by-track commentary from Fenriz. It also includes new cover artwork by the amazing Zbigniew M. Bielak, which is right after the jump, big as life. Continue reading »

HIT AND RUN: THE ROTTED AND CHROME WAVES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 132012
 

Two more quick items to pass along, and I hope my day job will allow time for one more post like this one before this day is over. Fucking day job.

The items in this post are both videos. The first one comes from a UK band called The Rotted, whose most recent album Ad Nauseum was released by Candlelight last fall. We never got around to reviewing it, but I’ll tell you what, it’s a fuckin’ blast!

The new video is for a song from that album called “Surrounded By Skulls”. Can you guess why the mere title of that song appeals to me? But it’s not merely the title that’s appealing. The song itself is virally infectious. It’s a combo of crusty hardcore punk, d-beat, and death metal that’s irresistibly catchy, with a real shout-along chorus. The video is a kick to watch, too. Looks like a live show by these dudes would be some head-busting fun. Also, there are a lot of skulls.

The second video is from Chrome Waves, a band I’ve written about twice before. The last time (here), I was raving about a song from their debut EP called “Light Behind A Shadow”, and lo and behold that’s the subject of the band’s first official video, which Metal Injection premiered today. By the way, the album was released earlier this month by Gravedancer Records and it can now be ordered as a CD from this location, as well as downloaded from iTunes and Amazon mp3. Continue reading »

HIT AND RUN: A NEW ABSU SINGLE AND NEWS ABOUT THE NEXT OAK PANTHEON ALBUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 132012
 

I’m still in kind of a work-related trash compactor, except it’s my mind and my time that are being compressed. I’ve had just enough time to glance around the interhole to realize that there’s a fuckload of happenings I’d love to share with our readers, but not enough time to package all of them together in a single post. But rather than just give up, I’m going to dash off a post here and then one or two more a bit later — quickly tossing out at least a few of the items that have caught my eye. This post has a black metal theme.

ABSU: “HALL OF THE MASTERS”

As they’ve done in the past, The Cartoon Network is again providing free new music as part of their “Adult Swim Singles Program”. Surprisingly, the single they released today is more extreme than what we would have expected. It’s a new single called “Hall of the Masters” from Texas-based Absu, a kvlt black metal band that’s well loved around NCS. It’s a hell-ripping thrasher of a song, and you can download it for free by visiting this page.

You can also give it a listen right after the jump. Continue reading »

EFFIGIES OF THE FORGOTTEN: NOCTURNUS – THE KEY

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 132012
 

 

(In this post, BadWolf looks back at an album he calls the progenitor of progressive death metal — a 1990 release by Florida’s Nocturnus, a band whose members including some significant names in the annals of extreme metal.)

Progressive death metal, now far from its maligned beginnings, is in full bloom. Certainly, the genre is a blog-darling, and NCS is no exception to that trend. Many of the most successful and critically acclaimed bands in contemporary metal—Opeth, The Faceless, Between the Buried and Me, Periphery, Obscura, Meshuggah, and others—could all very loosely fall under progressive death metal flag, or at the very least would not exist without that genre’s long and sordid history. Which means now is as good a time as any to reflect upon the art form’s history.

Where is it going? Well, where has it come from.

Well, I have dug into the past and given some extensive listening to, according to my research, the progenitor of progressive death metal. Some of my co-writers at Invisible Oranges turned me on to Nocturnus during my stay at Maryland Deathfest 2012, and it’s been in heavy rotation on my iPod since. Nocturnus released their debut album, The Key, in 1990 on Earache records, but it still scorches.

Continue reading »

THE CASE AGAINST RANDY BLYTHE: A LEGAL ANALYSIS

 Mosh Pit  27 Responses »
Jul 132012
 

We’re one of the few metal blogs on the web who have devoted no space at all to the criminal charges that Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe is facing in the Czech Republic. There are various reasons for that, but one of them is that we didn’t want to join the ranks of many whose writing on the subject has generated more heat than light, preferring instead to wait until a time when we might be able to contribute some meaningful insight into the problems that Blythe is currently experiencing.

Today is that day. Today, we have a guest post by a British criminal attorney, Clare Paget, who is one of the best minds at the law firm of Hanne & Co, in London, UK. She provides some actual trained legal insight into the situation. And for that, we owe thanks to one of our favorite UK extreme metal band’s, Prosthetic recording artist Dragged Into Sunlight, who put us in touch with Ms. Paget.

As you probably know, Randy Blythe was arrested on June 28 upon landing in Prague and was charged with what is being described as the offense of manslaughter under Czech law for allegedly causing the death of a fan named Daniel Nosek at a Lamb of God show in the country on May 24, 2010. At the time of this writing, Blythe remains in a Prague jail because the Czech prosecutor has filed an objection to his release on $200,000 bail.

Ms. Paget has experience with this type of case under British law, including obtaining the acquittal of a defendant in a high profile manslaughter case in 2011. Of course, because the charges against Blythe are based on conduct committed in the Czech Republic, the Czech criminal code will be applied to determine whether he committed an offense. Nevertheless, based on our research (which includes a review of this translation of the Czech criminal code and this summary and analysis of that code), it appears that there are relevant similarities between the Czech and British legal principles applicable to this type of criminal charge, as Ms. Paget describes them.

After the jump, Ms. Paget offers a concise analysis of the case based on her own experience in defending against manslaughter charges in the UK.  Continue reading »

THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF DANZIG III IS UPON US

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Jul 132012
 

Due to a recent day-job grind and a very late night spent in the company of Agalloch (a show that’s in my future as I type this and in your past as you read it, but which I have no doubt will be/was awesome), I am leeching off the work of other writers for today’s first two posts rather than creating the kind of brilliant original content for which NCS is known far and wide, by which I mean from Seattle all the way to Tacoma.

This first piece of leeching sucks the creative blood from Full Metal Attorney, whose blood we have figuratively sucked in previous posts as well. As you may recall from our previous leeching, FMA has been running posts celebrating the 20th anniversary of iconic metal albums. Today, he has posted one about the third album by Danzig, How the Gods Kill (its 20th anniversary is actually tomorrow, but FMA doesn’t post on Saturday’s).

FMA calls Danzig III “one of the most cocksure, diabolical metal albums of all time”, an album that saw Danzig “following a devil on the left down the path to rock and roll perfection”. Not only does he view Danzig III as the apex of the band’s musical career, he contends it’s a collection of music that, twenty years later, “hasn’t shown its age in the slightest.”

I don’t know whether these are controversial statements because, for me, Danzig wasn’t a pivotal band in my own road toward metal hell, and I’ve never listened to all of the albums. But I’ll say this: “Dirty Black Summer” is a hell of a song, and the H.R. Giger artwork for Danzig III is completely killer. Continue reading »

DEATHSPELL OMEGA: “DROUGHT”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jul 122012
 

Deathspell Omega’s new EP, Drought, is this distinctive French band’s first offering of music since Paracletus completed their conceptual trilogy of full-length albums in 2010, and it can be considered a further movement in the direction charted on that last album.

While the music (and perhaps the lyrics) create an aura of approaching catastrophe and convey a sense of freedom from external constraint that link it to the ethos of black metal, little remains of black metal’s most widely known (and most stagnant) musical tropes. There is also nothing on Drought that closely resembles the demon asylum quality of Fas – Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum.

What Drought does offer is an experience that is at times memorably beautiful and at times utterly chaotic but always completely enthralling. The songs are intelligently constructed and performed with a high level of technical panache, and they’re organized in a way that provides an appealing sense of flow through the EP, even though that path is subject to a multitude of twists, turns, and jarring turbulence.

The EP is bookended by “Salowe Vision” and “The Crackled Book of Life”, two largely instrumental songs that are the most melodic offerings on Drought. Stylistically, they share more in common with prog and post-rock than black metal. At the outset of “Salowe Vision”, guitar chords ring like cracked, rusted bells, a slow tolling, as if to announce the isolated melody that follows, which drifts dreamily and buzzes with reverb before the song accelerates and intensifies at the finish. Continue reading »

BLOOD MUSIC: WIN SOME EYE-CATCHING ABIGAIL WILLIAMS VINYL

 Metal News  10 Responses »
Jul 122012
 

On July 2, we reported the unfortunate news that USBM band Abigail Williams will be calling it quits after a farewell U.S. tour that starts later this month and runs into September. As a result of that post, we made contact with a relatively new non-profit organization based in Helsinki, Finland, named Blood Music.

Among other things, Blood Music raises money for its activities by releasing vinyl versions of previously released metal albums. For example, they have released vinyl versions of albums by Maudlin of the Well and in the near future they’ll be releasing a 7 LP box set of music by Strapping Young Lad. But the subject of this post is Blood Music’s release on vinyl of the first and the last works by Abigail Williams — the Legend EP and the band’s 2012 full-length, Becoming. There are five previously unreleased bonus tracks included on Legend (turning it into an album-length record) and three on Becoming (totaling more than 27 minutes) — and everything was remastered by the band’s frontman, Sorceron, from the original 24-bit mixes.

To help spread the word about Blood Music, they’re running a contest where the winner will receive a free copy of the sweet colored vinyl edition of Becoming pictured above. This is a double LP, with the pressing limited to 150 copies worldwide.

To enter the contest, you’ll need to like the Blood Music Facebook page (here) and share the photo on FB that you can find via this link.

Of course, Blood Music is also selling the colored pressings of both albums (though they’re nearly sold out of those) as well as the black vinyl pressings of both (also limited to 150 copies each). To check those out, HERE is the link to Blood Music’s store. And THIS is the link to Blood Music’s web site. After the jump is a pic of the colored vinyl version of Legend. Continue reading »

OLD MAN GLOOM: “NO”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jul 122012
 

(London-based guest contributor Alex Franquelli returns to NCS with a review of the new album by Old Man Gloom.)

Forget for a minute that Old Man Gloom is made up of members of some of the greatest and most innovative bands hardcore and metal have seen in the last 15 years. Try to ignore the fact that the predecessor to No – Christmas – is one of the most underrated works in the realm of extreme music. What you are left with is an album whose songwriting and arrangements are the closest extreme metal can be to perfection.

The shifts between post-metal tantrums and the violent beauty of ambient and electronica are in fact less vivid than in the previous release but, after all, in eight years a lot has happened and a different world welcomes a renewed band, while the sheer contrast between the two facets of the spectre is a contrast determined by a sound, which is still in search of a balance but is daring at the same time.

Let’s face it, when Aaron Turner (Isis, Split Cranium, Mamiffer), Caleb Scofield (Cave In, Zozobra), Nate Newton (Converge, Doomriders) and Santos Montano (founding member of OMG) met in the studio the first time, not many people would have thought the outcome could be anything less than excellent. And excellent it is.  The sound gracing the speakers when No is spinning is nothing short of an intriguing experience. Enough drones to make Khanate proud embellish the already obsessive thrusts driven by riffs indulging in loops (“Regain/Rejoin”) and feedback (“Rats”) in ways that can be defined as “structural” rather than cosmetic. Continue reading »

A WHOLE FUCKLOAD OF ALBUM RELEASE AND TOUR NEWS (AND A NEW GRAVE TRACK)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Jul 112012
 

If you made your way through today’s earlier post about the first direct observation of Dark Matter, then you know we now have an official definition of “fuckload”: It’s a number that’s equal to the number of miles in 18 megaparsecs, which is (yes, I finally did the math) 1,126,656,000,000,000,000,000. Conveniently, that’s about 1.1 sextillion of whatever you’re counting, which is why it makes so much sense to just call it a fuckload.

And today there was a fuckload of news about forthcoming albums, with album art and release dates and such, plus a press release about a hellacious new tour. I don’t have time to write about the entire fuckload of news items, so I’m just going to pick the four that got the most “fuck yeah’s!” in a random survey I did of myself.

The bands in question are: Hooded Menace, Eyeconoclast, Cryptopsy, and Obituary.  And then at the end, I’ve got a new song from Grave’s next album, because we always have to have the musics.

HOODED MENACE

We’ll start this fucker off with Finland’s Hooded Menace. Today it was announced that their first album for Relapse Records, Effigies of Evil, will be released on September 11 (it can be pre-ordered in a variety of formats and bundles here). David D’Andrea did the album cover, which is cool. Relapse describes the album as “combining the grooving riffs of Black Sabbath and early Cathedral with the fire of classic Autopsy and Asphyx”. Fuck yeah. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries