SERIOUSLY, DON’T GIVE MEGADETH ANY MORE OF YOUR MONEY

 Uncategorized  55 Responses »
Aug 162012
 

It’s so rare that anything connected with heavy metal breaks into the mainstream consciousness that I can’t help but pay attention when it happens. Today it was kind of unavoidable. I was in my car with the radio tuned to a local talk channel just about the time that the CBS national radio news came on, and sure enough, right there at the end, after stories about things like wildfires and drought in the Midwest and Mitt Romney’s latest insistence that, yes, he pays his taxes, was Dave Mustaine’s latest and perhaps most outrageous pronouncement yet. CBS even aired a clip from Mustaine’s August 7 commentary in Singapore. You know, the one where he said this:

“Back in my country, my president … he’s trying to pass a gun ban, so he’s staging all of these murders, like the ‘Fast And Furious’ thing down at the border … Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there … and now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple.”

Later, Mustaine went on to suggest that he may move to Singapore — a state not exactly known for its libertarian values — to escape the terror of “Nazi America.”

Dave, please move. Please, please, please, please, please!! If you move to Singapore, there’s less chance that the people at CBS will hear the next piece of ignorant garbage that spews from your pampered mouth.

It’s true that Dave Mustaine is not the only member of the community of metal with paranoid goofball ideas who insists on sharing them with the world. Unfortunately, the patronage of generations of metalheads have given him a platform from which his blathering gets noticed a lot more than the blathering of other lunatics who play in metal bands. It’s way past time that fans took the platform away from him. Continue reading »

NEW NASTINESS FROM ALL OVER: VENOMOUS MAXIMUS, TURBOCHARGED, AND DEIPHAGO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 162012
 

Oh baby, have we got some hot tracks for you today. I’ve donned the biohazard suit and gathered up three new tunes that bring the nasty and bring it hard. I’m not sure how or when the lexicon of metal got to the point where “filthy” became a word of praise, but this shit is filthy. Very different styles of music, but all three songs will get their hooks in you. The music is from Venomous Maximus (U.S.), Turbocharged (Sweden), and Deiphago (Costa Rica).

VENOMOUS MAXIMUS

This first item is just good timing. Less than a month ago I discovered this Houston band via their new music video for “The Mission” (featured here), and they surprised the hell out of me — surprising in the sense that their style of music isn’t one I’m usually into, but I fuckin’ loved that song, as well as the rest of the 2011 EP from whence it came.

Now I come to find out that Venomous Maximus have a new album projected for release this fall by the name of Beg Upon the Light, and yesterday they started streaming one of the new songs — “Moonchild”. And I mean to tell you, the central riff in this song (which slams right out of the gate) is an absolute headbanging killer. Seriously, you’d need a neck brace to keep your skull from bouncing like a basketball. A definite candidate for our 2012 “most infectious song” list. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORDBRAND – “CONSUME THEM” FROM “KOLUMBARIUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 162012
 

Mordbrand is a three-man death metal juggernaut from Sweden whose work has appeared frequently at NO CLEAN SINGING and drawn considerable attention elsewhere, too. Consisting of vocalist Per Boder (ex-God Macabre), guitarist/bassist/backing vocalist Björn Larsson, and drummer Johan Rudberg, Mordbrand have chosen (so far) to release their music in small portions. There was a 2010 split with Evoke, an attention-grabbing EP in 2011 entitled Necropsychotic (reviewed here), and a split with Bombs of Hades released earlier this year under the title No Life (featured here).

Since the release of the No Life split, Mordbrand have recorded two more songs destined for release by Deathgasm Records as a 7″ vinyl bearing the name Kolumbarium. The two songs are “Consume Them” and “Let Them Slumber”. The second one features guest vocals by Nox from the excellent Swedish band Craft.

Originally expected this summer, manufacturing delays have pushed off Kolumbarium’s availability — the latest word is that it will be released by late September or early October. However, because we are awesome, we have been allowed to hear the two songs in advance. Because you are awesome, you will also get to hear one of them before you finish reading this post. Yes, in a moment of weakness, Mordbrand agreed to allow NCS to provide the world premiere of “Consume Them”. And man, does it rip hell. Continue reading »

WHICH WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE?

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Aug 162012
 

Welcome to another edition of “The World of Merch”!  Actually, it’s the first edition of the series, and most likely the last.

I just saw these pics on the web this morning. On the left, Shining (Sweden) bring you logo panties, along with this announcement. “Shining are playing Summer Breeze Open Air this Saturday (Party Stage 19:50) and are bringing along new merch items! These and others will be on sale at www.shininglegions.com later as well, but if you’re heading towards Germany, why not surprise yourself or your girlfriend with a nice festival souvenir.”

I really didn’t see this one coming, not from a band like Shining. The least they could have done would have been to go crotchless or scratch ‘n’ sniff. Though I would definitely surprise myself if I bought one for me. My wife would be surprised if I gave one to her, too. However, I would not be surprised if she then stuffed it down my gullet.

Is metal underwear a big seller? For all I know, it could be. I haven’t exactly made a study of the market for band-logoed thongs. I dunno, maybe bands enjoy the thought that their name is on something that rides up the ass of their fans, male or female, and catches skid marks and stray drops of pee pee.

Shirts, on the other hand, I know that shit sells, especially when they’re as eye-catching as that new Cerberus t-shirt that the awesome Fleshgod Apocalypse are hawking. That shit is strong. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: HOT GRAVES / WHITEHORSE SPLIT

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 162012
 

That eye-catching cover art depicts an epic battle in the making, the zombie hell horse and the ferocious battle cat about to throw down. Hooves vs. claws (though it looks like the cat is trying to even the score by wearing the cat equivalent of brass knuckles — cats are ruthless when it comes to horse fighting).

The artwork (by Glenno) graces the cover of a split release by Hot Graves of Gainesville, Florida and Whitehorse from Melbourne, Australia. I was introduced to Hot Graves when they released their 2011 album Knights In White Phosphorus and it was featured in a guest NCS post by SurgicalBrute (here). He described their music as “crusty blackened thrash” and recommended them to fans of Possessed, Hell Hammer, and Sodom. I’ve been following them ever since.

Whitehorse, on the other hand, is a new discovery for me. They’ve put out two albums (the most recent of which was last year’s Progression), plus EPs and numerous splits. I’ll be following them now, too.

Hot Graves contributes two tracks to this split. “This Is For You” and “MetalBlaster”. The music sounds like mad scientists mixed thrash, punk, and d-beat, cooked it in whatever makes metal black,  and then spun it in a centrifuge at high speed until it exploded and spattered the walls with filth. It’s mainly fast, abrasively raw, and smokin’ hot. It’s the music of a demon moshpit at a dive bar in Hell. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD TODAY: WINTERFYLLETH, GOAT THE HEAD, ONE INCH GIANT, AND MASS HYPNOSIS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 152012
 

Here we have yet another random assortment of things I saw and heard today that I thought merited some attention. And the bands are: Winterfylleth (UK), Goat the Head (Norway), One Inch Giant (Sweden), and Mass Hypnosis (Croatia).
 

WINTERFYLLETH

I saw that another new song from Winterfylleth’s next album, The Threnody of Triumph, has started streaming. As previously reported here, the album is due for release on September 25 via Candlelight. The new song is “The Svart Raven”, and it’s streaming at Stereogum. I won’t blather on about the song; I’m saving my blathering for a review. For now, I’ll say only that the song is excellent and that you should hear it without fail if you have any interest in black metal. Go here to do that.

GOAT THE HEAD

I saw the image at the top of this post appear on the Facebook page of our favorite contemporary primal cavemen death metallists, Goat the Head. This looks suspiciously like cover art for some new collection of contemporary primal caveman death metal. My suspicions were further aroused by this accompanying statement by the Goats: “Exposing evident symptoms of imminent deathrash”.

I must say that I find this highly encouraging. It has been FAR too long since we’ve received new original material from this band, who we have written about a multitude of times in the past (collected here). They are, after all, the band who introduced us to the dreaded Cube, the mere mention of which gives me the nervous shakes. Although the Goatsters haven’t released new material in a while, earlier this summer they did record a cover of “Burner” by Motörhead, which I somehow overlooked. It rocks. It’s right after the jump. Continue reading »

INTER ARMA: “DESTROYER”

 Metal News, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Aug 152012
 

Yesterday, I saw this press release in my in-box: “Relapse Records is extremely proud to announce the signing of Richmond, VA’s INTER ARMA. The group . . . formed in 2006 and released their debut full-length Sundown via Forcefield Records in 2010.  Combining a punk rock ethos with an esoteric blend of psychedelia, black metal, and doom/sludge, the quintet quickly developed a name for themselves in the underground through relentless touring and mesmerizing live performances.”

I tend to take things like “relentless touring and mesmerizing live performances” with a grain of salt, but I perked up at that description of the band’s sound. I perked up even more when I saw that the band’s 12″ EP (Destroyer), which was released in June by Toxic Assets, was available for streaming on Bandcamp. And then the last bit of perking came when I saw the EP’s very cool cover art (above).

Fully perked, I listened to the EP — and realized why Relapse had glommed onto this band with sticky fingers. In a word, Destroyer is amazing. It’s an unpredictable collection of four very different songs that give the middle finger to genre classification. Inter Arma are like a conflation (or conflagration) of Melvins, Pelican, Neurosis, Satyricon, and Southern blues metal. Like the marriage of Electric Wizard and Darkthrone and . . . oh fuck it, none of these band references are really working very well as a means of capturing the music, so let’s try this . . . Continue reading »

NEW VIDEOS FROM WILDERNESSKING, PRAY FOR LOCUST, AND MOTH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 152012
 

We were a bit light on content yesterday, but we’ll be making up for that today — and this post wasn’t even part of the planned line-up. In one of those happy confluences of events, the morning brought three new videos that I’m really digging. Two of them are from young bands who’ve already become favorites, and the third is a bright new discovery: Wildernessking (South Africa), Pray For Locust (Sweden), and Moth (U.S.).

WILDERNESSKING

I suppose there might be a few things I haven’t yet done to promote this band’s music. I haven’t tried sky-writing or a flashing billboard in Times Square. I suppose I could put their faces on milk cartons, except they’re far from lost. To the contrary, in a relatively short time they’ve turned out some amazingly mature, completely enthralling music. First came their 2012 debut album, The Writing of Gods In the Sand (featuring the killer album art you see above by Reuben Sawyer). To steal words from my review, it lashed together styles from a variety of genres (including black metal, post-metal, and Enslaved-style prog) to create “a uniquely effective expression of power and emotion, a blending of light and dark, soft and hard, beauty and voraciousness.”

Then came a follow-on EP, …And the Night Swept Us Away (reviewed here), which I perceived as one long, panoramic song divided into three parts, not because it was written that way but because it worked that way as a musical journey.

Today the band provided me with yet another excuse to pimp them by releasing an official music video for “Rubicon”, one of the tracks from the album, which marks a turning point in the conceptual journey that the album portrays. It’s a live performance (interspersed with related clips) filmed at their record release show at the Kimberly Hotel on April 20. Have a look and a listen right after the jump . . . after which I’ve got some more news about the band’s activities. Continue reading »

INBORN SUFFERING: “REGRESSION TO NOTHINGNESS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 152012
 


(In this post, DGR reviews the new second album from French doomsters Inborn Suffering.)

And we’re here with the final of the three doom records (or records with doom elements, in the case of Barren Earth) that I’ve been listening to during this wonderful summer in Sacramento. I came across Inborn Suffering on a whim whilst bouncing around Bandcamp’s metal section. I looked them up and found out that this was only the French Melodic Doom Metal group’s second album and it had just been released after a six year wait. If you caught my Zonaria review, then you saw me musing on the fact that four years of waiting really sucked, so I can’t imagine what it was like to really be looking forward to these guys’ second release after six.

It seemed like their first disc was pretty well received and this one had been gathering positive press as well, so I checked it out. This is doom by way of groups like Daylight Dies, where everything sounds like it was recorded in an empty room with completely grey skies. It is heavily accented by some serious keyboard work and drags itself along at a slow, crawling pace. It swells at just the right moments to give the sense of drama that attracted me to this specific offshoot of doom in the first place. It’s also distressingly heavy when it needs to be.

Let me say this, I kind of wish I was one of the people who had to wait six years for this disc, because it is really good. To someone like myself, it is a pleasant surprise, and I can only imagine the sense of relief when a fan of the band finally gets their hands on this album and is gratefully  dragged along on the slow, plodding journey into utter misery on Regression To Nothingness. Continue reading »

A SCATTERING OF SCARS: THE GARDNERZ, POSH CUNT, AND REX SHACHATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 142012
 

I’m sitting here fresh from a restful 5 hours of sleep, with my eyes feeling like spider monkeys sandpapered them while I was asleep, but rapidly feeling more alive as I slurp on my second cup of Deathwish coffee (read about that shit in this post). In an effort to shock myself awake even more quickly, I’ve been listening to the three songs in this post. They kind of make me feel like alien larvae are burrowing under my skin, some slow and some fast, but all of them inexorably headed toward my gut where they will seek nourishment before exiting explosively through my intestinal wall.

Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have poured that second cup of Deathwish. Anyway, check out the scarring music while I get something sharp and start opening myself up to look for those fuckin’ squirmy larvae. The bands: The Gardnerz (Sweden), Posh Cunt (US/UK), and Rex Shachath (Ireland).

THE GARDNERZ

The sharp-eyed among you will recognize that cover art at the top of the post, because I included it in a previous feature about album art about six weeks ago. The artist is Daniel “Devilish” Johnson and he created this awesome image for a new EP by a Swedish band named The Gardnerz. The six-song EP, entitled It All Fades, will be released by Abyss Records this fall.

Today, the Axis of Metal blog began streaming a song from the album by the name of “Don’t Look Back”, and that’s kind of how I felt listening to it — something was on my heels, but it was a fuckload smarter to keep running than to risk a glance over the shoulder. Continue reading »

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