NO CLEAN SINGING

TERRORIZER UNLEASHES THE ZOMBIE HORDES

Mar 122012

To be brutally honest, I’m not my usual cheery self today. My fucking day job continues to interfere severely with the vastly more important job of entertaining the vast numbers of people (vast, I tell you) who count on NCS each day to give them a reason for living. But my spirits improved dramatically (albeit briefly) when I saw the new video from Terrorizer for the title track of their new album, Hordes of Zombies.

The band’s 1989 debut, World Downfall, is credited by lots of folks as being a landmark in the development of grindcore, but the band folded not long after, with its members going on to join little known acts such as Morbid Angel, Napalm Death, and Nausea.

There was a brief reunion of sorts, with Jesse Pintado and Pete Sandoval from the original band recruiting vocalist Anthony Rezhawk (Resistant Culture) and Tony Norman (Morbid Angel) to add guitars and bass, producing the 2006 album Darker Days Ahead. In the week following its release, Pintado died of complications from liver failure.

Now, Terrorizer has risen again, with David Vincent (Morbid Angel) on bass and guitarist Katina Culture (Resistant Cuture) filling out the line-up. So far, I’ve only heard the title track, courtesy of this new video, but I . . . fucking . . . love it! Continue reading »

ANOTHER NEW GOROD SONG: “CARVED IN THE WIND”

Mar 122012

No, that’s not the cover to Gorod’s new album. It’s part of the artwork for a forthcoming 7″ by New Zealand’s Heresiarch. We’ve posted the Gorod cover many times already, and I thought the Heresiarch art was so sick that it should be shared.

Okay, that didn’t make a lot of sense, did it? Gorod and Heresiarch have nothing in common except they’re both metal. But my brain is kinda scrambled at the moment because I just listened to a new Gorod song. It’s called “Carved In the Wind” and it features a jazzy guitar solo by Christian Muenzner (Obscura). I presume the song will eventually begin streaming on YouTube or some other more frequently visited location, but for now it’s in a tiny player that you’ll have to squint to find at Vs-webzine (HERE). Look for the cover art for Violent Absolution and you’ll see the player to the left of it.

I haven’t yet listened to the Gorod album, but I have it on good authority from a respected blogger friend (who has heard the album) that it may be the tech-death album of the year. Those are strong words, given that 2012 has produced Incurso by Spawn of Possession., in addition to a new one from Psycroptic and one to come from Cryptopsy. I may have to shove aside other albums I’m supposed to be spinning and jump right to the Gorod. Actually, there’s no maybe about it.

“Carved In the Wind” is delicious. I love the swirling guitar lead and the pulsing keyboard tones. I love the funky bass line. I love that jazzy guitar solo. I love that Gorod have pulled together in a single song so many different stylistic elements in a way that seems natural and have produced music that’s not only head-twisting but also melodic, memorable, and a headbanger to boot. Go check it out and then come back here and write something that makes no sense in the Comments.

Speaking of making no sense, there’s more Heresiarch artwork after the jump, from their last EP, Hammer of Intransigence, plus a live Heresiarch song clip. Continue reading »

SUMMER SLAUGHTER 2012 – UPDATE

Metal News 16 Responses »

Mar 122012

This year’s edition of the North American SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour is shaping up to be a must-see event. All you really have to do is look at the name of the band at the top of the bill. When the tour organizers began announcing the line-up they decided to build enthusiasm and anticipation by rolling out the names of the starring bands one at a time, beginning with Cannibal Corpse. The idea was to unveil a new band’s name every Sunday until the line-up was complete. After the initial announcement, I decided to wait until the entire line-up had become public before writing about the tour again.

Well, the plan hasn’t unfolded quite as envisioned. After the announcements of Between the Buried and Me, The Faceless, Exhumed, Goatwhore, and Veil of Maya, there have been a few hiccups — like the kind you get that go on for an hour and leave you begging strangers to scare you. There was no announcement a week ago, and despite promises by the promoters that they’d catch up by giving us two new confirmed names yesterday, that didn’t happen. Instead, we got a promise that it would happen later this week. Who knows why?

To make up for the miss that happened a week ago, the organizers said they would also announce yesterday the candidates for fan voting for the opening act on the tour. You may remember that they did this in 2011, too — rolling out a list of 10 band candidates and allowing fans to vote for a winner. Eventually, the promoters took most of the bands who failed to win and packaged them in a separate SLAUGHTER SURVIVORS tour. Welp, the announcement of the 2012 candidates didn’t happen yesterday either. Instead, we got this cryptic explanation:

“As for the voting contest. FALLUJAH, CEREBRAL BORE and AEGAEON will all be contenders for the opening spot. Who else should be included? We are actually considering letting you guys vote for the 1st and 2nd spots on the tour! All the other 8 bands are confirmed.”

AUTHOR AND PUNISHER

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Mar 122012

(BadWolf introduces us to Author and Punisher. Unlike most metal musicians, he engineers and builds his own instrumental devices. Prepare for massive nerdgasm.)

How would you like to be crushed by an army of giant robots? I’m afraid technology isn’t quite there yet, but the closest you could come is to jam on Author and Punisher.

Author and Punisher is the Industrial solo project of one Tristan Shone, and what an apt title it is. This is music that definitely follows a single creative vision (Author) and punishment is what he doles out. Shone’s new album, Ursus Americanus, will be released on April 24th through Seventh Rule records, the home of such sludgy marauders as: Indian, Harpoon, Lord Mantis, and the mighty Batillus.

Author and Punisher pulls influences from the more drone/groove oriented Industrial of Godflesh, as opposed to the thrashier (and poppier) Ministry school. Paradoxically, I find Author and Punisher heavier than those bands, but Tristan Shone does not use a guitar—and that’s precisely what is so metal about him.

He creates his own unique instruments—that resemble a Gundam cockpit. Check it out. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 42: BLASPHEMOPHAGHER, TEITANBLOOD, AND DIOCLETIAN

MISCELLANY 10 Responses »

Mar 112012

Almost a month ago I paid homage to the often disturbing but intensely magnetic “war metal” of Canada’s Mitochondrion. That led to a discussion in the Comments about what to call this kind of music. “Atmospheric death metal”? “Apocalyptic prog”? “Post-death metal?” Maybe “war metal” is as good a name as any.

The Comments also filled up with suggestions for other bands who have created similar kinds of soundtracks for Armageddon — not necessarily the exact same kind of music, but similar in the violent, apocalyptic atmospheres they conjure up. I picked three of those bands to feature in this post. This is a MISCELLANY post because I was unfamiliar with the music of each band (with one slight exception that I’ll mention later).

As per the self-imposed rules of MISCELLANY, I’ve randomly picked a song or two from each band, recorded my impressions, and then included the same songs for you to hear. The bands are: Blasphemophagher (Italy), Teitanblood (Spain), and Diocletian (New Zealand).

BLASPHEMOPHAGHER

This first band is the slight exception I mentioned. Blasphemophagher’s October 2011 album The III Command of the Absolute Chaos made Tr00 Nate’s list of his 30 favorite albums of 2011 that we published here, and I listened at that time to the sample song he picked, “Beyond Absolute Chaos”. So this time I decided to pick two different songs from the album. I chose “Chaostorm of Atomization” and “Abominable Nuclear Penetration”, because the names sounded so pleasant. Continue reading »

EL CACO: “HATRED”

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 13 Responses »

Mar 102012

I remain short on blog time, but haven’t run out of the urge to headbang. “Hatred” feeds that need quite nicely. It’s a song by a Norwegian band called El Caco. It’s the first track released from a forthcoming album called Hatred, Love & Diagrams. It’s also the first El Caco song I’ve ever heard. I gather it’s different from what the band has done in the past, because they say so:

“On their new album, El Caco “push the envelope even further than they have done before,” according to a press release. “Having explored the melodic aspects of rock and metal for more than a decade, this album shows us yet another side of this multi layered band.”

I will say this: Based on this song I want to listen to more from that new album, which was released in January by Indie Recordings and is available from iTunes and Amazon mp3. The song has been turned into a music video, which appears after the jump. I’m afraid that’s all I have time to say, except . . . bang yo head. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OBLIVIONIZED – “NULLIFY THE CYCLE”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Mar 102012

Last August, I went nuts over Abhorrent Evolution, the debut EP by a London-based collective with the apt name of Oblivionized. I compared the listening experience to “being backed against a wall with a firehose spewing sulphuric acid at full force, straight at your unprotected self” and called the music “super-charged metal at a hyperdrive pace, a tech-grind portrait of the 7th Circle of Hell, music with the sensibilities of a ravenous demon horde set loose after a milennial imprisonment.” And there were more metaphors.

Now there are more songs. Oblivionized has just released a new three-song EP called Nullify the Cycle through Grindcore Karaoke, which has made the music available for free download on Bandcamp (in exchange for your e-mail address).

Oblivionized prove again that they are a band to watch very closely. Listening to “The Nullification of Philanthropy” and “Cycle of Deprivation” is like being dropped without warning into a war zone. Combining an array of corroded, swirling guitar leads and vicious chugs, the band vent their fury with megawatt power. But the music isn’t an explosion of chaos. It’s technically demanding and filled with sharp changes in rhythm; this mechanized assault is well-coordinated and impressively executed. Continue reading »

LIKE TEARS IN RAIN

Off Topic 12 Responses »

Mar 102012

Blade Runner is not a perfect movie. Among its flaws, Harrison Ford, playing the lead role of Deckard, was the weakest link in a cadre of actors who were otherwise everything you could have wanted. But it’s a movie that makes a deep impression, or at least it does if you’re at the right age, at the right time of your life when you see it. At the right time, it seems profound.

How long do we have? We don’t know. No one knows. It’s a shame we won’t live . . . but who does? A blade runner, a hunter of rogue replicants, of skinjobs, realizes too late that life is precious, even artificial life. He realizes, as we all will eventually, the ultimate tragedy in the loss of a lifetime of unique experiences as all those moments pass away and doves fly off in the rain. Maybe he realizes that he, too, is a replicant. But does it really matter? They’re only accelerated versions of us, their energy draining away to the vanishing point before they’re ready. And who is ever ready?

A video artist named Francois Vautier extracted 167,819 frames from Blade Runner‘s final-cut version and assembled them into a gigantic virtual wall of images — a square of approximately 60,000 pixels on one side alone. He then created a virtual camera as a roving observer of the mosaic, passing over the frames in a compressed version of the movie itself. If you’re a Blade Runner worshipper, as I am, it’s a cool thing to see. Continue reading »

BANG THAT HEAD

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

Mar 092012

As you may have surmised from the relatively small number of posts the last few days (and perhaps the content of the last one), work and work-related things have interfered with your humble editor’s dedication to metalness. Unfortunately, it’s likely that I will continue to be fucked with by such interferences over the next few days. However, I did manage to squeeze in a quick listening expedition earlier today and I found some items that got my head rockin’.

That’s really about the only common theme running through the music in this post. The styles are divergent, but they all trigger that natural, in-born urge to bang the head. Or at least that’s what happened to me, and that’s really all that matters, right? So even if the music doesn’t make you bang your head, you can rejoice in the knowledge that I got the shit cranked up loud and got myself a good head banging, and that ought to make you blissfully happy.

The bands are these: 4ARM (Australia), Tukkanuotta (Finland), Iblis (Poland), and Cancer Bats (Canada).

4ARM

4ARM is a thrash band from Australia who released their third album (and their first for Rising Records) in February. It’s called Submission For Liberty. Also last month, the band released an official video for the title track, which I happened to come across today for the first time. Continue reading »

THE FBI FUCKS WITH NCS AND WE FUCK BACK WITH ATOMA

Exceptions to the Rule, IQ Subtraction, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 55 Responses »

Mar 092012

It was just a matter of time. You can’t write about the kind of vicious, seething, anarchic, soul-rending noise that we cover here at NCS — stuff like shamisen rock, Lacuna Coil, The BadPiper, and BabyMetal — without The Man coming down on your ass eventually. I got an e-mail from the fucking FBI yesterday! And they weren’t writing to wish me a happy World Kidney Day either.

But they picked on the wrong fucking people. I gave ’em a piece of my mind, and I’m not talking about the piece that loves kitties and sleeps a lot. That’s our motto here at NCS — you get fucked, you fuck back . . . hard. And I’m fucking back with a new music video by Sweden’s AtomA, the latest band to be joined by Christian Älvestam as the vocalist. I believe this is the 1,623rd such band.

We’re not going to let the FBI try to fuck with us in private either. You have to expose this kind of heavy-handed bullshit for everyone to see, so the masses can rise up in solidarity and strike back like a big fucken rattlesnake that’s been roused from its slumber — give The Man a big dose of lethal venom! So, after the jump . . . the piece-of-shit e-mail I got from the FBI, my courageous response, and the AtomA video. Continue reading »

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