SHORT BUT SWEET: GRAVEYARD – “THE ALTAR OF SCULPTED SKULLS”

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers  2 Responses »
Feb 162012
 

This is a SHORT BUT SWEET feature, but it could just as easily have been an EYE-CATCHERS feature, because . . . that album cover! Be honest: It caught your eyes, just as it did mine.

It’s in the only acceptable kvlt colors — black and white. It has countless skulls. I know this because I tried to count them and I couldn’t do it before I ran out of fingers and toes to count on. That makes the number of skulls countless. Plus, everything is dripping, even the words. And you don’t need color to know what they’re dripping with, and it’s not honey. Then you have the evil-looking candelabras and the ominous hooded figure standing behind the ALTAR OF SCULPTED SKULLS! 

Kudos to the artist, Matt ‘Putrid’ Carr (Autopsy, Impetigo, Coffins, Hooded Menace, etc), for this dread-inspiring achievement. It’s everything you want as a visual introduction to your spine-extracting, skull-bleaching, morbid death metal — which happens to be the musical content of Altars of Sculpted Skulls.

That’s right, this is most definitely not the Graveyard that produced all that retro-stoner-doom rock on Hisingen Blues last year. That was the Swedish Graveyard. This is the Graveyard from Spain, the band who released a 2009 debut album called One With the Dead plus an early demo, a previous EP, and an assortment of splits — and the band who, in Altars, have created what is rapidly becoming my favorite old-school death metal release of the new year. Every song is a gem — black diamonds in the rough. Continue reading »

NEWS FLASH: AUTOPSY RELEASES NEW VIDEO AND FREE SONG DOWNLOAD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

Trust the sensei’s to show all the young grasshoppers how it’s done.

Autopsy have today released an official music video for the title track from their new album, All Tomorrow’s Funerals, which Peaceville Records will drop on February 28. The album is a 22-track collection of re-mastered songs from all of their previous EPs, plus four new songs (of which the title track is one).

The band teamed up with Blood-Disgusting.com to premiere the video, which is streaming online at:

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/music/2575.

Generously, however, the video was made embeddable, so we’ve got it here, too. It’s essentially nothing more than the band playing the song on a stage, intercut with slo-mo film of the band members stalking through a decrepit building. But for me, nothing more is really needed. I’m quite happy just watching these legends prove they haven’t lost a step.

It’s a great song, too. The first part is a high-energy, thrash-punk take on old-school death-gore, fired up with some chaotic guitar solo’s, but this is Autopsy, and so you wait for it . . . and it comes: The racing ghoul first drops to its knees, and then collapses on all fours, and then begins to craaaaawl. Oh, the glorious filth!

Watch it after the jump, and get the link for a free download of the track. Continue reading »

NEW GOROD: “BIRDS OF SULPHUR”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

A Perfect Absolution, the new album from that French band of wizards known as Gorod is one of our most highly anticipated 2012 releases. Unfortunately, it won’t be released in our corner of the globe until March 12 (it’s available for pre-order at Listenable Records web shop here). Judging solely from the stupendous album cover by Yohann “HAÄSH” Huhner, you have to expect it will be . . . pulse-quickening.

But there’s further evidence that this album will be one of 2012’s best offerings. Listenable Records have just started streaming the first song from the album on their YouTube channel. It’s called “Birds of Sulphur”, a title that links up quite nicely with the eye-catching cover art. And man oh man, is it a helluva good song! Simply put, this is tech metal done right.

Not only is it fast, jolting, and jaw-dropping in its instrumental virtuosity, not only does it include voracious vocals and an attack-and-destroy sensibility, it’s also a head-spinning trip through an inventive musical landscape — and I emphasize the word musical.

Listen after the jump — and I’m warning you: the first person who uses the phrase “mindless wankery” in the Comments, I’m coming for you with a meat cleaver. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP WITH DEMONIC RESURRECTION AND SATYROS, AND SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EVOLVING BUSINESS OF METAL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

Demonic Resurrection (India) and Satyros (Germany) are two bands we’ve been following for a while at NCS, and they both have some recent news I thought was worth sharing, in part because they’re further examples of how the business of metal is changing.

DEMONIC RESURRECTION

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that DR is currently India’s best-known and most popular extreme metal band. They’re been riding a wave of deserved recognition that has been surging since the release of their third album, The Return To Darkness, in 2010.

On February 8, the band announced their goal of making a self-financed music video and soliciting financial help from fans. Other bands have been using the Kickstarter or Pledge Music web sites as vehicles for raising money for projects such as videos, the recording of new albums, transferring releases to vinyl, and even buying vehicles to make touring possible. Those sites weren’t ideal for India-based DR because they collect funds in dollars and require payment by credit cards (which many DR fans don’t have). So, DR partnered with a local music webzine called India Music Revolution to run the project.

They set a goal of raising 100,000 Indian rupees (about $2,000), and offered various reward packages depending on the level of commitment. Just a little more than 48 hours later — 48 hours — DR announced that they had met their funding goal. That speaks pretty loudly about the dedication and support of DR fans. But people can still donate to the project, and DR is now offering further inducements to keep the pledges coming in. Continue reading »

OP-ED: MESHUGGAH WILL NEVER DIE, BUT DJENT WILL

 Metal News  21 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

 (BadWolf stirs the pot on an issue that’s been generating a lot of discussion recently.)

I’d like to address some  speculation floating around the blogosphere now that the internet has had its first taste of Meshuggah’s new record, Koloss. Namely, our allies in metal at Heavy Blog Is Heavy and MetalSucks. Apparently, these people seem to think that Meshuggah may have somehow lost their relevance to the next generation of metalheads, who are being raised on Djent, itself the offspring of Meshuggah’s  influence.

 

First, just so you know where I am coming from: I love Meshuggah and mostly hate Djent. Meshuggah’s Destroy Erase Improve was the first ‘extreme’ metal record I ever owned. As for Djent, I was an early adopter and early abdicator. I stand by Cloudkicker and Animals As Leaders resolutely, but their largely instrumental/ambient take on the genre is very different from the now-proliferating pop-metal variety. I also stand by Periphery’s demo tapes, but the instant I saw that ‘Icarus Lives’ video and heard Spencer Sotelo’s voice, I knew it was time to jump ship. Anything that evokes Linkin Park is incredibly bad, unless that project involves Trent Reznor. Now we have Djent evoking Fred Durst, but replacing his trailer park machismo for otaku-pandering roleplaying that gestures toward environmental and social consciousness, but fails to evoke even 1/100th of the mastery Gojira display with such grave subjects.

Now that you know where I stand, on to the offending quote (from HBIH): Continue reading »

PARADISE LOST, NOW AND THEN

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 142012
 

Huh, it still seems to be Valentine’s Day. And I found someone else who loves you, even if no one else does (besides your friends at NCS, of course, because we love all of you). The someone else is Paradise Lost. I discovered that they love you last night (thank you DemiGodRaven), and meant to tell you about it earlier today, and . . . just fucked up.  What a shock.

Here’s how much they love you: They and their label (Century Media) are giving away a song from their next release (their 13th studio album), Tragic Idol. The song is called “Crucify”, and you can listen to it after the jump and get the download link if you like it — but the free download is only for today.

I may have listened to Paradise Lost once long ago, but if I did, I’ve forgotten. I became interested more recently because of all the coverage we gave the UK death-doom band Vallenfyre last year. Vallenfyre was started by Greg Mackintosh, who is a key member of Paradise Lost. I liked the Vallenfyre album so much that I decided to give Paradise Lost a chance, even though I knew their music wouldn’t be my standard fare.

If you’re unfamiliar with the band, their music is melodic doom, with mainly clean singing. Much of it is slow. Of course, much of it is atmospherically bleak. But much of it is also beautiful, and it achieves that without sacrificing heaviness. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CHRIS OJEDA AND TONY ROHRBOUGH (BYZANTINE)

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Feb 142012
 

(TheMadIsraeli scored this interview of two very talented dudes — Chris (“OJ”) Ojeda and Tony Rohrbough — of the revived and rejuvenated Byzantine. We could hardly be more excited about the rise of this band from the ashes and the promise of new music to come. We wrote about them most recently HERE, in a post that included their appeal for help with a Kickstarter campaign to assist in the financing of the new album — a goal that has already been met and exceeded. But the campaign is still open, and you can GO HERE to contribute.)

It seems appropriate to do this after Byzantine officially reached and exceeded their Kickstarter goal.  Now, production of a new album can officially commence in earnest, and I’m quite looking forward to seeing and hearing what will happen.  I hope you will enjoy reading this interview of Chris Ojeda and Tony Rohrbough as much as I enjoyed doing it.

Alright guys, I don’t want to bother with the bullshit formalities.  Let’s start with what I think of as the ideal opening question is here.  Byzantine: What happened to break you guys up, why did it happen, and why did you get back together?

CHRIS OJEDA: My perception of what happened is this: and it might differ from the other guys because we all were dealing with this internally and processing it differently… We signed a deal with a label and we didn’t really know what we were doing and weren’t prepared for the task at hand. And by task at hand, I mean, going broke, working shit jobs between tours, and not having one single thing in common with your boss at the record label. It started out nice, turned sour and then ate away at our friendships.

When you’re in a touring band, certain things are destined to happen if you do it long enough. 1: You will begin to lose sight of why you became a musician. 2: Relationships will falter back home and/or family members will die while you are gone and you will resent it. 3: Your hatred for your spiraling life will turn and focus its vitriol on your band mates because… well, because they are there. We essentially signed a recording contract, said “Fuck it! Sink or swim”, tied an imaginary chain around ourselves and dove into the water. Unfortunately, I was the first band member to wiggle out of the chains and swim for shore. I bailed. A divorce happened between friends and we wound up not playing music for the better half of 4 years. Wow… that was long winded!!! LMAO! Continue reading »

LISTENABLE RECORDS LOVES YOU, EVEN IF NO ONE ELSE DOES

 Metal News  No Responses »
Feb 142012
 

You may be having the time of your life on this 2012 edition of Valentine’s Day or you may be a straight razor away from ending it all, but either way, the day just got better.

Listenable Records has just made available for FREE download a 22-track sampler featuring music from past and present Listenable artists, including Gojira, Svartcrown, Hate, Heavenwood, Izegrim, Kruger, Panzerchrist, Cavus, Darkane, and Livarkahil, just to mention some of my favorites. You’ll need to surrender a working e-mail address to get the download, but that’s a small price to pay, because there’s some very nice tunage on this sampler.

The full track list is after the jump, along with a link to the Listenable page where you can (a) stream the whole sampler, end to end, and (b) get the download link. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS: ELYSIAN

 Eye-Catchers  1 Response »
Feb 142012
 

This is another classic EYE-CATCHERS experiment, and by “classic” I mean the original concept of this series — to find good music based solely on the album art. The subject of today’s experiment is a forthcoming debut album called Wires of Creation by a band from Melbourne, Australia, named Elysian.

I saw the album cover big as life in the body of an e-mail that greeted me in my in-box this morning. The brutal truth is that instead of moving on to other e-mails and NCS projects I had planned to mess with this morning, I stopped to check out Elysian’s music solely because I liked that album cover. It’s different. You can almost see the motion, the rising up, the colors changing with the motion against the black backdrop.

Based on the cover art and the style of the band’s logo, I made a guess that the music would be some flavor of prog. As it turns out, that wasn’t a bad guess, but not exactly dead center in the target either. My impressions of the music are based on one song from the album — “Mans Design” — which has recently become available for streaming, so that’s not exactly a great sample size. But I sure do like that song. Continue reading »

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY MOTHERFUCKERS

 Off Topic  65 Responses »
Feb 142012
 

Love is grand and all that, but you still need to keep your priorities straight.

Women need to keep their priorities straight, too. More about that after the jump.

Here we are, with another highly commercialized holiday, the principle object of which is to get you to show your love by spending money. And of course, nothing says “love” like spending money, and nothing measures the depth of your love more accurately than the amount of money you spend.

Being tolerant, being willing to sacrifice to the needs of someone else, shutting your yap and listening for a change, biting down on your temper when you’d selfishly like to have a good explosion, admiring and appreciating the person you’re closest to, remembering how much life would probably suck if you were alone again (and showing it) — that’s all shit. Buying gifts is where it’s at.

Apart from giving retailers yet another excuse to sell you their wares, Valentine’s Day has lots of other pluses and minuses. In the minus column, instead of providing an excuse for being more than usually romantic, it can become a brutal downer if you’re alone, especially if you’re still hurting from the pain of a recent break-up (or even an old one that just won’t leave your memories alone).

So your buddy Islander has some advice for you lonely hearts out there. In fact, I’m taking this occasion to answer some of the many e-mails I receive from people seeking advice in matters of the heart. Continue reading »

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