DISSIPATE: “MOTION”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 092012
 

This is the second of three posts today that focus on individual song releases by bands we’ve only recently discovered here at NCS. Credit to TheMadIsraeli for tipping me to Dissipate.

Dissipate are a prog/djent band from Livermore, California. Given my personal tastes in music, a little bit of prog/djent goes a long way, and a lot of prog/djent should just go away. I’m not trying to ignite a debate, just being clear about where I’m coming from.

However, although the nekro part of my multiple personality disorder has become increasingly dominant over time, I’m not too kvlt to dismiss this genre altogether. I still occasionally get a charge out of the sheer instrumental exuberance that some bands display, and that’s how I’m feeling about Dissipate’s new song, “Motion”.

Dissipate has chosen to include their fans in the gestation of this song, first posting their talented guitarist Mike Gianelli’s play-through of a rough mix last fall (here), then following that in January with a different play-through by the band’s bassist, JT (here), and finally uploading a Gianelli play-through of the finished song yesterday.

Despite the fact that I’m not conditioned to eat up this kind of music in big mouthfuls, I found myself hypnotized by this new video. Continue reading »

PSYCROPTIC: “THE INHERITED REPRESSION

 Album Reviews  15 Responses »
Feb 092012
 

(TheMadIsraeli enthusiastically reviews the new album from Tasmania’s Psycroptic.)

Napalm explosions of technical-as-fuckity-fuck riffs everywhere. Death induced by intricate, fusion-fueled, machine-precise drum attacks. Soul-rending incantations in the vocals. And, like . . .

EVERY POSSIBLE FUCKING THING THAT CAN BE RIGHT ABOUT DEATH METAL.

 
Psycroptic are the shit.  I think we all know this, but it’s SUCH a magnitude of the shit that sometimes . . . sometimes there’s a man . . . well, he’s the man for his time and place . . . and . . .

Ok, enough Big Lebowski quoting.  Sometimes an album needs to be defined, because sometimes we’re just not ready for what comes at us through our speakers, headphones, tin cans attached with strings, whatever your preferred listening apparatus is, because Psycroptic will cause said apparatus to melt at scorching hot temperatures and then burn their music directly into your skull so that it infinitely repeats itself with no off-switch.  The pain will be great, but it will also be purifying.

I’ve seen and heard some complaints about this band since the departure of vocalist Chalky and the introduction of current frontman Jason Peppiatt.  Don’t like him?  Time to get over it.  I think he is bringing a much-needed, more-focused approach to vocals that matches Psycroptic’s surgically precise instrumental assault.  He has a powerful voice, he sounds pissed — like he wants to kill — and  that complements the killing music. Continue reading »

FORCEPS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 092012
 

This is the first of three short posts today about single songs from divergent corners of the metal sphere — divergent not only geographically, but also musically.

Forceps is a Brazilian band who plan to release a debut EP called Humanicide later this year. I don’t know how many songs it will include, when it will be released, or what factors will determine the timing. What I know is that the band have released a song from the album for streaming. It’s on YouTube and Bandcamp. The name of the song is “Transmutation of Internal Organs”.

I came across them via a Facebook friend’s recommendation. When I began listening, my loosely organized brain immediately began loosely organizing the music according to genre. I thought, “brutal slam metal, with groove.” Gunner drumming, hammering/blistering riffs, abyssal growls. And then some spacey atmospherics intruded, and the vocals elevated into an abraded shriek. And then at 2:40 a too-short phalanx of headbangery came running out of hiding. And then came a brief burst of melody.

By song’s end, I decided my original genre classification was wrong, or at least too simple. Brutal, yes. Slamming, yes. But the tech-intensive riffing and all that groove and the vocal variety and the catchy melodic hooks — they mean something else. Whatever the label, this is nice. Check it out following the jump; we’ll update you when the EP drops. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: COPROLITH – “HATE INFECTED”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Feb 092012
 

In the realm of infernally regal blackened death metal, the bands that continue to rise up first in this writer’s mind are Polish juggernauts Behemoth and Hate, despite the fact that the blackening has worn off them over time, at least in sound if not in attitude. Of course, they are not by a long stretch the only bands who have brought about such a strikingly hellish union of those musical styles. Porvoo, Finland’s Coprolith have done it, as I discovered in listening to their new EP, Hate Infected.

This forthcoming, three-song offering is a prelude to the band’s second full-length album, which is projected for release in the fall of this year, and it follows the band’s 2010 debut album, Cold Grief Relief (which I haven’t heard).

The title track sets the hook right away with a thundering riff and a ripping lead melody. It’s a tasty combo of eminently headbangable groove and occult atmosphere. The melodic guitar solo brought a smile to my face, and so did the vocalist’s deep roars and chilling shrieks. The black hasn’t worn off Coprolith’s death metal.

“Chemical Suicide” proves that the title track was no fluke. A dark melodic lead floats over another killer riff that’s prime headbang material. It sounds like a giant industrial machine shaking the girders in some hellish manufacturing facility, implacably punching out war machines while a horned foreman exhorts the demon workers from a bullhorn. Continue reading »

ELITIST: “FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST”

 Album Reviews  17 Responses »
Feb 092012
 

I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, so I prefer to believe that, in person, Portland’s Elitist aren’t as inhumanly corrosive as their music. Yes, they say, “Our fucking lives ended when we started this band”, but they probably love their parents. Unless they killed them and ate their fingers like french fries.

Despite the fact that the music sounds like helpless bodies being dragged through a trough of broken glass and then dumped in a pit of salt so the lacerations will burn like a motherfucker before Elitist pee on them, they’re probably loyal friends and gentle lovers.

The jagged slurry of metallic slag that flows through these songs surely doesn’t flow through the veins of the band members. The tortured screams and ghastly howls in the music surely don’t come from the bleeding throats of caged demons within their bodies. If you were having a beer with Elitist, they wouldn’t really go for your throat like famished hyenas. They’d probably even buy a round.

This is what I prefer to believe — but after listening a few times to the band’s 2011 Season of Mist album, Fear In A Handful of Dust, I wouldn’t bet on any of it. Continue reading »

ESTONIAN BASS AND DRUM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Feb 082012
 

Let’s see now . . . where do we go next? The progression so far today: French old-school gore/death from NecroWretch; abraded female vocalization (and a flood of accompanying commentary) from Landmine Marathon, Wykked Wytch, and Izegrim; teasers from Finland’s Before the Dawn; words from the Demisery duo; and death-rap from Death Grips. Decisions, decisions . . .

I know!  We need some stripped-down bass and drum from Estonia’s Neoandertals! And to be clear, I am NOT talking about that pseudo-rave electronic music that came out of the UK in the early 90s. Blech! No, I’m talking about this:

That’s a track from a Neandertal instrumental album called Australopithecus that’s scheduled for release on February 17 and will be available on Bandcamp HERE. But wait, there’s more! There’s this piece of freaky bass-driven death metal from the band’s 2011 album, Ebu Gogo Gutting the Child: Continue reading »

DEATH GRIPS – UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 082012
 

Death Grips isn’t metal in any conventional sense (shit, did I just use “metal” and “conventional” in the same sentence?!?), but they’re still definitely metal. If you ain’t up on Death Grips yet, you can find a good introduction in BadWolf’s NCS post about them here. That post pushed me to explore Death Grips’ music, and the music made me a believer. Based on the comments we got and the page hits on that feature, there are lots more believers out there, too.

It goes, it goes, it goes, it goes 
It goes, it goes, it goes, it goes
Guillotine – YAAAAAH!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, so, for all Death Grips believers and those who will become believers, we have some news from the Death Grips facebook page: “we’re releasing two full length albums this year world-wide .. first one drops in April ”

We also have some new Death Grips 2012 music . . . after the jump.

I close my eyes and seize it 
I clench my fists and beat it 
I light my torch and burn it 
I am the beast I worship… 

Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GORD OLSON (DEMISERY)

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Feb 082012
 

(Demisery is a two-man death metal project consisting of noted guitar whiz Keith Merrow and his partner in crime, guitarist/vocalist Gord Olson. TheMadIsraeli raved about their 2011 debut album Hive of Misery in his NCS review last November — an album you can stream and buy HERE.  Today, we’re happy to publish his interviews with Demisery’s dynamic duo. In this post, he talks with Gord Olson and  in the immediately preceding post, Keith Merrow.)

Mr. Olson — you have a voice that sounds like a grotesque swamp monster and the shred skills to eviscerate an entire army of demons.  Why ARE you so fucking awesome?

Thank you very much, sir. I can only say that my skills either came to me through many long years of study and practice, or perhaps that creepy guy dressed up as the devil at that Halloween party had something to do with it… As part of a gag, I “sold my soul” to him! (laughs) But of course, that stuff isn’t real though, right? RIGHT???
 

I’m going to start this interview with the same question I asked Keith: How did you and Merrow hook up, why form Demisery, and how do you feel about Hive Of Mutation in retrospect?

Sometime in late 2010, I had stumbled across a couple of Keith’s videos on YouTube, and I was impressed by certain aspects of his sound. Actually, one of the videos I saw was of him doing a guitar cover of a Cannibal Corpse song, which I thought was really cool, so I wrote to him. I was wanting to pick his brain a little bit about his production techniques. I mentioned that I was a huge fan of old-school Death Metal, and sent him a couple of tracks that I was working on at the time. We found out that we had a near identical list of influences and favorite music, and it was kind of a trip to find that we had many other things in common as well, so I guess that was the start of the friendship. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: KEITH MERROW (DEMISERY)

 Interviews  1 Response »
Feb 082012
 

(Demisery is a two-man death metal project consisting of noted guitar whiz Keith Merrow and his partner in crime, guitarist/vocalist Gord Olson. TheMadIsraeli raved about their 2011 debut album Hive of Misery in his NCS review last November — an album you can stream and buy HERE.  Today, we’re happy to publish his interviews with Demisery’s dynamic duo. In this post, he talks with Keith Merrow and  in the next post, Gord Olson.)

This is so fucking cool to be doing an interview with you.  How are you today fine sir?

Hey thanks man, things are fantastic right now. Happy to chat with you!
 

Alright, so let’s get to the nitty gritty here.  How did you and Gord hook up, why form Demisery, and how do you feel about Hive Of Mutation in retrospect?

I met Gord a couple years ago. He had emailed me for some production tips, and I ended up doing a Skype lesson for him. We just basically hit it off after talking about our musical influences, and found that we had so much in common, musically. We’ve talked nearly every day since we met, and he’s just a great guy. He’s a wicked guitar player and has a knack for writing awesome old-school DM. We had talked about doing a collab on a death metal project for a long time. After he sent me a couple riff ideas he had, we basically just dove into it, head first. I’m really happy with how it turned out, in the end. We set out to make a traditional DM album, and that’s just what it is. It was cool to pay homage to our influences.
  Continue reading »

BEFORE THE DAWN TEASES US

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Feb 082012
 

Only two days ago we featured news about Rise of the Phoenix, the next album by Finland’s Before the Dawn, which prompted some speculation in the comments about whether the music would be up to the high standards set by the band’s previous releases. After all, it does follow pretty quickly on the heels of 2011’s Deathstar Rising, it does come from a band whose principal creative force (Tuomas Saukkonen) has his fingers in many other projects at the same time, and it will be the first BtD release in six years not to include the distinctive clean vocals of Lars Eikind.

Thanks to a tip from fireangel of the Finland-focused Night Elves site, much of this anxious speculation can be laid to rest. She pointed us to an album teaser uploaded by Nuclear Blast today. Based on the short song excerpts in the teaser, I can’t argue with what Tuomas Saukkonen says in the clip. It does indeed sound epic, fast, heavy, and awesome. Also, I can feel the music having a positive effect on my manhood.

Teaser clip after the jump . . . Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries