CYBORGS MAY OR MAY NOT KILL US ALL, BUT SYBREED WILL PROVIDE A PRETTY GOOD SOUNDTRACK FOR THE EVENTS

 Album Reviews  15 Responses »
Feb 022012
 

(Here’s another post from DemiGodRaven . . .)

Sorry folks, I’ve been busy for a bit. Trying to build up the finances to buy some podcast gear and maybe do a radio-style show where I expose the Sacramento music scene to people. It’s all very tentative though and the initial hurdle is about $500 so I had to bury myself in work. ~ DGR

A few weeks ago, I found an article on Io9 that discussed the merits of why we should fear androids, mutants and cyborgs, because they will likely be the ones to kill us all, instead of the plain old robots that we have always feared. Like most Io9 articles, it was interesting but didn’t go into quite enough depth or explore many of the possibilities of how such a scenario could play out.

It’s a common problem for Gawker sites in general, so you can’t really fault Io9 for that. They usually do well with their astronomy articles (which are a personal rabbit hole of mine), and once you get past their habit of creating sensationalist headlines, you can usually get a pretty good read. It’s as if Carl’s Jr (Hardees for you heathens who happen to live west of Utah) started advertising their burgers as the GREATEST FUCKING THING EVER. You know it’s bullshit, but the food is still pretty good.

One of the thoughts that did come to mind, though, was that the left-hand image above, which accompanied that Io9 cyborg article, reminded me a whole hell of a lot of the Swiss industrial/electronica/metal group Sybreed and the cover art for their single Challenger (which is on the right). Maybe it was the whole gas mask/face mask imagery. Consider yourselves blessed that I didn’t go with my original reaction, which was that the image reminded me of the video for Nine Inch Nail’s Pinion off of the Broken release. Although, then I could’ve done a whole article on the merits of bondage and BDSM. Perhaps we should save that for another time… Continue reading »

GOATWHORE: “BLOOD FOR THE MASTER”

 Album Reviews  18 Responses »
Feb 022012
 

(In this post, NCS writer Andy Synn reviews the new album from Louisiana’s Goatwhore.)

The first rule of Project Satan is . . . kill for the master.

If Goatwhore were a car, they’d be the were-car from Futurama, a savage, intelligent military car built from the most evil parts of the most evil cars in all the world. The steering wheel from Hitler’s staff car. The left turn signal from Charles Manson’s VW. The windshield wipers from that car that played Knight Rider . . . either that or the stalking murder-mobile from Stephen King’s Christine. Hot and nasty, definitively deadly.

“Blood For The Master” is a pitch-black muscle-mobile that runs on the blood of virgins, devouring the innocent and spewing out noxious fumes of poison thick enough to blot out the sun for a thousand years. Quite simply, it is the finest record the band have ever produced and a fitting soundtrack to the end of all things, a whiskey bottle in one hand, a straight razor in the other.

The record takes the best aspects from both their most recent breakthrough releases, the razor-sharp blackened savagery of A Haunting Curse and the sludgey death-march bludgeon of Carving Out The Eyes Of God, and mixes them up into something utterly toxic and bad for the environment. The production is utterly stunning, going one step beyond its predecessors’ thick and powerful sound by bringing back some of the bite of the more blackened guitar tone from A Haunting Curse without losing those thick, tangling bass tones and high-octane drum blasts. Continue reading »

STILL MORE TOURISM

 Metal News  1 Response »
Feb 012012
 

Well, just my luck that I put up that last post with updates about new U.S. tours and a half hour later saw the news about SUMMER SLAUGHTER 2012. Here’s the official statement:

“The rumors are true. Summer Slaughter 2012 will be the greatest bill in the history of the tour. Cannibal Corpse is confirmed to headline with special guests Between The Buried and Me. Each Sunday will see another confirmed band on the tour get announced via the SS Facebook page… It starts this weekend.”

So, the line-up will dribble out, drop by drop, like water torture, except it promises to be a good kind of torture, which happens to be the name of the new Cannibal Corpse album (Torture). Just judging from the first two bands announced, this tour is also going to include great musical diversity — a little something for everyone. I suspect that diversity is going to continue as the remainder of the line-up is announced, as has been true in past editions of this tour.

MORE TOURISM

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  5 Responses »
Feb 012012
 

This post is really about news of new spring tours, but I couldn’t resist adding that just-released cover artwork for the next studio album by Paradise Lost, Tragic Idol, which is scheduled for release on April 23 in Europe via Century Media Records. The album’s artwork was designed by Parisian designer Valnoir (www.metastazis.com), who has also worked with other artists such as Morbid Angel, Ulver, Watain, and more than 150 others.

Now, on to the tours news:

First, Lambgoat reported this news earlier today: “Late this spring there will be a festival type tour in the U.S featuring Origin, Cattle Decapitation, Misery Index, Aborted, Vital Remains, Threat Signal, Rings Of Saturn, and Dawn Of Ashes. The trek is currently being booked, with dates expected to surface in several weeks. We’ll keep you posted.” I mean, holy shit, that’s a helluva tour right there. But there’s more:

Hails and Horns reports that Skeletonwitch and The Black Dahlia Murder will be mounting a U.S. tour this spring. The dates are after the jump.

But that’s not all: MetalSucks will be co-sponsoring a 24-city U.S. tour consisting of Protest the Hero, Periphery, Jeff Loomis, The Safety Fire, and Today I Caught the Plague. The schedule for that one is after the jump — and there’s one more tour after the jump, too. Continue reading »

VIDEO ROUNDUP: NAPALM DEATH AND COMEBACK KID

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
Feb 012012
 


The thoroughly awesome Napalm Death will be releasing their 14th (!) studio album, Utilitarian, on February 27th in Europe and February 28th in North America. I’m really looking forward to it. Yesterday, thanks to a tip from TheMadIsraeli, I realized I had missed the album teaser that the band released last week.

The video was created by the band’s guitarist and backing vocalist Mitch Harris. It’s a politically charged animation interspersed with news clips of protests, and it’s a head-trip and a half to watch. A comment I saw on YouTube pretty much sums up the message: “Fuck the System, Fuck Governments, Fuck Aliens!”

And the music goes really fuckin hard, too. The riffs crush without remorse, and Barney Greenway sounds raw and pissed off. I’m also liking the use of clean vocals (I know, that’s heresy, but I’m just being honest). This is grindcore done right.

Watch that after the jump if you haven’t see it yet . . . and then we’ll move on to the new video from Comeback Kid. Continue reading »

ILLINOIZE: NEW GOODIES FROM THE HORDE AND AWAKING LEVIATHAN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  37 Responses »
Feb 012012
 

An e-mail from NCS reader Black Shuck delivered two nice pieces of news on Sunday concerning two Illinois bands we’ve featured here in the past — The Horde and Awaking Leviathan.

Some dude took us to task in a recent comment for false advertising  —  the name of the site is NO CLEAN SINGING, but we had reviewed an album that did that clean singing like half of the time. I can see why that would be confusing, but the music in this post won’t confuse anyone. Not only is there no clean singing, there’s nothing clean about the music in any respect.

THE HORDE

This band’s 2011 album, Thy Blackened Reign, is a hell-ripping cavalcade of Viking black thrash. Thematically, it takes its cues from Norse mythology, and musically it swings some mighty sharp-edged battle-axes. Speed metal and thrash are effectively fused together with elements of death metal and black metal. It delivers a cathartic, fist-pumping experience.

A couple of days ago, the band released a music video for the song “Odin’s Blood”. In someone else’s hands, the gang shouts of the song title and the first-pumping could have become cheesy, but these dudes have such authenticity and so much conviction for what they’re doing that they succeed. And holy shit . . . those riffs! Watch it after the jump. Continue reading »

OBLIVION

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Feb 012012
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli gave us a tip about the demo from this Bay Area band not long ago — and now here’s his more detailed review.)

The fucking brutals, they’re everywhere!

Oblivion already has my pre-emptive vote of one of the best death metal albums of 2012 when their debut The Reclamation drops this spring.  This three-song, self-titled demo is a 10-minute, titanic-sized carcass-crusher of eon-spanning human corruption and carnage condensed into audio, and I’m loving the ever-loving shit out of it.

From the moment that the opener “Reclamation” begins, the music drags your body into the depths of a wasteland that looks like the cover of Suffocation’s Pierced From Within.  It’s an acid storm of carefully planned knife-strikes in the form of technical riffing brought forward from the glory days of the mid 90’s, when tech death was cool as shit and hard as fuck to play, but still musically sound.  When it comes to death metal, this is the kind of music I live for.

“The Annunaki” starts with a foreboding intro before beginning the attack with a high-speed tremolo pick assault  — the drills go into the left side, the right side, and down into the top of your skull at once and leave the head a flesh crater sphere.  This song has the sickest breakdown I’ve heard in a death metal song in a while; kind of sounds like being pulled into the river Styx by fallen angels as your flesh peels off and your soul is ripped away from you. Continue reading »

UNEVEN STRUCTURE AND VILDHJARTA: “FEBRUUS” AND “MÅSSTADEN”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Jan 312012
 

(TheMadIsraeli is on a mission to review or re-review the 2011 albums that were his favorites.)

Alright.  Time for me to return to reviewing or revisiting my top 15 albums of 2011, which I previously listed on this site.  These won’t be as long as my normal reviews (generally half as long), so unless an album requires a longer piece, I’ll be doing these two at a time.  Today’s subjects are the yin and yang, the chaos and order, the good and evil of THALL.

Uneven Structure and Vildhjarta.  Februus and Måsstaden. First:

“So, I’m not going to dance around the verdict on this album: This thing is the shit.  Listening is like achieving enlightenment through sound, an aural ascension into nirvana, the equivalent of finding true inner peace through heavy-as-fuck, syncopated, gain-soaked djent riffs drenched in waterfalls of absolutely gorgeous ambience with an odd oriental color.” Continue reading »

THE OPHIDIAN TREK 2012

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Jan 312012
 

Some news about this tour has already trickled out, but I’ve now received an official announcement:  Meshuggah will be following up on the March 27 North American release of Koloss by launching a 19-city NorthAm tour — THE OPHIDIAN TREK 2012. It will begin on April 29 in Houston and conclude on May 23 in New York City.

And as strong as a Meshuggah tour will undoubtedly be, it’s stronger still because Poland’s Decapitated will be the opening act each night, and Baroness will also be in the line-up.

My own feelings were succinctly captured by this quote from Decapitated’s guitarist and founder Vogg: “FUCK YEAH! DECAPITATED with MESHUGGAH! We’re so proud and happy to be part of this amazing tour! It will be a huge honor to share one stage with such a great fuckin’ band! Cannot wait!”

The schedule for the tour is after the jump. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: OWAIN WILLIAMS (XERATH)

 Interviews  8 Responses »
Jan 312012
 

(Xerath’s 2011 album “II” was one of our favorites last year — check out TheMadIsraeli’s review of it here. Recently, he caught up with the band’s stellar guitarist Owain Williams for this real-time interview conducted via Facebook chat — a conversation to be continued at a later date.)

TheMadIsraeli: Hey Owain, totally random ass question…

Owain: Fire away

TheMadIsraeli: interested in doing an on the spot interview right now?

Owain: I’m game

TheMadIsraeli: Xerath. How did it start and why?

Owain: It was actually the brainchild of Andy Phillips, the old Xerath guitarist. Myself and Michael Pitman were merely there to facilitate his ideas. His vision was to marry classical music to technical heavy metal. All Mike, Rich and I have done (as well as recruiting Chris) is understand and realise that goal and try our hardest to make it our own and achieve it. While Andy’s no longer in the band, I think we were in agreement in the first place about how the band should sound

TheMadIsraeli: And Andy was on “I” and you were on bass at the time. So in a sense you’ve kind of taken the helm of a band you were just assisting along in its goal originally. How does that feel?

Owain:  I was credited as bass/guitar for “I”, so there are some songs that Andy or I would call our own. “Alterra” for instance was all Andy, “Right to Exist” was me, some we played about 50/50 guitar.  We’re such a multi-instrumental band, it’s hard to put a finger on who’s responsible for what anymore. For example I think the first song we ever wrote together was me showing Andy how you could have different tiny Polymeters on drums over different limbs which ended up as “Intrenity”. Rich (vocals) wrote a LOT of riffs on “II”, like “Sworn to Sacrifice” (my favourite!), and Mike (drums) wrote probably the most technical “guitar-wise”, “The Call to Arms”. Continue reading »

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