KEYBOARD WARRIORS: ERIK THOMAS

 Interviews  16 Responses »
Jan 282012
 

 

 (Rev. Will’s interview series focusing on metal bloggers and metal print journalists continues today with Erik Thomas, one of the founders of Teeth of the Divine.)

Finding a part-time metal writer with a day job that freakin’ deals with the law is like fantasizing about the existence of a zealous Christian pastor who has an obsession with researching about witchcraft—it is just a combination that comes off as extremely unlikely and weird to many. Well, such a weird occurance does exist.

A law enforcer by day, and a metal writer by night, Erik Thomas is not only one of the founders of Teeth Of The Divine (one of the Internet’s leading metal e-zines), but an ex-contributor to the now-defunct Metal Maniacs magazine and a current writer for Hails & Horns magazine as well. He has a family to boot! It’s just so cool when Papa writes about metal, isn’t it?

From his Missouri dwelling, the fervent devourer of traditional Swedish death metal sheds some light on the workings of Teeth Of The Divine and some of the social stigmas of metal—a topic banally discussed on various metal and non-metal news media during the days of yore.

Also, he is one of the last few surviving robots from the same batch as Islander, only with much more than a head missing than our benign NCS editor. Both of them may be old, but check out their cool arm tattoos! A legacy of and testament to their robotic past (perhaps they are cyborgs now), these unique markers were originally meant as identifiers, something very much akin to a barcode. Luckily for them though, they are fashionable statements now that just scream “Hot geezer alert!”. Continue reading »

GRIND TIME: A CARCASS BOOTLEG PLUS SLASH DEMENTIA

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jan 282012
 

The unifying thread of this post is a connection between the old and the new — as well as the sound of the “old” when it was brand new. The featured bands are Carcass (UK) and Slash Dementia (Finland).

CARCASS

The first Carcass music I heard was their 1993 album, Heartwork. Only later did I learn that what I thought was a melodic death metal band started life as a d-beat riding, gore-splattered, death-grind act who were in fact one of the pioneering bands in the evolution of that genre.

The band’s original name was Disattack. After the name change to Carcass, they released their debut album, Reek of Putrefaction, on Earache Records in 1988 after only four days in the recording studio. Although they weren’t happy with the outcome, that album “reached #6 on the UK Indie Chart, establishing Carcass as one of the pioneers of the grindcore genre” (per The Font of All Human Knowledge).

All of this is relevant background to what I stumbled across last night at CVLT NATION — a free download and album stream of a live performance by Carcass in the year of their album debut, 1988. Continue reading »

AUTOPSY UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

Yes, we approve this cover art for Autopsy’s next album of body parts. Mind you, no one sought our approval, but we grant it willingly, because this cover by Matt Cavotta includes all the food groups: bat wings, vulture heads, horns, tusks, a snake head, a sickle, a hatchet, a scorpion’s tail, a rib cage dripping with gore, and blood. But best of all, it includes the name AUTOPSY.

All Tomorrow’s Funerals is a collection of all of Autopsy’s past EPs in re-mastered form, plus four brand new songs — the first new Autopsy music since 2011’s wonderful album, The Macabre Eternal. Peaceville Records will be releasing it on February 28, which sounds like something of an oxymoron, because this album will certainly bring no one any peace.

One of the four new tracks, “Mauled To Death”, was included in unmastered form as a Decibel magazine Flexi disk not long ago, and it’s available for streaming on a SoundCloud player that we’ve embedded after the jump, just because even a news item like this one should not be allowed to appear at NCS without some kind of grisly music to accompany it. And believe me, this is grisly death metal straight from the crypt, crawling along at a lurching pace, surrounded by an air of lowering doom.

The track list for All Tomorrow’s Funerals is also after the jump. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FROM PELICAN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

The last release from Chicago’s Pelican came almost two years ago — What We All Come To Need. Word of new music has been circulating for a while, and today we can hear it.

Pelican’s new EP is called Ataraxia/Taraxis, and it will be released by Southern Lord on April 10. But Pelican has established a Bandcamp page that’s now streaming one of the EP’s four songs — “Lathe Biosas”.  On top of that, you can download that track for free by visiting Spin.com or via the Pelican Bandcamp site here.

The band characterizes the new EP as an “experiment” — the first release that they built “by recording in multiple studios (often not with one another) and compiling the results”. Most of the recording was done by the talented Sanford Parker, and he also handled the mixing.

After the jump, you can listen to the new song, “Lathe Biosas”. I’m writing about this and including the song stream for the usual and obvious reason — because I like it very much, and because I’ve become a fan of this band after seeing them live in Seattle for the first time last year. The song is a sweet jam of ringing, chiming, hammering, crushing music. Check it after the jump and let us know what you think. Continue reading »

BANDS YOU NEED TO HEAR: OBLIVION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

(TheMadIsraeli has a quick tip for you.)

Oblivion is a Bay Area band seemingly coming out of nowhere who are poised to take the death metal world by storm this year, playing a no-holds-barred, spine-crushing brand of insatiably bestial tech death that raises corpses from tombs, worms from rot, and blood from victims. After the jump are videos of portions of songs from their self-titled demo that I will be reviewing soon.

In the meantime, enjoy what you hear, and discuss. This demo is meant to serve as a teaser for their upcoming debut The Reclamation, due out later this Spring. Continue reading »

NOT A METAL INTERVIEW: BLUE STAHLI

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

(DemiGodRaven reappears to tarnish our metal cred with this interview, though I admit that it’s a very interesting read about a very interesting musician. The music turns out to be cool, too)

Back when The Number of the Blog was still a website I was very luck to receive the opportunity to pick the brains of five or six of my favorite musicians all within the same month. I drafted a variety of interview questions for each of them and, surprisingly, about half came back with responses, which is always an incredible thing to me. However, two or three never responded, for whatever reason. The musician got busy, something happened in the press pipeline, and you can’t really blame anyone for it. You just chalk it up as a loss and move on. The fact that TNOTB went down didn’t help either.

However, while combing through messages to the old email address (don’t ask me why, it just bothers the shit out of me seeing 200 Unread on the inbox), I came across a response from electronica musician Blue Stahli (featured here as recently as yesterday), who was one of the interviewees I had originally chalked up as a loss. Somehow, my old interview had been recovered and a response received over the vast reaches of time. I didn’t have the old site at which to publish this, though, which is why you’re now looking at it on NoCleanSinging’s page. So, I introduce you to electronica musician Blue Stahli.

Blue Stahli is a project that has been gaining steady momentum since 2008. A then-recent signee to the Fixt music label, he immediately buried himself headlong in a variety of projects, including an instrumental disc known as Antisleep Vol.1 (Vol.2 saw release in late December), a self-titled debut that our own GroverXIII listed as one of his pleasures in 2011 (here), and a variety of amazing remixes . . . many of which have been used as the backing to movie trailers.

In addition to being certifiably insane, Mr. Stahli is a pretty amicable guy, so even though some of the questions must have seemed like head-scratchers to him at the time, he still tried to answer them the best he could. Even better, I may have triggered the next Fixt Remix contest. Continue reading »

KEYBOARD WARRIORS: DAN GROVER

 Interviews  16 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

(For the last 5 days we’ve been re-publishing an interview series by Rev. Will that originally appeared at now-defunct The Number of the Blog and that focused mainly on metal bloggers. Beginning today, the series continues here at NCS with new interviews, beginning, fittingly, with the creator of TNOTB — groverXIII.)

Classic metal albums + Metal blogging = ?

When one thinks of that, one will no doubt arrive at 2 answers: Reign In Blonde (the gals must have dyed their hair black, which would explain the inactiveness) and The Number Of The Blog (R.I.P.). When one thinks of anime and metal blogging, one will no doubt think of Full Metal Attorney, since it could possibly be a reference to the wildly popular Japanese anime, Full Metal Alchemist, but I digress.

Blogging about metal (or any other kind of) music is not as easy as many would like to think. If done properly, it can actually start to feel like homework once the commitment starts to kick in. Deadlines? Research? Being constantly “marked” and judged on your worth by others? The similarities are all there, but the big difference is that blogging about music doesn’t really get you anywhere in life like school does (or is supposed to), unless you can turn it into a career like Axl and Vince of MetalSucks.

Frontman and founder Dan Grover of ex-The Number Of The Blog may not like to toot his trumpet, but he sure did contribute a unique voice to the metal blogosphere while The Number Of The Blog was still alive and well. Labeled by some critics and even by themselves (probably in jest) as “hipsters”, the blog was really anything but that. It will always be remembered for its one-of-a-kind daily columns, which had humorous and catchy names, yet dealt with serious as well as playful topics. From underground black metal in “Wintermoon Wednesday” to random, everyday topics in “Sunday Shit Shoot”, there was literally something for everybody. Hell, there was even a Pokemon-obsessed Devin Townsend fanboy contributor called Ziltoid; needless to say, he posted about the vastly varied species of colorful critters on more than one occasion.

So read on folks, if you want to get inside the mind of a hipster metal blogger with a very big and secretive plan to launch something new in the near future. I’m hoping it will be a hydrogen bomb filled with confetti. Continue reading »

A BYZANTINE UPDATE (AND IT’S A BIG ONE)

 Metal News  20 Responses »
Jan 272012
 

“Byzantine is one of the most original, most kick-ass, most awesome metal bands in the last 10 years and SHAME ON YOU IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE.  No one else has yet reproduced their combination of Bay Area thrash metal, death metal, Meshuggah math-metal stylings, jazz fusion, and the grooves and melodic nature of the post-thrash movement and made it all work so seamlessly and so well.”

That’s how NCS writer TheMadIsraeli began his retrospective on Byzantine’s discography at this site last August, a look-back that included downloads of the band’s three albums (with permission). In that same post, we reported that Byzantine had re-formed (minus Tony Rohrbough) and was working on new music.

Yesterday, we received the official announcement of Byzantine’s resurrection, almost four years to the day since their last album, Oblivion Beckons, was released — and it’s a complete reunion of all original members: Chris (“OJ”) Ojeda (vocals, rhythm guitar), Tony Rohrbough (lead guitar); Michael (“Skip”) Cromer (bass), and Matt Wolfe (drums). Here’s the statement from Chris Ojeda:

“We’ve all kept in contact through the past few years and have worked on each other’s projects as well. With our guitarist Tony moving back to WV from NC, we decided it would be a perfect opportunity to hang out again and jam. Before we knew it, we were tossing around riffs and song ideas and realized we had what seemed to be the foundation for a pretty kick ass Byzantine album.”

This is a band who were ahead of their time, and the time is certainly right for their reappearance. But they’re looking for help from fans. Continue reading »

TRIPPY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 272012
 

When you take a song that’s pretty trippy to begin with and you put it into the hands of a creative director and a capable production company and give them a decent budget to work with, you get a fucking trippy video. That’s the conclusion I reached after watching the Born of Osiris video that debuted at midnight last night, Eastern Time.

The trippy song is “Follow the Signs”, from the band’s 2011 album The Discovery (reviewed at NCS by IntoTheDarkness here). It’s a mash-up of complexity and beauty,  punchy staccato riffing and Outer Limits keyboard effects, hardcore rage and prog-metal ambience. Sometimes when I listen to this song, it just leaves me confused, and sometimes I think its ingenious and convincing. Despite my own ambiguous feelings about it, I’ll say this: it’s definitely not dull.

Nor is the video. The visual effects are of a high order, much better than most metal music videos have to offer. They capture the mind-bending aspects of the song. Like the song sometimes does, the video also leaves me confused about what I’ve just seen, but as a dish of eye-candy, it’s delicious.

“We are the victims, but we are also the crime / And the only one who can judge us is the Earth in time.” So the song says, after its dreamlike opening. The lyrics aren’t dull either. The video bears watching, even if you’re not a big Born of Osiris fan. It’s right after the jump. (Thanks to TheMadISraeli for a late-night e-mail letting me know this thing was out and about.) Continue reading »

RED FANG: THE “HANK IS DEAD” VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

I happen to like Red Fang’s music, but when it comes to Red Fang’s videos, it really doesn’t matter what you think of the music. They could be playing “Achy Breaky Heart” on a butt trumpet and the videos would still be funny as shit to watch. And now, hot from the cutting room, we have yet another addition to the Red Fang cinematic library: The “Hank Is Dead” video.

People who’ve been following the advance hype already know that the video involves an air guitar competition, but there’s more: awkwardly unclothed dudes who should never be seen without clothes, aerodynamically magnificent paper airplanes, an awesome wristwatch, plenty of beer, and plenty of beer. Also, there is a lot of beer.

If you don’t have some fun with this song set to this film footage, then, as much as I love you for reading NCS, I have to conclude that you have a case of tight-sphincter syndrome and you need a good loosening up.

Speaking of which, no, I don’t know what a butt trumpet is. It just seemed to fit the sentence. Watch the video after the jump. Continue reading »

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