MORE FREE SHIT: INFILTRATOR, OCEAN ARCHITECTURE, AND THE SEER

 Free Shit  3 Responses »
Jun 042012
 

(groverXIII bringeth you the free shith from three bands. . . .)

Hey there, party people. It’s your old pal, groverXIII, back with some more free goodness for you all, because I love each and every one of you like you were my own diseased, dysfunctional children. Let’s get this shit started!

INFILTRATOR

Philadelphia-spawned Infiltrator have released a free two-song demo, and you may be wondering why this is noteworthy. Well, it’s noteworthy because Infiltrator play dirty, breakneck thrash metal rooted firmly in the old-school, and it’s some of the best thrash metal of the year thus far. It’s really a pity that the demo is only two tracks, because the two tracks here are fantastic. There’s an abundance of memorable melodies, and the tracks are actually fairly long for thrash songs, with both tracks spanning more than five minutes, but there’s enough substance here to keep you interested. You can get the demo free at Infiltrator’s Bandcamp page.


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“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 54)

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  10 Responses »
Jun 032012
 

Welcome to another, long-delayed edition of THAT’S METAL!, and thank-you to all the NCS metalheads who’ve been sending me candidates for this series. As you’ll see, I’ve used quite a lot of them in this post, and have stored away others for future use.

For newcomers, this series is the one place at NCS where we don’t talk about music. Instead, in these posts we focus on photos, videos, news reports, and other items that aren’t music, but still seem metal. Here we go:

ITEM ONE

Item One is up above, and thanks to Mike Yost for sending it my way. This is not a still from the next sci-fi or horror blockbuster coming to a theater near you. This is a photo taken last winter in Finnish Lapland, where temperatures fall below freezing and snow is driven by the wind. The picture shows trees that have been coated in snow and ice. And in the sky above them is a phenomenon called the Belt of Venus, a band of pinkish light produced by a rising or setting sun (about which more can be learned here).

I’ve included one more photo taken by the same photographer after the jump, which makes it more obvious that these are trees. And yes, these pics are metal, in part, because they were taken in Finland. Continue reading »

A SNAPSHOT OF THE UNDERGROUND

 Mosh Pit  11 Responses »
Jun 022012
 

I follow a ton of bands on Facebook, so many that I can no longer get through all the status updates every day. But I try to stay abreast of what’s happening, in part to find things worth mentioning on NCS and in part because I’m just interested in the scene. Plus, I know people in some of these bands, especially the ones in Seattle.

These are some of the updates I saw late yesterday.  I picked these for a reason, which you may figure out for yourself as you read through them, though I’ll make the reasons explicit at the end.

Boston police arrested Javier Reyes of AAL outside a venue following a show, manhandling him and his friends for what seems to be no good reason.


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FREE SHIT – WEEKEND EDITION

 Free Shit, Metal News  No Responses »
Jun 022012
 

Happy Saturday to one and all.  I am awake and adequately caffeinated now, only moderately hung over from Friday night’s revels, and therefore able to type.  My thinking capacity is only on a par with that of the lower primates, but this is not unusual, so I am forging ahead with our first post of this first weekend in June.  And really, this post doesn’t require much thought, because it involves free music.

The first offering comes from Century Media. They have compiled a free sampler of songs from bands who are scheduled to perform at the SUMMER BREEZE festival in Germany on August 16 – 18. It’s a hell of a compilation, too, with songs from the likes of Insomnium, Napalm Death, Darkest Hour, Crowbar, Deicide, Asphyx, and Vallenfyre. Though it’s unlikely that every band is going to appeal to every metalhead, I’d be surprised if you don’t find some tunes to like, even from bands whose music you don’t already own.

To get the download, you do have to surrender an e-mail address and expose yourself to email marketing campaigns from Century Media and its affiliates, so there is that hitch. But otherwise, this is free, and you can get it via this link.

But that’s not all.  I found another just-released free compilation worth mentioning, and it’s maybe even more delicious. Continue reading »

THINGS I SAW AND HEARD TODAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Jun 012012
 

I’ve been doing actual paying work all morning. I took a break not long ago and cast my baleful eye around the interhole and my NCS e-mail box to see what there was to see and hear. And these are things I thought worth passing on.

First, that cover you see above is for a tribute album to Emperor called In Honour of Icon E, which will be released on June 25 by Metal Swamp. It’s a very nice piece of art, created by Wolkogniv of Folkingrimm Art.

It also looks like it will be a very nice album, with Emperor covers by the likes of Demonical, Helheim, Horna, Taake, and Setherial. I’ll give you the full tracklist rundown after the jump, but the news for today is that the album has gone up on Amqzon for pre-order, which means you can hear snippets of each song here. Continue reading »

GOROD IN THEIR ELEMENT, WITH SPIRIT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 012012
 

Here at NCS, we are massive fans of Gorod’s 2012 album, A Perfect Absolution. Few tech-death bands in the world have such a flair for combining wonderfully intricate and heavy compositions with memorable melodies.

So it brought a smile to my face to see that Gorod today released a video of them performing “Elements and Spirit” at Rock School Barbey in Bordeaux, France a few weeks ago. Watching and listening to the video made my smile even bigger.

Watch, and smile, at Gorod in their element . . . right after the jump. Continue reading »

VICIOUS HEADBANGING FTW: ZATOKREV AND DEMONICAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 012012
 

I don’t usually post live videos on this site unless the video and sound quality are in the good-to-great range — which means either pro-quality official vids or above-average fan-filmed clips. That just reflects my own prejudice: I don’t get much out of watching a live clip if the sound is muddy and the images are blurry or too dark. But sometimes the imperfections unexpectedly enhance the viewing/listening experience. I’ve got two examples of what I mean.

ZATOKREV

I found out about this Swiss band in April because they’d just been signed by Candlelight Records, and I posted about them then. Zatrokrev is a Slavic name; Metal Archives says it mean “Blood For This”. The band’s lyrics are in Czech and Slovak, as well as English, because vocalist/guitarist Frederyk Rotter is Czech-born. I still really like the name of their third album, which Candlelight will be releasing: The Bat, The Wheel, And A Long Road To Nowhere. It may have lost something in the translation from Czech.

When I wrote about Zatokrev the first time, they had one new song on YouTube called “Feel the Fire Pt. 1”, which I liked a shit ton. Since then, I’ve found another one called “Goddamn Lights”, which coincidentally is exactly what I say on post-bender mornings when my eyes open. It’s a fuckin’ good song, too, and I’ll have it for you after the jump. But, as noted above, the main reason for this post is a live video.

On May 4, Zatokrev performed at a venue called Le Grillen in Colmar, France, and a fan caught a couple of the songs on video.You expect a metal band to headbang while performing, but Zatokrev really headbang. If I headbanged like Fredryk Rotter, my head would fly off my neck like a discharged cannonball and punch bloody holes through unsuspecting moshers in the pit, leaving the rest to slip ‘n’ slide on the intestines when they hit the floor. Continue reading »

FUN WITH DJERV AND AMORAL

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jun 012012
 

Those of you who don’t have a problem with clean singing in metal will be just fine with this post.  And for those of you who are like me and have a low tolerance for it, well, just bear with me.  In the end, I think you’ll have some fun with this, too.  What I have here are two videos that debuted yesterday, both of which are clever and both of which feature some pretty catchy jams . . . but no growlies.

DJERV

Djerv is a Norwegian band fronted by Agnete Kjølsrud, whose name I recognize only because she sang along with Dimmu Borgir on three of the songs on Abrahadabra, including “Gateways”. You may recall that she appeared prominently in Dimmu’s video for that song. Djerv released their self-titled debut album on Indie Recordings last year, and of course I haven’t heard it, because . . . well . . . you can guess why.

Yesterday marked the appearance of an official video for one of the songs from that album — “Headstone”. I decided to give it a shot, and I’m glad I did. It features the kind of film-making technique that converts footage of real people (in this case, the members of Djerv) into animated characters. I saw a comment on Djerv’s FB page that described it as Frank Miller meets Night of the Living Dead, and that captures it pretty well. It’s fun to watch, and funny, too. Continue reading »

ICELAND METAL MONTH CONTINUES: BENEATH, CARPE NOCTEM, WORMLUST, AND KHAMUL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
May 312012
 

Here on the last day of May, I decided to christen the month Iceland Metal Month at NCS (see today’s first post).  Since we’ve wrtten about 8 Icelandic metal bands so far, it seemed like the logical thing to do. And having gone that far, I decided we ought to go further and bring the total to an even dozen. So, here we go . . . four more bands worth getting to know from a country that’s starting to seem close to Finland in the ratio of killer metal bands per capita of population.

BENEATH

I found out about this Reykjavík band while doing a little research on Ophidian I, who I included in that earlier post about Icelandic metal today: It seems that guitarist Unnar Sigurðsson is a member of both bands. It further appears that drummer Ragnar Sverrisson is also a member of another awesome Icelandic band, Atrum (who we’ve written about more than once in the past).

Beneath’s line-up solidified in late 2008, and in 2009 they won the Wacken Metal Battle contest in Iceland, thereby becoming the first Icelandic band to perform at the Wacken Open Air festival in August 2009. They released a debut EP titled Hollow Empty Void on Mordbrann Musikk in 2010 (it’s available on iTunes), and they’ve finished recording a debut full-length, Enslaved By Fear. That album will be released on July 17 by the dependable Unique Leader label. The eye-catching album cover was done by Raymond Swanland.

Now, about their music . . . Continue reading »

NILE: DOWNLOAD “THE FIENDS” FOR FREE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
May 312012
 

Last week we reported on the premiere of the first song from Nile’s new album, At the Gates of Sethu, which will be released via Nuclear Blast Records on June 29 (Europe) and July 3 (North America). The song is called “The Fiends Who Come To Steal the Magick of the Deceased”. At that point, it was exclusively streaming at Noisecreep.

But now, you don’t have to stream it any more, because Nuclear Blast is making the song available as a free download, in return for your e-mail address.  GO HERE to get the track for your very own. And in case you haven’t yet heard the song — which may not be exactly what you’re expecting from Nile, check it out on the player below:
 

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