JESPER ZURETTI’S TOP 15 OF THE YEAR

 Listmania  5 Responses »
Dec 132011
 

(As part of our series of posts on the Year in Metal, we invited musicians from some of our favorite bands to tell us what 2011 albums made an impression on them. Today, we hear from Jesse Zuretti, the talented guitarist and song-writer from The Binary Code.)

Although I’ve assembled a top 15 list, I highly encourage you to check out my honorable mentions down below. There were too many good releases this year.

1. Talib Kweli – Gutter Rainbows

This album, albeit non-metal, is packed with nostalgia for me. Hearing Ed Lover’s voice on this album was icing on the cake. Talib Kweli is one of the most well-versed rhymers of all time. His music is passionate, original, powerful, and adventurous. Listening to his lyrics is like hearing someone you look up to tell a story about something you relate to, and just exceeding your expectations with the outcome.

Why is this album number one for me? Because this is the first album of the entire year that made me say, “HOLY SHIT!” out loud. I’m not a man of uncontrollable, Tourette Syndrome-esque outbursts at the drop of a note from an artist – be it metal, hip hop, jazz, etc. Those “HOLY SHIT!” moments are generally found when something along the lines of a Pat Metheny solo rips into gear, or when Dennis Chambers flails into a comet trail of fills and ghost notes over a Victor Wooten tune. Talib Kweli handcrafted sound, lyrics, and power into a unique and TOLERABLE hip-hop album in the grand year of 2011. Fuck-all rare if you ask me, considering the amount of cocky-yarble these pretend gangster womanizer rappers have been pooping out into our wretched youths’ ears. Take a minute, pop on this disc (or WINRAR your Mediafire link) and let it roll. Continue reading »

WELL SHIT. THE WORLD MAY END IN 2012 BUT WE’LL GET TO SEE MIB-3 FIRST.

 Off Topic  10 Responses »
Dec 122011
 

Hot buttered damn! Until this morning, I had no idea this was on the way.  I may smile the whole rest of this day. I figured you could use a big fuckin’ smile on your face, too.

So many good moments from this franchise, and so many good lines. E.g.: “People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”

That is all.

BERGEN BANDS: AETERNUS, HELHEIM, SULPHUR, AND VULTURE INDUSTRIES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Dec 122011
 

Every day I discover something that reinforces just how fucking ignorant I am. As if I needed any reminders. Take yesterday for example. Yesterday I learned about a band from Bergen, Norway called Aeternus. They’ve been active since 1993, they released their first album in 1997 (Beyond the Wandering Moon), and five more have followed, with the most recent one (HeXaeon) surfacing in 2006.

Their current line-up includes the band’s founder, Ares (vocals and guitars), who has played with a number of other Norwegian black metal bands over his career, including a stint in Gorgoroth; V’gandr (bass), who’s also a member of Helheim and a live musician with Taake; Phobos (drums), who is also active in a very good band called Gravdal; and Specter (guitars), another member of Gravdal. Despite the pedigree of Aeternus’ members, I’d managed to go through life to this point without ever hearing their music.

What I discovered yesterday was that the band’s label, Dark Essence Records, has uploaded a collection of Aeternus songs to SoundCloud. The music is drawn from throughout the band’s history and includes two songs from HeXaeon (“What I Crave” and “The 9th Revolution”), one from A Darker Monument (2003) (“Sons of War”), one from Ascension of Terror (2001) (“Denial of Salvation”), one from Shadows of Old (1999) (“The Summoning of Shadows”), two from And So the Night Became (1998) (“Warrior of the Crescent Moon” and “Fyrndeheimen”), and one from Beyond the Wandering Moon (“Vind”).

This retrospective is well-timed because after the passage of five years since the last album, the band is now recording their seventh full-length, which should be ready for release sometime in 2012. It allows listeners to trace the path of Aeternus’ music from the early days up to the time of the last release, as a prelude to what will come next. And that’s not all . . . Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN’S LIST OF THE GREAT ALBUMS OF 2011

 Listmania  28 Responses »
Dec 122011
 

(This is the first in Andy Synn’s week-long series of posts looking back at albums released this year. In the days to come, Andy will also provide his lists of the “Good” and the most “Disappointing” albums of the year, followed by his lists of The Critical Top 10 and Personal Top 10 of the year. For more explanation of what all this means, plus Andy’s picks for the year’s best EPs, visit this location.)

GREAT

Despite my initial worries, 2011 has proven to be quite a good year for Black Metal, with several phenomenal records released this year from many of the genre’s unsung heroes. The absence of many of the leading lights of the scene led me to make several new discoveries as well as allowing several second-tier bands to rise to the occasion. Interestingly enough, this year’s “Great” list continues to demonstrate the variety of different shapes that Black Metal has taken without losing or distorting its core identity.

It does, however, seem to have been an overall more Death Metal-oriented year, with some crushingly heavy releases from both the old guard and the new breed. Despite my own tastes running somewhat counter to the old school revivalism that seems to be so popular in the competing worlds of Death and Thrash metal, it’s obvious even to me that 2011 has been a banner year for the former genre in particular. Even with my own preferences erring towards a more mechanistic form of metallic cyber-terrorism, the year has still thrown up a hefty number of devastating Death Metal discs.

While compiling the list, one thing that surprised me was the profusion of Progressive metal acts and albums that had unconsciously permeated my thoughts. Ranging from effervescent Melodic Death Metal groups to more Avant-Garde and indefinable acts, this year has seemingly been a great one for Progressive metal in all its many iterations.

After the jump you’ll find my list of what I consider the greatest and most exceptional albums released this year, albums which have not only struck a chord with me but have also pushed the boundaries in terms of their sheer quality and creativity. Continue reading »

PHRO TRIES TO REMEMBER WHAT YEAR IT IS AND WHAT FUCKING ALBUMS CAME OUT THIS YEAR

 Listmania, Phro's Posts  41 Responses »
Dec 122011
 

(The time has come.  What time is that?  Why, it’s the time when we begin publishing our own series on the best metal of 2011 — lists created by our writers, guest contributors, and members of metal bands who we’ve specially invited to share with us their lists.  And what better way to start than by turning to Phro for the kick-off?)

Ahhh . . . 2011, how quickly you came and . . . went?  Are going?  Let’s just stick with came for now.

What a year it has been!  I think.  I don’t really remember it.  I think there was something to do with tentacles and a few zombie girls.  Seriously, someone please make the whole zombie/vampire/werewolf thing stop happening.  Please.  I’m begging you.  I can only take so much pithy teen angst foisted upon poor hapless creatures of the night.  GIVE THEM BACK THEIR BALLS, DAMNIT!!!

Seriously.  And wizards, too.  Enough of that shit.

Oh, right, and there was music, too.  Particularly metal music.  Particularly good metal music.  (Anyone who ever utters the words, “It’s been a bad year for metal,” should go out behind the chicken chopping shed and punch themselves in the throat with a rooster.  You fucking lazy scum fucker.)  But it`s the end of the year, and it’s not enough to simply say there was a lot of it.  You people from the Internet want proof all of the sudden!  You freaks with your memes and your porn and your meme porn and your porn memes.  And your rules!!!  So many rules!  Well, I have a new rule for you.  Rule number 0.5.  It states, quite clearly: anything that can be made into furry-rape-scat porn should be made into furry-rape-scat porn and then broadcasted on CNN, FOX, and MSNBC until foxes look sexy.  (But only when they`re covered in poop.)

Poop, poop, poop, poop . . . poop . . . poooooooooooooop . . . Continue reading »

THEMADISRAELI’S CANDIDATES FOR HIS TOP 10 OF 2011

 Listmania  9 Responses »
Dec 112011
 

(Here’s a teaser from TheMadIsraeli . . .)

This listmania shit is interesting isn’t it?  Some of the picks I’ve seen on a lot of the lists posted here from other sites haven’t surprised me, but some have for sure.  But now I think it’s time to help get the ball rolling on the NCS lists.

Picking my top 10 for this year has been a rather brutal internal struggle for me.  I know what the top of the year group is — it’s been the same pool of 15 albums thus far, but the order keeps slightly changing.  But I figured I’d reveal those 15, and allow my final list of 10 to be a surprise.  Actually, I will not be doing a list per se, but instead I plan to write a review (if I haven’t already done so) or write a “second opinion” (if I did review it) for each of the final 10.  I hope you’ll find this interesting.

So, here are the 15 candidates . . .

Sylosis – Edge of the Earth

Xerath – II

Fleshgod Apocalypse – Agony

Decapitated – Carnival Is Forever Continue reading »

DAT GRUVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  35 Responses »
Dec 112011
 

Nature or nurture?  Present from birth or learned behavior?  When it comes to the impulse to move to a groove, it’s pretty clear that human beings are hard-wired to do it.  The following video is further evidence of that.

But the following video is evidence of other things, too:  that if exposed to metal at an early age, before their psyches are corrupted by pop music, children will get it immediately; that in addition to the impulse to move to a groove, the impulse to headbang is also hard-wired; and that Vildhjarta’s master plan to take over the world within the space of a single generation is proceeding successfully.

We’ve all seen other examples of this kind of “metal kids” video before, but this is the best one I’ve seen, because this young dude has definitely got some moves . . . and because of the headbang thing.

According to the description below the video clip, the guy who made it had some friends over to his place and decided to play some of his tunes for one of their kids. Watch what happens. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA CONTINUES: NORWEGIAN METAL TO WATCH FOR (Part 2)

 Listmania, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Dec 112011
 

This is the second part of a multi-part post about up-and-coming Norwegian bands. The first part is HERE, and this is an abbreviated version of the full explanation, which appears in Part 1:

“Pyro” is the name of a radio program on one of the radio channels (P3) operated by NRK, the state-owned Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The NRK P3 radio channel is mainly aimed at younger listeners, and Pyro is the program that focuses mainly on metal and hard rock.

Last week, the Pyro web site rolled out its 2011 list of the most promising metal bands in Norway. What I’m doing in this series is just rolling out what I found on the Pyro web site, doing my best (with the lame assistance of Google Translate) to give Pyro’s descriptions of each band they picked as the best new metal bands in Norway, plus the same music from each band that they gave as an example — except I’m giving a few more examples of songs because I’m having to find my own sources for the music (the Pyro stream clips aren’t embeddable). Since the verbiage isn’t a professional translation, any fuck-ups are mine, not Pyro’s.

So here we go with Part 2. In this part, we’re including Maladronia Institute, No Dawn, Corsair, Springskalle, and Okular. The musical styles vary a lot, but I enjoyed listening to all five (and by coincidence, I’ll be reviewing Okular’s new album soon). Below the images in the rest of this post, I’ve turned each of the band’s names into links that will take you to social media sites for each of them, in case you want to explore further. Continue reading »

K3LOID (AND OTHER MEANDERINGS)

 Off Topic  13 Responses »
Dec 102011
 

Last weekend I departed from our usual focus on metal with a piece on a forthcoming movie (“John Carter”) based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic series of sci-fi books set on Barsoom (the Martian word for Mars). That seemed to generate a fair amount of interest, and although I don’t plan to post about movies or books on any kind of regular basis, I got an e-mail about something else sci-fi-related that has set me off again. So here we go.

The e-mail (from a reader named Ben) pointed me to a web site about something called K3LOID. K3LOID is a sci-fi short film by a Spanish outfit called Big Lazy Robot VFX (“BLR”), based on Eliezer S. Yudkowsky’s Artificial Intelligence Box Experiment (more about that later). Coincidentally, BLR did the visual effects for an amazing short film called “The Gift” that we featured in a THAT’S METAL! post almost a year ago (and if you haven’t seen that, definitely go here and watch it).

All that’s available about K3LOID at the moment is a trailer, which you can see after the jump (and I’m actually not positive that there will ever be anything but this trailer, though I hope a film itself will come to fruition, because both the visuals in the trailer and the concept behind the film are cool).

Based on the trailer, and before I found out about BLR’s involvement, I thought this was a Russian sci-fi film (you’ll see why). That got me thinking about both Russian sci-fi movies and Russian sci-fi novels. I’m certainly no expert in either of those genres, but I remembered really liking a book called Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and the 1972 Russian movie made from that novel (directed by Andrey Tarkovskiy), which captured the sense of solitude, profound mystery, and utter strangeness of the mood and the events captured in the book. If you look, you’ll find Solaris on plenty of internet lists as one of the best sci-fi films ever made. Continue reading »

DYING FETUS: RETURNING TO FORM?

 Uncategorized  11 Responses »
Dec 102011
 

I decided I couldn’t wait until the next monthly NCS round-up of forthcoming albums. This piece of news deserves its very own separate post. Because it’s Dying Fetus. To begin, I think I need to quote yesterday’s press release in full:

“John Gallagher, guitarist and vocalist of DYING FETUS, has announced that the group has entered the studio to record their new full length album. The band will once again be working with longtime producer Steve Wright (Slipknot, Misery Index) at Wrightway Studios in Baltimore, MD.

Set to be released in mid 2012 through Relapse Records, the album will feature nine tracks and is a “return to roots” with production focused slightly more on slam than in the band’s last few works.  Thematically, the album is set to be a good old-fashioned piece of social and political commentary in the style of DYING FETUS as we have come to know.  An official release date and album title will be announced shortly.

“The last album had some groove in it,” stated John, “but [it] was basically a lot of tech; this one is a return to form of older DYING FETUS albums, so to speak- more modern production though, of course.”  “Everything’s tight,” John adds; “…the sound is crushing, the drums are amazing”. Continue reading »

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