BARSOOM

 Off Topic  58 Responses »
Dec 042011
 

I have to take a break from our usual subject matter and geek-the-fuck-out for a few minutes, because JOHN CARTER, the movie, is on the way.

Edgar Rice Burroughs is best known for being the creator of Tarzan, about whom he wrote 20+ books between 1912 and 1947. But Burroughs wrote other series as well, including 10 books set on Mars that featured the adventures of a hero named John Carter. This coming February will be the 100th anniversary of the novelization of the first book in the series, A Princess of Mars. (it was originally serialized  in a magazine called All-Star). In the Martian language used by Burroughs in his books, the name of Mars is Barsoom.

When I was much younger and even more geeky than I am now, I spent many happy hours on Barsoom, reading all the books in the Mars series more than once (I read all the Tarzan books, too, plus just about everything else Burroughs wrote). They told the story of a Civil War captain who inexplicably found himself transported to Mars, full of exotic civilizations, races of bizarre beings, and rampant conflict. So, I became childishly excited when I saw this morning that Disney has made a movie based on A Princess of Mars called JOHN CARTER.

It was directed by Academy-award winner Andrew Stanton (Wall-E) and starts Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) as Carter, Willem Dafoe as Tars Tarkas, and the delectable Lynn Collins (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) Princess Dejah Thoris. I really, really, really, really hope this movie is good. Really. Shit, I’ll be thrilled if it’s just decent.

It turns out that a teaser trailer was released in July, which I totally missed, but now there’s a new, longer one, which is finally what woke me the fuck up about this movie.  It looks pretty sweet. Check out both trailers after the jump, and I’ve also collected a shitload of stills from the movie and anothe rposter, too. Continue reading »

CHROME WAVES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 042011
 

Unless I miss my bet (and I would bet a lot on this), the day will come when you will be reading and hearing about this band far and wide, and you can tell your friends that you heard them first at NO CLEAN SINGING. Your friends may then look at you like a slug just crawled out of your nose, but pay them no mind. Who cares if they’ve never heard of NCS? What matters is the music of Chrome Waves.

First, here’s the line-up of this band:

Vocals: Stavros Giannopolous (vocalist and guitarist for The Atlas Moth), whose current album is popping up on “Best of 2011” lists far and wide)

Guitars: Jeff Wilson (guitarist of Wolvhammer, whose 2011 album The Obsidian Plains is superb and is also appearing on lots of year-end best-lists; formerly of Nachtmystium and Bringers of Disease)

Drums and bass: Bob Fouts (bassist for doom-metal band Apostle of Solitude; formerly with The Gates of Slumber)

I saw those names, and that was all the inducement I needed to spend some time with the first track they’ve released — a song that publicly debuted only last night called “”Height of the Rifles”. After the jump, we’ll be streaming it for you, but first, a little more intelligence about Chrome Waves from this interview of Bob Fouts. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 40: ERUPTED, FOUL BODY AUTOPSY, ABSENCE OF LIGHT

 MISCELLANY, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Dec 042011
 

Between my vacation in November, trying to catch up on what I missed while I was out of action, and planning for year-end Listmania at NCS, I’ve gotten ridiculously late in doing another MISCELLANY post. The last one was during the third week in October, which already seems like an eon ago. But rather than moan about my tardiness, I decided to just knuckle down and get ‘er done. Or at least get one done.

MISCELLANY started as a bit of a goof. I decided to do something with music kind of like what some people do with their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, when they obnoxiously tell you hour-by-hour (or minute-by-minute) what they’re doing — except I limited my disclosures to metal and hoped it would be more interesting than describing what I just ate or read or watched on TV, or the pleasures of the man-sized dump I just took.

To be more precise, on July 5, 2010, I posted a log of exactly what new metal I listened to and watched on that particular morning, regardless of whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. I didn’t plan on it being any kind of continuing thing, but I got enough encouragement from readers that I decided to just keep on keeping on.

I’ve been thinking back about how this started because this post is now the 40th in the series, which I guess is some kind of milestone. The first band covered in the first MISCELLANY post was an Austrian act called Mastic Scum, and I wrote about a video they’d released for a song called “Construcdead”. I introduced the video with these words: “If it’s been a while since you snorted coke, shot-up with heroin, cavorted with oiled-up dominatrixes, stuffed your face with food, been bull-whipped, had a golden shower, took it up the bunghole with a black dildo, or dribbled snot uncontrollably — well, you can relive those fond memories by watching this.” Good times. No wonder I decided to keep doing this.

Anyway, here we are again, and the rules haven’t changed: I keep a list of bands who contact us or who I’ve read or heard about somewhere, I pick some names at random and listen to a song or two from each pick, and then I write about the experience. It has turned out to be a good way to discover new music, and I’ve had extremely good luck with the picks. But still, you never really know what’s coming.

Today’s picks: Erupted (Sweden), Foul Body Autopsy (UK), and Absence of Light (Kenya). As it turns out, free downloads are available from all three bands Continue reading »

SYLOSIS: “A SERPENT’S TONGUE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 032011
 

I’m awake now, but still want to keep my “fuck yeah” face on.

I may write something later.  Or not.

This just up-loaded video sounds like the album track synced with video of the band’s last hometown performance in Reading, England, before embarking on their current US tour.

FLAMENCO METAL: IMPUREZA

 Album Reviews  19 Responses »
Dec 032011
 

I found out about the band featured in this post about a week ago, thanks to two, almost simultaneous messages from NCS reader Utmu and NCS writer TheMadIsraeli, both of whom seem to have an ear for metal that pushes my buttons. Impureza immediately pushed two of them: Their music incorporates both traditional “ethnic” influences and instruments that are rarely found in metal — in this case flamenco — and the cover to their most recent album, La Iglesia Del Odio (“the church of hate”), is a real eye-catcher (it was created by Johann Bodin).

The band are currently based in Orléans, France, and they actually appear to be Frenchmen instead of transplanted Spaniards, as one would expect from the music. Following a series of demos and splits, they released their debut album in April 2010 — the aforementioned La Iglesia Del Odio — on a French label called Snakebite Productions, from which the album can still be acquired in CD form.

Now, despite the abstract attraction (at least to me) of a death metal band who incorporate flamenco music into their sound, and despite the fact that they were deemed worthy of a spot at HELLFEST 2011, I did have to wonder whether this might turn out to be nothing more than a gimmick, a passing curiosity, a novelty without substance, and I also wondered how flamenco and death metal would sound in combination.

The answer: Impureza sounds brilliant, particularly if you’re a fan of technical death metal in the vein of Nile, Krisiun, Decapitated, or Fleshgod Apocalypse, and the distinctive flamenco cadences and melodies are no gimmick: They’re integral to this music, and they give it a fascinating, distinctive flair. Continue reading »

YOUR GALLIC GOODIES FOR THE DAY: OUTCAST AND HYPNO5E

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Dec 022011
 

On March 4, 2011, we included a song from a French band called Outcast in a post called Diversionary Tactics. The title of the song was “Elements”, and it was very fucking diverting. To quote from the post: “The riffs and time signatures jump around like barefoot children on a hot pavement, the drums rarely repeat the same patterns twice, there’s a freaky-good guitar solo, and the vocals bray in a hot fury (a mix of hardcore howls and death-metal growls). If you’re a fan of bands like Textures, CiLiCe, and Tardive Dyskinesia, do check this shit out.”

The song was taken from Outcast’s third studio album, Awaken the Reason, which hadn’t yet been released — an album mixed by Jochem Jacobs of Textures and mastered by Alan Douches. Well, here we are in December and the album still hasn’t been released. BUT, the latest word is that it will be coming in early 2012 and that specific info about the release date and the label will be coming within days — AND today, the band released another song from the album called “Abysmal”.

The music still puts me in mind of those three bands I mentioned in the March post — its pneumatic rhythms are pummeling and physically convulsive, with lots of funky, math-metally riffing, but it also includes nice melodic choruses and swirling, proggy, clean guitar solos in between the rounds of heavy, djent-style head-bashing. I am definitely looking forward to the album, just as much as I have been since March. Bring it on! You can hear the song after the jump.

The other offering of Gallic goodness for today comes from a band called Hypno5e, who I had the pleasure of seeing on the Art As Metal tour a couple years ago with Revocation and The Binary Code. Yesterday, Lambgoat exclusively premiered the title song from the band’s forthcoming second album, Acid Mist Tomorrow. It’s a helluva song, parts of which are very strongly reminiscent of Gojira (a plus, of course) and parts of which are soft, melodic, beautiful, and experimentally progressive. And you can hear it after the jump, too. The album should be very interesting and absolutely worth hearing. Fair warning: clean singing is involved. Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (Part 12)

 Forthcoming Albums  17 Responses »
Dec 022011
 

November is done, and the countdown begins to the end of 2011 and he beginning of the New Year. We’ve been so focused this week on the year behind us, since 2011 Listmania is now in full swing, that we almost forgot that there is a future, and it will be filled with metal.

So, here’s the deal:  In these METAL IN THE FORGE posts, we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month (November) about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — THIS ISN’T A CUMULATIVE LIST. If we found out about a new forthcoming album before November, we wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier.

This month’s list begins right after the jump. As usual, this list is half-assed rather than comprehensive. So, feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us what we missed when we put this list together. Let us know about albums on the way that  you’re stoked about! Continue reading »

VILDHJARTA: “MÅSSTADEN”

 Album Reviews  21 Responses »
Dec 022011
 

(The Madithraeli . . . uh, TheMadIsraeli . . . hath entered a thtate of thalldom to write thith enthuthiathtic review of the debut album by Sweden’s Vildhjarta. I feel compelled by unknown fortheth to thay: THALL!)

MASSIVE


FUCKING


BRUTHALLITY!


Alright, so we have a band here who have named themselves after a Swedish Dungeons & Dragons expansion about an ancient magical forest, have invented a word that has no veri-fucking-fiable definition that makes ANY SENSE and insert it into everything, and have pulled off one of the most notable changes in sound in the last five years.  But let’s get a refresher on what really matters… Continue reading »

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