AN NCS INTERVIEW: BLOOD RED THRONE

 Interviews  4 Responses »
Mar 282012
 

EDITOR’S NOTE: In September 2011, Andy Synn reviewed Brutalitarian Regime, the most recent album from Norway’s Blood Red Throne and ultimately named it to his list of 2011’s greatest albums, summing it up in these words: “This is a brilliant and unflinchingly brutal record, start to finish, standing as a testament to the seemingly boundless talents and uncompromising nature of the Norwegian death metal war-machine.”

Andy recently had the chance to interview the whole band in the flesh during one of the UK stops in their European tour with Suffocation, and he delivered the interview in two formats for you, because we know some like to read and some like to watch: Above is a video of Andy’s interview, and then a transcript of it is after the jump.
Continue reading »

METAL FROM 30,000 FEET

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 272012
 

Through the miracles of modern wi-fi technology, I am writing and posting this piece from a Boeing 737-800 airplane crossing the vast, imbecilic American continent on my way from one coast to the other, because my fucking day job demands it.

My traveling conditions aren’t ideal. The tight-sphinctered woman sitting next to me is grumpy. I am nearly deaf, and even though I have the volume turned down, noisy metal is apparently still leaking from my earbuds and polluting her personal space. Fuck her, I can handle the acidic looks, because I’m doing this for you.

The man across the aisle from me has been using a nasal inhaler, and I don’t think he has a cold. His pupils are now the size of pin pricks. I know this because he is staring at me. Fuck him, too, if he doesn’t try to fuck me first.

Worst of all, I haven’t started drinking yet . . . but I intend to make up for lost time as soon as I click the “Publish” button on my blog software.

Here’s what I found this morning that I thought worth sharing: A band from Australia named Ocean of Zero, a band from Germany named Black Shape of Nexus, and a band from parts unknown named Crator (whose creepy artwork is up above and whose membership is very intriguing). All of these bands are new to me. Continue reading »

THERE WILL BE A DELAY

 Uncategorized  34 Responses »
Mar 272012
 

My fucking day job is making me get on an airplane shortly for a long trip. The airplane may have wi-fi, in which case there will be more posts today. However, it may not, in which case I will most likely drink myself into a stupor and have to be removed by federal air marshals in a fireman’s carry.

I just didn’t want you to think I had fallen into the loris compound and been consumed (slowly) by the (patiently) waiting hordes.

In the meantime, I recommend you listen to High On Fire’s new album, De Vermis Mysteriis, which began streaming yesterday at NPR. I’ve not been a huge fan of HOF, but this sounds different and more varied from what I remember on their last album, and it’s good.

Or you could just spend hours pondering the layers of meaning in the photo up above and leave your interpretations of its message in the comments. Continue reading »

GOATWHORE, “WHEN STEEL AND BONE MEET”: THE VIDEO

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
Mar 272012
 

Goatwhore’s 2009 music video for “Apocalyptic Havoc” is one of my all-time favorites. It’s not terribly fancy, though it’s well-made. There’s no story. It’s just the band playing in something that looks like the interior of a church (except for the inverted crosses), with assorted close-ups of spark-shrouded Ben Falgouth looking badass (which is not difficult, since I bet Ben Falgouth looks badass even when he’s asleep) and Sammy Duet looking serious and cool, carving those tasty riffs with the neck of his guitar almost vertical.

I’m sure the song has something to do with how much I like the video. To be honest, Goatwhore could have been filmed playing dominoes and eating shelled pecans in a NOLA icehouse and I still would have loved it, as long as “Apocalyptic Havoc” was blasting out of the speakers.

But now Goatwhore have gone and gummed up the video works. Yesterday, we witnessed the debut of the video for “When Steel and Bone Meet”, which is a track on their most recent album Blood For the Master (reviewed here by Andy Synn). They could have just let the song carry the video again, as they did for “Apocalyptic Havoc”, because the song is great. To borrow Andy’s word, “When Steel… is a bar-room brawl set to music, chains and fists flying in a drunken, grooving orgy of violence that manages to cram in a swaggering groove, pummeling power-riffage, and some switchblade soloing in barely more than 3 minutes.”

But no, they had to throw in brief shots of two unclothed chicks licking blood off each other. I mean, really, who wants to see that? Bor-ing. Continue reading »

VIDEO ROUND-UP: OUROBOROS AND XII BOAR (AND A NEW VORKREIST SONG)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

The first two bands featured in this round-up have been the subject of previous features at this site, so we already know and like their music. But what we have here are new music videos that are worth a gander. And then the third piece of this triad is a new song from a band called Vorkreist (sans video).

OUROBOROS

TheMadIsraeli reviewed this Australian band’s latest release, Glorification Of A Myth, back in June 2011. He described the music as “a mix of Pestilence, Dark Angel, some slight Cannibal Corpse-isms, Vader, and a good dose of neo-classicism in the melodic moments” — a powerhouse collection of “killer riffs” and “face-melting guitar antics”.

The new video is for a song from the album called “Sanctuary”. It confuses me. It’s clearly telling a story, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Are the children at the end younger versions of characters we’re seeing at the beginning? Why the leap off the cliff? And what’s the snake man chopping with that cleaver? If you get it, leave a comment.

The YouTube version of the clip includes the lyrics, which are much better than average for a metal song, but they haven’t helped me figure out the video. I’ll link to them after the video. Continue reading »

DYING FETUS WILL REIGN SUPREME

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

This morning, TheMadIsraeli tipped me to the fact that Dying Fetus had just released a teaser clip for their new album, Reign Supreme, and then I got a press release with more detail about the album, plus I found the album art.

Relapse Records has now confirmed a June 17 release date for the album. According to the release, it 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.”

The album artwork, as you can see, features lots of skulls, because of course nothing says “metal” like a fuckton of skulls. Or so I’ve heard. Maybe we should put a fuckton of skulls all over NCS. Oh, wait  . . . yeah, we already did that. Maybe we need more skulls. Or worms.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the teaser track. It’s less than a minute long, but as TheMadIsraeli noted when he wrote me, it’s long enough to give you rabies. And if you don’t get the full infection from it, Metal Injection recently put up a video of the band performing a new song from the album called “Invert the Idols”, which is an awful nice piece of head-smashery. Continue reading »

GO SHOW PHRO’S NEW BLOG SOME LOVE, BUT BE SURE TO USE PROTECTION

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

Another ugly duckling has left the NCS nest to explore the wonders of the blogiverse on its own.

Yes, Phro has started his very own blog called PHRO METAL. But don’t fret none about missing Phro here at NCS. As the first ever duckling born with bat wings, he can’t get far in daylight hours and he’ll be returning regularly to the nest to get his pre-digested worms from momma’s thrusting beak.

To translate that into more-or-less plain English, Phro’s blog isn’t about music. For his metal writing, Phro says he will continue to do that here. So why, you may ask, has Phro titled his blog PHRO METAL? Well, as we all know, things can be metal without being music. And what Phro intends to do with his blog is use it as a platform for writing stories.

His first story on PHRO METAL is called “Lucy” and he’s publishing it in installments, with Part 1 appearing today. I’m not going to spoil it for you. Okay, well, I guess I’ll spoil it a little bit. Here’s the first paragraph: Continue reading »

AN NCS SONG PREMIERE: FLAYED DISCIPLE’S “INTERCEPTOR”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

It was nearly Halloween Eve last year when I stumbled across a UK band called Flayed Disciple and their deliciously titled EP, Ejaculate While Killing. In a burst of enthusiasm, I summed up the music thusly: “This shit is a freaked-out blast of death-thrash, like some Formula One machine with a corpse at the wheel, fishtailing across a crowded highway and leaving smoking wreckage in its wake.”

Fresh wreckage is now on the way, because Flayed Disciple have completed their debut album, Death Hammer, and it’s scheduled for release on May 28. Even better, they’ve authorized us to provide the intergalactic premiere of the album’s third track, “Interceptor”. And even better still, they’re making that song available for free download so you can carry it around with you like a severed finger.

Now, you may be interested to know (or to remember, if you’re an older fart like me) that Interceptor was the name of the vehicle driven by Mel Gibson (before he turned into a completely weird fuck) in the first two of the Mad Max movies. That was a fine car — a modified version of the 1973 XB GT Ford Falcon Coupe, which was a production car exclusive to Australia, with a big supercharger protruding from the hood.

Flayed Disciple’s “Interceptor” is similarly a fine song with a big protruding supercharger. Smoking thrash riffs eat up the pavement like a black machine being speed-shifted into ramming mode. And when the supercharger kicks in, you get a heated blast of guitar shred. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: THOSE WHO LIE BENEATH – “ANTICHRIST”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

Sometimes, changes in a band’s membership become catalysts for changes in their music. Sometimes, with the passage of time, musicians’ tastes change and they move to a different place musically because they have become different people. I have a feeling that both things happened to Those Who Lie Beneath.

Those Who Lie Beneath are a metal band from Portland, Oregon, whose debut album An Awakening we reviewed (here) in December 2009. The band have undergone significant changes since then. From a five-piece, they’re now a three-man outfit. The most noticeable change was the departure of their vocalist Jamie Hanks, who joined Seattle’s I Declare War.

I remember when Hanks earned the band a measure of notoriety by giving an interview to Noisecreep in which he said: “We all love Cannibal Corpse. But they’ve been doing the same shit for years. We want to be Between the Buried and Me and Cannibal Corpse and the Black Dahlia Murder, all in one.” In the same interview, Hanks told Noisecreep, “What we’re trying to do is be not only as brutal as we can but as evil, man. We want to have people look at us, and go, ‘Fuck, these guys are scary.'”

I was impressed with An Awakening, but I have to say that I like the direction of the band’s new EP, Antichrist, even more. And it beats An Awakening on the brutal/evil/scary scale, too. Continue reading »

BLOODGUARD UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Mar 262012
 

Earlier this month, Andy Synn passed his 18-month anniversary as a writer for NCS. His first post was a review of Dimmu Borgir’s Abrahadabra album. In all that time, Andy has rarely mentioned that in addition to writing about metal, he is also the vocalist for a UK metal band called Bloodguard. Maybe it’s that famous British reserve, or perhaps it’s because Andy is a gentleman and a scholar in addition to being a writer and a howler. I, however, am not limited by good manners or any sense of humility, and I have some news about Bloodguard that needs to be spread like the plague.

First, the band have now set the official track-listing for their debut album, Patterns In The Infinite, and this is it:

1. Eye Of The Paradox
2. Vanguard
3. Footsteps (Of The Dead)
4. Our Lady Of The Flood
5. Black Math Ritual
6. Panopticon
7. Final Prayer
8. Bridgeburner

After the jump, you’ll find an album preview video that will give you a taste of what the songs sound like in their unmixed form, although the order of the samples in the video doesn’t match the track-listing. But first, there’s even bigger news, because I’ve discovered from Andy the identities of five guests whose talents will be enhancing Bloodguard’s new album — and it’s quite an exciting list: Arthur von Nagle (Cormorant), Michiel Dekker and Ivo Hilgenkamp (The Monolith Deathcult), Seth Hecox (Becoming the Archetype), and Demonstealer (Demonic Resurrection). Continue reading »

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