SHORT BUT SWEET: BORIS THE BLADE’S “TIDES OF DAMNATION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Nov 052011
 

(Guest writer Austin Slagle-Knauss makes his first NCS appearance with a review of a new EP out of Australia.)

What do you think when you hear “Australian metal band”? First band I think of is Did You Mean Australia (who are not from Australia, but from Cincinatti) followed by Parkway Drive and the lesser known Thy Art is Murder. Well, there’s a new act on the horizon that will rival any of the bands mentioned before: Behold Boris the Blade and their new ep Tides of Damnation.

Think about the name for a moment and you might guess it’s another shitty core band trying to use a cool Snatch reference for a name. But upon my first time hearing them, I was pleasantly kicked in the head with a brutality that I was not expecting.

The band is a 5-piece from Melbourne, Australia, with ex-The Red Shore guitarist Roman Koester, who brings out the big guns, whether delivering a slow, daunting breakdown as in in the instrumental “Wastelands” or the full-on aural assault that is “Like Wolves” (which features guest vocals by CJ McMahon of Thy Art Is Murder).

The band has already made it to Number One on the Australian iTunes metal chart, and with good reason: This band makes you want to fucking devastate anything or anyone that crosses you. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

A BRUTAL ASS MORNING

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 052011
 

(TheMadIsraeli helps us start off our Saturday with a bang.)

Good morning fellow NCSer’s.  I’ve taken it upon myself while Islander engages in his carnal activities (gotta help a brother out) to be Islander number two, since it turns out a shitload of people get the two of us confused anyway.  I decided to bring you some brutal goodies this morning to start your day with.

Fallujah is a band I have heard much about, little of.  My good friend Brian Shields of White Noise Metal was especially singing their praises a while back.  He’d seen them live quite a bit and was pretty sure they were going to be the next big thing.  I think he might be right.  I have the debut song from their debut album The Harvest Wombs called “Become One”.  It is an amazing slice of technical melodic death metal full of nice proggy, jazzy, melodic transitions, assaulting the ears with a hail storm of blast beasts and vicious vocals.  I intend to procure this album for review one way or another. Continue reading »

UNIVERSE217: “NOTHING/66”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Nov 052011
 

Universe217 is an experimental doom metal band from Athens, Greece. They’ve released two albums, a self-titled debut in 2007 and Familiar Places in 2011. I found out about this band through a Facebook post by another Greek band, Tardive Dyskinesia, whose music I know and like a lot (I’ve written about them many times at NCS, including this post). So far, I’ve listened to a grand total of two songs by Universe217, and those songs were performed as a single work for purposes of an unusual video.

The video was shot on a mountain outside Athens called Aloula, which is perhaps most famous because it’s the place where much of the marble used to build the Parthenon was quarried. The band and the film crew hiked with all the gear up the mountain for about 20 minutes, then set up and played. The performance was recorded live. Joining Universe217 were a couple of guest musicians — the vocalist from Tardive Dyskinesia (Manthos), who played guitar in this performance, and the drummer for a band called Need (Petros), combining with Universe217’a own drummer for a dual attack.

The video performance combines two songs — “Nothing” from Familiar Places and “66” from the band’s self-titled debut. The music isn’t as extreme as most of the music we cover at NCS, but it has a haunting quality that I found appealing, and I also just think it’s cool that they did this in one take, performing live on a mountain outside Athens. I was also impressed with the vocals of the band’s frontwoman Tania. Most of her singing is clean, though as the song builds in intensity she eventually kicks into some nice harsh crescendos. Check this out after the jump. Continue reading »

ADIOS MOTHERFUCKERS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  21 Responses »
Nov 042011
 

I like vacations. First, there is very little working. Very little working is a good thing. I would be very happy with very little working from now until the end of time as I know it. Second, there is very much eating, drinking, and sleeping. These are also good things. I could do them until the end of time as I know it, until I become one of those people who gets so enormously fat and atrophied that emergency workers have to bust down the wall of the house and use a crane just to remove the corpse after the last filthy breath of life has passed the lips.

Third, if I am a good boy and play my cards right, there may be carnal activity with Mrs. Islander in between bouts of eating, drinking, and sleeping. Fourth, there will be beautiful clouds, of which I will take many photos during the few hours when I am awake, some of which I will share with you, because having your head in the clouds is a good thing and should be experienced more frequently.

Fifth, vacations are an excuse for me to solicit guest posts for NCS, of which I have received many already. You’ve seen some of them already this week, even though I have not yet left on vacation but instead have been working like a fucking orc under the heavy whip hand of the Dark Lord of Mordor. But what you’ve seen this week is just the tip of the iceberg — there are some juicy ones coming your way in the weeks ahead (in addition to new material from Andy Synn, BadWolf, and TheMadIsraeli). And by the way, there is still time to send me guest posts, so don’t be bashful.

Yes, I will still have some limited time for blogging activity, such as the time necessary to format and post guest pieces and maybe even to write some quick things myself. However, I am not going to push my luck with blogging time between now and my return to the NCS metallic island on Nov 18 (see note above re being a good boy, in hopes of carnal activity with Mrs. Islander).

So, with this post I bid you all a fond farewell.  Before this day is out, I will be winging my way to a distant land where life is sloooooow and there will be eating, drinking, sleeping, clouds, and perhaps carnal activity. I leave you with a random collection of music I missed while working like an orc over the past week: After the jump, new/newish videos from Vildhjarta (Sweden), Bury Your Dead (U.S.), and Exhumed (U.S.), and a new song from GoreGazm (South Africa). Continue reading »

HALLOWEEN FAIL (Part 4)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 042011
 

In our continuing attempt to make Halloween last all week, I’ve randomly picked four more Halloween-appropriate metal songs from the slew of suggestions we got via this post on Halloween Day.

First, we have “Evil Dead” from Death. As SurgicalBrute said when he suggested this one, how could this not make the cut (though “Zombie Ritual” would have been a fine choice, too)? Then I picked a live video of King Diamond performing “Come to the Sabbath”. Tikan’s actual suggestion was the “classic” Mercyful Fate rendition of the song, but this video is so full of cheese (and boobs) that I couldn’t resist it. After that, we’ve got some horrorpunk (thanks to Trollfiend) from a German band called The Crimson Ghosts; this video is pretty cool.

And finally, with thanks to .jh, we’ve got The Coffinshakers and their odd brand of goth country. Not metal, but definitely Halloweenie.

Lots of clean singing in this collection, but I’m holding my nose and doing it anyway — after the jump. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ROSICRUCIAN’S “BENEATH THE WAVES”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 042011
 

(Fresh off an NCS co-sponsored UK tour with his band Bloodguard, NCS writer Andy Synn returns to these pages with his review of a remarkable EP by Bristol’s Rosicrucian.)

It’s always a pleasure to encounter music where form is so perfectly suited to function. In this case, Rosicrucian’s flowing, tide-driven take on post-black metal dynamics is described and elucidated perfectly by the artwork and the song titles, which fit effortlessly into the musical aesthetic as a whole, enhancing the experience of the listener. The fit is seamless and seemingly effortless, the art adding whole dimensions to the music as an experience.

The slow-building tension of “Beneath The Waves” is the sound of a storm gathering on the horizon, whose furious winds and explosive cloud-bursts of emotion sweep down upon the listener with elemental force. Torrents of blasting, storm-driven drumming meld with instances of gleaming ambience, an azure haze which paints the song with a deep shade of existential despair.

The ringing coda of “Lest We Forget” is a thing of crystalline clarity and beauty, its skeletal spectre reduced to its starkest bones by the weight of ages, its remains exhumed by the passage of time to reveal both the beauty and brutality of our finite existence.  Exposed to the merciless elements, we are stripped bare by the scathing winds of tumultuous, blackened fury which carry these notes of striking melody with vibrant, unflinching power.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

HEIRS TO THE THRONE: DISSECTION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Nov 042011
 

(The first two albums by Sweden’s Dissection are among my all-time favorite metal albums. So I was most interested in this guest post by a writer who goes by the name Kazz.  He identifies six bands who faithful Dissection fans should get to know.)

I remember hearing Dissection for the first time right after their debut LP, The Somberlain, dropped. This was back in the day before the internet was the primary tool for discovering metal, and for American fans of European metal the options were limited to blind purchases from import mail-order distros, or if you were lucky enough to live in a city with a good metal record store, you might have been able to get a recommendation from a knowledgeable clerk (remember those?).

The second wave of black metal was in full swing, but I was more tuned into the nascent Gothenburg melodic death metal scene. The NWOBHM-influenced twin lead-guitar harmonies over a death metal framework made these early melodic death releases fresh, rare, and worth import CD prices for anyone who loved both melody and brutality.

Some of those early In Flames and Dark Tranquillity records had a much more blackened vibe in the early days, particularly in their vocal delivery. But it wasn’t until I got my hands on The Somberlain that I really found anyone who very effectively merged melody with a black metal framework. Dissection made their name by infusing their black metal with a layer of melody which ensured that each song was memorable, together with strong musicianship and compelling lyrics and imagery. By keeping most of their NWOBHM-isms in the minor scale, they maintained a sense of darkness and foreboding over the blasting, thrashing framework of technically-proficient black metal. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 11)

 Forthcoming Albums  14 Responses »
Nov 032011
 

October is over, except for Halloween, which continues to go on and on here at the metallic island that NCS calls home. Your humble editor spent the end of the month and the beginning of this new one grinding away at his fucking day job, which explains why this installment of METAL IN THE FORGE is late. It also explains why it’s more than typically incomplete, but more on that later.

Here’s the deal:  In these posts, we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month 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 September, 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. I fell down on the job of monitoring the interhole and press releases to catch news about new albums that looked potentially cool to me, so I know I missed announcements of new releases that should be included here. So, feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us what I missed. Let us know about albums on the way that  you’re stoked about! Continue reading »

HALLOWEEN FAIL (Part 3)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 032011
 

In our continuing attempt to make Halloween last all week, I’ve randomly picked three more Halloween-appropriate metal songs from the slew of suggestions we got via this post on Halloween Day. First up is a music video from Finland’s Medeia (with a little help from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video). It includes these immortal pick-up lines in a bar:

“I’m in a band”

“Yeah right, and it’s called old man’s dad?”

“We has a booze at the training place (or something like that)”

“You have a moose? Please just get lost.”

“I think he meant booze.”

“Why didn’t you say so! Let’s go!”

My other two picks are songs from Lair of the Minotaur (U.S.) and Spawn of Possession (Sweden). Stay grisly. Drink more blood. Watch and listen after the jump. (Thanks to jeimssi, kingben, and TRex for these suggestions.) Continue reading »

“THE GREAT EXECUTION” KILLS

 Album Reviews, Phro's Posts  12 Responses »
Nov 032011
 

(I have been meaning to review The Great Execution, the new album by Brazilian heavyweights Krisiun, because it’s one of the best death metal albums of the year. I still intend to do that. However, Phro has beat me to the punch. Read it and weep. It’s full of THOOM and BOOM.)

The latest Krisiun album The Great Execution is available for your listening pleasure now.  More specifically, it should be blasting in your fucking ears right now, and if it’s not, I have to say, I’m gonna have to seriously reconsider our friendship.  It’s nothing personal, but I just don’t know if can trust a hairy man-dog that eats its own poop AND doesn’t even have the good sense to listen to fucking Krisiun.

But, being merciful (though incredibly unimportant and not just a little petty), I’ll assume that, perhaps, if you’re not listening to it, then maybe you a good reason.  Like loss of multiple limbs.  Or the death of your entire family (Frank Castle style).  Or, perhaps, you forgot it was November 1st.  Whatever the reason may be, this is my attempt at explaining how spinal-cord-fuckingly awesome this album is.  (Seriously.  Your spinal cord.  It’s gonna get fucked.  It’s as if Death were less interested in killing you and more interested in using the hole in your back created by ripping your spinal cord out through your ass as a cock sleeve to store up and save excess Death-semen.)

This album goes to war (as the cover attests) and it doesn’t bother with prisoners, survivors, or even survivors guilt.  (I don’t know what that last sentence means.) (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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