AN EXCLUSIVE NCS PREMIERE: “TRANSITION” BY SIGHT OF EMPTINESS

Jan 112012

From left to right: Rafa Castro (Lead Guitar), Gabriel Arias (Electronics), Eduardo Chacón (Singer), Rodrigo Chaverri (Drums), Andrés Castro (Lead Guitar), Esteban Monestel (Bass & Backing Vocals)

To really set the stage for this story, we have to turn back the clock two years. In January 2010, we found out about a very impressive melodic death metal band from Costa Rica named Sight of Emptiness. What got us hooked were three songs from the band’s second album, Absolution of Humanity, that were then streaming at MySpace, plus a cool video of the band performing a fourth song — and we wasted no time posting about Sight of Emptiness here.

We wrote about them again in September 2010 on the occasion of the band’s release of a video capturing their performance of the song “Burning Silence” in front of 15,000 people in San Jose, Costa Rica, when they opened for Megadeth. Since then, the band have continued to perform and to build a an international fanbase — and to write new music.

And today we’re stoked to give you the world premiere of a new Sight of Emptiness single — “Transition”. It’s a killer song — one that rolls like a blast-wave of explosive detonation from start to finish, one that hits that sweet spot where the flash of cathertic high-energy intersects with shimmering melodies. It also reflects positive growth and evolution in the band’s sound.

In addition to the song, we’ve also got a short interview with the band and another video — after the jump. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: JAMES MAY (BLACK TUSK)

Interviews 1 Response »

Jan 112012

(In this interview conducted late last year, NCS writer BadWolf caught up with James May of Savannah, Georgia’s Black Tusk, whose 2011 album Set the Dial is a hell of a thing. In addition to a full touring schedule, the band also played the inaugural Metal Suckfest in New York City last November (reviewed by BadWolf here), and the live photos accompanying this interview except for the one abovewere taken at that show for NCS by Nicholas Vechery.)

BW: How are you feeling about the set you played at Suckfest?

BT: It was good. You could tell it was the first fest. It was a little chaotic getting stuff where it needed to be on time, but the overall turnout was good. We played the first night of the festival, so I’m sure they worked out the kinks on the second night.

BW: Have you played any other first fests?

BT: Maybe the Devilmech fest in Atlanta [Athens]. That might have been the first year.

BW: So how do the festivals compare to one another?

BT: Festivals are usually pretty uniform, that’s just the nature of the beast. There’s a lot of bands in a bunch of chaos. Everybody getting stuff to where they want it. From my perspective, they’re really fun to play, but as a touring band when you see a bunch of bands play every night, festivals just aren’t very much fun.

My girlfriend goes to music festivals all the time, and when I’m home she tries to bring me and I’m like “Dude, that’s what I do. The last thing I want to do is watch a bunch of bands all day.” I’m pretty sure everyone in a touring band feels the same way.

But I do like them—it’s a way for a lot of different people to see your band. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2011’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 16

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011 3 Responses »

Jan 102012

This is Part 16 of our list of the most infectious extreme metal songs released this year. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the Introduction via this link. To see the selections that preceded this one, click the Category link on the right side of the page called MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011.

Today’s first song was an early and easy pick for this list — hands down, it’s one of my favorite songs of 2011. It’s only emerging as an addition to the list at this late date because I first wanted to finish a review of the album from whence it comes — which I finally accomplished as of today. The second song was also an early favorite, but I’ve had it in my head to pair these songs together, for reasons I’ll try to explain. Here we go:

THY CATAFALQUE

There’s not much I need to say here about this band’s 2011 album Rengeteg, because earlier today I posted a detailed review of it. In a nutshell, it was one of my favorite albums of 2011 — maybe even my most favorite. It’s an odd feeling to have, because the vast majority of the singing is clean and many of the songs are not what anyone would consider “extreme metal” — but that’s my honest reaction to the music. Continue reading »

EXISTO VULGORE: A MASTERCLASS IN HOW TO CHEW THE EVERLIVING FUCK OUT OF THE SCENERY IN FOUR MINUTES

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Jan 102012

VULGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE

(DemiGodRaven [ex-The Number of the Blog] rejoins us today for this piece of timely commentary.)

It’s on occasions like this when I tend to take pause for a bit and reflect upon things in life. Rarely do you find yourself putting pen to paper without any purpose other than to meander throughout the English language (or your language of choice) and as a result say absolutely nothing.

It’s as if your brain absolutely refuses to give you anything resembling a cognizant thought out of an almost inferno-like spite because you’re attempting to challenge the damned thing. Thus, you find yourself in the endless cycle of tapping your fingers on the table, pen on paper, and zero to show for it. The world spins on and suddenly a half hour has passed. Then it is a full hour, and there has been something in the back of your mind that resembles a constant buzz. It resembles white noise at best, and at worst it resembles something off of Morbid Angel’s latest release, and it occurs to you that you know the exact cause of what in the world has been preventing you from writing anything worth a fuck. There hasn’t been an amazing piece of work from Morbid Angel’s latest as of yet.

Well…until now that is. Continue reading »

THY CATAFALQUE: “RENGETEG”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 20 Responses »

Jan 102012

I listened to a lot of albums in 2011, most of them new releases. I made mental lists and written lists of the ones I wanted to review, not because I think I’m particularly good at it, but because I want to do my part to help spread the word about music I admire and to support good bands so they’ll continue making music that makes me happy ( yes, it all comes down to selfishness in the end).

Of course, I fell down on the job miserably. I just didn’t get around to reviewing everything I wanted to praise in 2011. With the new year under way, I know that psychologically I’ll feel motivated to focus on new releases this year instead of trying to catch up on writing about 2011 albums. But if I never write about another 2011 album, there’s one I cannot leave unheralded — Rengeteg.

If this 2011 album from Thy Catafalque consisted of the 9 minutes and 20 seconds of “Fekete mezők” and 51 minutes of mind-numbing elevator music, I would still be happy. “Fekete mezők” is one of my favorite songs of the year. But that song is just the beginning of an album’s worth of musical marvels — and no two of them are alike.

The songs flow into each other without pause, pulling the listener along with them as they cross a constantly changing landscape of sounds and emotions. The idea of crossing a landscape isn’t just the feeling conjured by the movement of the music. It also emerges from the lyrics.

The words are in Hungarian, but they’ve recently become available in English translations, and I found them interesting to read while listening to the album (for the umpteenth time). If there’s a concept I can discern, it is one about the unity of life and matter, about the connectedness of human beings to the Earth, and more than the Earth, to the star-spawned matter of which we and it are made. Continue reading »

PDP: “MASS DELUSION”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Jan 102012

(Today TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut album of a band called P.D.P., which took form within the halls of Hollywood’s Musician’s Institute. The album was released last August by Heavyocity Records. P.D.P.’s official site is here.)

Two names. Pantera and Fear Factory.

P.D.P (no I don’t know what the name means, and they refuse to disclose what it means on top of that) is a band offering a nice reinterpretation of groove metal of the old Pantera school of thought. Bring in some industrial tinges, 8-string guitars, the willingness to be fast instead of relying on groove as a crutch, and the ability to write interesting riffs, and you’ve got yourself a helping of head-bobbing goodness I can get behind. This is their debut Mass Delusion.

The first song, “A Word to the Wise”, immediately delivers a succinct, classic Fear Factory styled opening with machine gun percussive attacks and solid, simple, hefty riffs. A nice dose of tasteful melodic shred is also injected courtesy of guitarist Dane Markanson and vocalist/guitarist Greg Harrison (a trend that continues throughout the whole album).

Songs like “Prototype Ares” and “Bleed Out”, which follow, showcase their slower, more groove-oriented side. Both songs utilize the massive low end of their 8-string guitars quite well to create a mammoth-sized, continuous punch to the nuts (I just know they are going to get pegged as some kind of Meshuggah copper simply because they execute riffs in the register of THALL (there is that word again)). Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2011’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 15

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011 4 Responses »

Jan 092012

This is Part 15 of our list of the most infectious extreme metal songs released this year. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the Introduction via this link. To see the selections that preceded this one, click the Category link on the right side of the page called MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011.

This list has included quite a lot of variety so far, which in part is a reflection of the diversity of my own tastes and in part a reflection of the tremendous variety available in metal today. But there’s one sub-genre that hasn’t yet made an appearance. I hate to even use the word, because it’s already getting a bad name in some quarters, due to the saturation of the style by a flood of bands and bedroom projects who seem to believe that atonal Meshuggah-style riffing played with a bit of technical flash is all that’s needed to create a “song”.

I suppose we should have seen that coming, since the label for the sub-genre originated as nothing more than a name for the representative sound or tone made by an appropriately down-tuned guitar. But of course, much more is needed than start-stop pneumatic riffing and polyrhythmic complexity to create something memorable — and infectiousness is what this list is all about. The two songs I’m adding to the list today have got that quality.

TEXTURES

TheMadIsraeli reviewed this band’s wonderful 2011 album Dualism here, and followed that with an interview here. Like him, I’ve been a Textures fan for a long time — they have yet to disappoint me. Back before that “djent” label went viral, I thought of Textures as a “math metal” band, but even that label was too restrictive. They’ve always had a talent for constructing songs that were not only rhythmically complex and physically jolting, but memorably melodic. Continue reading »

NEW GOATWHORE — AND OMNIUM GATHERUM LIVE

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 10 Responses »

Jan 092012

Man, what a morning this has been so far. First, we had a brief glimpse of a new Cannibal Corpse song before YouTube yanked it at Metal Blade’s request — and now we have a new Goatwhore official lyric video provided by Metal Blade. The Goatwhore track is called “Collapse In Eternal Worth”, and it’s from the new Goatwhore album Blood For the Master, which will be released on February 14 in North America and is one of my “most anticipated” records of 2012. The song is a slash of black thrash ‘n’ roll that will get your blood pumping. (Thanks to byrd36 for the tip on this one.)

But we’re still not finished with what has made this a sweet morning (for a fucking Monday). When I added “New World Shadows” to our ongoing list of 2011’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, it was a tough choice, because I was also powerfully drawn to another Omnium Gatherum song — “Soul Journeys”. This morning I was reminded why the choice was so difficult, why “Soul Journeys” is such a great song, and why Omnium Gatherum is such a great band.

What reminded me was a cool video of the band playing the song live at their last show of 2011 — on December 16 at Kerubi in Joensuu, Finland. And for Omnium Gatherum geeks, here’s a bit of trivia: When Jukka Pelkonen steps back and pulls the bass-player forward to take the lead during an instrumental section of the song, the guy who steps up Eerik Purdon, who was with the band when they recorded their last album before New World Shadows, The Redshift (2008).

There’s something about this song and about the positive energy that comes through this performance that just makes me feel (briefly) that all’s right with the world, even when all is very much not right. Watch and listen after the jump — to both the Goatwhore and the Omnium Gatherum. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA WRAP-UP

Listmania 6 Responses »

Jan 092012

With one exception, our 2011 edition of Listmania has finally drawn to a close (although TheMadIsraeli still has plans to elaborate on some of his choices with future reviews). The exception is my ongoing list of 2011’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs”, which may still be ongoing this time next year if I don’t force myself to wrap it up soon.

Compared to what we did near the end of 2010, this year’s series of posts really mushroomed — 44 posts in the space of about five weeks.

Among other things, we were fortunate to receive year-end lists from many of the writers who made The Number of the Blog such a great source for discovering new metal. But this year we also significantly expanded the scope of our own coverage, reaching out to more band members, fellow bloggers, and our own readers to get their recommendations of the best music that 2011 had to offer. We also started the series by re-publishing Best of 2011 lists from magazines and “big platform” web sites who included metal in their own retrospectives about the year’s best music.

I thought it might be useful to collect in this one place links to all of the posts we published in our 2011 Listmania series, organized into the following categories:

Magazines and “Big Platform” Sites

Band Members

Other Bloggers

Guest Contributors (including NCS readers)

NCS Staff

So, if you’re still hunting around for new music or want to see what others have been saying about the albums you liked, check out the comprehensive set of NCS links after the jump. And thanks again to everyone who contributed to this endeavor and to everyone who made time to read what we pulled together. Continue reading »

FUCK. IT’S MONDAY AGAIN. BUT LET’S CHEER OURSELVES UP WITH NEW CANNIBAL CORPSE, AL-NAMROOD, AND NAPOLEON SKULLFUKK.

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 10 Responses »

Jan 092012

I’d like to pretend I have a good attitude about Monday’s, but the truth is I’d rather go through childbirth and then be forced to eat my own placenta than start another fucking work week. I have a feeling I’m not alone in that feeling. I’ve been cheering myself up by listening to new tunes, and therefore I would like to cheer you up with them, too, in case you’re having that feeling that I’m having, y’know, the one about childbirth and the placenta.

CANNIBAL CORPSE

Florida’s Cannibal Corpse are officially the best-selling death metal band of all time. Longevity accounts for some of that success — they released their Eaten Back To Life debut in 1990. More than 20 years later, they’ve completed work on a new album that will crawl forth from the grave this year. We don’t have an album title or artwork yet, but a new song called “Demented Aggression” has just surfaced on YouTube.

This isn’t an official release, so I’m not 100% sure this is real — though it sure as hell sounds like Cannibal Corpse — and because it’s not official, it may get yanked by the Tube at any moment. But until that happens, you can go get your earholes violated right after the jump. (And thanks to Aaron for the hot tip on this baby.) Continue reading »

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