THE LINDGREN DIET: DAY TWO

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  8 Responses »
Sep 012011
 

Earlier this week, we introduced you to a revolutionary new holistic health regimen for metalheads that we’ve dubbed “The Lindgren Diet”. This isn’t just a formula for shedding unwanted pounds. It’s a magical recipe for mental well-being and overall physical health that will produce a “new you”. Developed by Ola Lindgren, the frontman and guitarist for Grave, the legendary Swedish death metal band, it’s taking the world by storm — and rightly so.

Eating right has never been easier — and it won’t leave you feeling hungry or deprived. There’s no need to count calories, carbs, portion sizes — or anything else. It’s just that easy! Ola Lindgren shows you how. Drawing on his own experience maintaining the physique of an Olympic swimmer despite the demands of the extreme metal lifestyle, he has crafted an easy-to-follow diet program that doesn’t require hard-to-find ingredients or long hours in the kitchen. Let other people do the preparation for you! All you have to do is consume — and then watch yourself be transformed.

I’ve been on the diet since Monday, and I can tell you that I’m already feeling the burn! I’m sleeping better, feeling more energetic during the day, and experiencing greater mental acuity. And that’s just from following the first daily intake regimen that Ola rolled out when he launched his blog, “Lindgren’s Health Blog 666”. But now Ola has given us the next installment in his recipe for whole-body perfection. I can’t wait to work this meal plan into my daily routine! Check it out after the jump. Continue reading »

ABSU: “ABZU”

 Album Reviews  15 Responses »
Sep 012011
 

(NCS writer BadWolf returns to our fold with his take on the forthcoming sixth album from Texas-based Absu.)

Absu’s 2011 pseudo-self-titled album, Abzu sends a message: “We are back, baby!” But wait, you may say, didn’t they already release a comeback album in 2009? With a near-identical title? And a similar cover? And the same funky wyvern mascot? Correct on all counts. But where ­Absu was overweight and boring, Abzu is sleek and stimulating—it is the sound of a band dedicated to constant improvement 20 years after its formation. If only more veterans shared their vitriol and dedication.

While Absu may have the lyrical and vocal aesthetic of black metal, at heart they want to be Slayer. At this point, aping LA’s finest is more than cliché, it’s juvenile. Bands trying to be Slayer (or Exodus for that matter—I’m looking at you, Heavy Artillery records) ceased to be interesting or innovative years ago. Props to Absu, then for doing their heroes justice and only cherry-picking those elements that work: They embrace their little beauty marks (the Araya-worship screams that punctuate “Earth Ripper”), not their most-xeroxed techniques (no trem-bar solos here).

Love of thrash keeps Abzu from inducing black metal fatigue, unlike some of their older records. New guitarist Vis Crom has elegance in his riffs that Shaftiel and Aethyris lacked, and his aptitude for middle-eastern-style solo melodies finally feels at home in Absu, not shoehorned in. Band leader Proscriptor McGovern works his hardest to out-fill Dave Lombardo, but has a style of his own. Nobody strings together tom hits the way he does.

Concordantly, Abzu feels at once familiar and unique. The production mirrors this: The instruments are dry and crunchy, but register with modern digital clarity. And god damn do those drums pop nicely.  I felt a click when I heard this record, like when I try on a jacket in a store and it instantly registers as *the* article of clothing I was seeking. For the first time since Tara, the band is painting by magic, not numbers.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MELODEATH WEEK: BEFORE THE DAWN

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Sep 012011
 

(After a one-day hiatus, TheMadIsraeli returns with the next installment in this Melodeath Week series, and today’s focus is on a Finnish favorite here at NCS — Before the Dawn.)

Before The Dawn might be a hard sell to some of you as a candidate for melodeath week. I was surprised when Islander reviewed Soundscape Of Silence (here) that people didn’t react in the way I’ve experienced when talking about this band. What’s that? Argue that Before The Dawn has been pioneering some obtuse form of metalcore. I suppose I can kinda understand the logic. They have the metalcore energy, and something of the poppy sensibilities that metalcore can have. However, if you ask me, this is an unfair characterization. Before The Dawn use these elements to create a very somber, very melancholic atmosphere.

If you’re at all familiar with the sound of this band, then you’re familiar with everything they do.  The sound is very consistent. Trying to pick any one album as the band’s best is kind of pointless. For example, the album I’m focusing on here (2007’s Deadlight) and the one that preceded it (The Ghost, from 2006) are almost interchangeable, with VERY similar melodies. Even with the strong similarities, though, Deadlight, out of all this band’s albums, is the one that sticks with me the most. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

CONDEMNED: NEW SLAMMING SICKNESS, OR SICKENING NEW SLAMNESS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Aug 312011
 

I’ve visited San Diego a couple of times. It seems like a nice town. You visit Balboa Park, and you see carefree people enjoying the beautiful surroundings and (when the fog isn’t insinuating itself) the sunshine. Fun-loving folks are out having fun at eateries and watering holes in the Gaslamp Quarter. There are beautiful beaches and ocean vistas, and you can catch a ballgame at Petco Park (as long as you don’t mind watching the Padres lose). But . . . there’s also a vile, dark, underside to this superficially pleasant city, and its name is Condemned.

Condemned is a brutal death metal band with a penchant for creating songs that slam. I don’t claim to be an expert in the subgenre of death metal called slam, but I can claim to have suffered brain damage listening to Condemned’s 2007 debut album, Desecrate the Vile. This was a tragic occurrence, because I have so little brain to damage that damaging any of it is a serious loss. However, I have managed to soldier on.

Unfortunately, I suffered further brain damage this afternoon listening to the first song to debut from the new album by Condemned, Realms of the Ungodly, which will be released by Unique Leader on November 9. Fortunately, November 9 is a long way off. I’m on a waiting list at a Seattle hospital for a brain donor, and I’m hoping I’ll be a lucky recipient before November 9. It would be nice to have a whole new brain before I listen to a whole album’s worth of songs like this one. Otherwise, I could be in some real trouble.

The new song is called “The Divine Order of Babylon”, and it’s decimating. The music is ugly, scary, and horrific — but it’s got groove, too. What’s left of my brain, while mourning the part that was killed off, remembers enjoying the song while it lasted. It’s enjoying the awesome album cover by Jon Zig, too. You can listen to the new song after the jump. Maybe your brain is too large and you’d like to reduce it to normal size. Continue reading »

MAURO MERCURIO AT WORK

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  30 Responses »
Aug 312011
 

Three days ago we reviewed the new EP from Italian face-melters Eyeconoclast, Sharpening Our Blades On the Mainstream. Eyeconoclast’s drummer is Mauro Mercurio, and his participation on the EP is one of the things that drew us to Eyeconoclast in the first place. Mercurio was the drummer for a phenomenal Roman death-metal band called Hour of Penance from about 1999 until 2010 and he’s been involved in other projects, as well as doing session work (e.g., he was the session drummer on Oracles (2009), the debut full-length by Fleshgod Apocalypse).

I’ve said before that I don’t know enough about the art of drumming to be a sophisticated critic of drum performances in extreme metal bands. I know what I enjoy hearing and I know when drumming makes an impression on me as I listen to a song and when it doesn’t particularly stand out, but my understanding isn’t much deeper than that. I’m also susceptible to a feeling of awe at sheer, unadulterated speed, especially when the performer is making use of the whole kit at a blazing pace.

Mercurio is one of those drummers who leaves my mouth hanging open, drooling slightly, with a cretinous glazed look in my eyes. I got that gap-mouthed, glazed look this morning when I saw a video that Mercurio put up on YouTube yesterday. It shows him laying down the drum track — in one take — for the title song on that Eyeconoclast EP. According to Mercurio’s note accompanying the video, the tempo of the whole song is 300 beats per minute (bpm). If my math is right, that’s 5 beats per second. This seems very fast to me. The normal resting heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Can the human heart beat at 300 bpm without exploding?

Mercurio also notes that in this recording, there were no triggers on the snares or toms and no studio editing on the drum track. Watch this shit after the jump, and in case you missed the song itself when we reviewed the EP a few days ago, you can hear that after the jump, too. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 18: EMETH

 THE SYNN REPORT  5 Responses »
Aug 312011
 

(I fancy myself a death-metal aficionado, and yet I am learning something new today, thanks to Andy Synn’s report on the discography of Emeth. Allow me to say, FUCK YEAH!)

This Belgian death machine will most likely be new to a lot of you, having spent most of the dark years since it first burst from its cadaverous womb subjugating the scum and villainy of Belgium’s metal underbelly beneath its heel.

Though Belgium does seem to possess an untapped hotbed of bands from all across the genre spectrum, the butchers of Emeth deal solely in a violent trade of brutal death metal that shifts back and forth between incisive hooks and nigh unlistenable, raging mania.

The group’s name means “truth” in Hebrew – a fitting epithet indeed, for a band whose aim is to plumb the depths of the human condition and expose these dark, often disgusting, truths about our fragile existence.

Yet far from being simple death-obsessed goreophiles, the men of Emeth choose to follow a more enigmatic path, delving into themes of insidious terror and shadowy mental torment, as brutal and horrific as any nightmarish concoction of their cannibalistic brethren.

Each album deals with its own terrible truth, the tormented facts and elusive fictions of the physical, the mental and the existential, whose faceless vehemence and formless horror weigh heavily upon our lives. Continue reading »

CHTHONIC: FULL STREAM OF “TAKASAGO ARMY”

 Metal News  No Responses »
Aug 302011
 

Taiwan’s Chthonic is the source of not one, but two of the best metal videos of 2011. We featured one of them here and the second one here. Chthonic is also the source of one of the year’s most interesting albums. Oh hell, why pussyfoot around? In my opinion, it’s also one of the year’s best metal albums.  Our own Andy Synn was pretty high on it, too, as you can tell from his review.

The album was released in certain parts of the world weeks and weeks ago, but it’s not scheduled for official release by Spinefarm Records in NorthAm until September 6. The band will be following that up with a three-week North American tour in support of Arch Enemy, accompanied by DevilDriver and Skeletonwitch. Fucking tasty line-up, that one.  The tour dates, which thankfully include The Emerald City, are after the jump.

But the main reason for this post is to alert you that the entire album is now available for streaming at AOL.  It’s worth hearing, and HERE is the link. Continue reading »

ARKONA: “SLOVO”

 Album Reviews  16 Responses »
Aug 302011
 

(We are so pleased to feature the first NCS guest review (and we hope it’s not the last) by one of our readers and frequent commenters, the only guy around here who gives Phro a run for his money, Trollfiend.)

I sometimes find myself compelled to defend my love of folk and pagan metal to the people I talk about music with, regardless of whether or not they might also like it or, if I’m being honest, whether or not they care.  This is because the genre has a bit of a reputation, possibly deserved, of being a little cheesy.  You know what I mean: furs, swords, war paint . . . this is what a lot of people think of when they hear “folk metal”.  For those of us who love it, though, that image is as fundamental as corpse paint is to old school Norwegian black metal.

Unfortunately along with this expected trope often comes a certain level of dismissal: You see a bunch of dirty assholes in fur cloaks and you automatically think, ‘Oh great, another pile of wannabe Vikings.  I bet that guy drives a Prius.’  If you take that approach to Russian folk metal powerhouse Arkona, however, you’re missing out on having your ass kicked all over Siberia in all kinds of heretofore undiscovered and not entirely unpleasant ways.

Like a lot of female-fronted bands, especially in metal, Arkona pretty much revolves around its frontwoman. In this case, however. It’s not because the record label thinks tits and leather pants are going to sell more albums…it’s because iron-piped Masha “Scream” Arhipova is a fucking ballbusting Slavic demon goddess with a whip made out of broken vodka bottles and a voice that is like getting punched in the face with a bear.

So when I was offered the chance to review Arkona’s latest album Slovo (released Aug 26, 2011) I sharted myself with glee.  After I changed my pants (no one likes to sit in cold shart) I sat down to have a listen. Continue reading »

THE LINDGREN DIET

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  43 Responses »
Aug 302011
 

If you’re like me, you could stand to shed a few unwanted pounds. You get in the habit of drinking a few too many beers on a regular basis, you let your diet go to hell, you sit on your ass for too many hours every day, and before you know it your previously sleek self with the body that made members of the opposite sex, or the same sex, pant after you like dogs in heat has become something that causes you to get rid of all the bathroom mirrors.

But don’t abandon hope! You, too, can have a body like Ola Lindgren, the only constant member of Grave, the legendary Swedish death-metal band. Lindgren is somewhere in his 40s and undoubtedly has decades of crap food and heavy drinking behind him. But that hasn’t stopped Lindgren from staying in fighting trim, with sculpted abs and the kind of body-fat percentage that would make a marathoner jealous.

Some of you would probably guess that Lindgren stays in shape by burning thousands of calories performing on stage in a rigorous touring schedule. But that would be wrong. You don’t have to be a popular death metal musician and vocalist to stay in shape. All it takes is the right diet.

And now, for the first time, Ola Lindgren has revealed the secrets of staying trim in the underground metal scene, with daily diet regimens that will take off those unwanted pounds and keep them off! Yes, you too can have a body like Ola Lindgren’s, and all you have to do is subscribe to “Lindgren’s Health Blog 666”. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MELODEATH WEEK: IN DREAD RESPONSE

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Aug 302011
 

(NCS writer TheMadIsraeli serves up Part 2 of his week-long series on modern melodic death metal.)

One of the complaints I’ve always heard about melodeath is that it isn’t aggressive enough. Well, to those complainers, In Dread Response is here to tell you to fuck yourself.

The debut of this New Zealand band, released in 2008, is really something to behold. I mean, just listen to the two singles (one here and one after the jump):


Continue reading »

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