HATESPHERE

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Aug 282011
 

Is this a badass album cover or what? Yes, I’m still catching up on last week’s news, and when I saw this, I damn well came to a full stop. Not only because of the artwork, but because Denmark’s HateSphere is one of those bands whose new music I think is always worth checking out (and this comes from someone who’s not a huge thrash fan).

Their next album may be especially worth our time, for three reasons. First, how can you go wrong with an album called The Great Bludgeoning? Second, the band’s line-up has changed since their last release in 2009 (To the Nines). Esben “Esse” Hansen (who also sings in As We Fight) joined the band as vocalist in June 2010, and a bass player with a punk background named Jimmy Nedergaard (Gob Squad) joined more recently for the recording of the new album. I’m curious about how those changes may affect the band’s sound. (Actually, we already have evidence, as you’ll hear.)

Third, the band claims that for the new album, they’ve taken a “more old-school direction” than they did on the last release, with a lyrical focus on “aggressions, drinking and hate”. So in other words, it will be an upbeat, family-friendly affair. Yay!

Oh yeah, one more thing: There’s a teaser clip available now, which will musically tease you. It’s after the jump, along with info about the album artist, the release dates, and a few other factual morsels. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 34: EYECONOCLAST, UNDER EDEN, AND HEIDEVOLK

 MISCELLANY  30 Responses »
Aug 282011
 


To recap the rules of this MISCELLANY game for NCS newcomers: When bands or labels write us, or we get reader recommendations, or we see news blurbs about bands who look interesting, we put the band names on a list. We limit this list to bands whose music we’ve never heard, and the majority of the listed bands are unsigned. At irregular intervals, when I’ve got time, I randomly pick a few names from the list and listen to one or two of their songs, and then I write my impressions for this MISCELLANY series. Plus, I make it possible for you to hear what I heard (or saw, if it’s a video).

This exercise is different from our reviews, which we almost always limit to music we want to recommend. For this exercise, like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, we don’t know what we’re going to get. It may or may not taste delicious. But the surprise factor is part of the fun (at least for me). For today’s post, the bands I picked were Eyeconoclast (Italy), Under Eden (US), and Heidevolk (The Netherlands). I actually picked a fourth band, too, but I’m discussing them separately, to keep this thing from growing even longer than it already is.

I’ll go ahead and confess right up front: I cheated on the MISCELLANY rules for all three bands, because their music turned out to be too interesting to assess with just one song. Yes, I even cheated on the last one, too, though it’s not the kind of music I typically embrace. All that cheating means there’s a lot of music coming your way after the jump, but none of you has a real life, do you? Of course not, so you have plenty of time to listen. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: MEANKIND

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  29 Responses »
Aug 272011
 

(In sympathy with our brothers and sisters on the East Coast who are enduring Hurricane Irene, our second post of this Saturday is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the free EP from a Hungarian musical hurricane called Meankind.)

Who exactly is this dynamic duo who dare to call themselves Meankind?

That’s right.  The most boss of metal duo’s ever.  Extreme high-speed death metal offered in short doses on this band’s debut EP 22.Zero is what you get.  Meankind can do melodic, atonal, brutal, grooving — you name it, and Meankind will write a riff that will suit your needs. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OBLIVIONIZED

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Aug 272011
 

Oblivionized could hardly have chosen a better name for themselves, because that’s how you’ll feel after listening to their debut EP, Abhorrent Evolution. It’s music made for those times when you’re in the mood for head-whipping self-destruction. Fair warning: it’s also the kind of song collection that causes me involuntarily to spew forth a froth of mixed metaphors. So, the English majors in the audience may want to take a sedative before reading further.

This is demonic deathgrind. I listen, and I think about being backed against a wall with a firehose spewing sulphuric acid at full force, straight at my unprotected self. Massively distorted guitars that shriek and crush. Cleaner guitar leads that slither like fat white worms that haven’t had their fill of coring yet. Gut-rumbling bass picking that’s faster than a famished cheetah on the trail of a doomed antelope with blood in the wind.

Bullet-paced drumming that may possibly be the most riveting sound on the whole fuckin’ album. Vocals that sound utterly deranged — a cacophony of shrieking and roaring, the sound of people being torn apart mixed with the gory growls of whatever supernatural things are doing the tearing, and the eating. Abhorrent Evolution is super-charged metal at a hyperdrive pace, a tech-grind portrait of the 7th Circle of Hell, music with the sensibilities of a ravenous demon horde set loose after a milennial imprisonent. And more metaphors. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FRIDAY VIDEO ROUNDUP

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 262011
 

This post will be atypically short on words and long on audio-visual content. I saw three brand new videos this morning that I thought were worth sharing. I’m going to arrange these in ascending order of length, from shortest to longest.

On the short end of this stick, we’ve got the new video from Toxic Holocaust for a song called “Judgment Awaits You”. It’s from their new Relapse records release, Conjure and Command. Short, brutish, punk-thrash from a PNW band who have grown on me more and more as time passes.  Thanks to BlankTV for premiering this baby.

In the middle of this line-up is a new live video from Arch Enemy for the song “Bloodstained Cross”. The song is from their 2011 Century Media release, Khaos Legions. Yes, I confess: I have always had a crush on Angela Gossow. Does that make me weak? The video intersperses cuts of live shows from all over, with the audio from the album track. It was premiered by Revolver earlier today at this location.

The last and longest piece of vid is an August 24 live performance by Krallice of the song “Telluric Rings” from the band’s 2011 Profound Lore album Diotima, which our bro BadWolf eloquently reviewed for us here. If after all of our harping about Krallice here at NCS you still haven’t taken the plunge, now’s a good time to get wet. One of the best American black metal albums of the year, in my halfwitted opinion. The vocals are sort of drowned out on this vid, but otherwise the audio quality is decent, and the video is pro-shot.

So, that’s it for the words. All three videos are lined up for you after the jump. Enjoy the rest of your fucking day. Continue reading »

ENOCHIAN THEORY – “EVOLUTION: CREATIO EX NIHILO”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  4 Responses »
Aug 262011
 

(Andy Synn takes us into the weekend with his review of the first album from the UK’s Enochian Theory.)

Hello again ladies and gents, here’s another taste of something a little different that barely comes under the site’s remit, yet I feel will appeal to the more expressive and open-minded of you all the same.

Enochian Theory are a UK prog band of expansive ambition and mesmerising melody where majestic cleans rule the roost and growled vocals are definitely the exception, rather than the rule. Very much art for art’s sake, the enigmatic complexity of each song’s serpentine structuring is offset by the soaring, infectiously melodic vocals of frontman Ben Harris-Hayes, whose emotive delivery and harmonious, scintillating lyrical expositions contribute to making the album that rarest of things, both an immediate pleasure and a long-term investment of impressive quality and intriguing depth. The candid, at times even painfully raw, nature of the singing gives the whole expansive, captivating affair a recognisably human element which serves as an anchor point no matter how convoluted or complex the music may become.

When absorbed in the album itself, I actually struggled to compare it directly to any external influence, so distinctive is its sound, although links can be drawn, very favourably, to fellow British prog luminaries Anathema and Porcupine Tree, along with the solo works of PT’s own Steven Wilson. Yet of greatest interest to the readers of this site will be the sonic connections to the emotionally complex solo work of Devin Townsend, the raging ambience of latter-day Isis, and the mind-bending instrumental excursions more commonly attributed to Tool. Yet Enochian Theory themselves are very much a singular entity, these comparisons barely scratching the surface of what the three-piece actual sound like in full-flight.   (more after the jump .. . .) Continue reading »

REVISITING THE CLASSICS: “FORBIDDEN EVIL”

 Album Reviews, Revisiting the Classics  18 Responses »
Aug 262011
 

(TheMadIsraeli, who originated our now-continuing series of look-backs at metal classics, provides this latest installment, focusing on the 1988 debut by California’s Forbidden.)

Thrash metal in a lot of ways IS metal to me.  It’s the genre that, when I think about metal, I gravitate to automatically.  The energy, the frantic rage and desperation, THE FUCKING SPEED AND THE RIFFS!  It’s always astonishing to me when I meet a metalhead who doesn’t like thrash.  That’s like not liking pizza, or beer, or the combination thereof.

Forbidden was a thrash band I’d always heard about but never bothered to check out, dismissing them as a cult band who were viewed as being more legitimate than the more popular thrashers because they simply weren’t mainstream.  Boy was I wrong, and it took one unexpected circumstance to open my eyes: My girlfriend at the time made me check out Forbidden’s music.  Yes people, my girlfriend at the time had better music than I did, AND was hotter than I was, AND was more talented.  Hopefully, I’m on my way to catching up, at least on the quality of music I have.

Forbidden Evil is the typical fan favorite, as well as mine, but for good reason.  Consisting of a badass set of pipes by the name of Russ Anderson, a fierce guitar duo in Craig Locicero (one of my fav guitarists of all time mind you) and Glen Alvelais, Paul Bostaph on drums, and Matt Camacho on bass, Forbidden were poised to take the thrash circuit by storm with the release of this album. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

ECCENTRICITY

 Mosh Pit  55 Responses »
Aug 252011
 

We all live in two worlds: the face-to-face world, the world of flesh and blood, populated by the people with whom we interact in person on a daily basis, and the electronically enabled world, in which we interact with people we’ve never met. In my face-to-face world, most of the people I know aren’t metalheads. The people I work with and most of my friends aren’t into metal, and don’t have any idea that I have this blog. They’d be terribly confused if they knew.

I do know people in the flesh-and-blood world who are into metal — people I see at Seattle clubs pretty regularly, a handful of musicians, and a few people I’m very close to, but in my circle of friends, they’re outnumbered by people who don’t get the attraction of metal at all. The truth is that I “know” far more people who are metalheads in the electronic world than I do in the face-to-face world, and I’ve “met” most of them through NCS.

The headbangers from those two worlds, as a group, aren’t a statistically valid sample, and I’m certainly not a trained sociologist, but when I think about all the metalheads I know and I throw in the ones I read about, I draw some conclusions about why I’m drawn to them. In most ways, I think they’re like most people. They’re not any smarter or dumber than anyone else — it’s basically the same Bell curve. They’re not any more or less fair, any more or less conscientious, any more or less moral or “deviant”, any more or less hard-working, no more immune or susceptible to pain or joy, no less needing of love and friendship, no more or less heedless of the feelings of others.

Despite the vaunted extremes of the metal scene, I don’t even think most metalheads are any more individualistic or independent than the average person either. Because, let’s face it, human beings are social creatures. We’re herd animals. We need standards and we conform to conventions, and most of us tend to be followers instead of leaders. It just happens that our herd is smaller than the big herds that swarm around us, and our conventions seem alien to the members of those larger herds. Having said all this, however, I do think metalheads are different in certain ways, and those differences are what draw me to them. Yes, part of it is that they use the words “fuck” and “fucking” more often than most people, but there’s more. (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SCIENCE OF DEMISE: “SUBMERGE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Aug 252011
 

(TheMadIsraeli has another discovery for us, and another free download that we’re hosting for an impressive young band from Gothenburg, Sweden.)

100 Knives Inside drummer Nikolaj Sloth Lauszus messaged me one day and told me he had some friends of his he wanted me to check out.  USUALLY when a band member wants me to check out a band they’re friends with, the band typically sucks.  And hard.  However, Science Of Demise is a whole other case entirely.

As in a fucking awesome one.  This is Science Of Demise’s debut LP Submerge. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

ANALDICKTION: “SLUTS”

 Album Reviews, Phro's Posts  36 Responses »
Aug 252011
 

(Would you wanna run into these dudes in a dark alley? I think Phro would. Yes, we have a guest-review from the tentacle master hisself. Which means that if you have children, they need to be locked up in the next county before you read this. And if you don’t have children, well just write that off the list of your life goals. My anus feels raw just reading this.)

12:24…12:24…12:24…12:25…

The red glow of the alarm clock filled my room like an over-sized cock slapping you in the face.  It wouldn’t go away, and it wouldn’t let you forget that it was there.  And it kind of made my head hurt.

I closed my eyes again and rubbed them—wait.  Why were my hands covered in warm…liquid.  Oh, god, I thought, not a-fucking-gain…what the hell happened here??

I slowly rolled onto my belly and felt something poking my hip.  It felt squishy.  I assumed that was not good.  After sighing dejectedly, I pushed myself to my feet and attempted to find the light switch.  The moment light bathed the room I vomited like a dog chewing on grass.

Let’s back up 24 minutes.  (more after the jump . . . oh yes . . . much, much more) Continue reading »

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