SLYTRACT: “EXISTING UNREAL”

 Album Reviews  35 Responses »
Aug 082011
 

Slytract is a three-man band from Hungary whose new album (their second) is one of the most pleasant discoveries I’ve made this year. I gather from my reading that their 2008 debut, Explanation: Unknown, was a raw mix of thrash and death metal, but the new release, Existing Unreal (which will become available on August 26), stands four-square in the territory of hi-octane melodic death metal, and man, is it an accomplished planting of the flag in that territory.

There are no ho-hum songs on this album — I thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. Because of the mature song construction and the band’s facility in the creation of distinctive melody and rhythm, I looked forward to each track on the third and fourth listens as much as on the first. Though there’s continuity in the band’s stylistic identity from the record’s beginning to its end, most reminiscent to me of the almighty Insomnium (except with more pedal-to-the-floor pacing), each song has its own personality.

In its execution, what makes Existing Unreal a cut above the average MDM offering comes down to one person — Gábor B. Melegh. He provides most of the vocals and he’s the band’s sole studio guitarist (Gyula Czeglédi is the second guitarist when the band plays live). Vocals first: He sounds like Amon Amarth’s Johan Hegg, which means that no matter how high-flying or approachable the melodies may become, the songs have a counter-balancing bestial edge that will scare away all the hipsters and casual metal dabblers, which is just fucking fine by me. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

GUILT ASSUAGEMENT

 IQ Subtraction  34 Responses »
Aug 072011
 

OK, yes, I feel like a dick. There is no actual NCS tour (at least not yet), merely my own hair-brained idea of humor. I could have just put up that spoof post today with no advance teasing, and everyone would have seen it for what it was, eventually, and maybe gotten a chuckle or two out of it. But no, I had to be a dick and put up a facebook status hinting that we would have news today of a tour sponsorship.

And that led to lots of heartwarming “likes” and comments and e-mail messages from people who thought this would be real and were genuinely excited and happy for us that we were sponsoring a tour. Fuck. I should have known.

So I’ve been feeling guilty over the last 48 hours over my dickishness. Guilt, for me, is a powerful motivator, and so I’ve been thinking of how I could assuage my guilty feelings. I came up with this idea, which does make me feel better, though “dickwad” may still remain my new name in the minds of many.

We are going to create and give away 100 black t-shirts with the fake tour poster you see up above on the front of the shirt (and a big thank-you to Dan Arena of Dormition Designs, the poster’s creator, for permission to do this). Yes, I said give away — we’re even paying the shipping charges. Details about how to get one of the shirts follows the jump. Continue reading »

WE SPONSOR OUR FIRST TOUR! GET EXCITE!

 IQ Subtraction, Metal News  22 Responses »
Aug 072011
 

Here’s the news you’ve all been waiting for . . .

Sponsoring tours is old hat to big-boy metal sites like MetalSucks, but it’s a dream come true for us. We are so fucking proud to announce the first-ever NCS-sponsored nationwide metal tour, which kicks off on September 1 — and man, have we lined up some radical acts for this baby. It’s like a dream line-up for us, headlined by the awesome, penetrating extremity that is Massive Wall of Penis.

Some of these names may not be as familiar to you as MWOP, but trust us, from top to bottom, this bill is as strong as a big, stiff . . . uh . . . thing of stiffness. We’ve got those masters of old-school Swe-death, Thor’s Uterus. We’ve got the dominatrix-fronted grind of Trollcock Fetish. We’ve got the tentacle-metal of Raging Hectocotylus (the actual multi-orifice penetration on stage is not to be missed).

And let’s not forget about the brutal death metal served up by the inimitable Putrid Fugue, who refuse to bathe beginning a month before a tour starts until a month after it ends and eat nothing but cold canned chili on the road. Fans have been known to faint from the stench when these dudes take the stage!

We’ve also got that demented Pink Floyd cover band, Dildo Resin. If you haven’t heard their tech-death take on “Dark Side of the Moon”, you’re in for a fucken treat. And to get these shows off on the right foot, we’ve scored Cephalopodic Sperm Packets as the opening act, with their namesake fluid sound of dank, sticky, Neurosis-style sludge and their projectile fluid canisters to get the moshpit good and lubed up for the remaining acts.

Trust us, this tour will blow your shit away. Check the schedule after the jump to find the tour stop nearest you. Continue reading »

ALIASES: “SAFER THAN REALITY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 072011
 

(Israel continues to pump out the reviews. Here’s his take on the latest from UK tech-metallers Aliases.)

I love SikTh. I don’t think any band is ever going to be able to recapture the sense of quirkiness and eccentricity they had in their unique sound. People have been waiting for them to reform. It hasn’t happened YET, and I’m more or less reconciled to it never happening. So now what?

Well… one of the masterminds, if not THE mastermind, behind SikTh, guitarist Graham “Pin” Pinney, has formed a new project by the name of Aliases. What is Aliases you ask? The initial reaction would be, most definitely, to brand them as djent, although this isn’t entirely fair. Graham’s signature style of guitar playing is indeed on display here, but the man has obviously evolved beyond his initial roots in SikTh to something, dare I say, more sophisticated.

Aliases is comprised of guitarists Graham and Leah Woodward, Jay Berast on vocals, Darren Pugh on drums, and Joe Heaton on bass. All are extremely proficient at what they do, all definitely in it to win it. So the question is, just how good is the music found on Aliases’ debut, Safer Than Reality?

What do you think? (hold that thought until you see what comes right after the jump) Continue reading »

DRINK WITH THE LIVING DEAD!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 062011
 

A big thank-you to the lovely Fireangel from the wonderful Finland-based Night Elves blog for her e-mail alerting me to this serving of Saturday awesomeness-ness.

Ghoultown is a Texas-based “hellbilly” band whose music is a metal-tinged, ghoul-themed amalgam of cowpunk and rockabilly. I don’t claim to be an expert on the band’s lengthy discography, but I do like the catchy bit of cautionary storytelling embodied in their song “Drink With the Living Dead”, which appears on the Life After Sundown album. And I especially like the brand new animated video produced for the song.

The artwork in the video was entirely created by Finnish artist Juha Vuorma, who is both a comic-book artist and a creator of album covers, including the art for the first three Kalmah albums as well as covers for records by Usurper and Altars of Destruction, among others. The video’s storyline (and the song) were written by Ghoultown frontman Count Lyle, and the final animation and directing for the video were completed by LA-based Laume Conroy.

Regardless of whether the music sounds like your kinda thing, the video is absolutely worth watching. After the jump, I’ve got a few more thoughts and then the video. Continue reading »

THE BYSTANDER CHRONICLER: SE7EN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Aug 062011
 

(NCS contributor Siddharth Darbha has become The Bystander Chronicler . . .)

INTRODUCTION

Back at the Man Cave, a.k.a., NCS HQ, we were doing the usual shit; plumbing, repairing cars and teaching Don Draper how to drink Scotch. Somewhere between the overdose of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine and the disproportionate ratio of LSD in our jam toast, a flash of light told us we have to feature seven bands that haven’t appeared on NCS yet, and pretty much blur the sense of reality we create for ourselves. We followed to the word. We are weak at math, but added roman numerals to compensate.

Most of the artists here don’t give a fuck about being metal enough. You have been warned. Also, somehow, through the alignment of all the planets from the CQ34R system, all except the first turn out to be instrumental bands, fitting nicely into our basic rule welded into the URL itself. Why did we chose these artists? We fear most of you are turning into serial necropedophilic rapists, and we need to calm you down. *Hypercool Dr. Evil grin*

I : THE HAARP MACHINE

We listen to a good amount of technical metal, and can tell when we hear a good one. Though their debut album is yet to release this year under Sumerian Records, we will hold our panties in a bunch until these Britishers (pictured above) throw those discs at us. Excellent note choices, good grooves and a weird middle eastern-ish ambient touch; they know what they’re doing. Here, to reinforce our opinion, we feature their track “The Escapist Notion” (immediately after the jump): Continue reading »

VADER RELEASES A DECAPITATING NEW SONG

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Aug 052011
 

All of you know how very, very stoked we are here at NCS for the release of the new album from Poland’s Vader, Welcome To the Morbid Reich. About a month ago, we got the first song from the album, “Come and See My Sacrifice”, and now we have a second one: “Decapitated Saints”, which appears to be a re-recording of a song that first appeared on the band’s 1989 demo, Necrolust.

I’m so damned excited to share this with you that I’m not even going to waste time trying to describe it to you. Fuck, you’re going to listen to it anyway, right? (If the answer to that question is No, please keep it to yourself.) After the jump, stream “Decapitated Saints”, but first be sure you’ve tied your head down firmly to your neck and shoulders. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 16: COMMUNIC

 THE SYNN REPORT  2 Responses »
Aug 052011
 

(Time for another SYNN REPORT. Today, Andy looks back at the discography of Norway’s Communic, and on Monday we’ll have his review of the band’s brand new album, “The Bottom Deep”.)

Hailing from Kristiansand, Norway, yet bucking the common trends one associates with Norwegian music – no rotten, corpse-painted fury or leather-clad, aggressive sleaze to be found here – prog-metal 3-piece Communic pursue a huge, multi-faceted sound that takes in recognisable elements from a multiplicity of metal sub-genres, swallowing up thrashy rhythms, soaring vocals, labyrinthine song structures, adaptable string-work and elaborate, eloquent drumming, melting them down to their constituents in order to re-forge them anew into a whole far greater than the mere sum of the parts.

Each of the three members is a vital component in crafting the complex and convoluted mini-epics which make up Communic’s various records; Tor Atle Andersen’s drums are a sheer delight to experience, over and over again playing subtle rhythmic shifts off against pounding artillery fire, Erik Mortensen’s flowing, liquid bass lines adding both depth and power in equal measure, while frontman Oddleif Stensland draws from a seemingly bottomless well of scything riffs and piercing, emotional solos. The way these three individuals play off one another is mesmerising, creating a vast soundscape of progressive instrumentalism one second, locking into a devastating metallic groove the next. The breadth of their sound and the sheer array of sonic textures they are able to conjure is a testament both to their striking individual personalities and to their collective focus and the musical identity they have built.

For all their soaring, epic compositions, the band are careful to maintain a strong foundation of armour-plated riffs which make their layered, expansive sound a legitimately heavy concern. At times soft and soothing, at others hard and pounding, these Norwegian progsters have perfected a precise balance between melancholy clarity and crushing power that serves as a perfect foil to their dark, often wilfully complex, subject matter. (more after the jump, including tracks to stream from each album . . .) Continue reading »

GIANT SQUID

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 052011
 

Our metallic bro BadWolf e-mailed me late yesterday with news that NorCal’s Giant Squid has a new album on the way, with a new song posted for streaming. On the one hand, Giant Squid’s music isn’t my usual kind of thing. If you amalgamated various genre tags that the band itself uses, I think that would be a fair description: post-metal-art-doom-rock-sludge. I also have trouble with Aaron John Gregory’s quirky, high-pitched, occasionally screechy style of clean singing.

On the other hand, the music on the band’s last album (the only one I’ve heard) — The Ichthyologist — was original, unpredictable, and uninhibited, and I can respect that, even if it hasn’t seen many plays on my iPod. Plus, I do like the band’s use of down-tuned sludge-chords in juxtaposition with airier melodies. Plus, there’s that album cover for the new one, Cenotes, which is due for release on October 25 on Translation Loss Records. Fucking great, weird piece of art, also created by Aaron John Gregory. Plus, we’ve already gone off our usual beaten path today with that deathstep thing.

After the jump, you’ll find a player that will stream the first song to be released from Cenotes, “Figura Serpentinata (Pycnopodia sapien)”. The track list for the new album, plus streams of the band’s previous discography can be found at their Bandcamp page or their facebook. Continue reading »

DEATHSTEP: FUCKING GOOD PANCAKE OR MASSIVE WALL OF PENIS?

 Album Reviews  22 Responses »
Aug 052011
 

At NCS, we do our best to cover a broad swath of metal, but there’s one genre we’ve almost completely ignored — that union of dubstep and death metal known as deathstep. There are reasons for that, principally because your humble author knows virtually fuck-all about the genre and has a low tolerance for electronica. I say “almost completely ignored” and “virtually fuck all” because once upon a time we did pay attention (here) to a remix by Cam Argon (Big Chocolate, Disfiguring the Goddess) of a Suicide Silence song. In addition, occasional NCS guest writer The Artist Formerly Known As Dan (who, by the way, needs to send me more posts!) provided this feature about dubstep, which included one of the deathstep tracks created by the Cam Argon-Mitch Lucker collaboration known as Commissioner.

Earlier this week, I got an e-mail from NCS reader and musician Ray Heberer (who has some big news on the way about several of his projects — but more on that later) suggesting that deathstep is worth more attention. As Ray pointed out, prototypes of the genre have been popping up with increasing frequency, but you won’t find much of it dating back more than a year — it may be the first new metal genre of this decade. Does that mean it’s worth anyone’s time? Well, that’s the question, innit?

I’m certainly not yet prepared to shower deathstep with accolades, and I have little doubt that metal elitists (which means about 99% of all metalheads) are or will be inclined to vomit all over the style at the slightest provocation. But while withholding judgment about the budding genre as a whole, I definitely am prepared to shower some accolades on one example of the genre that Ray turned me onto in his e-mail. It’s a full-length album — as far as I know, the first full-length deathstep production, period. Not only is it an album-length work, it’s one song — 39:54 in length — and it’s available for free download.

And, unexpectedly, it’s unusually good. Ray wrote that it may be a genre-defining piece of music, and he may be right. The musician goes by the name Switchup, the album is called Hell’s Symphony. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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