“THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 43): THE BLUE FUCKING ANGELS

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  9 Responses »
Aug 042011
 

In Seattle, the city near the metallic island that NCS calls home, there is a summer tradition called Seafair, which is just about to begin. It’s been going on since the 1950s. It involves things like hydroplane racing on Lake Washington, a Boeing air show, music concerts (no metal, of course), both US and Canadian naval warships on parade, human parades, and copious drinking and eating. But my favorite part of the festival is the air show put on by The Blue Angels.

For those of you living outside the US, The Blue Angels are a squadron of Navy pilots who perform aerial acrobatics using F/A-18 Hornet aircraft flying at the speed of holyfuckwhatwasthat! They perform for 2 days in a row (this weekend), and they have practice runs for two days before the performance (the first of which happened to be today). They’re loud — louder than a drunken fuck in a thin-walled motel. In fact, they’re so distracting that a major interstate highway in their flight path is shut down when they’re practicing and performing. You can imagine how drivers feel about that.

Yes, The Blue Angels are metal, but that’s actually not what this post is about. What this post is about is an Onion-style piece of reporting about The Blue Angels in an internet mag called The Seattle Salmon. It so perfectly captures the tight-sphincter side of Seattle culture, and it’s so goddamned hilarious that I have to put it up, verbatim, right after the jump. It is definitely metal. The title of the piece? “Seattle’s Pussies Prepare To Bitch About The Blue Fucking Angels”. Continue reading »

BATTLECROSS’ PURSUIT OF HONOR; or AMERICA FUCK YEAH!

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Aug 042011
 

(NCS contributor BadWolf weighs in with his thoughts about the new Metal Blade release from Battlecross.)

In the interest of full disclosure, readers beware: I have a personal interest in Battlecross. I have known them from the earliest demo tapes, been involved in their scene for years, pimped their debut album endlessly, and have a vested interest in their success.

None of that changes that Pursuit of Honor, their debut album on Metal Blade, is a triumphant achievement, as well as a testament to the perseverance of Detroit, and the virility of modern American metal.

Let’s take the story back five years. I was a freshman at a liberal arts college in Michigan and met my best friend there. At that time I was metal to the bone but wholly disinterested in modern metal. He changed that with two albums: Lamb of God’s Sacrament, Trivium’s Ascendency. Suddenly I got the connection between the late-80’s thrash titans I worshipped and contemporary metal.

Months later Machine Head’s The Blackening was released and I was adrift in the middle of the American metal renaissance. This style is directly descended from Slayer, Pantera and Metallica, but incorporated the mosh-friendly rhythm of hardcore and the triumphant melodicism of European death metal. After a Trivium gig that year, my BFF and I sat up drinking 40’s of Miller Lite and jamming to the Battlecross demo we got in the parking lot. The next year that style was dead—suffocated by pop-metalcore (which we rejected) and the prog-death explosion (which we embraced).

Flash forward to now and the style is attempting to revive: Revocation are trying to cash in on their critical acclaim, as are Lazarus A.D., and finally Machine Head are releasing the follow-up to The Blackening. None of that matters: Battlecross have revived the genre all their own. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE ERLANDSSON BROTHERS TEAR IT UP AT TUSKA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 042011
 

Adrian and Daniel Erlandsson are brothers, both of whom started playing drums at an early age in their home in Malmö, Sweden. Adrian went on to become the drummer for bands such as At the Gates, The Haunted, and Cradle of Filth, and currently plays for Brujeria and Paradise Lost. Daniel has been almost as prolific. His work includes drum duties on In Flames‘ Subterranean album, and he’s been the drummer for Arch Enemy since 1998.

By all accounts, both are considered very good at what they do. I’ve admitted before that I’m not a good judge of technical ability; I tend to fall into a state of slack-jawed wonder when I watch almost any capable extreme-metal drummer performing live. I can’t wrap my mind around the stamina, the physical coordination, and the memory skills required to play such intricate rhythms at such high speed for such a long time. But I do know what I like to hear, and I like to hear the Erlandsson brothers at work.

Not long ago, we featured drum-cam footage of Fredrik Andersson of Amon Amarth playing at the recent Tuska music festival in Finland. Now we’ve got drum-cam video of the Erlandsson brothers at the same festival — Adrian performing with the legendary At the Gates, and Daniel with Arch Enemy. I had fun watching these clips, and only a couple of flies entered my open mouth while I watched. I thought you might like this shit, too, so after the jump you can check out the brothers Erlandsson doing what they do best. Continue reading »

JASTA

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Aug 042011
 

(Israel Flanders reviews Jamey Jasta’s new, self-titled solo album. He is expecting some disagreement.)

Ok, so Islander posted a song from this album recently and people didn’t care for it that much. I suspect that many of those opinions were simply pre-conceptions brought on by Jasta’s infamous brocore outfit Hatebreed. Yes, Hatebreed are the bro-est of bros, if there is such a thing as an epitomizing band, but it is unfair to apply it to Jasta in this case. This is really good music that deserves a shot.

So what does Jasta as an album have to offer? This album, according to the man himself, is an amalgamation of all of his musical influences. He plays everything, and wrote everything. Jasta’s preferences seem to cater toward thrash metal, old school hardcore, a taste for some slight metalcore sensibilities, and a little bit of that Crowbar southern sludge weight.

The album opens with “Walk That Path Alone”, a totally old-school throwback hardcore song with a catchy breakdown at the end that doesn’t bore me to tears. The next three songs “Mourn The Illusion”, “Screams From The Sanctuary”, and “Nothing They Say” demonstrate Jasta’s more metalcore leanings. We get to hear for the first time that the man is actually good at clean singing. I know, sounds impossible right? It isn’t. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

BE STILL MY BEATING HEART: DECAPITATED, DECREPIT BIRTH, AND FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE ON TOUR!

 Metal News  27 Responses »
Aug 032011
 

I just saw the news about a new tour beginning at the end of September, and I was so excited it nearly gave me heart failure. Our friends at MetalSucks are sponsoring the 2011 CARNIVAL IS FOREVER NORTH AMERICAN TOUR, headlined by Decapitated and including Decrepit Birth, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Rings of Saturn, and The Haarp Machine.

For my tastes, that is just a stupendously strong line-up. Though I haven’t yet heard The Haarp Machine, I will now hunt down their music with interest, and as for the rest of the bands, well I’m not going to make reference to boners or cum because that would be inconsistent with my previously expressed opinions on the use of such words in metal writing. I will just say that something wet has happened and I am unable to stand up.

After the jump you can see the schedule. I believe it is a fine schedule, because it includes a stop in Seattle. Continue reading »

FUCKING GOOD PANCAKE – Part 3

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Aug 032011
 

This post is devoted to the third of the songs I heard this morning that caused me to shout “FUCKING GOOD PANCAKE!!”, which caused my cat to spontaneously evacuate his bowels, undoubtedly because he is not conversant in Google Translate renditions of Finnish idiom into English. The fact that he is almost 20 years old and now seems prone to spontaneous evacuation may also have something to do with it. However, just to be safe, the next time I hear a song as hot as these three, I plan to whisper fucking good pancake.

This last, but not least, part of my morning discoveries is the latest pre-production track to be posted for listening by The Binary Code.  My admiration for this band goes back to a time when both NCS and the band were in their infancy, so to speak — though The Binary Code never seemed to take baby steps. In their music, they were fully mature from the outset, whereas I’m still breast-feeding.

Although we have written about The Binary Code frequently, reviewing all of their musical output to date, it’s been a while since we checked in with them. They haven’t exactly been sitting still since the release of their Priest EP last summer (reviewed here). Yesterday, they added to their Facebook band page the third of three new pre-production tracks. The latest song is called “Dark Meditations”, and it is indeed a dark, heavy, atmospheric instrumental. Part ambient cloudscape, part jolting, pneumatic riff-fest, part progressive guitar exploration, it’s just fucking good pancake from beginning to end. Cool bass line in this song, too.

Check it out after the jump, and we’ll throw in the first two pre-production tracks for your listening pleasure, too. Both of them are tremendously good. By the way, these may be pre-production tracks, but they sound pretty fucking finished to me. In fact, they sound like The Binary Code’s best work to date. Continue reading »

FUCKING GOOD PANCAKE – Part 2

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Aug 032011
 

As promised, here’s the second part of this morning’s 3-part series devoted to new songs I’ve just heard that qualify as fucking good pancake.

I came across this song in a typically randomized fashion. I know you’re dying to learn how that happened, and so I will tell you, because I don’t want you to die, because, y’know, your death would reduce our readership and site traffic, and that would reduce our advertising revenue from zero to some kind of negative number. Since we don’t advertise, I wonder who I would have to pay if you died?

Where was I? Oh yeah, how I came across this song. Well, I included a UK band called Anterior in this morning’s installment of MORE 2011 SICKNESS. I saw a news blurb about the band’s forthcoming album, and their name rang a bell with me — though I wasn’t sure why it did — and so I added it to that list of forthcoming albums. One of our readers, jeimssi, added a comment to the effect that it was the first time jeimssi had seen anyone writing about Anterior anywhere, and that caused me to think harder about how I knew this band and why I had lost track of them.

I have only one Anterior song on my iPod, and I can’t remember why it’s there. It’s called “Days of Deliverance”. While listening to that song for the first time in many moons, I did some net-snooping to find out more about what Anterior has been up to — and came across a squib from Metal Blade Europe from a bit earlier this morning announcing that Anterior had just premiered the second single from the new album. My machinelike mind, working at the speed of light, deduced that Anterior must have also released a first song from the album.

So, I tracked down both songs. The one that premiered today is called “Blood in the Throne Room” — and fuck, did it light me up from the first few notes. It’s a blistering, headlong gallop of melodeath pancake goodness, with a crazy-good guitar solo whipped into the batter. Listen after the jump (you’ll find a stream of the first song from the new album after the jump, too.) Continue reading »

FUCKING GOOD PANCAKE – Part 1

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 032011
 

I usually try to put some thought into the headlines for NCS posts (usually about 30 seconds of thought), instead of just writing, “HEY MUTHAFUCKAZ, THIS NEW SONG RULEZ!” For this post, the title just typed itself. As for what it means, those who know, know. Those who don’t need to bone up on their Finnish idioms.

This morning, I have three new songs that qualify as fucking good pancake. The first one, which is the subject of this post, comes from Dutch progressive tech-metallers Textures. They’ve released the first taste of new music from their forthcoming album Dualism. The track is called “Singularity,” and you can hear it on the band’s Facebook page by pressing the “Like” box (I don’t yet have an embeddable copy of the track — when I do, I’ll update this post to add it here for those who aren’t FB nerds).

The song is fucking good pancake. I am liking the dominant riff very much. It is a slightly off-kilter series of hammer blows. I am liking the harsh vocals and tolerating the clean ones. I am liking the rhythmic changes and instrumental progressions in the song’s mid-section. I am liking the propulsive drum fills. I am liking the floating melodies (though not liking them as much as on “Awake”). But mainly, I am liking that dominant Meshuggah-style riff. Fucking good pancake. Go listen to it, won’t you?

Nuclear Blast will be releasing the album’s first official single, “Reaching Home,” on August 19. Dualism will come out on September 23 in Europe, South America, Australia and Asia, and on September 27 in North America. (a bit more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE BURNING

 Album Reviews  11 Responses »
Aug 032011
 

(NCS writer Israel Flanders shines our spotlight on the discography of The Burning.)

Since plans have not gone as smoothly as expected (still don’t have Vader and Aliases for review yet), I had a special article in the bag that seemed good to do now.  I’m going to introduce you to a band called The Burning from Denmark.  I will do mini-reviews of all three of their albums and, with the band’s permission, provide you with a download of their discography.  THIS WILL ONLY BE UP FOR A WEEK, SO GRAB THIS WHILE IT’S HOT!  I really want to thank and give a shout out to the guys in the band for allowing me to do this — it’s a huge honor.

The Burning started their foray into the metal world with this debut, titled Storm The Walls.  Let’s establish what sets The Burning apart here, or what’s noteworthy:  This is a heavily groove-oriented band, this is a band who have prided themselves on their consistency in having only one guitarist, and this is a band who honors the craft of straight-forward, pummeling songwriting. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 8)

 Forthcoming Albums  10 Responses »
Aug 032011
 


July is behind us, and the last month of the summer has begun. Drifting along even more stupidly than usual, I let the first day of the month come and go without posting our usual monthly  installment of METAL IN THE FORGE. So, we’re late with this, but I have a feeling no one was holding their breath waiting for it anyway.

You know the drill:  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 album before July, 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. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. And feel free to tell us about how we fucked up by omitting releases that you’re stoked about. Continue reading »

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