THEMADISRAELI’S CANDIDATES FOR HIS TOP 10 OF 2011

 Listmania  9 Responses »
Dec 112011
 

(Here’s a teaser from TheMadIsraeli . . .)

This listmania shit is interesting isn’t it?  Some of the picks I’ve seen on a lot of the lists posted here from other sites haven’t surprised me, but some have for sure.  But now I think it’s time to help get the ball rolling on the NCS lists.

Picking my top 10 for this year has been a rather brutal internal struggle for me.  I know what the top of the year group is — it’s been the same pool of 15 albums thus far, but the order keeps slightly changing.  But I figured I’d reveal those 15, and allow my final list of 10 to be a surprise.  Actually, I will not be doing a list per se, but instead I plan to write a review (if I haven’t already done so) or write a “second opinion” (if I did review it) for each of the final 10.  I hope you’ll find this interesting.

So, here are the 15 candidates . . .

Sylosis – Edge of the Earth

Xerath – II

Fleshgod Apocalypse – Agony

Decapitated – Carnival Is Forever Continue reading »

DAT GRUVE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  35 Responses »
Dec 112011
 

Nature or nurture?  Present from birth or learned behavior?  When it comes to the impulse to move to a groove, it’s pretty clear that human beings are hard-wired to do it.  The following video is further evidence of that.

But the following video is evidence of other things, too:  that if exposed to metal at an early age, before their psyches are corrupted by pop music, children will get it immediately; that in addition to the impulse to move to a groove, the impulse to headbang is also hard-wired; and that Vildhjarta’s master plan to take over the world within the space of a single generation is proceeding successfully.

We’ve all seen other examples of this kind of “metal kids” video before, but this is the best one I’ve seen, because this young dude has definitely got some moves . . . and because of the headbang thing.

According to the description below the video clip, the guy who made it had some friends over to his place and decided to play some of his tunes for one of their kids. Watch what happens. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA CONTINUES: NORWEGIAN METAL TO WATCH FOR (Part 2)

 Listmania, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Dec 112011
 

This is the second part of a multi-part post about up-and-coming Norwegian bands. The first part is HERE, and this is an abbreviated version of the full explanation, which appears in Part 1:

“Pyro” is the name of a radio program on one of the radio channels (P3) operated by NRK, the state-owned Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The NRK P3 radio channel is mainly aimed at younger listeners, and Pyro is the program that focuses mainly on metal and hard rock.

Last week, the Pyro web site rolled out its 2011 list of the most promising metal bands in Norway. What I’m doing in this series is just rolling out what I found on the Pyro web site, doing my best (with the lame assistance of Google Translate) to give Pyro’s descriptions of each band they picked as the best new metal bands in Norway, plus the same music from each band that they gave as an example — except I’m giving a few more examples of songs because I’m having to find my own sources for the music (the Pyro stream clips aren’t embeddable). Since the verbiage isn’t a professional translation, any fuck-ups are mine, not Pyro’s.

So here we go with Part 2. In this part, we’re including Maladronia Institute, No Dawn, Corsair, Springskalle, and Okular. The musical styles vary a lot, but I enjoyed listening to all five (and by coincidence, I’ll be reviewing Okular’s new album soon). Below the images in the rest of this post, I’ve turned each of the band’s names into links that will take you to social media sites for each of them, in case you want to explore further. Continue reading »

K3LOID (AND OTHER MEANDERINGS)

 Off Topic  13 Responses »
Dec 102011
 

Last weekend I departed from our usual focus on metal with a piece on a forthcoming movie (“John Carter”) based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic series of sci-fi books set on Barsoom (the Martian word for Mars). That seemed to generate a fair amount of interest, and although I don’t plan to post about movies or books on any kind of regular basis, I got an e-mail about something else sci-fi-related that has set me off again. So here we go.

The e-mail (from a reader named Ben) pointed me to a web site about something called K3LOID. K3LOID is a sci-fi short film by a Spanish outfit called Big Lazy Robot VFX (“BLR”), based on Eliezer S. Yudkowsky’s Artificial Intelligence Box Experiment (more about that later). Coincidentally, BLR did the visual effects for an amazing short film called “The Gift” that we featured in a THAT’S METAL! post almost a year ago (and if you haven’t seen that, definitely go here and watch it).

All that’s available about K3LOID at the moment is a trailer, which you can see after the jump (and I’m actually not positive that there will ever be anything but this trailer, though I hope a film itself will come to fruition, because both the visuals in the trailer and the concept behind the film are cool).

Based on the trailer, and before I found out about BLR’s involvement, I thought this was a Russian sci-fi film (you’ll see why). That got me thinking about both Russian sci-fi movies and Russian sci-fi novels. I’m certainly no expert in either of those genres, but I remembered really liking a book called Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and the 1972 Russian movie made from that novel (directed by Andrey Tarkovskiy), which captured the sense of solitude, profound mystery, and utter strangeness of the mood and the events captured in the book. If you look, you’ll find Solaris on plenty of internet lists as one of the best sci-fi films ever made. Continue reading »

DYING FETUS: RETURNING TO FORM?

 Uncategorized  11 Responses »
Dec 102011
 

I decided I couldn’t wait until the next monthly NCS round-up of forthcoming albums. This piece of news deserves its very own separate post. Because it’s Dying Fetus. To begin, I think I need to quote yesterday’s press release in full:

“John Gallagher, guitarist and vocalist of DYING FETUS, has announced that the group has entered the studio to record their new full length album. The band will once again be working with longtime producer Steve Wright (Slipknot, Misery Index) at Wrightway Studios in Baltimore, MD.

Set to be released in mid 2012 through Relapse Records, the album will feature nine tracks and is a “return to roots” with production focused slightly more on slam than in the band’s last few works.  Thematically, the album is set to be a good old-fashioned piece of social and political commentary in the style of DYING FETUS as we have come to know.  An official release date and album title will be announced shortly.

“The last album had some groove in it,” stated John, “but [it] was basically a lot of tech; this one is a return to form of older DYING FETUS albums, so to speak- more modern production though, of course.”  “Everything’s tight,” John adds; “…the sound is crushing, the drums are amazing”. Continue reading »

THE CURTAINS PART, THE LIGHTS COME UP, AND TROLLFIEND TAKES THE STAGE!

 Metal News  25 Responses »
Dec 092011
 

It appears we have helped spawn a new blog. And not just any blog. And not just by anyone. Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to introduce you to ALSO, WOLVES, the new blog dedicated to folk, Viking, and pagan metal launched by our very own Trollfiend.

Well, he’s not really ours. We explored the possibility of establishing ownership but learned to our dismay that the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution prevents that here in the States. But even though we don’t own him, Trollfiend has become a welcome presence around NCS through his frequent comments and occasional guest posts about pagan and folk metal, which is a sub-genre we had been unfairly neglecting before Trollfiend showed up.

After spending some months around NCS, Trollfiend evidently came to the logical conclusion that if people will read the kind of shit we post at NCS, well then, fuck, why not do it himself? And so he has. And it’s really good. So far, Trollfiend has put up 3 posts on the new site since launching in late October (we knew about it then, but Trollfiend asked us not to spout off about it until he had built up a bit more content), and all three are worth reading. The headline for today’s offering at ALSO, WOLVES is at the top of this post, and you should definitely check it out.

But don’t stop there. Show Trollfiend some love. And no, I don’t mean e-mailing him photos of your genitalia. Well, I mean don’t just do that. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: JONAH LIVINGSTON OF RAMMING SPEED

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 092011
 

(The MetalSucks-sponsored METAL SUCKFEST in NYC early last month was a milestone event. Two NCS emissaries were on hand to witness it — BadWolf and photographer Nick Vechery — and they’ve already turned in reviews of the show here (Day 1) and here (Day 2). BadWolf also interviewed a number of the performers, including this discussion (completed a couple weeks after the SUCKFEST) of Ramming Speed drummer Jonah Livingston.)

I caught on to several outstanding bands at the Metal Suckfest, but none of them caught my ears the way Ramming Speed did. Their hooky mix of punk and classic metal is perfect recession-era drinking music. Thanksgiving weekend, I sat down with their drummer, Jonah Livingston [also head of TDB (Teenage Disco Bloodbath) Records] during the OSU/Michigan football game to talk about Suckfest, Boss HM-2 core, and why marching bands need more Entombed in their repertoires.

Ramming:  sup!

BW:  Hello, Jonah! I’m just glad Michigan is actually ahead rt now!

Ramming:  Cheers dude

BW:  But enough about that. How does the band feel post-Suckfest?

Ramming:  Personally I’m feeling energized, we spent a lot of this year sitting at home writing but it’s been super busy since the fest. We’re leaving on tour in a few days so this last month has been dealing with merch, finishing the booking, promoting etc. We also got to try a bunch of new songs at the Suckfest that seemed to work well, so we’ll be doing even more of them on the tour.

BW:  It was a very good set! Are you changing it for the tour? As in, even more new material, or more older stuff?

Ramming:  Out of all our new songs I think 9 of them are ready to play live, so we’re doing one set with like 4 new ones and 5 old, and a second set with 5 different new ones and 4 old ones. The idea is to switch off between the two sets every day so when we get home those 9 will be as tight as shit so we can hopefully we can hit the ground running and go into the studio as soon as possible after that. Continue reading »

2011 – THE EPs AND THE UNHEARD

 Listmania, SHORT BUT SWEET  13 Responses »
Dec 092011
 

(Editor’s Note: Beginning next week, we will start publishing our own lists of 2011’s best metal from NCS writers, NCS readers, and guest contributors who we invited to participate in our year-end review. Here’s Andy Synn’s prelude to what he’s got planned for us — plus the first of our year-end lists; so I guess we’re actually starting today?)

Every day next week I will be delivering one of my Year In Review columns for 2011, much in the same format as I did last year. For those of you who are newer to the site, here’s how it works:

On Monday you will get the list of the “Great” albums of the year. An aggregation of the best written, best played, and most artistically rewarding records of the year, in my critical opinion.

On Tuesday you will get the list of the “Good” albums of the year. A composite of all the albums which are undeniably solid, with a mix of great/good songs, all exceptionally strong but with slight weaknesses that stop them from being really “Great”.

On Wednesday you will get the list of the albums I consider the most “Disappointing” of the year. Now to try and mediate the inevitable flame wars and insult that will be thrown my way, let me make it clear; as things stand I very rarely, if ever, review an album I know I am going to dislike. I try and listen to, and then review, albums that are at least “Good” if not “Great”, so as to describe them and recommend them to people in a positive way.

The albums that make up my “Disappointing” list are not necessarily BAD albums, but largely they are albums from bands who should have, and could have, done better – often because they’ve done better before. At worst, these albums are distinctly average and unimpressive offerings from bands who have far greater potential. A warning though – there are a lot of “big hitters” who produced ultimately “Disappointing” albums this year. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA CONTINUES: MSN ENTERTAINMENT’S TOP 50

 Listmania  23 Responses »
Dec 092011
 

We’ve been re-publishing the Best Metal of 2011 lists that we’ve seen on other web sites, focusing on sites that have really big audiences — which sorta means, by definition, that they’re not metal-only sites. So far, we’ve reported about the lists on Pitchfork, NPR, Noisecreep, and PopMatters (and we also included DECIBEL magazine’s Top 40 list and . . . uh . . . Revolver’s list). You can catch up on all that by using this Listmania link.

Today, we’re reporting on The Top 50 Albums of 2011 as selected by Adrien Begrand for MSN Entertainment. MSN Entertainment (which is owned by Microsoft) is another broad-scope entertainment site that includes coverage of music, film, games, videos, celebrity gossip, and a wide range of music. They claim over 23 million unique visitors to the site every month, narrowly edging out NCS in audience size. Once again, we’re featuring their list not because MSN Entertainment is one of our go-to sources for discovering and assessing metal, but because we’re curious about what mass-audience outlets are touting from our precious underground genre.

MSN Entertainment has been rolling out their Top 50 list all week in segments, and as of this morning, the list is now complete. To see the list at MSN Entertainment, along with Adrien Begrand’s comments about each album, GO HERE.

A few thoughts about the list:  Finally, the Devin Townsend Project and Ghost Brigade get some listmania recognition (and Amon Amarth make another rare appearance, too); thrash-lovers will be happy to see Evile’s name on the list; the list includes high finishes for Obscura and In Solitude; straight-up death metal is largely ignored, despite the plethora of good, filthy, old-school offerings this year; and I predict the Top 4 will prove disappointing to many NCS readers.
Continue reading »

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