THE ROLLING STONE METAL AWARDS (INDIA): YEAR TWO

 Metal News  No Responses »
May 292011
 

(NCS contributor Siddharth Darbha joins us today with a report on the nominees for India’s biggest metal awards show.)

The Rolling Stone Metal Awards is back. Being India’s most popular and highly dedicated metal award ceremony, we at NCS cannot let this pass unnoticed. We briefly mentioned the 2010 edition of the Awards last year (here), with our congratulations to Demonic Resurrection and Infernal Wrath.

With nominations invited from across the country, the grandeur has been amplified multifold this edition. This shall be the event’s second year. It is slated to be held on 19th June. Funny bone tickler Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy (Scribe) will be hosting the event, which will also feature live sets by Bhayanak Maut, Artillerie, Exhumation and Noiseware.

The category list has been lengthened, with the net set being : Best Album Artwork, Best Metal Drummer, Best Metal Guitarist, Best Metal Bassist, Best Metal Vocalist, and Best Metal Keyboardist, the nominees for which can be found here, in addition to three other categories open for public vote.

The complete panel of judges is yet to be announced, but Marty Friedman (Megadeth) is definitely in!

Apart from the aforementioned panel of judges, there are three categories open to public vote via Facebook. Make your vote count or check out India’s best releases this year. We’ve got the list of nominees for the three public-vote categories after the jump. Continue reading »

Time to WAKE THE FUCK UP!

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
May 292011
 

Sorry to be so rude in my choice of words. I blame the music I’m about to play for you. Let me try that again:

It’s time for you to shake off the somnalent after-effects of your Saturday-night slumbers and become fully alert. Is that better?

So, maybe you really aren’t ready to wake up and would prefer to remain dozy and slothlike for a while longer. If so, do not watch the videos I have collected to begin this sleepy Sunday. The music will not allow you to remain soporific. Or somnalent. Or slothlike. Or other words beginning with S.

For our five-alarm music today, we have an offering of new and old music videos. First up is a new performance video from a French band of which we are big fans here at NCS — Eryn Non Dae. After that, an evil song from Black Hole Generator (Norway), with an official video that’s almost as disturbing as the music. Then, two more new videos — one from Egyptian-born Nader Sadek and the other from The Generals (Sweden). And finally, I’ve got a new song from a UK band called The Soulless (formerly Ignominious Incarceration). The styles of metal are diverse, but all this music will whomp you in the noggin.

If you’re not awake and banging your fucken head after hearing all these songs, then, as a trained medical professional, I believe I can clinically classify you as comatose. Continue reading »

CONGRATS TO BLOOD AND THUNDER

 Metal News  5 Responses »
May 282011
 

The local metal scene in the Seattle area is really hopping with talent these days. One of the bands whose fortunes we’ve been following for a while is Blood and Thunder. We’ve written about them several times in the past (for example, here and here). In addition to being very talented young musicians, they’re also a group of really nice people — James Furrow (keys), Billy Keller (guitar and backing vox), Ryan Yancey (lead vox and drums), Jeff Weaver (guitar), and Nick Hughes (bass). And they’ve been supporters of our humble site, which we appreciate.

After a fair share of ups and downs in the production process, Blood and Thunder have finally completed work on their debut album — Dawning of the Ancients. To celebrate the occasion, the band headlined a CD release show at Seattle’s Studio Seven last night, and my NCS collaborator Alexis and I were there.

We arrived too late to catch some of the early acts, but had a head-banging good time listening to Deathmocracy, After the Fallout, and Unhailoed — all of whom performed very strong sets.  The music was quite diverse and a good showcase for the strength of Seattle’s metal scene.

And, as we knew they would, Blood and Thunder killed it at the close of the night. Their stage presence and musicianship just gets stronger and stronger every time we see them. We snagged a copy of the CD, and you can expect a review of Dawning of the Ancients in the not-too-distant future. For now, congratulations dudes!

(Follow Blood and Thunder on Facebook here.)

THE NUMBER OF THE BLOG CRAWLS FROM THE GRAVE

 Metal News  No Responses »
May 282011
 

Our allies in blog, The Number of the Blog, have managed a resurrection. After being out of commission since May 23, thanks to being fucked like a tethered goat by their web host, the TNOTB site seems to be back up and running this morning.

Or rather, back up and crawling, smelling of the grave, hungry for blood and baby flesh, and whatever else those dudes subsist on — and no doubt overflowing with bloggerish effluvia that they just can’t wait to eject into the byways of the almighty Web.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(Congrats TNOTBers!)

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ÄRA KRÂ

 Interviews  3 Responses »
May 282011
 

I’m afraid that I was so damned emotionally affected by Ferne Tage, the new genre-bending album from Germany’s Ära Krâ, that I got perhaps too emotional in my review (published here). Thing is, even a month later, the album is still an intense listening experience — something like a blackened form of metalcore with progressive elements, a mix of harrowing catharsis and melancholy beauty. It’s standing up extremely well to repeat listening.

I confess I’ve also been intrigued about who these guys are, what other bands they’re in (or have been in), what prompted the creation of this album, and a bunch of other subjects, many of which are none of my damned business. But “shy” and “retiring” aren’t in my vocabulary, so I pestered the band for an interview, and they foolishly agreed.

I think if I’d been able to confront them in person, gotten them really liquored up, and then subjected them to the irresistible power of my personal charisma, I might have had more success worming personal details out of them. But alas, the famous Seattle tech-geek community still hasn’t perfected the human teleporter, and so I had to do this by e-mail.

Still, I do believe I succeeded in multiplying the quantity of publicly available Ära Krâ information by a few orders of magnitude, given how secretive they are. Read their interesting answers to my intrusive questions after the jump. And if you haven’t yet downloaded Ferne Tage from their Bandcamp page, you really should. Continue reading »

DIVE IN TO DEIVOS DAMMIT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
May 272011
 

I thought I was finished with blogging for the day, but then one of those things happened to me. One of those things where I decided to take a break from my day job and listen to a bit of music and had a HOLY FUCK!! moment. When those moments happen, the second thing I think (after thinking HOLY FUCK!!) is, “I gotta get this up on the fucking blog ASAP!” I’m afraid I just can’t keep hot discoveries to myself — have to share.

Here’s how this HOLY FUCK!! moment came about: NCS reader and frequent commenter Utmu sent me an e-mail three days ago with a handful of recommendations. Lazy, distracted monkey that I am, I didn’t check out his links until that work-break I took about 30 minutes ago. It so happens that the first of Utmu’s recommendations was a Polish band called Deivos.

The name rang a faint bell, perhaps because I heard or read something about one of their two albums — Emanation From Below (2006) or Gospel of Maggots (2010) — but I was sure I’d never heard their music. So, I followed Utmu’s link and found a new song from a new album (Demiurge of the Void) that’s due for release by Unique Leader Records on September 27.

That song turned out to be just fucking awesome. It really reminded me of a cross-section of two death metal bands I dearly love — Fleshgod Apocalypse and Decapitated — in the sense that it’s a flat-out, jet-fueled, turbo-charged, smokin’ hot, rubber-laying drag racer of a song, with the staging lights all lit green. Wonderfully fast, tight execution and an unstoppable groove. Just too damned much fun to hog for myself as we accelerate toward the weekend. Go check it out after the jump — and I found one more song from that forthcoming album for you, too. Continue reading »

70,000 TONS OF METAL TO SET SAIL AGAIN; JUST BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T SINK THE FIRST TIME DOESN’T MEAN IT WON’T HAPPEN NEXT TIME

 Metal News  11 Responses »
May 272011
 

We had lots of fun last year with the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise, thinking of all the things that could go wrong (for example, this). You can’t blame us, can you? Seriously, the idea of putting about 2,000 metalheads on board a ship with 40 metal bands and 24/7 bars and shoving it off into the Caribbean just seemed like an invitation to disaster.

Our fun-poking stopped, of course, when the cruise happened, no one died, and it appeared that everyone actually had a pretty good time. The tour organizers must have made some money on the thing, because now they’re launching a reprise of the cruise, scheduled to sail from Miami on January 23, 2012. Public ticket sales will start on May 31. Instead of voyaging to a Mexican island, as they did this past January, the new 4-day cruise will be bound for the Cayman Islands, where they have pubs.

Ten bands have already signed on for this next edition of the cruise, including Amorphis, Moonsorrow, and Pestilence. You can see all the names of those adventurous 10 right after the jump.

Did any of you go on the first cruise? Was it worth it? Did people actually die, and it just got covered up? Continue reading »

JOB FOR A COWBOY: “GLOOM”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
May 272011
 

(We’re pretty close to just turning the whole site over to Andy Synn. Today we have Andy’s third post since Monday. Here’s his review of the new EP by Job For A Cowboy, which be available digitally and physically via mail-order (only from Indiemerchstore.com) on June 7.)

Doom & Gloom. A perfect pairing in so many ways. Showcasing as they do the growth and evolution of JFAC’s ungodly chimeric creation, two sides of the same coin, still redolent with untapped potential, which has lost none of its lustre or value over the years.

If it is impossible to discuss JFAC without mentioning the dreadful pejorative “deathcore”, then let me address the issue in this manner; the band have, for me, always epitomised the strengths and possibilities of what the sub-genre could, and should be. Taking death metal’s powerful engine and building a sleeker, more modern vehicle around it, fuelled by youthful energy and ambition, the band have joined other such groups of the modern death metal pantheon, such as The Black Dahlia Murder and Aborted, who have (at times) been tagged with the “deathcore” identity, yet (thankfully) have little in common with what the sub-genre has unfortunately become. The one thing the aforementioned groups do have in common however is the admirable growth and maturation they have achieved over the years.

From youthful fire-starters, attempting simultaneously to both ape the achievements of their predecessors yet also define themselves by opposition to what came before, these acts have found that one CAN build an identity on the genetic blueprints of their forebears without becoming clones of them, and as such have become more comfortable within the death metal mould, yet not limited by it exclusively. They are no longer afraid of learning from, or being associated with their parents, having reached the understanding of adulthood themselves. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

NEW GOJIRA SONG: “OF BLOOD AND SALT”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  26 Responses »
May 262011
 

I’m in a hurry, so no words, other than to say my new hero (and occasional NCS writer) Siddharth Darbha just e-mailed me a link to this, which purports to be a new Gojira song from their long-awaited EP, The Sea Shepherd, and that it purports to include guest participation by Devin Townsend and Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah).  I have to go change my underoos now.

OPETH OPDATE

 Metal News  10 Responses »
May 262011
 

I’ve been thinking about Opeth, and it has affected my word formulation. It’s some kind of temporary phonemic speech disorder, I think. But I’m not sure. I’ll have to continue thinking opon it. But for now, onward and opward!

So yes, I’ve been thinking about Opeth because some additional details were released this morning about their next album, entitled Heritage, which will be their tenth.

First, it will be released on September 20 by Roadrunner Records. Second, it was produced by the band’s vocalist/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt and it was mixed by Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) and Åkerfeldt.  Third, Travis Smith (who has created many other Opeth covers) worked with Åkerfeldt to create, design and execute the album’s artwork.

Fourth, Åkerfeldt had a few things to say about the album: “It will be our 10th album/observation. I dig it; we all do. In fact, it feels like I’ve been building up to write for and participate on an album like this since I was 19.” He also had some intriguing things to say about the music — which we’ll quote for you after the jump. Continue reading »

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