AMORPHIS DEBUTS SECOND NEW SONG FROM NEXT ALBUM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
May 022011
 

Today Amorphis began streaming a second song from their next album, The Beginning Of Times, which is scheduled for release on May 27 via Nuclear Blast Records. This one is called “My Enemy”.

Now, we already warned you in our post about the first song released from this album (“You I Need”) that although we weren’t blown away by that song, we were going to continue covering developments about this album like a wet blanket. Actually, what we said was this: “. . . we’re probably going to run a feature every time anyone in the band belches or farts between now and May 27.” So far, we haven’t been tested on that boast. Fortunately, what we have today is an actual song rather than an expulsion of nether-wind.

So what about this song? Well, you can tell it’s an Amorphis melody from about the first 2 seconds — and then the first vocals you hear are GROWLY (yes!). The song includes some heavy riffing too go along with those gruff vocals, and the chorus melody is just fine. I’m calling this a step up from “You I Need”). Speaking of that first song, Amorphis is filming a video for it, which will be available in the coming weeks — and I’m sure we’ll stick it up here at NCS pronto.

Now go past the jump and listen to the new song. Continue reading »

SCAR SYMMETRY: “THE UNSEEN EMPIRE”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 022011
 

(Andy Synn joins us again today with his review of the The Unseen Empire, the new album from Sweden’s Scar Symmetry. The Unseen Empire was released on April 15 in Europe and will be released on May 17 in North America via Nuclear Blast Records — that’s the North American jewel-case cover art above.)

I have to admit right now that Dark Matter Dimensions was my favourite of SS’s releases thus far. Although the two new vocalists were not fully integrated together, I felt that the musicianship and song-writing on their last album was nothing short of stellar. Too often the band was referred to merely as an afterthought to the impressive vocals of Christian Alvestam, yet on this latest record the new vocalists have made huge, leaping bounds of progression, matching the capabilities of the musicians and material surrounding them as never before.

Comparing their performance with that of their predecessor is now a pleasure, rather than an unfortunate chore, as the harsh vocals are now more varied and aggressive, lower, harsher, higher, more emotionally convincing, while the clean vocals have also pushed themselves to greater heights, smooth yet unexpected melodies matched by digressions into piercing falsetto and powerful, intensely emotive singing. The new blood and new-found variety allows the band to explore vocal arrangements and melodies which would never have been possible or thought of with their previous vocalist. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 5)

 Forthcoming Albums  6 Responses »
May 022011
 


What the hell is that big yellow thing up in the sky? It looks vaguely familiar, but it’s appeared so rarely here in The Emerald City over the last six months that we’re having trouble placing the name. Well, maybe the name will come to us. The great wheel of the seasons surely must continue to turn someplace, but in Seattle it seems to have been stuck on Winter since, like, forever. In some parts of the world, April showers bring May flowers, but here, April showers will probably bring . . . May showers.

Okay, enough whining. At least we don’t get tornados dropping from the sky like atom bombs and wiping whole towns off the map. And even though the weather hasn’t been our friend, we have metal to make up for the cold shoulder — and there’s a bunch of new metal headed our way.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. Continue reading »

OSAMA BIN LADEN HAS BEEN KILLED

 Off Topic  23 Responses »
May 012011
 

Tonight, in a televised statement, President Obama has confirmed previous reports that a small team of U.S. military forces killed Osama Bin Laden at a compound deep inside Pakistan today and took custody of his body.

I don’t know how much this means to people outside the U.S., or what it means to people in other nations. In this country, it means a great deal, a kind of closure after nearly a decade since 9/11.  At least when I’m in my right mind, I don’t wish the death of anyone, but I confess to a feeling of relief tonight, a feeling that some small measure of justice has been done for the nearly three thousand families, both here and in other countries, who lost loved ones on that awful day.

But, really, I’m just a part-time metal blogger, and no one in their right mind visits NCS to get their “hard news”, so I’m keeping this brief and I’m going to withhold any further comment. Anyone else who feels like saying something, please do so. I just couldn’t let this pass without notice.

KRODA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
May 012011
 

Assume that you’re a near-slavish fan of Agalloch. Now assume that you saw this post by the band on its Facebook page, preceding a link: “New KRODA album sneak peak. It is awesome!” What would you do? As a near-slavish fan of Agalloch, I clicked on that link with my trusty mouse. That took me to a web page for a Ukrainian black metal band called Kroda. On that page was a music player streaming five songs from a forthcoming album entitled Schwarzpfad (which Google Translate tells me is German for “black path”).

The player was preceded by this cryptic verbiage: “Don’t download this promo-version due to low bitrate and because this mix miscontains something. Furthermore, please, don’t upload this promo-version to mp3-traders portals as ‘album’. Respect musicians and their wish to give you possibility to listen new material for free before it is officially released. The promo-player will be active only ’til 02.05.2011. Schwarzpfad album will be released via PURITY THROUGH FIRE in closest time.”

I’m really only guessing about what that means, but my guess is that some of the mixing and mastering remains to be done for the songs as they’re delivered via the player (though it sounds finished to me). I wondered why Kroda bothered to put up the stream with those kinds of reservations. But Agalloch vouched for the awesomeness of the music, even in its not-entirely-finished state, so I started listening.

I listened to every song. And then I started over and listened again. Why? Because it’s . . . awesome. And it doesn’t sound quite like any black metal I’ve heard this year. I figured out a way to embed that player here on our site (after the jump). Check it out now, because if that cryptic note is correct, the stream is about to evaporate. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NACHTMYSTIUM

 Interviews  19 Responses »
May 012011
 

(NCS contributor BadWolf caught up with Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd, Will Lindsay, and Sanford Parker before the band’s live performance at Harpo’s in Detroit on February 25, 2011, and conducted this very interesting and revealing interview, which includes candid comments about doing business with record labels, some news about Nachtmystium’s next album, including a working title that appears to have been conceived during the interview, and some eye-opening comments by Blake Judd about the rape charges now pending against Jef Whitehead (aka Wrest), the frontman of Leviathan and a Nachtmystium collaborator. BadWolf proves again that he knows how to do this interview shit . . .)

BW- So how’s the tour going?

Blake Judd- Tour’s going really well so far. The Cradle of Filth guys have been super cool to us, which was our biggest concern. Not that we had any reason to worry but they’re a big band and we’re not and we’re playing direct support to them.  We thought we would be treated like we’ve been treated before which hasn’t been the case. Kids are coming out. The crowd reaction has been sort of eh; some people seem kind of confused by it.

BW- But that’s your career though, isn’t it?

BJ- There’s truth in that, too. The tour is good though. We’ve had more problems with our internal, like, with our bus company than anyone else as far as the people we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

BW- At first I was really puzzled by the bill and then it started to make sense to me. Cradle of Filth is a band where you can ask ‘is it Black Metal?’ Well, what is Black Metal, anyway? It is Black Metal but it’s reaching out of that sound in a way, which is what you guys do as well, so it ended up making sense to me. Did it make sense to you?

BJ-I don’t give a shit, personally. We come from a world where most members of bands I know would take joy in beating the shit out of someone from Cradle of Filth. That’s the world I come from. I don’t care about that anymore, I’ve been over that for a long time and do my own thing. We haven’t really found our crowd. We don’t have beards or a mountain of Sunn amps, so we don’t appeal as much to the hipsters. The people we work with deal more with bands like Cradle of Filth than bands we might listen to in our free time. It’s strange but we’ve got a good thing going, a good crew of dudes. The crowd certainly doesn’t seem to dislike us. We’re further proving ourselves to be a flexible band, which is important. I don’t know, what do you think? Continue reading »

SAVAGE, SWEET, AND IN BETWEEN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Apr 302011
 

The weekend is upon us. Don’t know about you, but I’m fucking ready for it. Tonight I’m going to see Between the Buried and Me, Job For A Cowboy, The Ocean, and Cephalic Carnage, which is certainly one of the more diverse touring line-ups of the year, so far. I’ve seen three of those bands multiple times in the past, and they do not disappoint, and I’m very curious about the fourth, who I’ve never heard on stage — The Ocean.

I hope you’ve got something to look forward to this weekend, too. But even if you plan to wallow in misery because life decided to burn a bag of shit on your front porch, we can at least give you some new tunes to brighten the weekend outlook. Not knowing what kind of metal you may be into, I tried to round up a mix of styles, while staying with the theme of new music.

Maybe you enjoy having your face clawed off by demon spawn. If so, we’ve got yet another new piece of otherworldly scariness from Malfeitor (Sweden). Maybe that’s not enough, and what you really want is music that will leave your flesh so scavenged that even hyenas will lose interest in your carcass. We have an answer for that, with a compilation from CVlt Nation. Maybe you get your rocks off from technical guitar wizardry, with music that transports you into a sublime plane which makes you feel connected to something larger than your own feeble soul. If yes, then you’ll want to hear a taste (two tastes, actually) of the solo release from Christian Muenzner (Obscura).

And maybe you want something in between, something that captures the emotion of your life, with every high and low, from the rocket-ship into the stratosphere to the utter desolation of your worst depression, from the sunrise to the bottomless pit. Yeah, we have that too, from Germany’s Ära Krâ. But before that we have a brand new song from Origin, and we really shouldn’t have to explain how many kinds of awesome that means. Stay with us, after the jump . . . Continue reading »

WOULD YOU LIKE A NEW SONG FROM THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER? OF COURSE YOU WOULD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 292011
 

I have a sneaking suspicion that among our readers we have more than a few fans of The Black Dahlia Murder. So, this seemed newsworthy. Actually, “newsworthy” is a very restrained way of saying, “Holy fuck, have we got some shit that will engorge your erogenous zones!” Or something like that.

Newsworthy/Erotic Item No. 1: The Black Dahlia Murder’s new album, Ritual, will be released on June 21 in the U.S. and in Europe on other dates in June. The album is up for pre-order on Metal Blade’s site (here).

Newsworthy/Erotic Item No. 2: Metal Blade has premiered a new song from Ritual called “Moonlight Equilibrium”. I’ve heard it. I like it a lot. It’s a blaster, with a sweet groove and some invigorating shred. You can hear it, too, right after the jump. Continue reading »

CAPSULE UPDATE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 292011
 

Man, time do fly. Last July we discovered a head-spinning South Florida metal band called Capsule. At that time, they had only released one album (not counting a previous demo) called Blue. We reviewed that unpredictable but always crushing album here. Jump ahead to the here and now, and Capsule have released a second album called No Ghost on Rohrschach Records.

On top of that, Capsule scored an exclusive album stream on DECIBEL magazine’s web site. To borrow from the DECIBEL intro: “To loosely quote Ice Cube, today is a good day. The Deciblog is proud to be the only site on the Internut streaming the new album from Miami, FL, hardcore melody makers Capsule. No Ghost is a deliciously dizzying slice of adrenalized pogo-ready jams. It gives you the illusion that your brain is expanding in your skull, making you feel momentarily wiser than you actually are. We have no qualms with that.”

I would have no qualms about that either, except my brain started out so small that it would take a shitload of expanding to bring it up to human-normal size. So, although I don’t feel wiser listening to No Ghost, the music did cause me to slam around the room like a pinball and bust up all the furniture. That counts for something, right?

We think DECIBEL has hogged the album stream long enough, so we’re putting it up on our site, too. Plus, we’ve got more good news: Capsule is on the road as we speak. In fact, if you happen to live in Seattle, you can catch their show tonight at The Black Lodge. After the jump, we’ve got the rest of the remaining tour dates and places, plus that album stream. Check that shit out. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT: SPECIAL COVERS EDITION

 THE SYNN REPORT  17 Responses »
Apr 292011
 

(I swear this was a coincidence. I wrote a post that went up earlier today on metal covers based on a single by Anachronaeon we received yesterday, and then our UK contributor Andy Synn delivered this special edition of THE SYNN REPORT about . . . covers. This is the kind of occurrence that sends me back to the dictionary once again to figure out the difference between synchronicity and serenditpity. Or maybe it’s both.)

Covers are a strange breed of song – they’re the equivalent of a parallel universe, an alternate history, a What If? Comic, an adaptation of your favourite book starring an unexpected actor, a Shakespeare play set in an average American high school…

Seriously though, they have a huge amount of potential, both to be intriguingly inventive and woefully horrendous. Their success (or lack thereof) depends on many factors, but mainly on the song-choice itself – is it a natural fit for the band? Do they have the intelligence to re-work it in a distinctive manner? Or is it simply enough to tear through it in their own inimitable style, making few changes, but relying on sheer power to see them through?

I have chosen 15 artists who have produced some of my own personal favourite covers, showcasing a variety of approaches, some fully traditional takes on the original, others totally reworked variations. If there’s one thing that these covers show however, it is the subtle threads that inter-link all different sub-genres of rock and metal, which allow bands to re-work them organically. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries