IHSAHN TO PERFORM IN THE U.S.

 Metal News  21 Responses »
Apr 132011
 

Take a look at that flyer up above for ProgPower XII, the latest installment of the long-running prog- and power-metal festival held in Atlanta. Now let your eyes drift over to the upper left-hand corner and find the logo for a band called Arcturus. Now, mentally cross out that name and put a different name in its place: Ihsahn.

It’s true — Arcturus is out and Ihsahn is in — as in, yes, the former Emperor frontman will be making his first live stage appearance in the U.S. I’m not a huge Ihsahn fan, but I know many of you are, and this definitely qualifies as news that’s worthy of note.

The story about how Ihsahn was added to this festival is also damned funny.  It starts with the bizarre statement by Arcturus (who I’ve never heard of, to be honest) “explaining” the cancelation of their appearance and ends with the promoter’s blunt-but-hilarious comment about Arcturus jumping ship. I think it’s safe to say that in the eyes of most metalheads, he got himself a big upgrade.  Read both statements after the jump. Continue reading »

A BEST OF THE DECADE LIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  25 Responses »
Apr 132011
 

(Today we’ve got another guest post for you, this one from an NCS reader and a metal vocalist and lyricist who goes by the handle “.jh“. His band suggestions in our Comments section and in his “Best of 2010” list, published at NCS here, have reliably steered us to lots of music we’ve gotten hooked on, so we were curious to see the list you’re about to see.)

A few weeks ago TNOTB ran a story where they were promising to crown the 100 best songs of the past decade and asked people to contribute 15 to 20 albums, and they’d talley the votes up and post the resulting top 100 albums. Now who doesn’t like a good list? So I diligently carved up a list of all albums I own that were released between 2000 and 2009. For the record, I ended up with roughly 4000 songs / 400 albums. Picking just 5% from the list was hard, and I’m sure that if I were to revisit this list a year down the road, I might pick differently, but this is here and now, so what follows is the list, plus sample songs. After the list are a few thoughts about some of the albums, and also a list of albums that might have made the cut.

(in alphabetical order)

1349 – Hellfire


Continue reading »

DEMONICAL IS RAVENOUS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Apr 122011
 

It was the second day of this year. We posted a collection of music organized around the objective of musically detonating a couple canisters of napalm in your head, as a way of clearing out the post-New Year’s Eve/Day cobwebs and preparing everyone to resume their “normal” lives.

We began the napalming process with a video from a Swedish death metal band we had just discovered by the name of Demonical. At that point, Demonical had produced two albums, and the video was for a kick-ass song from the second album called “Baptized in Fire”.

Demonical is now on the verge of debuting their third album, Death Infernal. Released by the awesome Cyclone Empire label, it will see the light of day on April 15. We’ve heard the album, and it’s stupendously good. Demonical continues to channel the undead spirits of Dismember and Entombed, with some updated flourishes of their own; we’ll have more in-depth things to say about this album in the near future.

For now, we have a video that the band released today for a song from the album called “Ravenous”. The song itself is a masterful rendering of remorseless old-school death, with its roots sunk deep in unconsecrated, blood-soaked burial grounds. It’s a grinding engine of down-tuned destruction, augmented by galvanizing beats and a whisper of dark melody. The video itself is also well-executed and fun to watch. Check it out after the jump. Continue reading »

HOLY. SHIT. CHECK OUT THIS TOUR

 Metal News  16 Responses »
Apr 122011
 

I just saw news about a tour scheduled to make its way through the U.S. and Canada this summer, and fluids burst from every orifice. Well, at least my nose started running.

The headliner: Children of Bodom

The supporting bands:  The Devin Townsend Project, Obscura, and Septic Flesh

The dates and places? They include Seattle on June 27, which is really all I need to know. But because I love every single one of you, especially those of you who will be denied the chance to see this tour because I know you will be hurting inside, the rest of the schedule is after the jump, along with the tour flyer. Excuse me now while I wipe my nose. Continue reading »

SEPTIC FLESH: THE GREAT MASS

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Apr 122011
 

(Our UK contributor Andy Synn provides his review of an album we’ve been eagerly awaiting here at NCS — the new one from Greece’s Septic Flesh, due for release by Season of Mist on April 18 in Europe and one day later in NorthAm.)

Ladies and gentlemen, for my next trick I’m going to attempt to review the new Septic Flesh album without ever explicitly mentioning their previous album Communion (not counting this mention obviously)!

Equally comfortable playing the roles of death metal behemoths, gothic troubadours and classical composers, Septic Flesh have crafted another deep and rewarding piece of majestic, symphonic metal that carefully navigates the pitfalls and clichés which plague many of their peers. Largely this is due to their focus on making the more esoteric elements of their sound just as important and vital to their success as the guitar riffs and drum patterns which underpin them.

I for one could not imagine these songs without the complex classical arrangements, nor see them existing without the frantic energy provided by the furious drums and guitars. At no point is the orchestration treated as an afterthought, or designed simply to fill otherwise empty space, and equally it has been used at the expense of the metallic heart which powers the songs. Rather, the classical elements have been composed to suit the core metallic might of the band . . . which has itself been influenced and shaped by the core classical influences that run through their musical veins!  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

WE ALMOST MISSED THIS NEW AMORPHIS SONG . . . ALMOST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Apr 122011
 

I knew Amorphis would be debuting a new song from their next album yesterday. I meant to keep my eyes peeled for it so I could feed it straight onto NCS without delay. I fucked up. But I’m not beating myself up over that, because it’s the first time that I’ve ever fucked up. Ever.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement. To be more accurate, it’s the first time I ever fucked up . . . since the last time I fucked up. Which happened about a half dozen times yesterday before the missing-the-new-Amorphis-song fuck-up.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the new Amorphis song. It’s called “You I Need”. It’s going to be released digitally in Finland on April 20 and in other countries on April 22. It comes off the band’s new album, The Beginning Of Times, which is scheduled for release on May 27 via Nuclear Blast Records.

We already featured the album art (you remember the big egg hanging over the earth, on the verge of hatching something?), now we’re featuring this song, and because it’s Amorphis — one of our principal Exceptions to the Rule of no clean singing around here — we’re probably going to run a feature every time anyone in the band belches or farts between now and May 27. After the jump, we have the song and a few thoughts about it. Continue reading »

CEREBRAL BORE MANIACALLY MISCREATES A NEW VIDEO

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  17 Responses »
Apr 112011
 

Last November we happily discovered a band from Glasgow, Scotland called Cerebral Bore and their then-self-released debut album Maniacal Miscreation. In our typically eloquent fashion, we described the music as “the kind of metallic extremity that shoves egg-beaters through the skullbone and proceeds to whip the gray matter into a fluffy merengue” — as the kind of “cerebral drill job” that left our brains “satisfyingly disassembled and chopped up into the consistency of dog food”. A bit more from that review:

The music is on the brutal side of death metal. It’s almost unrelentingly fast — which suits us just fine. The guitar riffing is adrenaline-charged, finger-fast, and reliably hammer-stroked with big slams. We particularly liked the start-stop attack of the drums and the quite audible bass rhythms that unerringly root down deep into the part of the brain that acts without thinking and sends irresistible electrical impulses into the buried pleasure centers.

Barreling along in an unconstrained rampage is plenty of fun for the listener, but the icing on the cake are the passages in the songs when Cerebral Bore skid into a completely irresistible beat.

Since last November, it’s fair to say that Cerebral Bore’s global popularity has increased significantly and is now on the verge of erupting. They signed to Earache Records in December, which will be giving Maniacal Miscreation wider distribution (beginning with a European release yesterday and a NorthAm release on June 7), they’re scheduled to tour basically the whole fucking world in 2011, including dates in the U.S., and today they’ve released a new video for the album’s title track “Maniacal Miscreation”, which you can witness after the jump . . . Continue reading »

COMPS ON THE WAY

 Metal News  12 Responses »
Apr 112011
 

Don’t know about you, but I like music compilations, especially when they’re free. They’re a good way to discover new bands and new sounds in a flash. There are two great comps on the horizon — one we’ll talk about now and another one (which we’re actually co-sponsoring) that we’ll feature tomorrow.

Today’s news is about a comp of music by unsigned bands that’s been assembled by our friends at The Number of the Blog. It will include 18 tracks, many of which were previously unreleased, and it will be distributed through Bandcamp, which means the original song files were uploaded in high-quality, lossless format — and that means the shit will sound like crystal.

Today, TNOTB revealed the track listing, and it’s juicy, as in saliva-producing. I’m familiar with the music of 14 bands on the list, and am a fan of all of them. So I’m up for hearing not only the new stuff from those bands but also the tracks from the bands whose names are new.

To be brutally honest (the only kind of honest we know how to be at NCS), I’d be tempted to say nice things about this comp even if the band selections made me yawn, because, y’know, I like the people behind TNOTB. But I don’t have to wrestle with my morals over this comp, because it really does look like a winner, from start to finish.  Check out the track list after the jump. You’ll be able to download the comp on Friday (we’ll put up a reminder then.) Continue reading »

LOUDBLAST REDUX

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 112011
 

Only six short days ago I used the “exclusive” streaming of a new song by a French band called Loudblast as an excuse to go off on a selfish, petulant rant about the use of “exclusives” in metal marketing (here). Kind of embarrassing actually, but “Embarrassing” is one of my middle names, so what do you expect?

The song was/is called “Emptiness Crushes My Soul”, and I liked it, which was one of the reasons I got frustrated at my inability to embed the song right here at NCS. In the post, I mentioned that Loudblast had filmed a video for the song that allegedly featured a former porn star named Nina Roberts, though I saw no evidence of that in a teaser for the video that the band had released. Not that I give a shit whether music videos include former, or current, porn stars. If you want porn, you really don’t need to troll for metal videos to get it.

Well, now the video for “Emptiness Crushes My Soul” has been released, and sure enough, it includes nudity and flashes of sexual activity between Ms. Roberts and something that may or may not be a man, that may or may not have been created by the woman, and that may or may not represent her fantasy about a horse. In other words, I don’t have a very good idea about what’s going on, or what it has to do with the song. But the song is still good. The video is NSFW so be mindful of who’s peering over your shoulder.  After the jump . . . Continue reading »

KRALLICE’S “DIOTIMA”: A CRITIQUE

 Album Reviews  17 Responses »
Apr 112011
 

(Regular NCS contributor BadWolf continues to explore an alternative to traditional album reviews in this, his latest “critique”. The subject is the new offering from New York’s Krallice, scheduled for release by Profound Lore on April 26.)

Krallice’s Diotima record reminds me most of the scene in David Fincher’s Fight Club where the narrator and Tyler Durden are speeding in a car along a bridge and release the steering wheel. Speed increases, their trajectory veers, and tension increases because the logical conclusion is not foregone, but seems pretty inevitable. The anxiety, the dark sound in that scene comes from a desire to see the characters crash and by proxy for the audience to feel the impact of a death, or near-death, experience. Sartre was obsessed with looking off the edges of cliffs because he felt (and believed all people felt) a sublime desire to jump.

Krallice in 2011 feels like that razor’s edge between stillness and leaping when the band fires on all cylinders. There is a constant sense of swerving momentum which is in the most focus. The feeling is not unique to Krallice—Iron Maiden’s Aces High is about harnessing the freefall effect, and at their best Metallica and Gojira can evoke the same reaction. Diotima is the first record I’ve heard to emphasize it to this degree.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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