A BRIEF BURST OF UNCONTAINABLE ENTHUSIASM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Feb 032011
 

I can justly be accused of being enthusiastic about almost everything. That may not be the most metal of outlooks, especially when my enthusiasm turns out to be misplaced, or cools after a little calm reflection; I do lose my bearings sometimes.

But, with all those caveats out of the way, I have to tell you, right now, about a song I just heard.

On the way to my fucking day job this morning, I started listening to the brand new album from Finland’s Alghazanth, which is called Vinum Intus. I wasn’t familiar with this band until we started that Finland Tribute Week thing, and one of our readers (CarlSK) recommended them in a comment, noting that the band’s vocalist is Mikko Kotamäki, who also fronts Swallow the Sun and Barren Earth.

I only got two songs into this new album and then stopped and started replaying that second song. The way I feel right now, this beautiful song is blowing out of the water almost all the other new black metal releases I’ve yet heard in 2011.  (more after the jump . . . including the song) Continue reading »

THE FAMINE

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Feb 032011
 

Join us once again in our continuing quest for new ways to describe music in mere words. This review will be filled with metaphors and similes (necessarily pathetic ones because we are writing them ourselves) because The Famine‘s new album, Architects of Guilt, demands more than usual review verbiage is capable of expressing.

Imagine this: You come across a big nest of dormant, Texas-sized red wasps, and you drop it gently into a big bag. Carefully, you walk over and stand on an electrified floor, you shake the bag vigorously until all the wasps are awake and really pissed off, then you stick your head in the bag while big pulses of electric current shoot up through the soles of your feet in a syncopated rhythm — and a welterweight boxer uses your kidneys as a punching bag.

And for good measure, your friend the welder periodically applies a burst of acetylene flame to the base of your neck, without so much as a reach-around.

There you have it: That pretty much describes what we felt when listening to The Famine‘s new album, Architects of Guilt. We could just stop there, but we get paid by the word here at NCS, so there’s more to come!  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

HELP BRING IHSAHN TO THE U.S.

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Feb 022011
 

Lots of you thought Ihsahn‘s 2010 solo album After was one of the best albums of last year, and of course all of you are huge Opeth fans. Aren’t you?  Yes, of course you are. We know these things.

If advance press reports are correct, Opeth entered Atlantis studios in Stockholm on Monday of this week to begin recording their tenth album for a fall 2011 release on Roadrunner Records, with the engineering work to be handled by Jens Bogren (Soilwork, Katatonia, Paradise Lost, Bloodbath).

Now, it stands to reason that Opeth will tour the world in support of that album, and the world includes the U.S., which means Opeth will come here to play for us. How does Ihsahn fit into this story? Well, our metallic brother BadWolf brought to our attention that a petition has been started on Facebook to convince Opeth to bring Ihsahn with them in support of that tour — which would be Ihsahn’s first U.S. tour if that were to happen.

That sounds like a damned fine idea. Maybe if enough of us on Facebook “like” that petition page, someone might be convinced to actually make it happen, someday, some way. Certainly can’t hurt, can it? To support that petition, here’s the link.

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 4: TRIGGER THE BLOODSHED

 Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT  5 Responses »
Feb 022011
 

(Our UK contributor Andy Synn returns with another edition of The Synn Report.)

Ah “Deathcore”. In today’s current climate the word carries so many mixed connotations that it’s less of a genre-descriptive term and more of a full-on assault on a band’s right to exist. What’s worse is that, wrongly or rightly applied, the term has become synonymous with the WORST proponents of the style, rather than the BEST.

Young British tykes Trigger The Bloodshed were tarnished with the stain of ‘core from their earliest album. Granted, THAT name, their age, precociousness, and the timing of their first release didn’t help them much, but it’s still worth noting that although their first album did flirt with many of the elements so currently associated with the “deathcore” genre, the band always seemed less interested in being associated with a particular scene or style than they were in simply creating good, heavy music, placing a much greater emphasis on the “death” over the “core”.

All this, however, is not to say that associating purely with Big Daddy Death Metaltm doesn’t create some similar issues (the two genres being genetically intertwined after all). Both genre and sub-genre often suffer from an “overabundance of brutality” – a directionless focus on a perceived holy grail of heaviness, at the expense of actually saying anything lasting with the music. (more after the jump, including recommended songs from the TTB discography . . .) Continue reading »

CAN I CATCH A RIDE TO INDIA?

 Metal News  27 Responses »
Feb 012011
 

Hey, I was wondering whether any of you dudes or ladies might be driving to Darjeeling in the vicinity of September 30?  See, I just found out there’s a metal festival that’s gonna happen there from September 30 – October 2 called Underground Unleashed 2011. And wait til you see the line-up:

Incantation (USA)
Demonical (Sweden)
Cerebral Bore (U.K)
Nervo Chaos (Brazil)
Dethroned (U.S.)
Arsames (Iran)
InnerGuilt (Lebanon)
Perversion (U.A.E)
Morbid Devourment (Indonesia)

I don’t know all these bands — yet — but the first three pretty much made me start drooling uncontrollably. I would totally be willing to share driving duties and buy a tank or two of gas. I’d bring some good tunes, too. Maybe even treat everyone to a burger when we get there. Or whatever people in Darjeeling eat that doesn’t cost much money.  (more after the jump, including more hot-shit Incantation news . . .) Continue reading »

RANDOM

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  9 Responses »
Feb 012011
 

Have you ever listened to metal you really liked that you tried to describe to someone else — even another metalhead — and your brain and tongue locked up because you couldn’t find the right words, or even other bands that you could use as references? That’s the affliction that’s been inflicted on me by an unsigned band from San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina, called Random.

Random is composed of only three people — Raul (guitars and vox), Pablo (bass and chorus), and Marcos (drums and chorus) — but on their debut EP, Prrimo, The, they sound like an army. Yeah, sure, with modern recording equipment, one person can sound like an army, but that’s not what I mean. I mean they’re so damned talented, they sound like more skill than three young musicians ought to be capable of summoning.

I will warn you: The music isn’t quite our usual fare here at NCS. For example, this band includes among their cited influences Tool, The Mars Volta, Deftones, and King Crimson — and there’s a lot of clean singing. On the other hand, they also cite Meshuggah, Mastodon, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Between The Buried and Me. What’s really freaky is that the music they make is in line with all those influences, and it’s so well executed that dropping names like those isn’t overreaching.

I shit you not — this is brash, brilliantly inventive, creatively constructed music, densely packed with stylistic extravagance and technical wizardry, and it deserves a big audience. Getting there will just take a little word-of-mouth, and some receptive ears. We’ll supply some words — you supply your ears.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 2)

 Forthcoming Albums  No Responses »
Feb 012011
 


The first month of the year has come and gone. January brought those of us in Seattle some typically ass-sucking winter weather, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as the brutality dished out by the weather gods on our metal brothers and sisters in the Midwest and Northeast of the U.S. And of course, our readers ins places like Russia, and Finland, and Sweden are probably laughing their asses off reading our complaints about our winter weather. So, we’ll just shut up about that.

Besides, January brought all sorts of great new metal to our tender ears, so who gives a shit about the weather anyway? And you know what else January brought? It brought news of still more metal goodness on the way — great bursts of audio sunshine in our collective futures that will part these winter clouds and leave them whimpering in cloudy tatters.

Okay, maybe we should leave poetry to the poets and just get on with this next monthly installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, where we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like, or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we’ve cut and pasted the announcements and compiled them in alphabetical order. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones:

AJATARRA: “AJATTARA — the Finnish band featuring former AMORPHIS frontman Pasi Koskinen (a.k.a. Itse Ruoja Suruntuoj) — will release its seventh album, Murhat (“Murders”) on February 2 via Osasto-A Records. Murhat is available for streaming in its entirety on the AJATTARA Facebook page.”  (much more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

WE HAVE A WINNER!

 IQ Subtraction, Off Topic  2 Responses »
Jan 312011
 

Maybe other people don’t find lorises as amusing as we do. Or maybe other people are happy just to look at lorises without treating them as fodder for “icanhazcheezburger” captions. Or maybe other people would rather we just stick to metal and leave bug-eyed animals to The Discovery Channel.

Whatever the reason, we only got three entries in our latest NCS contest — which was to come up with a suitable caption for that loris image up above that our buddy Phro sent us all the way from his fortified outpost in Japan.

Phro graciously consented to judge the entries and pick a winner, which he has now done. After the jump, Phro names the winner and explains his choice, we reveal our prizes for the lucky dude, and we add the winning caption to the photo.  (We do have metal today, in the two posts just below this one, so don’t start throwing things at the computer screen . . .) Continue reading »

AMON AMARTH: “WAR OF THE GODS”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  16 Responses »
Jan 312011
 

This will be quick, but it will be good, I promise.

Everyone knows that Amon Amarth has a new album on the way —“Surtur Rising”. I am very much looking forward to it. Very much.

This past weekend, the first track from the album — “War of the Gods” — debuted on Full Metal Jackie’s nationally syndicated radio show. And as I had hoped, someone has now uploaded the track (which includes Jackie’s quick intro) onto YouTube.

It is classic Amon Amarth — which means if you’re not a big fan, this won’t change your life. But if you are a big fan (as I am), it is just a fucking killer way to start the week. It’s a phalanx of raging Vikings pounding down at you at a full charge, with Johan Hegg barking like a big wolf. It’s got a massively infectious little melody grooved into it, and a boiling guitar solo to boot.

UPDATE: After the jump, we now have the official stream of “WAR OF THE GODS” — not the version ripped from the radio on YouTube, with its imperfections.

Go past the jump and listen . . . and then get your battle ax out of the closet and run into the streets looking for a worthy foe to butcher! Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 21

 MISCELLANY  6 Responses »
Jan 312011
 

I’m way behind with these MISCELLANY posts. Of course, “Way Behind” is one of my middle names (or two of them), so I guess this doesn’t come as a shock to anyone. It’s still unfortunate, because the longer I wait to do one of these, the more impossible it becomes to get through all the undiscovered music I’d like to hear. Actually, there’s no such thing as “more impossible”. A task is either possible or it’s not.

Anyway, there are rules to performing this particular impossible task: Here at NCS we keep a running list of bands whose music we’ve never heard, but who look interesting for one reason or another; usually, they’re bands who are fairly new to the scene. When time permits, I pick a handful of names off the list and listen to a song or two from each band and then write about my reactions in these MISCELLANY posts. Sometimes, I’ve got reason to think I’ll like the music, but usually I have no idea. And because I’m realistic about the worth of my own opinions, I give you a chance to hear what I heard so you can make up your own minds.

In this installment of the series, I checked out the following bands from the following places: Red Descending (Australia), Death Comes Pale (Denmark), and PLAAG (Belgium).  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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