ODYSSEY

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 162010
 

A few years ago my day job took me to Spokane pretty regularly. It’s in far eastern Washington, near the Idaho border. Culturally and politically, it’s a world apart from Seattle. The town itself is not much to look at, but you drive 20 minutes in just about any direction, and you’re surrounded by physical beauty. I also liked every person I met there — every one.

There’s metal in and around Spokane. Every now and then a group of us will make the drive east to catch a tour that inexplicably hits Spokane but bypasses Seattle, and there’s usually a good turnout of headbangers. But for new bands, it’s probably not an ideal place to launch a career. Not that we really know what we’re talking about — it’s just a guess.

So our dog-like ears perked up when we saw a Facebook post from the always-interesting Jesse Zuretti (The Binary Code) recommending that his friends check out a 3-piece Spokane band called Odyssey. Not something we could resist, (a) because of the source of the recommendation, and (b) because of the band’s location.

Odyssey has just released a new 4-song EP called Schematics, which follows on the heels of their September ’09 hour-long debut album, Objects in Space. It’s the EP that we’ve now heard, and it’s very strong. No clean singing on that EP, or any other kind of singing. It’s an instrumental brain scrambler that’s completely engrossing. We’ll try to explain why . . . after the jump. Continue reading »

SIGHT OF EMPTINESS: “BURNING SILENCE”

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Sep 152010
 

Man, time really flies. It was January 25 when we wrote a post about an unsigned band we had just discovered called Sight of Emptiness — a melodic death metal band from Costa Rica, of all places. There were then three songs from a forthcoming album streaming on the band’s MySpace page, and we liked what we heard. We also found a video of one song and put it up on our site.

Sight of Emptiness has had an eventful eight months since then. That album (the band’s second) is now out — it’s called Absolution of Humanity, and it was mastered by Jens Bogren, who has worked with the likes of Opeth, Soilwork, Bloodbath, Katatonia, Symphony X, and Amon Amarth.

Also, on May 9, Sight of Emptiness opened for Megadeth at Autodromo La Guacima in San Jose, Costa Rica, playing before 15,000 people. That must have been a huge kick in the ass for these guys, though they have previously been hand-picked by Dark Tranquillity and Amon Amarth to open for them in previous Costa Rica performances.

And in June, Sight of Emptiness won an award for “Best Metal Album” at the ACAM Awards in San Jose (ACAM is the Costa Rica equivalent of ASCAP in the U.S.).

And today they’ve released a professionally filmed and edited video of the band performing a song called “Burning Silence” at that Megadeth concert in May. It’s a cool song, the video is fun to watch, and this is a band that deserves some recognition.  The video is after the jump.  Take a look . . . Continue reading »

A SAPPY THANK-YOU, AND NAIL CLIPPINGS

 Band Name Fodder, Off Topic  7 Responses »
Sep 152010
 

This is the second post of the day, which we don’t do very often. As the title says, this is mainly a sappy thank-you post.  Of course it is, because “sappy” is my middle name. Well, it comes right after my other middle names, i.e., “wordy” and “half-assed.”

For many months after we started this blog, no one posted any comments on what we wrote.  Okay, to be honest, for many months no one read what we wrote.  But even after the reading started, our words were greeted by silence.  Figuratively, the sound of crickets.

Not all bad, because I’ve missed the sound of crickets ever since moving to Seattle from Texas years ago. I don’t miss the appearance of crickets, just the sound of them, on warm nights, when you can’t see them. Kind of a dreamy, hypnotic sound. The sound of nature around us, undisturbed.

Where was I?  Oh yeah: No one posted any comments at NCS for a long time.  But now that has changed, and it’s been an exhilarating change for us.  We look forward every day to seeing what readers write, even when someone calls us retarded, and we feel kinda empty on the days when none come.  That’s mainly because the comments are usually better than the posts we write.

Yesterday was a classic example, certainly one of the best comment days ever.  We did a half-baked riff on band names and got a slew of comments that were smart and funny and creative and educational and took the discussion off in unexpected directions, which is part of what’s so much fun about the comments we’re getting.

And did I say the comments are educational?  They’re really educational!  Of course, when, like us, you start in a state of embarrassing ignorance, it may not take much to be educational in our eyes, but still. After the jump, I’ll tell you the things I learned yesterday, and one thing in particular that drew me back to an album I haven’t listened to in a while, and it was just a perfect end to a beautiful Indian summer day in Seattle.

But first: Thank you to the people who commented yesterday — to Dan, and ElvisShotJFK, and Brian, and Andy, and byrd36 — and to everyone else who has taken the time to add something to this site since we started.  And we don’t mean to slight those who simply read and don’t write (which is mainly what I do on other sites).  We are sappily grateful to all of you, too. But if you usually don’t write and are are tempted to write something someday, don’t worry — we won’t bite! (more sappiness, plus some music, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

K-K-K-KATAKLYSM IN SEATTLE!

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 152010
 

Two nights ago our NCS spiritual advisor Alexis and I dropped in to Studio Seven to catch Kataklysm in action. Neither one of us had any business hitting a metal club that night because we both had really early days ahead of us the next morning. But Kataklysm was on the bill, and only a case of amoebic dysentery would have kept me away.

Alexis hadn’t listened to Kataklysm before and she went along mainly to humor me. As a compromise, we arrived a bit late and left right after Kataklysm’s set — so we missed Kittie (who I was really curious to see) and DevilDriver (who we’ve seen before). Consequently, this is only a partial concert review, which is probably fitting — a half-assed review to match up with our typically half-assed photos.

And we do have lots of those — images of the first two bands we saw (Hostility and Misery), and of course a few handfuls of our better pics of the astounding Kataklysm. Our thoughts about the part of the show we saw, plus some other random thoughts, plus the photos, are after the jump . . . Continue reading »

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

 Band Name Fodder  46 Responses »
Sep 142010
 

Who hasn’t heard of Slayer? Even non-metalheads who’ve never heard Slayer’s music have heard of Slayer. (Though most of those people are ministers.) The band created ground-breaking music and have been vastly influential on the development of generations of bands, but they also had the inspiration to pick one of the best metal band names of all time.

That same talent for name selection is recognizable in the other members of the so-called “Big Four”: Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. Wholly apart from the music, those one-word names are fucking metal.

How much does it help to have a badass band name in the microcosm of metal? I’m really not sure. What if the music of the “Big Four” had sucked ass? What if they had appeared on the music scene and then rapidly sunk beneath the waves like dense turds, never to be seen or heard from again, and taking their awesome names down into the depths with them?

That could have happened, because I don’t think picking a great name means your music will be great, and all those great names would have been lost to the world of metal forever. On the other hand, if Slayer had called themselves Behold the Arctopus or Attack! Attack!, would the music have somehow become worse? Would Slayer have become less popular? Picking a sucky name doesn’t necessarily hurt your chances if the music is good.

There just doesn’t seem to be any necessary correspondence between the quality of band names and the quality of the music or success of the band. But it is entertaining to consider the evidence — the ass-kicking bands with ass-kicking names, the ass-kicking bands that have succeeded despite piss-poor names, and the bands whose names are just perplexing.

We’ll kick around some examples after the jump, and then we’ll invite your participation . . . Continue reading »

EMBRYONIC DEVOURMENT

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Sep 132010
 

It’s difficult to know whether to take this seriously:  Northern California’s Embryonic Devourment dedicates their new album, Vivid Interpretations of the Void, “to the people helping to expose the reptilian agenda,” specifically including David Ickes, Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa, conspiracy theorists Phil Schneider and Alex Jones, and “The Sumerians”.

If you don’t know, David Ickes is a British writer, speaker, and former media personality whose writings argue that shape-shifting alien reptoids have been controlling the course of human events for thousands of years and have inserted their own genetically compatible humanoid slaves into positions of power.

Embryonic Devourment’s fixation with the reptilian threat goes well beyond the album dedication. Lyrically, the songs are all about that, too — that and nothing else: Shape shifters “killing people fast”, the controlling dominance of “eternal ancient gargoyles,” the “messages lying beneath older worldly tablets,” the intertwining “of repto ancestry through history,” “lizard eyes pierc[ing] your mind hypnotized,” and more.  The album as a whole stands as a warning to the merely human: “Beware thy master god of disaster.”

Stranger things than this have inspired musicians, though this is certainly strange enough. But hey, we’re keeping open minds about the reptilian agenda. We run across people almost every day who act like reptoids. Who knows? Maybe they really are.

Plus, we’re keeping open minds as a show of respect for the music — which is an inventive and strangely pleasing amalgamation of cathartically extreme styles. (more after the jump, including an ear-grabbing song . . .) Continue reading »

NAME-THE-BURGER CONTEST: WE HAVE A WINNER!

 Off Topic  3 Responses »
Sep 122010
 

A little more than a week ago, we joined forces with the Netherlands-based metal blog Death Metal Baboon (DMB) to sponsor a contest. We invited our readers to submit their most inspired names for a gut-busting burger concocted by DMB’s Niek that those of us here at NCS had the pleasure of reproducing in all its glory for our own delectation. (The story of how that happened and how the contest came into existence can be found here.)

DMB and NCS agreed to contribute the following CDs as a prize for the winner:

Kataklysm – Heaven’s Venom

Neurosis – Enemy of the Sun (2010 reissue)

Ion Dissonance – Cursed

Decrepit Birth – Polarity

Demonic Ressurection – The Return to Darkness

Red Descending – Where Dreams Come to Die

Chronic Xorn – Death Destruction Sermon

Symbol of Obscurity – n.N.i.M.m.

The Way of Purity – Crosscore

We got some outstanding name suggestions from NCS and DMB readers, and selecting the winner wasn’t easy. But we do have a winner, and his name is Dan. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FROZEN

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Sep 112010
 

We’re way late with today’s post. There’s a long story behind the delay, but it’s not very interesting, so we’ll just save it. Again for uninteresting reasons, we’ll probably be late tomorrow, too. And because we’re late delivering our product, we’ll be refunding 15% of your NCS subscription fee, no questions asked. Now that we’ve done something that makes us feel better about our tardiness, on with today’s post:

Is it possible for something to be both cold and hot at the same time? If the subject is the temperature of some piece of matter, including the molecules of the air, the answer is usually no. It’s either hot or it’s cold or it’s something in between, but not both hot and cold at the same time. Unless it’s fried ice cream, of course.

But once you get away from describing the temperature of matter, the answer changes. Take people, for example. Some people can be both “cold” and “hot” at the same time. It’s in the eye of the beholder, but some people can be hot precisely because of their coldness.

When it comes to extreme metal, music can definitely be both cold and hot at the same time. You can’t touch music, of course, but music produces sensations and emotional reactions that can be described with adjectives, such as “cold” and “hot,” that typically apply to tangible things.

Frozen is a metal band from the ancient town of Cadiz, which is situated on a narrow spit of land on the sea-coast of southern Spain. Frozen describes its music as “cold black metal”, and there is indeed an icy quality to the music. But it also burns, and the band’s latest album, The Unborn, has become one of our most-listened-to black-metal finds of the year.  (more after the jump, including a song to stream . . .) Continue reading »

“THAT’S METAL!” — BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (No. 14): THE QUILTS AND CLAMPS EDITION

 That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  6 Responses »
Sep 102010
 

It’s been a while since we featured anyone in a THAT’S METAL! post that we actually admired. Instead, it’s been Serbians who cook testicles, guys whose dogs chew off their big toes or get shot in the head and are so wasted they don’t notice, and dudes who get gored in the scrotum by angry bulls. Sure, all that stuff, and more like it, made us exclaim, “Shit! That’s Metal!”, but not really in an admiring way.

Come to think of it, we did admire that bull who spent his last few minutes on earth rampaging through a packed grandstand of yokels in Spain who were being entertained by the bull’s torment. But still, that was a bull, not a person.

Today, we’re giving a shout-out to a person here in Seattle who’s done something metal that doesn’t involve personal injury or rank stupidity. Her name is Boo Davis, and that’s her at the top of the post. But because we know you’ve come to expect some brutality and sarcastic commentary in your THAT’S METAL! posts, we’ve paired up her story with one that involves electrified nipple clamps.

Now, you know you want to continue reading after the jump, and who’s stopping you? If you need a cookie for your efforts, we don’t have any, but we do have some musical accompaniment . . . Continue reading »

FRACTAL GATES

 Album Reviews  20 Responses »
Sep 092010
 

Do you remember the first time you listened to extreme metal — of any genre? Do you remember which band it was? I bet you do. I know I do.

For me, in terms of my musical tastes, it was like I was traveling on a train and someone flipped a switch without warning and shunted the car onto a side track that headed off at a sharp angle into an entirely different landscape. The band that flipped the switch for me was In Flames. It could have been some other band, because it was a pretty random experience, but that’s who it was.

The music was so different from anything else I’d heard. It was like I’d unwittingly reached out and grabbed a live power line — it sent a current bolting through and just torched my head. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my hair had started smoking. That combination of fast, powerful aggression with harsh vocals and catchy, melodic hooks was completely arresting. I went off down that side track and never came back to the main line.

Since then, I’ve gotten into other kinds of music that’s more extreme than In Flames — certainly more extreme than what In Flames has become in recent years — but probably because of that first experience, melodic death metal is still what grabs me the hardest, and when I hear it done right, it still gets me charged up like nothing else.

Last week I listened to the latest album from a Parisian band called Fractal Gates, and it reminded me of what I felt the first time I listen to In Flames — not because Fractal Gates is an In Flames knock-off, but because they’ve succeeded so well in combining dark, threatening power with soaring melodies to produce a galvanizing result.  (more after the jump, including a song to hear, and some very interesting album art . . .) Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries