LIVING SACRIFICE

 Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 102009
 

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Resurrected death/thrash band Living Sacrifice has just released a new single, “Rules of Engagement” in advance of their forthcoming CD, The Infinite Order, due for release on January 26. It’s streaming on the band’s MySpace page, it’s available on iTunes, and it kicks ass.

This Arkansas band originally formed in 1988, broke up in 2002, and reunited in 2008 with a six-week US tour (“Stronger Than Hell”) headlined by Seattle metalcore band Demon Hunter. I had lost sight of the band during their hiatus and had not paid any serious attention to them even before the break-up — frankly, because of preconceptions based on their categorization as Christian metal. But I caught the “Stronger Than Hell” tour when it passed through Seattle, and their performance that night was one of the best I saw that year.  Hell, one of the best in many years. They totally tore up the place, and a worshipful packed crowd at El Corazon went crazy over them. So did I. Continue reading »

IMPOSTER SYNDROME

 Band Name Fodder, Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Dec 082009
 

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Researchers have shown that people aren’t good judges of their own performance and often tend to overrate their own abilities.  Some people think they’re way better than they are, and their own sense of self-importance just oozes from every pore.  You can probably think of people like that in an instant – whether it’s someone you personally know or a celebrity you know about.  Take Dave Mustaine for example. But people can misjudge their abilities in the opposite way too.

A few days ago I was talking with someone who told me about imposter syndrome.  It’s not exactly a recognized psychological disorder, but it’s something that researchers have studied and written about.  It can be defined as a persistent feeling that you’re really not as good as other people think you are, that whatever success you’ve achieved isn’t really deserved, and that other people have just been deceived about you.  Those feelings are accompanied by a fear that your lack of competence or talent will be found out and that you’ll be revealed as a fake and a fraud.

It’s more than low self-esteem.  People with low self-esteem might actually be unsuccessful people.  People with imposter feelings actually have achieved some success, but aren’t able to recognize and value their own achievement.  And perversely, with each new success, the fear of being “found out” increases.   I’m guessing there are people in some successful metal bands out there that suffer from those fears and who can’t enjoy their deserved success as a result.  Poor bastards. Continue reading »

TEXAS IN JULY

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 082009
 

Texas+in+July+texas

My co-Author IntoTheDarkness turned me on to Texas in July this past summer not long after they released their full-length CD I Am. I liked it immediately and have found myself going back to it periodically since then (and I’ll eventually explain why). When I first started listening to I Am, I knew nothing about the band and there wasn’t a lot to learn on the netz, though I did discover that despite their band name the guys were from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (As a native Texan, I was a little disappointed by that discovery, but managed to get over it.)

Recently, after one of my periodic returns to I Am, I decided to hunt the web again for more info and found a lot more than when I looked the first time 6 months ago. For one thing, the band’s MySpace page now shows more than 1 million song plays, which is a shit-load. And I found that the band had released an EP called Salt of the Earth in October 2008 (both releases are now available on iTunes).  I also found all sorts of on-the-surface reasons why the odds would be against me liking this band.

First, they’re really young (ages 16-18, and two of them still in high school) and I’m really not.  I’ve found very few metal bands that young who have enough song-writing sophistication and playing chops to be worth more than a brisk once-over. Second, look at that photo above: kind of screams “Emo!” doesn’t it? Third, their label (CI Records) bills them  as a Christian metalcore band. Now don’t get me wrong — they’re some bands stuck in that same genre pigeon-hole that I really like (e.g., August Burns Red) — but it’s not a long list. My tastes these days tend to run toward the more brutal end of the extreme metal spectrum.

But against all these odds, I’m still addicted to Texas in July. Call it a guilty pleasure. And the source of the appeal, as it should be, is the music. To explain . . . Continue reading »

METAL TSUNAMI

 Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 062009
 

tsunami

For all you horn-headed stat geeks out there, Cosmo Lee has compiled some fascinating numbers that you can read about in detail at his Invisible Oranges site. In a nutshell, in 1986 (which Lee uses as a baseline), 458 full-length metal releases came out. Assuming you had wanted to, you could have listened to all of them at the rate of 38 a month. Last year, there were almost 5,000 full-length metal releases. You’d have had to listen to more than 400 albums a month to cover all of them. And that’s not counting demos — there were more than 4,000 of them released last year.

We can guess about why this flood of metal has built to tsunami-like proportions over the last 23 years. For example, advances in technology have made DIY digital recording much easier and cheaper, and the netz have made it vastly easier for bands to get their music out into the world (regardless of whether the music is worth a shit or not).

None of this means those thousands of metal bands releasing new music every year are making any more money than the 458 who released albums in 1986. In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked if those 458 metal releases generated more total sales (in constant dollars) than the almost 5,000 released last year. Sure, the population has grown since then (in the U.S., from about 240 million in ’86 to about 304 million in ’08). On the other hand, file-sharing and downloads have just about succeeded in putting a stake through the heart of CD sales.

One thing is for sure: The flood of metal has populated every metal micro-genre with lots of choices and has made it increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff if you’re a listener. As Lee astutely observes in his post:

Such multiplicity means that consensus is likely impossible to reach nowadays. Year-end lists show much less overlap because people have many more choices. . . . In the past, people had limited, overlapping access to information — the same few TV channels, record stores, and so on. Now technology has blasted everything wide open. The only year-end list that matters now is yours.

DISFIGURING THE GODDESS

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 052009
 

DFG2

Someday we’ll write about a band we don’t like. Promise. But not today. Today is a day to write about Disfiguring the Goddess. We really like Disfiguring the Goddess. And irresistable cosmic forces dictate that we write about DTG today. Why?

Well, first, earlier this week the band made 3 “new” songs available for free download here. Second, soon after that, following a long hiatus, the nearly perfect Metal Sucks website relaunched the “Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week” contest. Check it out here. And guess whose logo they chose to use for the re-launch? Well, I mean that’s the point — you’re supposed to guess. But we’ll save you the trouble. The logo featured on Metal Sucks was a cropped version of the image above, the same one you’ll find on the MySpace page for — Disfiguring the Goddess.

Your superstitious Author decided he could ignore this kind of cosmic alignment only at his peril. Besides, this band deserves our Authorial attention here at NCS. DTG is unsigned. Its only available body of work consists of a 6-song promo EP (available on iTunes), a 4-song demo you can scrounge from net download sites, and a few “vocal videos” on YouTube. And as far as we know, DTG has never performed even a single live show. Yet it has developed a large cult following, largely on the strength of Cameron “Big Chocolate” Argon’s vocal prowess and his ability to create music that’s “outside the box” — which is saying something in a musical genre that’s itself way outside the box. The inimitable Sergeant D has written over at Metal Inquisition that Argon has produced “the most brutal, crushing, guttural slamz on Earth.” Gotta agree. Continue reading »

THOSE WHO LIE BENEATH

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Dec 032009
 

BEHEMOTH_AdmatTWLB

A few days ago we frothed at the mouth over Portland band Those Who Lie Beneath and their truly awesome debut CD An Awakening.  Today we learned that the band has been added to the Portland and Seattle shows of the Evangelia Amerika tour.  That tour was already a don’t-miss extravaganza, headlined by the titanic Behemoth and supported by Greek black metal studs Septicflesh and Norwegian “suicidal black metal” band the Shining.  But the addition of TWLB really makes this the kind of experience you’ll miss only if you hate yourself.

Be there or be square:  Portland on January 18 at the Hawthorne Theater and Seattle on January 19 at El Corazon.

METAL DOWN UNDER

 Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 022009
 

Psycroptic in Indonesia

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We’re big fans of Psycroptic. First, they’re called Psycroptic. Second, they’re from Tasmania for fuck’s sake. Third, they play some awesome technical death metal. And fourth, when they tour, they go to places like Indonesia (Java and Bali to be precise) — and they draw big crowds there! I’m not shitting you. The photos up above are from Psycroptic’s Indonesian tour in November. The band’s amazing drummer Dave Haley released a report about the experience. Here’s an excerpt:

“We can honestly say we can’t wait to go back! Indonesia’s metal scene is huge, and feels more like a ‘community’ than just music fans. I can honestly say I’ve never seen so much enthusiam and passion for music anywhere in the world. What an amazing place…I wish every tour could be as good as that one was!”

Who knew?

AustralianHeavyMetalLogo

Then on top of that, Psycroptic returned to Australia to learn that they had received a pile of awards at the first annual Australian Metal Awards show in Sydney, including best live band and — what did I tell you — best band name.

And they’re working on new music for release in 2010.

For more details about all these doings, go here.

Ever Forthright-Always Brutal

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Dec 012009
 

Long Island's new Expirimental tech death band Ever ForthrightSometimes, many of today’s metal bands can begin to sound the same. Many of the bands in each genre of metal sound so similar to each other that it becomes hard to find standouts. But every once in a while, a band comes along that shakes me to the core and reminds me why i still listen to the genre of music that i do. Continue reading »

PORTLAND IN THE SUN — Part 2

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 012009
 

Dawn in Portland

Yesterday we wrote about American Me, the first of two Portland bands that have produced new releases from Rise Records within the last month or two.  Today, we’re talking about the debut album from . . .

Those Who Lie Beneath

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TWLB dropped their first CD, An Awakening, on Oct 13, and it’s one of the best debuts we’ve heard this year. They share this much with their label-mates, American Me: Both bands churn out fast, angry, viscerally affecting sonic assaults — exactly the kind of NCS Metal your Author wants.

But where American Me generates a heavy brand of hardcore, Those Who Lie Beneath have built their sound around a different core: death metal.  But what they’ve produced on An Awakening is a blend of many death-metal influences — old-school death, the crushing breakdowns of deathcore, melodic death metal guitar stylings and solos, and tech-death instrumentation. The music resists simple classification, though it isn’t a forced stitching together of styles for the sake of showing off or trying to be different for the sake of being different.  The music truly hangs together in an integrated, fully realized way. Continue reading »

PORTLAND IN THE SUN — Part 1

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Nov 302009
 

Dawn in Portland

No, I’m not talking about the weather.  This time of year it blows just as hard in Portland as it does here in Seattle.  I’m talking about recent releases from two passionate Portland bands that are most definitely worth checking out:  Siberian Nightmare Machine from American Me and An Awakening from Those Who Lie Beneath. Both bands are signed to Rise Records, both are hot shit, and both are playing at Portland’s Club Satyricon on Dec 2.  Today we’ll talk about American Me and tomorrow we’ll cover Those Who Lie Beneath. Continue reading »

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