WELL, HOLY FUCK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 132010
 

The last couple of days my day job has had my head in a fucking vise. I’ve barely had time to create posts for this site, but haven’t had much time to browse other metal sites I usually frequent in order to keep up with what’s happening in the metal cosmos. I did a little catching up last night, and found two stupendous videos that have just been released over the last 48 hours.

Because I’m a little slow to find them, you may have seen the videos already, but I’ve got to put them up anyway because they’re both so cool — in very different ways. Both of them made me exclaim “Holy Fuck!” (hence, the really imaginative title of this post).

The first one is a video of “Alas, Lord Is Upon Me” from Behemoth’s most recent album, Evangelion. I saw a censored version of this video on a couple of other metal sites, but this morning I found an uncensored version that’s now out. The only difference from the censored version is that there are a couple of flashes of nudity (as a priest in his vestments has sex with a naked woman in a church). The images in this slick video (even when they don’t involve nudity) are striking.

The second video is a live pro-shot performance by the reconstituted Polish death-metal band Decapitated. I got excited about this one mainly because Decapitated’s heavy-grooved, technical music is just so damned awesome, and this performance appears to be the first since the awful 2007 van accident that killed the band’s drummer and left its vocalist in a coma.

In fact, the only original member of the band still left is guitarist Wacław “Vogg” Kiełtyka. But based on the evidence of this video, Decapitated can still kick your ass into the stratosphere.  (both videos are after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

METAL FROM NORTH AFRICA (Part 1): SCARAB

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Jul 072010
 

On July 5, we tried a little experiment. Indulging in the same kind of presumptuousness that motivates people to tweet about their latest meal or the last time they washed their underwear, we just described the music we’d randomly checked out that morning — whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. None of the bands was known to us, and we didn’t actually like everything we found, but we wrote about all of it anyway — just because that’s what we heard.

A few readers actually seemed to like the idea, and we’re desperate for approval, so we’ll do it again. But not today. Today, we’re doing something that’s a little more focused and we’re exercising a bit more judgment. But in a way, this post started just as impulsively as the one on July 5.

We were over at Steff Metal‘s blog and got into a sick mixtape she had created (here), the subject of which was music with an ancient Egyptian theme (though not played by bands from Egypt). That got us to thinking (always a dangerous pastime) and we realized that we knew very damned little about Egyptian metal bands.

So, we started exploring, and the path we wandered hooked us up not only with some really good Egyptian metal, but also with metal from some other North African countries — Tunisia and Morocco, to be precise. We found enough interesting shit that we’re dividing this post into three parts: One band today (Scarab) and the next three over the two following days.

To be clear, we’re not pretending this is some kind of authoritative survey. We didn’t do in-depth research, and we didn’t listen to dozens of bands and then selectively whittle down the group. We’re way too half-assed for that. We just jumped into the fast-moving current of the internet and waited to see where we’d be washed up on shore.

And by sheer chance, we wound up with a little bit of everything — some death metal, some oriental black metal, and some progressive/folk metal — but what we found was awesome. So open your minds and your ears and we’ll show you what we found.  (beginning after the jump, of course . . .) Continue reading »

CATZ

 Mosh Pit, That's Metal -- But It's Not Music  12 Responses »
Mar 072010
 

I try to stay grymm. This is an extreme metal blog, after all. Brooding and scowling are the order of the day, except when we take a break for attempts at humor — which necessarily have to be tasteless or sarcastic. Problem is, I have a weakness for cats. I have a cat — or to be more accurate, I share a cat. He’s about 17 years old and a big part of my day. That makes me a little insecure, because as pets go, I have this nagging worry that cats aren’t considered metal, not like a Doberman or a pit bull or a wolfhound.

I got a little bit of an ego boost when I read Issue #62 (Dec 2009) of Decibel. It included an article called “The Cutest Kitties in Metal.” The article consisted of seven pages of dudes from metal bands with their cats, with photos and affectionate commentary from the dudes about their cats. That made me feel a little more metal about my own cat thing.

But that was a couple months ago, and I’ve started feeling insecure again about my metalness. Like when I saw the photo above and started laughing. I don’t even know why I’m making that confession.  Lolcats are not metal. I know that. I don’t even know why I’m putting this post together. Trying to justify my cat weakness I guess, at the risk that you readers will think this post is a complete, bullshit waste of space and time.

But fuck it, the die is cast. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Tomorrow we’ll have a post ready on some divergently awesome new music, but today, I’m afraid it’s all catz.

So, the cat above isn’t metal.  But what about this?  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

FLIPPING THE BIRD

 Mosh Pit  No Responses »
Jan 262010
 

bgg

See those pictures above? In descending order, that’s Arch Enemy, Behemoth, Dragonforce, Dez Fafara, Carnifex, Axl Rose, and the late great Dimebag, all flipping the bird. This is a pretty random selection. If we’d had more time, we could have made this photo gallery a lot longer. For every metal band you’ve got on your personal music player, odds are that somewhere there’s a photo of them giving the finger.

Who are they flipping off? Is it the photographer? Is it you, their adoring fans? Is it the world in general? And why are they doing this?  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

BEHEMOTH IN SEATTLE

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 212010
 

Tuesday, January 19, 2010. This is how the day began over Puget Sound (honest to God — I really saw this and really took this photo):

And this is how it ended at El Corazon in Seattle:

After starting off the New Year of live music last week with an ass-kicking show by DevilDriver, Suffocation, Goatwhore, and Thy Will Be Done (see our review here), your three NCS Authors took in the Evangelia Amerika tour two nights ago in Seattle — and the ass-kicking continued as Behemoth, Septicflesh, Lightning Swords of Death, and Those Who Lie Beneath took the stage at El Corazon.  For our report, and a lot more of our amateurish concert photos like the one above, continue reading after the jump. Continue reading »

BURNING IDEAS (Part 3)

 Metal News, Mosh Pit  2 Responses »
Jan 162010
 

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this post, we focused on the recent exploits of ex-Gorgoroth vocalist Gaahl. Gaahl has publicly supported the burning of churches in his native Norway. Norwegian churches don’t much care for Gaahl’s rhetoric (shocking, isn’t it?). They are now pressuring Norway’s National Stage to drop Gaahl from the cast of a black metal musical scheduled to be performed there in May. They might succeed.

You may remember that this isn’t the first time or the first place where Gaahl has run into trouble for being offensive to institutional religion. In 2005, he and Gorgoroth narrowly escaped criminal prosecution in Poland for staging a concert that featured impaled sheep’s heads, satanic symbols, and a mock crucifixion by naked models doused in blood. Poland has laws that prohibit behavior offensive to people’s religious beliefs.

Gorgoroth are not the only corpse-painted dudes who’ve had run-ins with those Polish laws. Which brings us to Behemoth (more after the jump). Continue reading »

NEWS FROM ALL OVER: HAGGIS AND BONG

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Jan 112010
 

I bet the title of this post got your attention, didn’t it? And I bet that if someone does a Google search for “haggis and bong” in the next day or two, we’ll be one of the first returns. Of course, I can’t imagine why anyone would do that — unless you live in South Africa or you stumbled on this news at Blabbermouth:

South African Metal Festival Aims To Set Record For ‘Most People Headbanging Simultaneously’ – Jan. 10, 2010: 21 of South Africa’s top metal bands will perform at the MotherFUDD festival, set to take place March 12-14, 2010 at Malonjeni Guest Resort, South Africa. The event will also host what it claims to be “the first-ever official Guinness World Record for most people headbanging simultaneously” on March 13.

Following the above intro was a list of those 21 bands scheduled to play at the “MotherFUDD” festival, including — you guessed it — Haggis and Bong. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

WHY IS GERMANY SO FUCKING BRUTAL? (postscript)

 IQ Subtraction, Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 192009
 

wacken10smallVans WarpedYesterday, NCS Co-Author IntoTheDarkness posted a piece on the brutality of German extreme metal bands. In an episode of synchronicity, this morning I saw three news updates about festivals scheduled for 2010 — one in the U.S. and two in Germany. And the comparison speaks volumes. On the one hand, we have the 2010 Vans Warped Tour spreading across the US next summer like a brain-sucking plague. On that tour, you’ll have the opportunity to see such stupifyingly awful bands as Attack! Attack!, Breathe Carolina, and Eyes Set to Kill. There are a few saving graces on the tour — Parkway Drive, Suicide Silence, and Whitechapel. But suffering through the rest of the 67-band lineup for the opportunity to see those dudes would be worse than a garden-hose colonoscopy without anesthesia.

SUMMER_BREEZE_2010On the other hand, next year in Germany we’ll have the latest installments of (a) the Summer Breeze festival scheduled for August 19-21 in Dinkelsbühl; and (b) the Wacken Open Air festival scheduled for August 5-7 in (where else) Wacken, Germany. At Summer Breeze, you could see the likes of Asphyx, Barren Earth, Behemoth, Dark Tranquillity, Despised Icon, Dying Fetus, Hypocrisy, Necrophagist, Obituary, Sepultura, Swallow the Sun, The Crown, and Maroon. And Wacken Open Air will feature bands such as Amorphis, Arch Enemy, Caliban, Immortal, Iron Maiden, and Slayer.

What’s really mind-blowing about the contrast is that those German festivals, each spread over just a few days in a single location, will draw tens of thousands (e.g., 70,000 tickets were sold for the 2009 edition of Wacken Open Air more than 200 days in advance). To get that kind of attendance in the U.S. for metal, you apparently need to have a line-up of largely craptastic bands and a schedule of about 40 dates in 40 cities.

To be fair, the German festivals draw crowds from all over Europe, and the U.S. does have some legitimately extreme festivals that are drawing headbangers in increasing numbers (the Maryland Deathfest, now in its 8th year, comes to mind most prominently). But still, so far, it’s no contest.

For full lists of the bands scheduled to date for these 3 tours, continue reading after the jump.

Continue reading »

BLACK METAL NAVEL-GAZING

 Metal News  10 Responses »
Dec 152009
 

Immortal

I don’t read The New York Times regularly. I’ll make a wild guess: I bet most visitors to this site don’t read it either. If you do, you need to rearrange your priorities. There are only so many hours in the day, and you’d be happier if you spent more time here at NO CLEAN SINGING, or any of the linked sites over to the right, and less on The New York Times. But though I don’t read that paper regularly, I’ve got friends who do, and three of them e-mailed me about an article that appeared there today entitled “Thank You Professor, That Was Putrid.”

The word that first came to mind after I read it was “bizarre.” The second word was “fucking pretentious.” The article describes a six-hour symposium on black metal held last Saturday afternoon at Public Assembly, a bar and nigthtclub in Brooklyn. The symposium, called “Hideous Gnosis,” was attended by an odd combination of pointy-headed academics (including two who traveled from England for the event), music critics, and at least one actual black metal musician, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, the frontman and guitarist from Liturgy. (That can’t possibly be his real name, can it?  Gotta be a black metal stage-name.)

The academics presented papers with such mouth-watering titles as “The Counter-Reformation in Stone and Metal: Spiritual Substances,” “Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya,” and “Perpetual Rot: Obsessive Cycles of Deterioration.” I can sum up my reaction like this: “Reading About Hideous Gnosis: Regurgitating in My Lap.” 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.

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