Oct 092012
 

Here are a few items of interest I saw between yesterday and today that I thought were worth throwing in your general direction. Catch!

DAYLIGHT DIES

A Frail Becoming, the new album by North Carolina’s Daylight Dies, is being officially released today by Candlelight Records. It’s very, very good. I hope we will have a review soon, because the album deserves whatever we can do to help spread the word.

The latest song to be released for streaming is the album’s fourth track, “Dreaming of Breathing”, which is the subject of a music video directed by Ramon Boutviseth that debuted yesterday. It’s a beautifully filmed video, and the narrative portion suits the moody, dreamlike ambience of the music, while the band footage suits all the thundering that Daylight Dies do so well in their doom-influenced brand of melodic death metal.

Check it out next . . . Continue reading »

Dec 072011
 

I discovered a French band called Svart Crown more than a year ago when I reviewed their second albumWitnessing the Fall. I compared them to a joint venture between Immortal and Immolation. Since then, the band signed with Listenable Records, which put the album into wider distribution. It’s still a damned strong listen.

This morning I saw that the band have released an official video for “Into A Demential Sea”, one of the songs from Witnessing the Fall. To crib from my review (since I’m too fucking lazy to come up with any new phraseology), it’s “almost experimental in its combination of raging guitars, complex drumming, and sharp rhythm breaks that cause the song to trudge with death-doom chord progressions.”

But more importantly, it will trigger the old headbang reflex, which is a reflex that needs to be triggered often, so that you don’t get fixed-neck syndrome, which is a precursor to tight-sphincter complex and stick-up-the-ass disease.

And in other welcome news, an Ulcerate-Svart Crown European tour has been announced for February 2012. I say “welcome” because I’m trying to be happy for our European readers. I myself do not find this news welcome, because, since I can’t go to any of these shows, the news simply makes me jealous and slightly miserable because of my loss. I’m going to console myself by watching this video again. It’s after the big goddamn tour poster which immediately follows the jump. I hope all you Euro motherfuckers are happy. Continue reading »

Apr 212011
 

(Brutalitopia is a great name for a metal blog. If we’d thought of it first, you might be reading “Brutalitopia” right now. But instead of us, two other dudes thought up the name, and they’ve put together some great content to go along with it, too. Check that site now if you never have before (use this link). Today, in response to our appeal for help, Brutalitopia Jack has contributed the following thought-provoking guest post.)

Historically speaking, trends and styles tend to occur in phases. This is certainly true for music, and putting metal under the microscope is a great test of this theory; NWOBHM was the representative blueprint of heavy music in the late 1970s, thrash was the mid-80s, and death metal reigned right around the time Metallica sold out. As for the current era, there’s little doubt that heavier progressive acts have assumed dominion for the foreseeable future.

The intriguing situation with prog, however, is the labyrinthine absorption of various sounds and styles that so conspicuously distinguishes itself in today’s muddled scene. Listeners and critics alike often refer to groups as dissimilar as Opeth and Mastodon as progressive, and no issue is made of it. Some argue that the label “progressive” should be understood less as a genre and more as a descriptor of approach and stylistic ethos, but that’s a discussion for another day. The fact remains that progressive metal is at the forefront and will be for some time.

The logical and fanatical question then becomes this; as we enter the second decade of the new millennium, will the burgeoning progressive metal frontier yield a Big Four like Thrash once did? The short answer (at least to this guy) is no. And that’s only because we’ll simply never see a collective reaction to such a limited number of bands ever again; the digital age makes it impossible for even 40 bands to hold the attention of the whole metal community. But while we likely won’t be able to point at four groups as the unquestioned, paramount torchbearers of metal in the 2010s at the end of the decade, it’s not a futile enterprise to attempt to identify four that could really break into the forefront in the next several years. Essentially, fuck everything I just said and put on your pretending caps.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

Feb 242011
 

(Today, NCS contributor BadWolf reviews the new album by New Zealand’s Ulcerate.)

Give it up for New Zealand’s Ulcerate for knowing how to throw a curveball at me. The band is signed to Willowtip, my go-to label for death metal that has as much Dillinger Escape Plan in the mix as Cannibal Corpse. When I see Willowtip on a CD, I expect winding technical and chaotic riffage (on bass and drums, as well as guitars) to force my skull into a state of rapid decompression. In effect, I fully expect their records to be all experience and no songwriting—in this case the experience of being “that guy” in Scanners.

The Destroyers of All does nothing of the sort. Instead, it bakes its listener to death—a fitting follow-up to their last album, Everything is Fire. The album is in every possible way comparable to a desert, so much so that I want Ulcerate to do the soundtrack to the next stupid adaptation of Dune—this is the sound of wandering sand-worms. The song structures are vast and majestic, and make good use of so-called negative space. The last record burned the earth; this record sifts through the cinders at a leisurely (torturous) pace.

As has been pretty openly stated over at Invisible Oranges, this is a death metal record made by people who like “-post,” metal. That is to say, it has songs with long and irregular structures without refrains or choruses, and a general sense of minimalism.

Full disclosure: I am a filthy, filthy whore for this sort of thing. Neurosis and Isis make me shiver with anticipation when the proper mood strikes. I even like long-form repetitive black metal (Dear Wolves in the Throne Room, play Ohio, you bastards!). Coincidentally, I feel the same way about films with long, majestic shots of deserts. Yes, I am that asshole, and this album seems tailor-made to suit my taste.  (more after the jump, including a track to stream . . .) Continue reading »

Jan 112011
 

The forthcoming album from New Zealand’s Ulcerate (their third) has been high on our list of anticipated 2011 releases. It will be called The Destroyers of All, it will be released on January 25 by Willowtip Records, and it’s now available for pre-order here.

The reason for this post is to make you aware (the one or two of you who don’t regularly read MetalSucks) that MS is now featuring an exclusive full-album stream of  The Destroyers of All at this location. I haven’t yet listened to the full stream (chalk it up to something I fondly call “my fucking day job”), but from what I’ve heard so far, it’s a worthy successor to the band’s stunning 2009 album, Everything Is Fire.

One more tidbit on the subject of the new Ulcerate album: The band has made one track from the album — “Dead Oceans” — available for download via its web site. To use a journalistic term of art, it’s good shit.

Dec 012010
 

November is now in our rear-view mirror. December lies ahead of us: A perfectly good stretch of road marred by the speed bumps of the cataclysm that is Christmas. And on the other side of those speed bumps is the end of the year – the roadkill that is New Year’s Eve. And you know what the run-up to year-end brings — year-end lists. It’s already started, but the coming weeks will bring us a slew of Best of 2010 album lists. We’ll probably do our own Best of 2010 list — not the best albums of the year, but, as we did last year, the most infectious extreme metal songs of the year.

But we’re not quite ready to launch that list. Instead, we’re looking off into the future, not backward at the music that’s rattled our skulls over the past year. Yes, it’s time for another monthly installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, in which we cobble together a list of forthcoming new albums, cribbing like rag-gatherers and lint-pickers from PR releases and metal news sites like Blabbermouth in order to construct a line-up of new music that we’re interested in hearing.

All of our previous monthly updates can be found via the “Forthcoming Albums” category link on the right side of our pages, and because we’re not keeping a cumulative list, you might want to check the last couple months of these posts if you want to get a full picture of what’s coming. The list that follows, in alphabetical order, are albums we didn’t know about at the time of our last installment, or updated info about albums we’d previously heard were on the way. After the jump, of course . . .

Continue reading »

Aug 312010
 

Another month has passed. Summer is waning. It’s still as hot as the ninth circle of Hell in most parts of our country, but here in the Pacific Northwest, the air is already beginning to feel like fall. And because fall in Seattle lasts about one week, winter is already what we’re thinking about, because winter means getting soaked with rain. In the dark.

Where were we? Oh yeah, another month is over. And here at NCS, that means it’s time for another installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, a forge being the old name for a place where a blacksmith heats metal and works it into the shape of something useful. We thought it sounded literary.

Another name for “forge” is “smithy.” As in, “the blacksmith works in a smithy.” But “smithy” doesn’t sound literary, and METAL IN THE SMITHY just sounds fucked up. METAL IN THE FORGE is a little fucked up, too, the more we think about it, but not as fucked up as METAL IN THE SMITHY.

Where were we? Oh yeah, at the end of every month, we update the list of forthcoming new albums we first posted on January 1. (All the other updates can be found via the “Forthcoming Albums” category link on the right side of our pages.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases we didn’t know about at the time of our previous updates, or updated info about some of the previously noted releases.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Perhaps needless to say, these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site — the kind that would like to tear your head off.

So, after the jump, in alphabetical order, you’ll find our list of cut-and-pasted items from various sources since our last update about forthcoming new releases. Look for the bands you like and, if you’re really obsessive like we are, put reminders on your calendar. Continue reading »

Nov 242009
 

[Editor’s Note: NO CLEAN SINGING was originally founded by three metalheads who go by the names of Islander, Alexis, and IntoTheDarkness. In this post, IntoTheDarkness tells you a little bit about himself, and below that, Alexis introduces herself. Islander hasn’t yet written anything about himself, other than what you can read into what he writes on this site — and this photo.]

Why is there such a separation within the metal scene? Why is it that if someone likes more than one distinct type of metal, he or she gets ridiculed? For example, if you’re someone who likes both death metal and deathcore, you are suddenly no longer a true metal fan. Continue reading »