BLOODSTOCK 2012 – A REVIEW AND MUSIC FROM THE FESTIVAL (Part 1)

 Concert Reviews  6 Responses »
Aug 282012
 

(Our NCS comrade Andy Synn has recently been making me green with envy by attending summer metal festivals on the other side of the Atlantic, which for me might as well be on the other side of the solar system.  However, gentleman and scholar that he is, he didn’t just go and have a ridiculously good time. He also sent back this review of his jaunt to the UK’s BLOODSTOCK festival on August 10-12, 2012. We’re dividing it into two parts, with Part 2 coming up tomorrow [now posted here].)

Ah, Bloodstock. Always an interesting festival, caught between its early power/trad-metal roots and its steady expansion into a more rounded, extreme/non-mainstream metal festival. This year’s line-up was pretty enticing, but circumstances and finances looked set to prevent my attendance. But fate and serendipity stepped in (thank you Sahil!) and on Friday 10th of August I found myself once more pulling into the festival’s parking lot, with a song in my heart and a shiny guest wristband on my arm.

 

FRIDAY

Carefully timing my arrival to coincide with that of Moonsorrow, I wasn’t disappointed, the band utterly on fire, despite the occasionally washed out sound. It helps that the set-list comprised some of my favourite Moonsorrow tracks, I’ll admit that, but the performance itself was brilliant either way. The only downside is that, due to the length of their material, it always seems like too few songs

Sepultura put on a damn good show, their new drummer certainly doing his best to live up to Igor Cavalera’s enviable legacy, while the triptych of Derrick, Paulo, and Andreas showed again and again why they stuck with the name – they just do it all better. The new material sounded great live, while the quartet give the old stuff, including a brace of Beneath The Remains-era material, new life and vigour. Props as well for the welcome, but unexpected, guest slot from Tim “Ripper” Owens on “Territory”.

Dio Disciples were, in many ways, something of a curiosity for the festival. Essentially Dio’s band with a different singer (and a few guests), it’s hard to judge them on merit alone, as their appearance was due to far more than just an ability to play the songs well. This was a tribute to one of the genre’s legendary figures, and while it would be churlish to say it was simply a well-received cover set (the downright dedication to this band’s slot bordered on the fanatical), one can’t help but be moved by this show of respect, and by being reminded of the sheer quality of the material on display. Continue reading »

TOURISM

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jan 222012
 

I’ve been catching up on metal news today and came across news of three upcoming U.S. tours that are . . . newsworthy, to say the least.

I’m guessing this first one will be old news to many of you, since it surfaced on Friday, but it has sure produced some tumescence in your humble editor’s loins today. Behemoth, Watain, The Devil’s Blood, and In Solitude will be hitting the road for The Decibel Magazine Tour, a 26-date trail of wreckage across the U.S. starting in April. It will be the first Behemoth tour for Nergal since being diagnosed with and beating leukemia. That’s a cool tour flyer by Justin Bartlett up there, too.

More details, including tour dates, venues and ticket info, will be announced at www.decibelmagazinetour.com on January 24th.

But that’s just for starters. Mastodon’s Troy Sanders recently confirmed that his band plus Opeth and Ghost will be embarking on a North American tour of their own. During a recent interview at a Belgian radio station, Sanders stated: “We go to Australia to take part in the Soundwave Festival, which is going to be lovely, take a short break. Do a North American tour with Opeth and Ghost. And then take another break and come back over here for the European festival season.”

I have a feeling a few people will buy tickets for that tour. No further details are available at this time. (found this news via Loudwire)

And that’s not all. Would you believe a 30-date tour of the U.S. this summer by Agalloch?!? Continue reading »

WATAIN: “LAWLESS DARKNESS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 172011
 

Record Label: Season Of Mist | Year: 2010 | Genre: Melodic Black Metal

By Willard Shrapnelspear

WA-TAIN! WA-TAIN! WA-TAIN! WA-TAIN!

That was pathetic little me—who hasn’t gotten the golden opportunity to see Watain live yet—imagining how awesome it will be to be chanting this devilishly good band’s name at one of their concerts. I love band names that are made up of two syllables. They are just so easy to remember and convenient to be used by the crowd to get itself stoked during the sound check. Cue festive and hypnotic chants!

Although the highly melodic and influential, but controversial, Dissection finally succumbed to their ill fate in 2006 following Jon Nödtveidt’s demise, all is apparently still well with the much loved Swedish black metal scene. In fact, seeing as how frontman Erik Danielsson played session bass for Dissection a year before it broke up and how 1/3 of the final Dissection lineup (in the much worshipped form of cult figure, Set Teitan) contributes live guitars at Watain sets, it could even be said that Watain is basically pre-Reinkaos Dissection reincarnated (Erik! Don’t ever kill a man and commit suicide afterwards!!).

The gravelly growls that psyche one up for some bloooodshed, the bassy mid-paced grooves, the frantic alternations between stepwise descending/ascending note sequences, and last but not fucking least, that signature high-pitched tuning for the lead guitar on its eargasmic solos, how old-Dissection can a band get? Stellar tracks that showcase such traits are “Malfeitor”, “Reaping Death”, “Wolves Curse”, “Total Funeral” and “Hymn To Qayin”. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SHINING: “VII / FÖDD FÖRLORARE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jun 102011
 

Shining‘s new album, VII / Född Förlorare (“born loser” in English) is one of the most musically varied, beautifully written, and superbly executed albums I’ve heard this year. It also may be the most surprising.

Maybe I wouldn’t have been so surprised if I’d been more familiar with the band’s previous releases, but I came to the album as a Shining newbie, never having heard any of the earlier music. What I had in my head before listening were bits and pieces of things I’d heard or read over the years — that the band played a mix of black metal and doom, that the lyrics promoted suicide and other forms of self-injury (including drug abuse), that the band’s concerts have turned violent on occasion, and that frontman Niklas Kvarforth mutilates himself on stage. There was also this quote from Kvarforth that I read someplace (the original source is here):

“Of course we support suicide, SHINING support all that is negative in this bastard world of ours. We have had a couple of cases in the past with people whom have ended their lives under the influence or partially under the influence of our work and of course this is a true blessing indeed, yet we pray for increased numbers of fatalities.”

With all that, and a general sense I had that Shining really doesn’t care what anyone thinks of them or their music, I’m not completely sure what I was expecting from the new album, but it wasn’t what I got. What I got was something that defies easy characterization, a mixture of folk music, progressive metal, acoustic ballads, chug-heavy aggression, wonderfully varied vocals, and absolutely blistering guitar solos. The music is rich and often has the feel of something intensely personal. Yes, it’s mostly dark and melancholy, but it didn’t make me feel suicidal at all.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

SCRIBE UPDATE

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jan 212011
 

One week ago, we posted a piece by NCS contributor Siddharth Darbha introducing us (and many of you) to an Indian metal band called Scribe. You can read Siddharth’s article here. Siddharth noted that Scribe’s 2010 album, Mark of Teja, had been nominated for Best Album at the 2010 edition of The Jack Daniel’s Rock Awards.

By way of background, this is the sixth year for those awards, which are organized in association with Rolling Stone (India) magazine. This year, 280 entries were submitted for the 16 award categories, including Song of the Year, Band of the Year, and Album of the Year. The editors of Rolling Stone whittled the list down to five nominees in each category, and those were then presented to a nine-member jury of judges. The award winners were decided by a combination of weighted jury votes and popular votes on a specially created web site. Bear in mind that the nominees for each award came from a range of genres — not limited, for example, to extreme metal.

Last night, the awards were announced at a live event at The Hard Rock Cafe in Mumbai. And guess what? Scribe pretty much ran the table, winning the Popular Choice awards for Song of the Year (“1234 Dracula”) and Album of the Year, as well as the Critics’ Choice Awards for Song of the Year and Band of the Year. Scribe’s Srinivas Sunderrajan also won the Bassist of the Year award. For all the results, go here.

Congratulations to Scribe for carrying the flag of Indian metal to the top of the heap — and congrats also to Demonic Resurrection for winning the Popular Choice award for Band of the Year. Pretty damn cool to see two metal bands like this being named Band of the Year against competitors from “more accessible” genres.

And along the same lines, did you know that on Monday of this week none other than Watain‘s album Lawless Darkness won the Swedish version of the Grammy award for “Best Hard Rock” Album of the Year? It did. “Hard rock” clearly means something different in Sweden than it does in the U.S. Holy shit.

RANDOM VIDZ

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Nov 062010
 

I’ve got a shitload of stuff to do in advance of my impending vacation, including advance work on this blog in an effort to keep it from going dark between November 10 and November 20. So what am I doing instead this morning? I’m fucking off, watching metal videos. Typical.

But it’s a hell of a lot more fun than doing all the crap I need to be doing. This is procrastination in action. Actually, I guess procrastination is the opposite of action. Whatever it is, I’m enjoying it, and I thought you might enjoy it, too. In case you feel like procrastinating, I’ve got five videos for you. That’s a lot of procrastinating material, but you can pick and choose if you don’t want to fuck off as much as I’ve been fucking off. The first four are live performances, with very good sound quality (and varying video quality).

WATAIN

The first offering is some quality fan-filmed video footage of WATAIN‘s October 27, 2010 performance of the song “Malfeitor” from Lawless Darkness at a club called the Baroeg in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. That Lawless Darkness album is stunningly good, and getting to watch Watain perform their evil music on stage is cool. Maybe someday I’ll get to see them in person.

(and after the jump, videos from God Dethroned, Asphyx, Pestilence, and The Browning . . .)

Continue reading »

GOOD LINES

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jun 292010
 

Why do people read album reviews? In an extremely rare moment of logical thought, I decided that was a question worth considering when I started writing them myself. Just seemed to me that if I really wanted anyone to give a fuck about what I wrote, it might make sense to figure out what people were looking for. Here are the answers I came up with:

First, some people are looking for advice in deciding whether to spend their time (and maybe their money) on the music.

Second, even if readers already know the band and have their own opinions about the album, they’re curious about how the particular writer has reacted to it, and why — maybe as validation for their own opinions, maybe as a test about whether their own musical taste has finally fallen all the way into the shitter.

And/or third, they want to be entertained by the writing — even if they don’t really give a crap about the album itself.

I read album reviews for all three of those reasons, and I try to keep those reasons in mind when I write my own, even though I know full well that (a) anyone who looks to me for advice is scraping rock-bottom; (b) no one in their right mind would use my opinion as a standard by which to judge their own; and (c) my best shot at being entertaining depends on using words like “shitter,” “crap,” “fuck,” and “anus” as often as possible.

For me, the best reviews are those that satisfy all three of the criteria listed above. But I confess that, more and more, I read reviews for the third reason — to be entertained. I still read reviews to find new music, though the truth is that I already have so much new music to hear that I need more like I need a second anus. And I figured out a long time ago that I like so much of what I hear that testing my opinions against those of respected critics would just make me feel even more retarded than I already feel.

So, realizing that the desire to be entertained is a big part of why I gravitate to particular reviews, I decided to sample for you some of the best lines I found in music reviews over the past week. Why? Because it’s fucking entertaining.  (so, if you want to be fucking entertained, continue reading past the fucking jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2010 SICKNESS (Part 4)

 Forthcoming Albums, Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
May 012010
 

We’re now a full four months into 2010, and it’s time for our fourth update to the list of forthcoming new albums we posted on January 1. (See the original list here, the first update here, the second update here, and the third update here.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases that we didn’t know about on January 1 or at the time of our last three updates (or that we’ve found updated information about) — and the new sickness is still spreading in epidemic proportions.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs from various sources since our last update about forthcoming new releases. Look for the bands you like and put reminders on your calendar. Or if you’re old school like us, just get em tattooed someplace you can see without a mirror (because reading stuff backwards is hard).

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS: “Abigail Williams have completed recording of individual performances for their still untitled second full-length. Captured at Conquistador Studios in Cleveland, Ohio, eight new songs were laid down with vocalist/guitarist Ken Sorceron and engineer Cole Martinez controlling the audio takes. The songs are currently being mixed by Peter Tagtgren (Dimmu Borgir, Immortal, Celtic Frost) and are expected to be completed later this month.”

ABYSMAL DAWN: “Los Angeles-based metallers ABYSMAL DAWN will enter Trench Studio in Corona, California in May with producer John Haddad (PHOBIA, INTRONAUT, HIRAX) to begin recording their new album for a tentative fall release via Relapse Records. The follow-up to Programmed To Consume will be mixed by Erik Rutan (HATE ETERNAL, VITAL REMAINS, CANNIBAL CORPSE) at his Mana Recording Studios in St. Petersburg, Florida.”  (the list continues after the jump .  .) Continue reading »

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