Nov 262014
 

 

For four days I’ve been on the other side of the country from my home in the Seattle area, and I’ll be working here for 10 more days. It’s one of those projects that engulfs me periodically, a night-and-day kind of thing that squeezes my blog time down to acorn size. I did make room late last night for some exploring and found the following new music I thought you might like. I sure as fuck did. Presented in alphabetical order by band name.

DYSANGELIUM

The German black metal band Dysangelium have a new album on the way from W.T.C. Productions. The title is Thánatos Áskēsis, it’s due for release on December 24, and it’s available for order here. I haven’t yet listened to the entire album, but I did catch Decibel’s premiere of one of the new songs yesterday, and have really been enjoying it. Continue reading »

Sep 262013
 

Here’s a round-up of noteworthy things seen and heard over the last 24 hours.

MARYLAND DEATHFEST

The organizers of MDF XII have been slowly announcing the names of bands who will appear at next year’s edition of the best metal festival in the US. The most recent announcement came earlier this week with four new names: Cancer, from the UK, who will be making their first US appearance since 1993; Sacrifice from Canada, who will be making their first appearance since 1992; Nocturnus (who for legal reasons must call themselves Nocturnus A.D.), who will be playing the entirety of their debut album The Key; Crowbar; and Death Toll 80K from Finland.

I have several friends who are especially hot over the return of Nocturnus, including NCS writer BadWolf, who reviewed The Key in retrospective back in July 2012 (here). There seems to be some uncertainty about which of the band’s original members will be appearing, other than drummer/vocalist Mike Browning. However, Nocturnus performed songs from The Key live in Mexico City last April. Photos of that show can be found here, and videos are on YouTube, too. I wouldn’t recognize the performers, but presumably it will be the same line-up at MDF.

Here’s one of those videos: Continue reading »

Jul 162012
 

Very sad news to start this round-up: Jon Lord passed away today at the age of 71. He suffered a fatal pulmonary embolism while hospitalized, following a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Though he had a long solo career and played with a variety of bands, he is best known as the keyboardist with Deep Purple and co-writer of many of that band’s most famous songs, including “Smoke On the Water”.

Deep Purple’s music meant a lot to me at a particular point in my life, and I’m sad to see that Jon Lord is no longer in the world. In his memory, here’s “Perfect Strangers”, a song that stands the test of time:

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/02-Perfect-Strangers.mp3|titles=Deep Purple – Perfect Strangers]

In happier news, King of Asgard released a music video for “The Nine Worlds Burn”, a song from their forthcoming album …To North, which is scheduled for release by Metal Blade on July 27 in Europe and July 30 in the U.S. The song should be familiar, since we devoted a post to it when it began streaming as the album’s first single in early June. The song still reminds me of Nalgfar and Immortal, with a dramatic feminine vocal in the interlude. Great song, and the video captures the fire of the song . . . with fire. Watch it next. Continue reading »

Jun 162012
 

Friday’s are often slow news days in the world of metal, but yesterday brought a bunch of goodies, and now we bring them to you for your amusement and edification. Stylistically, this metal is all over the fucking place, because so are my tastes.

DYING FETUS

The new Dying Fetus album, Reign Supreme, is so damned fine — one of the finest brutal death metal albums of 2012 in your humble editor’s opinion. It’s due for release on June 19. A few tracks have already premiered, including “From Womb To Waste”, which we featured here last month. It’s one of those songs that’s likely to remembered as much for the highly quotable audio sample at the beginning as for the rest of the song.

Yesterday Relapse released an official video for the song. It’s a splicing of live performance clips. It seems there is headbanging and moshing at Dying Fetus shows. Watch it after the jump. Continue reading »

May 112012
 

True story:  I tried to roller skate once.  It didn’t end well.  I kind of careened all over the place, totally out of control, veering in one direction and then another.  Eventually I came to rest — on my ass, with a severely sprained ankle.  It was a hell of an adrenaline rush, followed by a fuckton of pain.

The point of this post is to throw some music your way to help you skid into the weekend ahead, to get some adrenaline pumping, and to bring the pain.

YELLOWGOAT

We know Joel Grind can thrash. He’s the driving force behind Portland’s one-man wrecking machine, Toxic Holocaust, a “band” that quite effectively churns out a holocaust of punk/thrash mayhem. Now we can hear a slightly different side of Mr. Grind.

He has a one-man side project called Yellowgoat and has finished recording a 9-track album under that name. Yesterday he put up on the Tube of You an 8-minute preview of the album, with excerpts from the songs. Based on those previews, I’d describe the music as a nasty, fuzzed-out fusion of black thrash, d-beat, and punk — a throwback to the early days of black metal. It makes sense that he picked a name that pretty obviously came from the cover of Bathory’s first album.

The music is vicious, raw, and thoroughly energizing. So get this skate show on the road by rockin’ out to the Yellowgoat album preview right after the jump, and after that you’ll see some of Joel’s comments about this project. Continue reading »

Dec 052011
 

In this third part of our impromptu mini-series on female fronted metal bands we’ve recently discovered, the subject is Winds of Genocide. This band is based in Durham City, in the northeast of England and are fronted by a woman named Kat “Shevil” Gillham. Their debut effort is an EP released in 2010 called The Arrival of Apokalyptic Armageddon. I heard about them recently via a message from occasional NCS contributor “Willard Shrapnelspear”. He may not have been a patron of NCS for very long, but he has already figured out the kind of rank, disgusting musical assaults I often prefer in metal.

Just a few days ago, the reliable, Singapore-based Pulverised Records (home of bands such as Desultory, Interment, Impiety, Bastard Priest, and Morbus Chron) announced the signing of Winds of Genocide for the release of their debut album sometime in 2012. The music is described in a press release as “an offensive d-beat onslaught” and “a bastardized fusion of Cianide, Amebix, Unleashed and Bolt Thrower.” That all sounded pretty fuckin good to me.

The most recent song released by the band is a tune from an upcoming split with Abigail (Japan), and it’s called “Into the Darkness of Eternal Nuclear Winter”. The band describes it as “kinda like Unanimated, Naglfar, early Unleashed thrown into a blender with old school Svensk Käng/ Crust Punk”. Check it out on the Soundcloud player right after the jump. It’s also the first song streaming on the ReverbNation player that I’m also including after the jump. It includes songs from that 2010 EP, too. Check it out. Continue reading »