ADIOS MOTHERFUCKERS

I like vacations. First, there is very little working. Very little working is a good thing. I would be very happy with very little working from now until the end of time as I know it. Second, there is very much eating, drinking, and sleeping. These are also good things. I could do them until the end of time as I know it, until I become one of those people who gets so enormously fat and atrophied that emergency workers have to bust down the wall of the house and use a crane just to remove the corpse after the last filthy breath of life has passed the lips.

Third, if I am a good boy and play my cards right, there may be carnal activity with Mrs. Islander in between bouts of eating, drinking, and sleeping. Fourth, there will be beautiful clouds, of which I will take many photos during the few hours when I am awake, some of which I will share with you, because having your head in the clouds is a good thing and should be experienced more frequently.

Fifth, vacations are an excuse for me to solicit guest posts for NCS, of which I have received many already. You’ve seen some of them already this week, even though I have not yet left on vacation but instead have been working like a fucking orc under the heavy whip hand of the Dark Lord of Mordor. But what you’ve seen this week is just the tip of the iceberg — there are some juicy ones coming your way in the weeks ahead (in addition to new material from Andy Synn, BadWolf, and TheMadIsraeli). And by the way, there is still time to send me guest posts, so don’t be bashful.

Yes, I will still have some limited time for blogging activity, such as the time necessary to format and post guest pieces and maybe even to write some quick things myself. However, I am not going to push my luck with blogging time between now and my return to the NCS metallic island on Nov 18 (see note above re being a good boy, in hopes of carnal activity with Mrs. Islander).

So, with this post I bid you all a fond farewell.  Before this day is out, I will be winging my way to a distant land where life is sloooooow and there will be eating, drinking, sleeping, clouds, and perhaps carnal activity. I leave you with a random collection of music I missed while working like an orc over the past week: After the jump, new/newish videos from Vildhjarta (Sweden), Bury Your Dead (U.S.), and Exhumed (U.S.), and a new song from GoreGazm (South Africa).

VILDHJARTA

Last May, Sweden’s Vildhjarta signed with Century Media. On November 28 or 29, depending on where you live, Century Media will release the band’s debut album, Måsstaden. I know almost nothing about this band, but they seem to be getting some mega-buzz. At the urging of TheMadIsraeli, I watched this music video, which appeared a bit earlier in the week. It looks like what might have resulted if Kenneth Grahame had written The Wind in the Willows on opium. It sounds very interesting — heavy distorted chords hammering unpredictably, digital monkeys screeching unpredictably, harsh growly vocals vocalizing unpredictably. The album should be . . . unpredictable.

BURY YOUR DEAD

You know I love some Bury Your Dead. After all, we originally named this site in their honor. Yesterday (or was it the day before?), they debuted a new music video over at Roadrunner, but Mediaskare has now put it up on the Tube of You, allowing me to put it right here. The song is “The Sirens of Titan” off the 2011 album Mosh ‘n’ Roll. This one has hammering rhythms, too, just not the same as Vildhjarta’s. This is some heavy-ass metallic hardcore, complete with Mat Bruso’s bitchin’ vocals. Yum.

Looks like the guys had some fun playing musical chairs, too.

EXHUMED

California’s Exhumed released their “comeback” record All Guts, No Glory in July, their first album in eight years. It’s currently streaming in its entirety at this location. They’re now touring North America with support from Goatwhore and Havok.

Exhumed kick massive amounts of tuchas. To get a taste of some Grade A prime goregrind, check out this drum-cam video of Mike Hamilton destroying his drum kit while the band as a whole destroys the audience with two songs — “Death Knell” and “Necrotized”.

GOREGAZM

This last one is a bit out of left field, or more accurately, out of South Africa, which may be saying essentially the same thing. I’ve learned while working on this blog that there are a lot of very talented and very hard-working metal bands in S.A., but they’ve got more than the usual amount of challenges getting noticed outside their home country. In our meager way, we’ve tried to help shine a spotlight on S.A. metal through a series of posts about that scene (and I do plan to do a fourth one before this month is out).

Goregazm is a brand new band from South Africa that I found out about from Van Zyl Alberts of the quite awesome Architecture of Aggression (featured at NCS here). They’re from AoA’s home stomping grounds in Pretoria (a/k/a the death metal capitol of South Africa). The mastermind behind the band is a dude named Heinie van der Walt, formerly of a band called Rhutz, and they only recently had their launch show as a band (I’m not sure who else is even in the band at this point).

What I’ve heard is a single track called “Barbatus”, but I do like that track. Here it is:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/25897863″]

And just before finishing this post I discovered that GoreGazm’s album has just become available on Bandcamp (here) at a name-your-price option. More listening ahead . . . .

And speaking of Van666 Alberts, he’s got another band going called Bloodbeast along with two members of Fuck the Corpses and a bass player from Bile of Man. I’ll have more to say about them in the future.

********

Well, that’s it for this post. The next time you hear from me, I’ll be . . . someplace in the clouds.