Off Topic Archives - Page 3 of 14

LISTMANIA: JOSEPH SCHAFER’S TOP 10 NON-METAL ALBUMS OF 2017

Exceptions to the Rule, LISTMANIA 2017, Off Topic 10 Responses »

Jan 032018

(In what has become an annual tradition, former NCS writer, ex-Invisible Oranges editor, and current contributor to Decibel and Noisey, Joseph Schafer (whose NCS moniker was BadWolf) brings us a year-end list of favorite Not-Metal albums.)

As in previous years, this is my favorite article to write. There remains something delicious and transgressive about extolling the virtues of mainstream pop music to metal fans on a metal-centric platform. The reason why is no mystery: metal is intended itself to be delicious and transgressive, but too often becomes a stale and staunch conservative vomitorium. Eat the same diet of blast beats, high-gain distortion, and Lucifer sigils, vomit them back up, ingest a new round of the same, repeat.

I like a Roman feast as much as the next guy, but I also know to take myself out to sushi every so often, remaining Fukushima background radiation be damned. And yes I know that’s not what a vomitorum was actually used for but you all gleaned my meaning regardless, and if not what’s wrong with you?

Besides, as any social media window left open too long will tell you: even staunch metal fans love plenty of extra-metallic material. Tom G. Warrior loves David Slyvian. This is no great act of rebellion, this is the simple acknowledgement that metal is pop music, as in art meant for popular consumption. That is no damning admonishment. It describes Mozart, too. Continue reading »

BRO-COUNTRY FOR NO MEN: AUTHENTIC COUNTRY ARTISTS FOR METAL FANS

Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 22 Responses »

Jul 072017

(We have a little-used category of posts that, for want of a better term, we call “Off Topic”. This is one of those “not metal” posts. But it also fits in another category of posts — “That’s Music — But It’s Not Metal” — which is too complicated to explain in detail, but basically refers to music that isn’t metal, but also kind of is “metal”. I’ll shut up now and let Grant Skelton take it from here.)

I used to loathe country music. Going to college near Nashville, the Mecca of country music, probably didn’t help. Metal was all I wanted to hear. That is, until I discovered late greats like Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt.

Whole libraries have been written on each of those two. And even among metal fans, Cash and Van Zandt seem to occupy something of a sacred place. Late last year, Islander gushed over Panzerfaust’s cover of Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” referring to Cash as, “the most black metal country singer you can find.” Neurot Recordings has released two compilations (Volume I and Volume II) of Townes Van Zandt covers by Scott Kelly, Wino, Mike Scheidt, and Steve Von Till. Dorthia Cottrell of Windhand recorded her creepy rendition of Van Zandt’s song “Rake” for her self-titled 2015 solo album The much-hyped upcoming outlaw country cover album from DevilDriver (whether you hate that idea or love it) further underscores my point.

Don’t get me wrong, the country music you’ll hear on the radio is nothing more than the foul ordure of red-state identity politics. The songs aren’t songs, they’re lists of ideals and symbols that perpetuate a mythical, illusory way of life. But this article isn’t about that. It’s about artists whose music, while not metal in the slightest, I believe will still be meaningful and enjoyable to readers of our site. On my honor, here you will find no songs about girls in trucks. Continue reading »

BLOG BREAK (WITH SOME MUSIC BY AZELISASSATH)

Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Dec 112016

The last two days have been crazier than usual in the not-blog part of my life, the part that I usually succeed in squelching down into a tiny thing that whines for attention but doesn’t get it. Beginning two days ago, it became the mouse that roared.

The nastiness started when the web hosting service we use for NCS (Bluehost) somehow crashed their entire system around mid-day on Friday just as I had posted one premiere, with one more that I had still planned to post. I’m calm about it now, but I was punching walls for a few hours after that happened. Once it became clear that this debacle wasn’t going to be fixed any time soon I just said, Fuck It, and started drinking.

Ten hours later, Bluehost still hadn’t fixed the problem, NCS was still inaccessible, and I was pretty well hammered. Continue reading »

SHOCKED

Off Topic 103 Responses »

Nov 092016

“Anger trumped hope. Donald Trump’s astonishing victory over a heavily-favored Hillary Clinton on Tuesday is the greatest upset in the modern history of American elections – convulsing the nation’s political order in ways so profound and disruptive its impact can’t even be guessed at.”

And that’s how one article I read this morning began. There are tens of thousands of articles from around the world that in substance began the same way. We did not see this coming, and now many of us can’t see where we are going — or we think we can see it, and it’s a very dystopian vision of the future.

On days like this, it’s hard to go forward with a “business as usual” approach. As much as we love what we do here at NCS, it’s obviously dwarfed in importance by what happened at the polls in the early morning hours of this day, and what that outcome portends for the next four years and longer. Continue reading »

BOOKS WORTH READING: A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIST FROM NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG)

Off Topic 12 Responses »

Sep 012016

EDITOR’S FOREWORD: We’ve had a few posts over the nearly 7 years of our existence that have focused on works of literature, but very damned few. That’s not shocking, because this is first and foremost a blog about music. But for some musicians who dare to talk about it, and for many ardent fans, there are connections between these two forms of art.

Beyond those connections, some of you (maybe even the majority of those who visit this putrid site) spend as much time reading for pleasure as you do battering yourselves with violent sounds. For those in that group, and for those who are open to finding new inspiration, we bring you a very different kind of list from Neill Jameson of Krieg. I selfishly hope this will spawn both comments on this post and more features on our site about written works of art that dovetail with our interests in metal.

Our thanks to Neill for the following words: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: THE COMANCHEROS — “FOUR HORSEMEN”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Off Topic, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Jul 152016

(Andy Synn reviews the debut EP by The Comancheros, headquartered in Columbia, Missouri.)

As my third and final entry this week on the theme of bands beginning with “The” I’m venturing a little bit outside of our usual wheelhouse with the smooth and smoky brand of musical misery served up by The Comancheros.

But Andy, how are these guys in any way relevant to the NCS audience, I hear you ask?

Well, for one thing, one of their members just so happens to be a certain R. Michael Cook of the inimitable A Hill To Die Upon (who, I have it on good authority, are back in the saddle and working on new music themselves), and for another The Comancheros list their main influences as “Lynyrd Skynyrd, Willie Nelson, Judas Priest, and Dwight Yoakam”, which suggests to me that one or two of you might just find something to like on their new EP, Four Horsemen. Continue reading »

NEILL JAMESON REMEMBERS THE FORGOTTEN 1990S

Off Topic, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Jun 232016

(Neill Jameson (Krieg) returns to our site with some remembrances about under-appreciated albums from a formative period.)

Recently I did a piece for Invisible Oranges about discovering Alice in Chains and Nirvana as a young boy stuck in the shitty Pittsburgh suburbs in the late 1980s, and that got me to thinking about that period of time for music and how there’s some really great records that almost never get mentioned because people’s tastes generally stick to what they hear about, akin to how so much great early ’90s black metal is missed because of a lack of a controversial narrative to them.

So I figured I’d share a few records that never really got their due from that era in my continuing mission to be on your newsfeed as often as possible without it being for exposing myself at a playground. And we’re off! Continue reading »

DARK ACOUSTICS: OFFRET, TAMÁS KÁTAI, MIKKO JOENSUU, KAM LEE

Exceptions to the Rule, Off Topic 16 Responses »

May 012016

By way of explaining why my own output at the site has been sparse over the last week, I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I have a close friend in the ICU at a Seattle hospital whom I’ve been visiting for hours each day. One week ago she was driving to work in downtown Seattle and was hit in an intersection by a big city aid truck responding to an emergency call. She’s still in a coma, with a brain injury, though there are signs that she is approaching wakefulness.

Yesterday being a Saturday, I spent a few hours at home listening to music before returning to the hospital. I listened to some new metal that suited my mood, which I plan to compile in a Shades of Black post later this morning. But in a sequence of unpredictable but serendipitous events I also happened upon all the music collected in this post. There’s a bit of metal in the first and last items, but mostly this music is way off our usual beaten paths, yet these songs also suited my mood. I hope you’ll appreciate them, too.

OFFRET

A Russian friend in Novosibirsk (and a member of Station Dysthymia) recommended this first band, calling the music “hauntingly beautiful” — and so it is. The band’s name is Offret, from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. I’m not sure if this is a one-man project or a group. What I heard was a self-titled EP released on April 25, 2016, via Bandcamp. Continue reading »

ANOTHER DEATH OF ANOTHER GIANT: R.I.P. PRINCE

Off Topic 9 Responses »

Apr 212016

Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minneapolis on June 7, 1958, was found dead today at his home and recording studio, Paisley Park, in Chanhassen, Minnesota. This is according to numerous reports, including one by the Associated Press, which seem to be true.

I’m posting this because it is hitting me just as hard, and maybe harder, than the deaths of Lemmy and Bowie. I’d be giving away more about my age than I want to give away if I went into too much detail, but let’s just say that I was an ardent fan of his music in the early years and it was a point of connection between me and my then wife-to-be.

I’m not capable of trying to explain what it was like when he burst upon the music scene, and there will be obituaries and retrospectives galore in the coming days written by people much more eloquent than me. But although I won’t try to write it, I can show you. Continue reading »

“THAT’S MUSIC! — BUT IT’S NOT METAL” (EXCEPT IT SORT OF IS): GAELYNN LEA

Exceptions to the Rule, Off Topic, That's Music -- But It's Not Metal 10 Responses »

Mar 062016

Gaelynn Lea is a musician in Duluth, Minnesota. According to the biography on her web site:

“She has been playing violin for over twenty years. First classically trained, she began learning traditional Celtic and American fiddle tunes at the age of 18. During her college years Gaelynn started sitting in with various folk/rock musicians and developed an improvisational style all her own. Eventually she also began singing and dabbling in songwriting.”

“Dabbling” is a humble word for it. Gaelynn was one of more than six thousand un-signed musicians or bands who submitted music videos in NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest. Under the rules of that contest, the song had to be an original work created solely for the purpose of entering the contest, and it had to be performed “at a desk (any desk!)”. All those thousands of submissions were reviewed by a panel of six judges, and they picked Gaelynn Lea’s submission as the winner.

I read the judge’s comments about the song and the video before I heard it. The judges were Robin Hilton, Bob Boilen, Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys and The Arcs), Son Little, and Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of the band Lucius. You can read their comments about the song here. In a nutshell, they were all profoundly moved. They explained that they heard other songs that displayed better musical craft and skill, but what Gaelynn did was to create something unusual and memorable.

I can’t separate the song from what I watched in the video and what I knew immediately about Gaelynn Lea from seeing it. It makes the song more poignant and powerful — but I believe (though I’ll never know for sure) that I would have found it tremendously poignant and powerful anyway. Continue reading »

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