WHITECHAPEL: “WHITECHAPEL”

 Album Reviews  19 Responses »
Jun 082012
 

(In this post, UK-based Andy Synn reviews the new self-titled album by Whitechapel.)

Ah Whitechapel, a name to inspire an instantaneous reaction from pretty much anyone who hears/reads it. In fact, I’d imagine many of you have already formed your opinions based on seeing the name of the review alone, and that they’re either going to be “Whitechapel are the sickest band ever dude!” or “deathcore posers aren’t real metal”… and seriously guys, I thought we were past a) the ignorant fanboyisms of declaring band x, y, or z “the sickest band ever”, and b) pre-judging by association with (often outdated) stereotypes. They’re two ends of the same scale, and both are pretty played out by now.

Now, personally I didn’t really “get” Whitechapel at first. Though their debut was a cut above the rest of the cookie-cutter, faux-aggro deathcore out at the time, and their second record saw some vast improvements in their sound and overall direction, I still wasn’t sold. The reason the group finally “clicked” for me was not just the release of their third album (though it is a very good album), but down to the WAY I was listening to the band – something facilitated by their third release, but which has also allowed me to appreciate their second album more than I ever did.

You see, the HOW and the WHY of listening to an album are just as important as the WHAT (genre, etc). And what finally clicked for me was when I queued up a Whitechapel album right after listening to one of my favourite death metal acts, the genre-defining Vader. The similarities were astounding, and this comparison finally got me to look at Whitechapel in a fresh light.

Phil Bozeman’s vocals are the modernised, spitting-image of Piotr’s, while the band’s overall blueprint bears the genetic fingerprints of the Polish masters all over it – the blinkered brutality, the sheer speed, the singular focus on aggression, the minor melodic teases, the twisting solos… they all scream VADER to me. That may be blasphemous to some of you, but it’s how my mind finally managed to categorise Whitechapel, and I think the comparison is only a positive one for them. Continue reading »

EPHEL DUATH: “ON DEATH AND COSMOS”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jun 082012
 

With six albums to their credit between 2000 and 2009, Ephel Duath is a band with whom I should have become familiar by now, but alas, no. It took their new EP, On Death and Cosmos, to finally pull me in. Given my state of ignorance about the band’s past, this review won’t provide a comparison of the new music to what preceded it. I am the proverbial blank slate, on which the EP’s three songs will write what they will.

And maybe that’s just as well, because the Ephel Duath that gave birth to On Death and Cosmos after a nearly three-year hiatus is nearly a new band. Songwriter and guitarist Davide Tiso is still at the helm, but he has changed, wrenched by personal tragedy, economic pressures, and disappointments with the music business. Undoubtedly, those experiences have fed the fires that flow through this EP.

Davide has also recruited an eye-catching company of new names to round out the line-up: ground-breaking vocalist Karyn Crisis (Crisis), who is also Davide’s wife, and legendary bassist Steve DiGiorgio (formerly of Death, Autopsy, and Testament, among others) have joined master drummer Marco Minnemann (Adrian Belew, ex-Necrophagist, ex-Kreator), who also collaborated on Ephel Duath’s last album. In fact, given that line-up, it’s not really a stretch to call this new Ephel Duath a “super group”.

And on top of that, from what I’ve read, it appears that no one Ephel Duath album has sounded much like any of the others anyway. So, let’s start fresh, shall we? Continue reading »

NEW TRIBUTES TO ENSLAVED AND EMPEROR

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jun 082012
 

Enslaved at the Quart-festival, photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen, Scanpix/NTB

“Emperor and Enslaved are two of the most well-known bands in the history of Norwegian extreme metal, and June strangely enough brings tributes to both bands. On June 25th the album A Tribute To Emperor-In Honour Of Icon E will be released, and a week before Önd-A Tribute To Enslaved will see the light of day.”

And so begins an article by Totto Mjelde that appears today on Lydverket, a Norway-based web site affiliated with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK. We’ve written about Totto’s coverage of Norwegian metal in the past, and this most recent piece by him is definitely worth reading. It includes interviews of Raphael Henry (Pictonian Records), the curator of the Enslaved tribute; Ivar Peersen of Enslaved (who, interestingly, plays guitar on Taake’s contribution to the Emperor tribute);  Nocturnal, from Tryzna Productions, which is releasing the Emperor tribute along with Candlelight Records; and Ørjan Nordvik of Helheim., who perform on that tribute.

But that’s not all. Totto’s article also includes exclusive streams of two songs from the Enslaved tribute compilation: Ribozyme’s performance of “To The Coast”, and Vreid’s cover of “Lunar Force”.

GO HERE to read and listen to Totto’s feature. After the jump I’ve included the cover art and track lists for both albums. Continue reading »

EVOKEN: “AN EXTRINSIC DIVIDE”

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 082012
 

On July 31, Profound Lore will issue the label’s 100th release, and it will be Atra Mors [“Black Death”], by Evoken. This is the band’s first album in five years, and only their fifth in a career that has spanned 20 years.

I gather from reading about the band that many regard them as forefathers of the funeral doom movement in the U.S. And you can correctly infer from that last sentence that I’m a newcomer to Evoken. As far as I can remember, the sum total of the music I’ve heard consists of a brand new song that Profound Lore began streaming yesterday: “An Extrinsic Divide”.

The song makes quite an impression, which is sort of like saying that World War II was a bit of a scrape. At more than 10 minutes in length, it exhales a suffocating fog of dank miasma, creating an all-encompassing atmosphere of catastrophe. The uber-distorted music is very heavy and generally ponderous — the sound of dinosaurs walking the earth and making the ground tremble with their might.

But that’s not the sum total of the song by a long shot. It also includes some beautiful, albeit haunting, melodies (ably assisted by reverberating guitars and keyboard overlays), as well as accelerated passages of gut-churning death metal. Continue reading »

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN ICELAND (AND A FREE DEATHWISH SAMPLER)

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jun 072012
 

To be clear, I’m not actually adventuring in the actual country of Iceland, though I wish I were, because it seems like a fascinating place, and even if the landscape turned out to be less dramatic than it looks in photos, I feel pretty sure I could get my head whomped pretty hard by some live metal.

No, the adventuring in this post is following up on some new music from a couple of bands we featured on our impromptu Iceland Metal Month series last month. One of the bands is Ophidian I, who we wrote about here. The other is Beneath, featured in this post. They’ve both started streaming additional tracks from their forthcoming albums, and the new songs are slaughtering me, in a good way — the kind of slaughtering where body parts come off and you eat them with the music ringing in your earholes and you realize that you don’t taste half bad despite what you might have thought.

Also, since I’m back on the subject of Iceland, I thought I might as well throw in some music from another band we haven’t covered yet. It’s not an Icelandic band. They’re actually from New York, but they recorded a new two-song 7″ at “Sundlaugin”, a studio in Mosfellsbær, Iceland, owned by the band Sigur Ros. (The session was engineered by Birgir Jón “Biggi” Birgisson.) The band is called Self Defense Family, and the music is a big, sweeping left turn away from our well-traveled path around here — but it has managed to sink its hooks in me. Maybe it will hook you, too. Continue reading »

MISERATION: “ON WINGS OF BRIMSTONE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 072012
 

We’ve already posted twice about the forthcoming album by Sweden’s Miseration, so this makes three. Late yesterday, the band released a second track from the album for YouTube streaming. This one’s called “On Wings of Brimstone”

The album is Tragedy Has Spoken and it will be released by Lifeforce Records on July 2 in Europe and a day later in North America. As previously noted, the artwork is by the ubiquitous and dependably awesome Pär Olofsson. I thoroughly enjoyed this band’s ass-blasting last album, The Mirroring Shadow (2009), and had high hopes for the new one. I’ve only found time for one spin through it so far, and it’s certainly not a clone of The Mirroring Shadow, but it’s quite cool.

Among other things, it incorporates the use of 8-string guitars and folk instruments such as the Indian Esraj harp, the Persian hammered dulcimer called a Santur, sawblade, organ, mandolin, and piano, as well as Mongolian throatsinging. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you much of that just from listening. Although I’m familiar with a vast array of instruments, most of them are the kind you buy online and have them shipped to a one-use only P.O. box, though possibly a Santur was included as a bonus in my last shipment. I know there was something in there that involved strings and a hammer.

Anyway, there’s a lot going on in “On Wings of Brimstone”. There is definitely some up-tempo ass-blasting brutality, a la The Mirroring Shadow, but the song also includes dark stomping chords with an old-school Swedeath tone, a white-hot guitar solo, and a dramatic melody. And Christian Älvestam provides an impressive array of vocals style, from flesh-flaying howls to abyss-deep growls to soaring cleans. There might be an Esraj in the mix, too, though since I’ve never heard an Esraj it’s difficult to be sure. Very nice song — listen after the jump. Continue reading »

I’M NOT GOING TO CALL THIS “THINGS I SAW AND HEARD YESTERDAY” BECAUSE I’VE OVERUSED THAT LINE SO I’LL COME UP WITH SOMETHING ELSE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  18 Responses »
Jun 072012
 

Really, I swear, this isn’t going to become a regular feature, despite the fact that this is the fourth time I’ve done one of these posts in the last week. And the proof is that I’m not using the same name for this post as I did for the last ones. I’m calling it something different. You can see that.

Anyway, here are some things I saw and heard yesterday and last night, and at the end of the post I’ll have an update on our experiment in paying to promote our Facebook posts. Here’s a disgusting hint: It works.

I saw an announcement by Century Media that Swedish death metal icons Grave (in their leather finery up above) will release their 10th studio album, Endless Procession Of Souls, on August 27th in Europe and on August 28th in North America.  I’m already beginning to get the stench of rotting corpsemeat up inside my nose. I’ll probably stop bathing soon, just to get myself fully attuned to the reek by August. We previously reported that Grave will be touring NorthAm with Dark Funeral (and some band named Morbid Angel) this September and October.

And speaking of grisly old-school Swedish death metal, I received through the ether an electronic copy of a new EP from Mexico’s Zombiefication called Reaper’s Consecration. I’ve only listened to two of the five tracks so far, but it is a fucking brain assassin, and the EP includes this sweet cover art designd by the band’s vocalist Mr. Hitch: Continue reading »

CHEMICAL TOMB: S/T

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, Phro's Posts  6 Responses »
Jun 062012
 


(Phro reviews the 2012 free EP by “2 Polish and two English scumbags stuck in the shit hole known as Plymouth”, a/k/a Chemical Tomb.)

Grindcore.

Can you think of any genre label more accurate to the genre it describes? Not even “death metal” carries the visceral weight of “holy-fuck-who-just-shoved-a-chainsaw-in-my-ear” that is imparted by the two syllables of “grindcore.” And when you make like a bath salt abuser (salter? bather?) and start chopping wildly at random appendages and slice off the “core,” you just get “grind”: simple and glorious like unrepentant morning wood, standing ready to fuck everything with violent dissonance.

Which brings us to my early morning discovery today: Chemical Tomb.

They seem to have a thing for pot, based on their movie samples. I forgive them because they made my ears cum and bleed at the same time. (Cleed? Blum?)

This EP, if it’s long enough to be anything more than a single, is all of 5 minutes. Perfect for a quickie before work or, if you put it on a loop, to help you get through a few rounds in a cage match. I think. I’m not actually sure how cage matches work…do they involve whiskey? They should. Everything is better with whiskey.

Anyway. The music. Well, obviously, I’m gonna just put that handy little bandcamp player after this. But maybe you’re at work and you can’t listen to music. So you need words—my words, sweaty with exertion and flush with eagerness to please—to give you an idea of what you’re missing out on. Continue reading »

SHADOWS FALL: “FIRE FROM THE SKY”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jun 062012
 

 

(After a bit of a hiatus, TheMadIsraeli returns to NCS with this review of the new album by Shadows Fall., which was released on May 15 by Razor and Tie.)

My articles have fucking sucked lately.

I don’t mean to write shitty articles, but when great metal albums are so few in number, and pre-canned bullshit with a side of genericore are all that surround me, I make do with what I can find.  I try to write about shit I think you guys will like, and please don’t take this as me saying that I don’t believe in anything I’ve reviewed lately.  I do.

But fuck, is finding good — no, great — metal a needle-in-the-haystack endeavor like anything else?

Shadows Fall decided it was time to end that shit and give me a swift kick in the balls.  Fire From The Sky reminds me of exactly why I fell in love with metalcore when it first arose from the ashes of the nu-metal bullshit of the 90’s and kicked unsuspecting angsty teens with daddy issues in the fucking teeth.  This odd melding of thrash, melodic death, and hardcore got my blood pumping so hard I pissed razors and shot acid from my eyes at any butt-rock or alt-metal fan who wanted to tell me any differently.  Even while incorporating commercial elements sch as a few scant soft moments, clean vocals, and catchy choruses, Shadows Fall managed to bust jaws and crack skulls with the best.  I sincerely think if Of One Blood or The Art Of Balance didn’t send you into head-banging convulsions, you were probably one of these embittered retro assholes who felt that metal died in the early 90’s and that bands like fucking Pantera were the last bastion of good music (protip: they weren’t).

Fire From The Sky has everything that established this band’s foothold in the realm of badassery, and more.  Shadows Fall not only have the gift of the riff, the attitude, and the passion for playing what they play, but they’ve managed to keep it up over the course of seven full-lengths now.  Retribution kicked me in the fucking ass, shoved a bomb up it, and detonated it, turning me into instagib salad sludge for the wolves to feed on.  Fire From The Sky is more like being put through Spetznaz training where they teach you how to take a full-force punch to the stomach.  How?  By punching you in the fucking stomach.  Over and over again, at the risk of internal bleeding. Continue reading »

DID FACEBOOK JUST MAKE A HARD LIFE HARDER FOR UNDERGROUND BANDS?

 Metal News  81 Responses »
Jun 062012
 

Maybe this is old news to people better informed than I am, but I just discovered some very disturbing developments at Facebook. What I found is ironic. Last weekend, I used screen shots of Facebook posts by metal bands as a snapshot of the kinds of difficulties that underground bands face in attempting to continue creating music and performing. Now, it turns out that Facebook is restricting the ability of metal bands — and labels and blogs like ours — to market themselves and stay in touch with their fans through Facebook.

How long has this been going on? I haven’t yet found the answer to that question. But one thing is quite clear: When a band or a label or a blog like ours adds a post on Facebook, most of our fans who have “liked” us do not receive those posts. Here’s what I know:

NCS has a Facebook page. I add a Facebook post every time we add a post on this site, as one way of telling people we’ve done something new and ridiculous on this site (or new and awesome, in the case of posts created by the other writers). At this writing, we have 1,476 Facebook “likes” — a number that’s pitifully inadequate considering the amazing quality of our content, but still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

As the “Admin” of our Facebook page, I started noticing recently a set of statistics at the bottom of each one of our FB posts showing the number of “people reached” by each of those posts, and the percentage of all the people who “like” our page who saw the post. Since then, I’ve been looking at those stats, and the percentage has never been as high as 50%, and it’s usually less than a third of all the people who have “liked” us.

I assumed that when I added a post, it would show up in the news stream for every person on FB who had “liked” our page. When I saw those “people reached” statistics, I assumed that FB had implemented some kind of algorithm to  calculate how many of those people had logged in to FB and perused their news stream.  WRONG. Continue reading »

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