COLISEUM, BITTER END, HARM’S WAY, CONSUMMATION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 292015
 

 

So here’s how this post came about. I woke up this morning, caffeinated and nicotined myself, and started browsing Facebook to see if any world leaders were trying to get in touch. Within the first 20 seconds I spied a link to a new Coliseum video for a new Coliseum song. Of course, I had to see what that was about, because there’s on such thing as a bad Coliseum video. This new one gave me a surprise, but not an unpleasant one.

It turned out that Coliseum’s label (Deathwish Inc.) had queued up a playlist on YouTube without my realizing it, and so as soon as the Coliseum video finished, a song from a band named Bitter End started playing. And it hit the right chord in my addled brain. No sooner had it ended than a full-album stream launched, for a new release by Harm’s Way. The first couple of tracks beat me senseless, and so I just sat there, hunched over and black and blue, and let them finish what they’d started.

With blood running from my nose and ears, I thought I’d better stop before that Deathwish playlist served up something else because, y’know, I’d like to make it to lunchtime without rupturing my spleen. So I went back to Facebook and pretty quickly got a recommendation from KevinP about a metal band named Consummation. And since the first collection of music I’d heard wasn’t pure metal, I thought I’d give that a shot — and so here we are. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOLFHEART, ENSLAVED, DEVATHORN, COLISEUM, MINSK, BINARY CODE, CRETIN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Feb 272015
 

Tuomas Saukkonen (Wolfheart)

It’s the same old story. Metal is such an over-boiling cauldron of creativity that if you have to wait a few days to go exploring for new things, you find yourself up to your neck in hot water. Or at least that’s what happened to me yesterday.

Having failed to compile a round-up of new music since last Sunday, I felt overwhelmed when confronting how much I wanted to write about today. I had to make some hard choices about what to recommend, and even then I had to stifle my usual verbosity — time is a harsh mistress, and not in a good way. So, with a regrettable (to me) minimum of introductory comments, here’s a selection of what lit me up over the last 24 hours, presented in the order in which I saw and heard them. I’ll have a few more new items to share with you on Saturday.

WOLFHEART

Earlier this month Spinefarm Records re-released Winterborn, the fantastic album by Wolfheart that we praised to the skies (repeatedly) when it was first self-released by the band in 2013. The re-issue comes with two bonus tracks (“Isolation” and “Into the Wild”). Two days ago Wolfheart premiered a music video for the album’s first track, “The Hunt”, which shows scenes from the recording of the track. It’s a wonderful song (it was on our list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs), and any excuse to hear it again is welcome. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: RED FANG, CARCASS, CHROME DIVISION, COLISEUM, AWAKENING SUN, ACHERON

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Dec 162013
 

For various reasons, including a long vacation, a buttload of work and work-related travel that confronted me in my day job upon returning from said vacation, and the dedication of space to our ongoing year-end LISTMANIA series, I’ve not been doing a very good job of spreading the word about new music and videos. Much new music and videos of interest have been accumulating. I’m collecting five of the recent videos and one new song in this post. Many of them lean more toward hard rocking that the kind of extreme metaling I usually feature in these round-ups, but it’s all good stuff.

RED FANG

Red Fang have consistently produced videos that are sure-fire chuckle fests. Their new one is no exception. Directed by Whitey McConnaughy, it’s for “Blood Like Cream”, one of the songs on the band’s latest album Whales and Leeches. It’s a twist on the zombie theme. These undead monsters want PBR instead of brains — but it is fuckin’ Portland, so that’s not a total shock.

Yeah, there’s clean singing in the song, but it’s crunchy, it rocks out, and it gets its hooks in your brain meat. Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS

 Metal News  11 Responses »
Apr 232013
 

Within the last few days (and mostly today), seven albums I’m very high on (and have written about here) have begun streaming in full on various web sites. They shouldn’t be missed — it’s a great chance to check out the music before deciding whether to plunk down money for them.

Each of the sites where these streams are now available includes info on how to order or pre-order the albums, so I’m not going to take time to repeat that info here. I’m also not going to take the time to write about the music (though we do plan to review some of these albums) because . . . you can hear them right now! The relevant links are below, in alphabetical order.

ALTAR OF PLAGUES: TEETHED GLORY AND INJURY

http://pitchfork.com/advance/81-teethed-glory-and-injury/ Continue reading »

PTAHIL, COLISEUM, AND PUSHMEN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 162013
 

Last night I took my net and waded into the swamp of the interhole looking to catch some fresh fish to serve up for you on a platter this morning. Turns out, I caught a bunch of damned piranha, which suited me just fine, since I was in a foul mood over the carnage in Boston and was having fantasies about feeding the gutless, life-taking perpetrators to something carnivorous.

All three of the new songs I found have something in common — there’s some punk down at the core of each of them, and varying degrees of 666 charred into their skins with a hot brand. They’re all also catchy as fuck. We’ll start with the nastiest piranha in this group.

PTAHIL

If you don’t know about Indiana’s Ptahil, then you haven’t been paying close enough attention to my babbling. They give no fucks, they do what they please, and what pleases them is singing about Satan in a way that will burn out your brain but leave a grin on your melted face. Both of their albums (reviewed here and here) have fired me up like an arson job, and now they’ve released a new single on Bandcamp named “Lamashtu”. In no time flat, it’s become one of my favorite things they’ve done yet. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2010’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 5

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2010  No Responses »
Jan 012011
 

Happy New Year!  Wonder if anyone will be sufficiently conscious this morning (or all day, for that matter) to read us? Will these words exist if no one reads them? Does a sound exist if no one hears it? Am I completely full of shit or only partially full?

I’ll leave these questions to the philosophers and forge ahead. I particularly don’t want to spend time thinking about the last question. Instead, we will roll out the next two entries on our list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs.  For a full explanation of what we mean by “most infectious”, read this. And to see the songs we’ve named so far, click the Category link over on the right called MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2010.

In a nutshell, what we’re doing is listing, in no particular order, the catchiest songs from a wide range of extreme metal sub-genres — not necessarily the best metal of the year (though lots of these songs would qualify for that kind of list), but the ones that most effectively got our heads and other parts of our bodies moving, and then got stuck in our skulls on mental replay long after they ended.

Today’s two additions share a certain musical style. They feature garage-punk chords, snarling attitude, and a clarion call to mosh-pit mayhem. In a word (or two), they fucking rock. Follow along with us after the jump as we talk about Coliseum and Kvelertak . . . Continue reading »

HAMMERED

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Jun 192010
 

I’m way later than usual getting today’s post up for your reading and listening pleasure. Nobody likes a whiner, but I whined in yesterday’s post about my fucking day job and how it’s really been cramping my style here at NCS the last few days.

Well, the job-related vise that my head’s been in loosened up yesterday, and things should get back to normal around the NCS Island. Of course, I had to celebrate the vise-loosening by getting completely hammered last night with a bunch of other people who were no more capable of exercising restraint than I was.

I blame all of them for the way I feel today. I’ve been debating whether to hunt them down and kill ’em all, or keep it simple and just kill myself. I’m still thinking about it. Problem is, the thinking part of my brain, which was vanishingly small to begin with, was obliterated last night and is still recovering.  So it may take me a while to choose between those two options.

In the meantime, without a whole lot of introduction or commentary, I’m gonna serve up a couple of musical items for you, including another new music video. These items are brought to you courtesy of two bands: Shadow of the Colossus and Coliseum.  (continue reading after the jump . . .) Continue reading »