HALLOWEEN FAIL (Part 4)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 042011
 

In our continuing attempt to make Halloween last all week, I’ve randomly picked four more Halloween-appropriate metal songs from the slew of suggestions we got via this post on Halloween Day.

First, we have “Evil Dead” from Death. As SurgicalBrute said when he suggested this one, how could this not make the cut (though “Zombie Ritual” would have been a fine choice, too)? Then I picked a live video of King Diamond performing “Come to the Sabbath”. Tikan’s actual suggestion was the “classic” Mercyful Fate rendition of the song, but this video is so full of cheese (and boobs) that I couldn’t resist it. After that, we’ve got some horrorpunk (thanks to Trollfiend) from a German band called The Crimson Ghosts; this video is pretty cool.

And finally, with thanks to .jh, we’ve got The Coffinshakers and their odd brand of goth country. Not metal, but definitely Halloweenie.

Lots of clean singing in this collection, but I’m holding my nose and doing it anyway — after the jump. Continue reading »

DYING FETUS COVERS NAPALM DEATH, AND THE RE-ISSUE OF DEATH’S “HUMAN” IS STREAMING

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jul 062011
 

Many death metal and grindcore bands have got great names, the kind of names that are fun to trot out when a non-metalhead asks you what kind of music you listen to, just to see the resulting facial expressions. Dying Fetus and Napalm Death are among the names I like to use. Of course, it helps that I actually really like both bands.

Death metal and grindcore song names are good for this purpose, too — like “Unchallenged Hate”. Now, if a non-metalhead asks you what you’ve been listening to today, you can tell them: Dying Fetus’s cover of Napalm Death’s “Unchallenged Hate” — because that’s what we’ve got for you in this post. It was just put up for streaming by Metal Hammer, via Muzu.tv, and because the player is embeddable, we’ve got it for you after the jump.

This is the second Dying Fetus cover we’ve featured, the first one being their cover of “Unleashed Upon Mankind” by Bolt Thrower (here). Both songs are from Dying Fetus’ cover album, History Repeats…, which will be released by Relapse on July 19 in NorthAm and internationally on July 25.

And in other news, the re-issue of Death’s Human album (which we covered here) is now streaming in full — all 49 tracks. The link for that is also after the jump. Continue reading »

ODDZ AND ENDZ: UNKIND, DEATH, AND ATHEIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 212011
 

I’ve been visiting family in Texas, and that’s cut into the time I need to finish reviews of new albums I’ve been working on. Yes, I know — my priorities are screwed up, but there you have it. Anyway, today I’m doing as I did with yesterday’s second post and just throwing together a variety of things that caught my attention as I snooped around the web last night.

The major difference between yesterday and today is that I now have my earbuds again and I’ve actually listened to the music before tossing it your way, so I can vouch for what I’ve got today (for what that’s worth): First, a badass new song from Finland’s Unkind. Second, a remixed and re-mastered version of the song “Suicide Machine” taken from the forthcoming reissue of the Human album by Death. And third, a professionally filmed, multi-camera capturing of Atheist‘s entire set at France’s Hellfest festival on June 19.

UNKIND

This Finnish band is, for me, a relatively recent discovery. They were signed to Relapse Records last September and they have a new album scheduled for release on August 2 in NorthAm and August 15 internationally. Titled Harhakuvat, it will be their fifth studio release. The band have just posted a song from the album called “Laumasielut” on their Facebook and MySpace pages, and I really like it. Though the band is described as a hardcore act, this new song’s prog influences are evident. The song is sweeping, crushing, beautifully played, and I’m really digging it.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 3)

 Forthcoming Albums  14 Responses »
Feb 272011
 


We’re jumping the gun on this post, since the month doesn’t end until tomorrow. Why? Uh, because this post is ready to go and we don’t have anything else finished for today yet. Work and other shit interfered with our grand plans for a Sunday post.  We might still get another one up later today, but for now, feast your eyes on the barrage of metal headed our direction.

What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days (or in this case, the last 27 days) about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming New Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. There’s some awesome shit on the way. Continue reading »

DEATH: THE SOUND OF PERSEVERANCE

 Album Reviews  12 Responses »
Feb 152011
 

(NCS contributor BadWolf joins us today with some timely thoughts about Death‘s final album.)

Today super-quality metal label Relapse Records is releasing a re-master of Death’s seventh and final studio album, The Sound of Perseverance. The re-master will come with a slew of extras including liner notes from cover artist Travis Smith (Opeth’s go-to man) and guitarist Shannon Hamm, as well as a second disc of unreleased material. Order it from Relapse themselves, or on iTunes, and get a third disc of bonus material.

But, to be honest, all that rigamaroll may just be distracting you from what’s at stake here: a great opportunity to re-visit one of the very best metal albums ever made. Unreleased tracks and demos are just empty calories on one of the leanest and most ruthlessly efficient musical death machines ever put to tape.

These days it seems to me that Death doesn’t get mentioned alongside classic American DM bands like Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, and Deicide. This makes sense; Death was always the odd band out. Death began brutal and grew more melodic and complex with TSoP being the culmination of that evolution.

In fact, The Sound of Perseverance is as much a power metal record as a DM record (Schuldiner had composed some, perhaps all, of the material with his trad-metal outfit Control Denied in mind). That it functions so well as a slice of brutality as a series of guitar playing exercises is a testament to the forward-thinking nature of Chuck Schuldiner. (more after the jump, including some of the re-mastered songs . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 2)

 Forthcoming Albums  No Responses »
Feb 012011
 


The first month of the year has come and gone. January brought those of us in Seattle some typically ass-sucking winter weather, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as the brutality dished out by the weather gods on our metal brothers and sisters in the Midwest and Northeast of the U.S. And of course, our readers ins places like Russia, and Finland, and Sweden are probably laughing their asses off reading our complaints about our winter weather. So, we’ll just shut up about that.

Besides, January brought all sorts of great new metal to our tender ears, so who gives a shit about the weather anyway? And you know what else January brought? It brought news of still more metal goodness on the way — great bursts of audio sunshine in our collective futures that will part these winter clouds and leave them whimpering in cloudy tatters.

Okay, maybe we should leave poetry to the poets and just get on with this next monthly installment of METAL IN THE FORGE, where we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like, or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we’ve cut and pasted the announcements and compiled them in alphabetical order. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones:

AJATARRA: “AJATTARA — the Finnish band featuring former AMORPHIS frontman Pasi Koskinen (a.k.a. Itse Ruoja Suruntuoj) — will release its seventh album, Murhat (“Murders”) on February 2 via Osasto-A Records. Murhat is available for streaming in its entirety on the AJATTARA Facebook page.”  (much more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

REVOCATION DOES DEATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 292011
 

The March issue of DECIBEL magazine arrived a couple days ago at the NCS island. There on the cover was a photo of a smiling Chuck Schuldiner licking blood from a nasty cut on his finger. And to commemorate the magazine’s 12-page oral history of Death, the issue included a “Flexi” disk recording of Boston’s Revocation covering “Pull the Plug” from Death’s 1988 album, Leprosy.

I stared at that Flexi disk for a few minutes, trying to think what to do with it.  I tried to shove it into my computer’s CD drive, but it was too big. I shook it really hard and held it up to my ear, but no music came out of it. I even chewed on it, but it still wouldn’t give up its secrets. Slowly, it dawned on me that this thing was meant for a turntable — y’know, those things that make stuff spin around and around, with an arm that holds a needle that somehow makes sound come out of the spinning things?

Problem is, we don’t have any turntables here at NCS. So that Flexi disk is destined to go through life as a coaster.

Then, just as I was resigning myself to having to imagine what “Pull the Plug” would sound like as performed by Revocation, that dim bulb in my head flared briefly and I remembered an e-mail I’d gotten earlier in the week from NCS contributor BadWolf telling me that the Revocation song was streaming over at MetalSucks. I hadn’t been anyplace where I could listen when that e-mail arrived, and then I just forgot about it. So I guess that Flexi disk served a purpose after all.

If you happened to miss that song-stream over at MS, don’t make the same mistake twice — you can stream the song here, right after the jump, and you should, because, to use a journalistic term of art, it’s hot shit. Continue reading »

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