DISFIGURING THE GODDESS: THE NEW ALBUM IS STREAMING

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  23 Responses »
Mar 292011
 

We’ve written about Cam Argon, a/k/a Big Chocolate, before. Many times before, in fact, though not recently. What first attracted our attention to him back in 2008 was his involvement in a brutal death-metal project called Disfiguring the Goddess.   You can find a bit of the backstory about DTG in this post we ran more than a year ago. Cribbing from that post, we described the original DTG EP like this: “a raw, distorted vortex of brutal, slamming death metal marked by some truly distinctive vocals.”

Since surfacing as a cult-figure-on-the-rise through DTG, Cam has gone on to do many other things, including dubstep, remixes, a project called Commissioner with Mitch Lucker of Suicide Silence, making music videos, and a stint as the vocalist for Burning the Masses. His musical interests are, shall we say, varied.

But no matter how far and wide Big C’s musical creativity has taken him (or will take him), there have been a solid mass of core fans interested mainly in one question: When will there be new Disfiguring the Goddess music? The question is now answered, because yesterday Cam Argon uploaded an entire new album’s worth of DTG music to Soundcloud.

The album is called Circle of Nine. Based on previous reports, we assume Big C recorded all the songs with ex-Misericordiam blaster Phil Cancilla on drums and Joe Broodle on guitar, in addition to the instrumental and programming work that Big C himself did. [Update: that was a bad assumption — we’ve now heard from Cam, and he did this whole album by himself, all the vocals, guitars, and drum programming.] And, of course, there are those distinctive vocals.

We’ve just started listening to these tracks this morning, and goddamn, it will spin your fucking head around and then tear it off. Fast, brutal, jolting, unpredictable, instrumentally inventive, and anchored by the most gut rumbling, abyssal, brutal-death vocals on the planet. Check it out for yourselves — the whole album stream is after the jump. Continue reading »

THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS DAN WANTS TO EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Dec 272010
 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Back in November when I was away on an undeserved but still enjoyable vacation and unable to blog, lots of good people stepped up and contributed posts of their own so that NCS wouldn’t have to go dark while I was gone.

One of those contributors, The Artist Formerly Known As Dan, took a running head start on year-end album lists and became one of the first writers in metal blogdom to stake out a position on the year’s best metal (here). That post scored a massive number of hits, no doubt due in part to the fact that it was featured on MetalSucks.

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, we asked Dan if he had made any revisions or additions to the list he prepared a month ago. What we got from him was this.]

So, I hope all the NCS readers aren’t bored with me after my first list. I thought my picks for the best of 2010 were pretty solid, but reading lists can get old, so now I’ll try to focus my attention on one subject. That subject is potential musical recommendations for my NCS brethren that are outside the realm of metal.  I have a pretty wide range of tastes, but I thought that at least some of my “other” music might interest a few of you, specifically because it generally follows the NCS manifesto:

-it’s not pop music

-it has at least one or more of the following characteristics: fast, punishing, cathartic, dark, powerful, crushing

-there is no clean singing

So let’s get started.  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

CAMERON ARGON – BURNING THE MASSES (UPDATE)

 Interviews, Metal News  10 Responses »
May 212010
 

Back in mid-February, we enthusiastically reported the blessed union of the remarkable Cameron (“Big Chocolate”) Argon and the also-remarkable San Diego death-metal band, Burning the Masses.

The exciting news back then was that Argon was joining BTM as its vocalist, adding his talents not only to the recording of BTM’s next album but also joining the band for an ass-kicking European tour with Suffocation, Annotations of An Autopsy, Nervecell, and Fleshgod Apocalypse. We called it “A Marriage Made in Hell,” because, you know, all involved are hella good.

You can read that extended report, which included an interview with Cam Argon, at this location.

Cam did indeed join BTM, he did indeed track the vocals on the band’s forthcoming release, Offspring of Time (which is scheduled for a July 20 release on Mediaskare Records), and he did indeed front the band on that European tour.

But on May 18, he put up a blog post stating that he would not be performing with BTM on the band’s 3-month, nationwide summer tour — which began the next day. We got in touch with Cam to get more details, and his answers to our questions appear after the jump.

If you’re a fan of Big Chocolate, Burning the Masses, Suicide Silence, Disfiguring the Goddess, or Abominable Putridity, you’ll want to read what he had to say because he touches on all those projects. And if you don’t know what we’re talking about, it’s time you found out!  Oh yeah, Cam also talks about a mysterious new musical collaboration he’s got going on with Mitch Lucker of Suicide Silence (continue after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL: BIG CHOCOLATE AND BURNING THE MASSES

 Interviews, Metal News  2 Responses »
Feb 142010
 

If you’re a follower of Cameron Argon (a/k/a “Big Chocolate”), Disfiguring the Goddess, and/or Burning the Masses, we’ve got treats in store for you today: breaking news updates, a mini-interview with Big C that includes some info we haven’t seen anywhere else, some hot-shit music to stream, and a cool tour poster. If none of these names means anything to you, but you like innovative, brain-cleaving death metal, then stay the fuck with us and expand your musical horizons!

THE BACKSTORY: Back in 2008, we stumbled across a 6-song DIY EP (still available on iTunes) by a “band” called Disfiguring the Goddess. It immediately grabbed us by the throat and wouldn’t let go — a raw, distorted vortex of brutal, slamming death metal marked by some truly distinctive vocals. We hunted around for more info and discovered that DTG was pretty much the alter ego of a young dude named Cameron Argon.

Since the EP, Argon has generated a handful of additional DTG songs with ex-Misericordiam blaster Phil Cancilla on drums and Joe Broodle on guitar. (We wrote about DTG‘s most recent output back in early December in a post you can find here.) All the music is absolutely cool shit, and it has spawned a cult following based largely on the vocal work of Cam Argon, who the inimitable Sergeant D over at Metal Inquisition has called “quite arguably the best guttural death metal vocalist on the planet.”

Lots of DTG‘s devoted followers have wondered when the band would actually release an album, and others have wondered if Argon would hook up with some other, more established band in need of a vocalist. That speculation was fueled at one point by Argon’s decision to join the Russian brutal slam metal band Abominable Putridity for some live shows in Moscow last summer, and he appears to have recorded one-off vocals for some other bands, including this one for unsigned Indiana blasters Dissever the Tyrant. But Argon has been in no hurry and seems just as dedicated to finishing his education as expanding his death metal horizons. (continue reading after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

DISFIGURING THE GODDESS

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Dec 052009
 

DFG2

Someday we’ll write about a band we don’t like. Promise. But not today. Today is a day to write about Disfiguring the Goddess. We really like Disfiguring the Goddess. And irresistable cosmic forces dictate that we write about DTG today. Why?

Well, first, earlier this week the band made 3 “new” songs available for free download here. Second, soon after that, following a long hiatus, the nearly perfect Metal Sucks website relaunched the “Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week” contest. Check it out here. And guess whose logo they chose to use for the re-launch? Well, I mean that’s the point — you’re supposed to guess. But we’ll save you the trouble. The logo featured on Metal Sucks was a cropped version of the image above, the same one you’ll find on the MySpace page for — Disfiguring the Goddess.

Your superstitious Author decided he could ignore this kind of cosmic alignment only at his peril. Besides, this band deserves our Authorial attention here at NCS. DTG is unsigned. Its only available body of work consists of a 6-song promo EP (available on iTunes), a 4-song demo you can scrounge from net download sites, and a few “vocal videos” on YouTube. And as far as we know, DTG has never performed even a single live show. Yet it has developed a large cult following, largely on the strength of Cameron “Big Chocolate” Argon’s vocal prowess and his ability to create music that’s “outside the box” — which is saying something in a musical genre that’s itself way outside the box. The inimitable Sergeant D has written over at Metal Inquisition that Argon has produced “the most brutal, crushing, guttural slamz on Earth.” Gotta agree. Continue reading »