STILL MORE DIVERSIONARY TACTICS: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, EASTERN FRONT, AND TAAKE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Mar 062011
 

We seem to be stuck on triads. On each of the last two days, we featured the music of three bands. This being the third day, it appealed to our rudimentary desire for symmetry to feature three more. A triad of triads. Today, we’ve got a fairly new video of Fleshgod Apocalypse (Italy), a song from the recent U.S. label debut of Eastern Front (UK), and a not-new video of a not-new song from a not-new band — but one we finally decided to check out — Taake (Norway). Let’s get right to it:

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

Don’t know how I missed this.  On February 21, a video appeared on YouTube of Fleshgod Apocalypse performing live at The Bonecrusher Fest 2011 in Utrecht, Holland, the night before. If there were such a thing as an official NCS “mascot”, this band would be it. We’ve probably dropped their names in posts and comments more than any other band.

We fantasize about offering them vast sums of money to come live in Seattle and be our official house band, y’know, after one of those stupendous offers of cash from Nigeria or Ghana or Mali or Hong Kong materializes — which we know will happen if we’re patient and continue to lead a clean, godly life and do good works for those less fortunate than ourselves. Can I get a big “Amen!”?

No, no, no, I did not ask for a big “Hail Satan!” Let’s try that again:  Can I get a big “Amen!”?

Well, I can tell that ain’t gonna fuckin work with this crowd, so let’s just go back to FA.  (after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2010’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 15

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2010  11 Responses »
Jan 112011
 

Today we reach the end of the line — the last two songs on our MOST INFECTIOUS list. Our list this year was three times as long as our 2009 list, but even so there were lots of other worthy candidates we omitted — including many recommendations we got from lots of you. Truth be told, 2010 was filled with great metal releases. Picking the catchiest songs wasn’t easy, and undoubtedly we fucked it up by leaving off some winners. But hey — we fuck up a lot.

No fucking up today, though. Our last two songs are from two blazingly hot bands who produced smoking hot cauldrons of metal in 2010. We saved them for the finale on purpose because they’re two particular favorites of ours. Both bands are from Italy and when their 2010 releases were recorded, they shared a common member (though no longer). Let’s get to it.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

We hope our list included at least a few surprises for you, but this isn’t likely to be one of them. Out of all the bands we could have fantasized about paying to be at our beck and call once we get the jillions of dollars that African philanthropists have promised us, this is the one we picked. (more after the jump, including the songs . . .) Continue reading »

IT’S BEAUTIFUL — AND IT SUCKS

 Metal News  5 Responses »
Sep 022010
 

Sometimes you can admire the idea of beauty from afar, even when you have no chance of experiencing it for yourself. It’s a melancholy kind of fantasy. It’s sublime, and it’s wistful at the same time. It makes you wish, for a moment and maybe longer, that you were someone else, in some different place.

We had that moment today. We have that moment almost every day, prompted by one thing or another. But it passes, as it must, because life must go on, and no good comes from pining too long over what might have been.

Today’s moment was provoked by finding out, finally, about where the following metal tour would be stopping in North America. It will be called THE DECIBEL DEFIANCE TOUR 2010. It is a thing of immense and terrible beauty. It features these bands:

SUFFOCATION
THE FACELESS
THROUGH THE EYES OF THE DEAD
DECREPIT BIRTH
FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

The thought of this tour transports us into flights of ecstasy, as if soaring high above the earth with all of creation spread before us for the taking. In other words, for our tastes, it’s the most fucking skull-rattling, ass-kicking, intestinally perforating tour of the fall.

It’s also a very melancholy discovery. For all the flights of mental fancy, it brings us very low. At the end, it’s an excrutiacingly suck-tastic discovery. Can you guess why?  (more whining after the jump, of course . . .) Continue reading »

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE UPDATE

 Metal News  12 Responses »
Aug 132010
 

Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse is one of those bands (and there aren’t many) for which we have this presumption: They can do no wrong. Perhaps someday they will, but until that day, we will willingly listen to whatever music they create.

We reviewed Mafia — their most recent installment of obliteratingly good music — on June 2 (here).

Various things have happened since then. For one thing, we learned the stupendously good news that Fleshgod Apocalypse will be touring the U.S. this fall with this lineup of bands:

SUFFOCATION
THE FACELESS
THROUGH THE EYES OF THE DEAD
DECREPIT BIRTH

Is this the best tour of the year? If it’s not, it’s very fucking close. We don’t have dates or places yet, but you can be damned sure we’ll tell you when we do.

For another thing, FA’s bassist/vocalist Paolo Rossi gave an extended interview with an Italian metal site called Metal Italia, which was published yesterday, that included some interesting tidbits of information.

Do any of us here at NCS speak Italian? Well, fuck no! We can barely speak English! But we do know how to copy Italian text on a web site and paste it into Google Translate.

Did we get nice, smooth, intelligible English results when we did that? Fuck no! We got half-wit, idjit, gibberish English. Fortunately, to use a baseball metaphor, half-wit, idjit, gibberish English is right in our wheelhouse, because that’s mainly what we speak. So we feel pretty confident we can give you the substance of the news revealed in that interview.  (after the jump, of course, along with a widget that will allow you to stream FA songs . . .) Continue reading »

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE: MAFIA

 Album Reviews  11 Responses »
Jun 022010
 

A few short weeks ago, we mourned the apparent demise of Hour of Penance, a fantastic band from Rome that a well-known metal blogger characterized in an e-mail to us as “the Italian Behemoth.” (The most recent NCS post about HOP can be found here.) Our one consolation was the knowledge that the other band featuring the multi-talented HOP vocalist Francesco Paoli — Fleshgod Apocalypse — was still alive and well, and had a new album on the way.

Our advance copy of that album (which is really an EP) arrived a few days ago, and we tore into it like a pack of ravenous wolves. It’s called MAFIA, and that is indeed what it’s about. This statement from the band appears in the CD insert:

MAFIA is dedicated to all those who shed their own blood to fight the neverending curse of racketeering. We do support the war against those animals.

La Cosa Nostra is certainly not the typical subject matter of extreme metal songs, and we have more to say about the concept behind this album and the small and large ways in which that concept works its way through the music.

But to cut to the chase about the music, MAFIA will explode your head. If you liked this band’s debut album, Oracles, you will be mighty pleased by the new one. And if you haven’t yet checked out Fleshgod Apocalypse, don’t put it off any longer.  They’re putting out music that’s not quite like anything else you’ve heard. (more after the jump, including our favorite track from MAFIA . . .) Continue reading »

NOT-SO-FUNNY SHIT GETS EVEN WORSE

 Metal News  No Responses »
May 132010
 

Yesterday, we reported the bad news about what happened to one of our favorite death-metal bands, Hour of Penance, at their show in Alicante, Spain not long ago. In a nutshell, the band’s drummer Mauro Mercurio was unable to play on stage (apparently due to being too fucked up) and had destroyed or damaged property at the venue, resulting in detention by Spanish police. And all of that led Hour of Penance to cancel the remaining dates on their European tour.

Well, the news just gets worse and worse. Today we saw a blog post by Francesco Paoli, the frontman for Hour of Penance. Correction — ex-frontman. And that’s the worse news: Francesco has announced that he has left Hour of Penance as a result of the incident in Alicante. We’re re-printing his blog post with the full explanation after the jump.

This is a truly fucked-up development. Earlier this year, Hour of Penance released their best album yet — Paradogma — one of our favorites of the year so far.  They looked like they were really hitting their stride and bound for even greater things. And now, virtually overnight, the band is disintegrating.

We’re not blaming Francesco for his decision. Read his blog post, and you’ll understand it. It’s just sad news for fans of Hour of Penance. The saving grace is that Francesco remains active in his other band, the ungodly good Fleshgod Apocalypse — and that band has completed a new album (Mafia) that will be released in the U.S. on June 8.

Now, continue on after the jump to see Francesco’s depressing blog post.

UPDATE: We’ve added a more recent post with additional details from Francesco that emerged after the statement you’ll see following the jump. Those further details suggest that Hour of Penance may not be dead after all and that Francesco was planning to leave the band even before the incident in Alicante. You can read all about it by following this link.

Continue reading »

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

 Metal News  No Responses »
Mar 272010
 

Maybe there’s a band out in the world someplace that sounds like Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse — but if so, we haven’t heard it yet. Their 2009 debut album, Oracles, combined blowtorch death metal with (gulp!) classical music.

Guess we’d better define our terms here. By “blowtorch death metal,” we’re trying to convey the almost overpowering onslaught produced by rapid, atomizing, chainsaw guitar rhythms, blazingly fast drum noise (heavy on the blast beats), shred-tastic ax solos, and staccato, brutal-death-metal gutturals — all mixed together in a fuzz-heavy production. You know, like a blowtorch to the face. You could search high and low and not find more pulverizing sounds that could still be called music with a straight face.

If that’s all Fleshgod Apocalypse had given us in Oracles, it would have been enough –because the blowtorch metal was ass-kickingly over the top. But they didn’t stop there. They added to the mix some massive grooves and unexpected segments of majestic melody.

But they didn’t stop with that either. Sprinkled here and there (briefly) on Oracles were intros, outros, and interludes of classical or medieval music — pianos and strings, orchestral passages, monastic chants. Talk about a mind-bending concept — one moment the music is tearing along like the back end of a jet engine and in the next moment you’re hearing a Viennese waltz. We know that sounds kinda ridiculous, but believe us — it works.  (read on after the jump . . . and listen to a new track . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2010 SICKNESS (Part 2)

 Forthcoming Albums, Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Feb 232010
 

We’re now almost two months into 2010, and it’s already time for our second update to the list of forthcoming new albums we posted on January 1.  (See the original list here and the first update here.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases that we didn’t know about on January 1 or at the time of our last update about a month ago — and there’s a lot of them.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs from various sources over the last month about forthcoming new releases:

1349: “Prosthetic Records will release the brand new album from Norwegian black metal legends 1349 in North America via an agreement with Indie Recordings. The new CD, which promises ‘a return to the band’s more traditional, raw-yet-technical black metal sound,’ is due on April 13. In support of the yet-to-be-titled record, 1349 will embark on a North American tour in April and May as the support act for CANNIBAL CORPSE (alongside SKELETONWITCH and LECHEROUS NOCTURNE).”

ABACABB: “ABACABB are currently out on the road headlining the Hot Dice On Black Ice Tour featuring Upon A Burning Body!. The tour just hit Texas and will be in California this weekend. Following the tour ABACABB will enter the studio with producer Will Putney at Machine Shop in New Jersey and will have a new album to be released sometime this summer.”

AEON: “Swedish death metallers AEON have set Path Of Fire as the title of their third album, due later in the year via Metal Blade Records. The CD was recorded in September 2009 at Empire Studio in Östersund, Sweden and was mixed the following month at Mana Recording Studios in St, Petersburg, Florida by Erik Rutan (HATE ETERNAL, MORBID ANGEL, CANNIBAL CORPSE). The mastering was handled by Alan Douches at West West Side Music (CONVERGE, HATEBREED, THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN) in New Windsor, New York.”

AMORPHIS: “AMORPHIS will release its first-ever live DVD, Forging The Land Of Thousand Lakes, in early June via Nuclear Blast, in time for the band’s 20th anniversary. The filming took place on November 20, 2009 at Club Teatria in Oulu, Finland, where AMORPHIS was supported by STRATOVARIUS and BEFORE THE DAWN. In addition to the full-length live show, the anniversary DVD will include plenty of bonus material documenting the band’s impressive career.”   (much more 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 »

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