We’ve got an NCS reader and commenter who uses the nom de plume “Surgical Brute.” Every now and then in his post comments, he’ll mention a band whose music is new to me. I usually try to check out those bands, and so far, he hasn’t steered me wrong.

Recently, I invited him to send us five new recommendations, because it’s pretty clear to me that my tastes and his coincide to a significant degree. He responded with five bands whose music I’d never heard. I’ve been saving up those recommendations for a MISCELLANY post, which is the series that recounts my adventures into the musical unknown. I’m splitting up those five bands into two MISCELLANY posts, with the second one to follow next weekend, if not sooner.

So, here we go: For each band, I’m including Surgical Brute’s brief description of the music, my own reaction to a single song (or two) picked at random from each band, and then the song itself for you to hear and judge for yourself. Here’s the line-up for today, in the order that Surgical Brute described them to me via e-mail: The Stone (Serbia), Graveyard Dirt (Ireland), and The Wakedead Gathering (U.S.). Bear in mind that I hadn’t heard the music before sitting down to listen for this post. It turned out to be quite a varied offering of music.

THE STONE

This Serbian band formed in 1996, originally under the name Stone To Flesh, and in the following years they’ve produced quite a lot of music. Their most recent full-length — the band’s fifth — is called Umro (which seems to mean “died” or maybe “dead”). It came out in 2009 on Folter Records. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »