OUR LIST OF 2011’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 13

 IQ Subtraction  22 Responses »
Jan 072012
 

This is Part 13 of our list of the most infectious extreme metal songs released this year. Each day until the list is finished, I’m posting two songs that made the cut. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the Introduction via this link. To see the selections that preceded this one, click the Category link on the right side of the page called MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011.

MORBID ANGEL

Successful, immensely influential artists of long standing often find their creative freedom restricted by the shackles of their own success. What has worked in the past will likely work again, and that’s an insidious inducement to just repeat the pattern again and again. That’s the carrot, but there’s also a stick: Striking out onto a new path risks alienation of a dedicated fan base. Loyal adherents of an artist’s well-defined style may be too close-minded, too wedded to the past, to be receptive to experimentation.

Fortunately, not all successful artists fall prey to these carrot-and-stick inducements to stand pat. Some are brave enough and creative enough to throw off the shackles of their own success and strike out in brilliant new directions, to boldly go where others are too timid to tread. So it was with Morbid Angel’s 2011 album, Illud Divinum Insanus, which translates to “fuck you, we doin’ this thang anyway.” Continue reading »

2012: METAL IN THE FORGE (Part 1)

 Forthcoming Albums  28 Responses »
Jan 062012
 

December and 2011 are both over, and with the end of the last month, it’s time to round up what we saw over the last 30 days about forthcoming albums.

We usually try to post these updates on the first of the month, but the first of this month was New year’s Day, and I was moving kinda slowly that day. Plus, I’ve been focusing on year-end lists from a variety of sources, and, well, I’m late with this. I have more excuses, if you’d like to hear them.  No?  Okay, I understand.  I’ll just shut up and get going with this list.

So, here’s the deal:  In these METAL IN THE FORGE posts, I collect news blurbs and press releases I’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like at NCS (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — THIS ISN’T A CUMULATIVE LIST. If we found out about a new forthcoming album before December, we wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier.

This month’s list begins right after the jump. It includes some real eye-openers. In fact, it’s not too soon to say that 2012 is already looking like yet another royally skull-fucking year for metal. But as usual, this list is half-assed rather than comprehensive. I confess that in December I was even more half-assed than usual in keeping my eyes open for news about new albums. So, feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us what I missed when I put this list together. Let us know about albums on the way that  you’re stoked about, even if you don’t see them here! Continue reading »

THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING

 Uncategorized  23 Responses »
Nov 222011
 

(Andy Synn wrote the following opinion piece.  If we don’t get some comments on this one, I’ll be quite surprised. Andy’s got some questions at the end, and we’d love to hear your answers.)

Here’s a question that’s been on my mind for a while now; what do we do when our heroes let us down? What happens when the bands we love go off the boil, make weird creative decisions, or just simply move away from playing the music for which we fell in love with them?

Music is an intensely emotional topic, and one which promotes a peculiar kind of loyalty to develop in those of us who love it deeply. As metal fans in particular, we seem to embody the very extremes of this trait; treat us well and we will die for you, cross us and our wrath and enmity shall be eternal. Indeed, once a certain line is crossed it’s very common to see a band written off as “dead” by any number of their former fans.

Most recently, however, I’ve been trying to take positive steps when confronted with this situation. Rather than entering into either a) a defensive flame war on behalf of our fallen heroes, or b) seizing on the opportunity in order to heap my own well-earned scorn on the victims of this public derision, I have instead been taking the fall of our chosen heroes to promote potential successors who are ready and waiting to step up and take on the mantle.

This does, however, raise one further issue: to what extent we, as metal fans, are willing to accept our heroes being replaced and (if that is the case) do we actually always have one eye out for the Next Big Thing – not the one who’ll necessarily sell the records and get the airplay, but the one who will step into the well-worn shoes of our heroes once they have gone to the sacred feasting halls of Valhalla?

Now 3 particular albums/events inspired these thoughts recently… Continue reading »

OLD SCHOOL / NEW SCHOOL

 IQ Subtraction, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Jun 092011
 

Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of a feature we’re calling OLD SCHOOL / NEW SCHOOL.  I usually run on at the mouth in introducing posts around here, but for this one, I’m just gonna let you figure out the theme for yourselves. Given the title we’re using for this series, it seemed fitting to begin with the following contrast. (Don’t worry, there will be music after the jump.)

OLD SCHOOL

NEW SCHOOL

(yeah, more after the jump . . .)

Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 4)

 Forthcoming Albums  15 Responses »
Apr 022011
 


Technically, we should have posted this yesterday, but yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and people might have thought we were making up some of this shit. But it’s all true, and nothing happens on April 2 to plant doubt about truth. Except for what causes doubt to be planted about truth on any other day of the year.

Here we are at the beginning of the second quarter of 2011 — the time when for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is supposed to spring.  Where I live, spring has apparently been victimized by a brutal street mugging and is hospitalized at the moment.  A few plants have been deluded into thinking it’s spring, but for the rest of our local world, it’s still fucking winter.

Fortunately, the change of the seasons have fuck all to do with the release of metal. 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 31 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. Dive in after the jump. Continue reading »

CARCINOGEN

 Album Reviews  13 Responses »
Oct 162010
 

When you mentally strip away all the small and large luxuries of life, you are left with the basic rudiments of existence, the core elements necessary for subsistence — food, water, shelter, and in our case, death metal. Nothing fancy, mind you, just the stripped-down, fuzzed-out, palm-muted, drop-tuned, guttural-voiced, percussive approach of the old school, preferably played at a galloping pace.

Rhythmic dynamics and squalling guitar solos are plus factors. Melody is not required.

Eye-catching album art is also a plus, like that busy piece of black-and-white ghoulishness up above by an Indonesian underground artist who calls herself “Oikwasfuk“, depicting the Virgin Mary being impaled by a flying-v guitar while five zombies eat her alive. You know, fun for the whole family! Bring the kids!

Yes, when the band wrote us, they cleverly used that piece of art to hook our attention, like fish caught in a gill net — that, and the band’s viciously cool one-word name. But that was only the beginning. The art and the name only lured us into the music, which in this case (to persist with our commercial fishery metaphor) works like a processing plant — removing the head, guts, and pin bones and then blast-freezing the carcass.

The band is Carcinogen, the album is a five-song EP called Unholy Aggression, and the very satisfying sound is death/thrash of the old school. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

MORE 2010 SICKNESS (Part 6)

 Forthcoming Albums, Listmania, Metal News  4 Responses »
Jul 012010
 

Another month has ended, and like a drug-resistant strain of sexually transmitted disease, we’re still here.

And because we’re now a full six months into 2010, it’s time for another monthly update to the list of forthcoming new albums we first posted on January 1. (All the other updates can be found via the “Forthcoming Albums” category link on the right side of our pages.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases we didn’t know about at the time of our previous updates, or updated info about some of the previously noted releases.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Perhaps needless to say, these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site — the kind that would like to tear your head off.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs from various sources since our last update about forthcoming new releases. Look for the bands you like and put reminders on your calendar. Or if you’re like us, just stick post-it notes on your forehead. Of course, if your foreheads are the low, sloping kind, you may only have room for a few, so be choosy.

BURDEN OF GRIEF: “German melodic death/thrash metallers BURDEN OF GRIEF will release their new album, Follow The Flames, on July 2 in Europe via Massacre Records. The follow-up to 2007’s Death End Road will contain 10 new songs. The limited-edition version of the CD will include a bonus disc featuring cover versions of eight metal classics.”

CEPHALIC CARNAGE: “Denver, Colorado-based technical death/grind metallers CEPHALIC CARNAGE have set Misled By Certainty as the title of their new album, due on August 31 via Relapse Records. The follow-up to 2007’s Xenosapien was recorded at the band’s own studio with longtime engineer/producer Dave Otero. The CD is described in a press release as a ’50-plus-minute journey into metal’s most extreme realms’ which ‘see[s] these veterans takes it to edge before pulling it back with ‘Repangea’, perhaps their most sprawling and epic work to date.'”

(lots more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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