WOMANOWAR: THE ARGUMENT FOR BALANCE & EQUALITY — AN INTERVIEW WITH SUBROSA (KIM PACK, SARAH PENDLETON, & REBECCA VERNON)

 Interviews  20 Responses »
Dec 232013
 

photo by Brandon Garcia

(We welcome the return of guest writer Alain Mower and the second in his series of interviews of women in metal. In this edition, he talks with three of the members of Utah-based SubRosa — Kim Pack, Sarah Pendleton, and Rebecca Vernon — whose 2013 album More Constant Than the Gods has been appearing on many year-end lists around the world, including this recent one on our own site, and whose answers to Alain’s questions are both eloquent and inspiring.)

This series is dedicated to creating discussion and awareness by expressing the observations, thoughts, and opinions of current prolific metal musicians who, in their spare time, also happen to be women. This is in direct response to the few stragglers in the community who think that there is still a place for sexism in metal.

If this results in you punching some loud-mouth, drunk sexist at the next show you go to or calling someone out when they question the attendance, attire, or musical capabilities of a woman at a show, then that’s all I could ever ask, and then some. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2011’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 10

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2011  No Responses »
Jan 042012
 

This is Part 10 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.

The name of this site confuses occasional visitors who come across something we’ve posted about bands who feature nothing (or nearly nothing) but clean singing. This post will confuse such people. It may also cause some of our regular readers to growl angrily. But to be fair, we’ve said from the inception of NCS that there would be Exceptions to the Rule of no clean singing, and today’s two additions to the MOST INFECTIOUS list qualify. Besides, I’m just being honest — these two songs are among the most infectious I heard this year, even if the genres from which they come aren’t my usual bread and butter.

40 WATT SUN

This band’s 2011 album The Inside Room has dominated year-end lists far and wide, including many that we’ve posted at NCS over the last month, including the No. 1 spot on Snagon’s list. Hell, it even showed up on the year-end list from “T” of Dragged Into Sunlight, in company with the likes of Autopsy, Craft, Leviathan, and Lifelover. “T” described it quite aptly in two words: “Beautiful. Isolated.”

I rarely listen to the style of melodic doom that pervades The Inside Room, and I’m not well-informed about stand-out albums in the genre, either this year or ever. On the other hand, I didn’t jump on the 40 Watt Sun bandwagon late in the day. Acting on impulse, I decided to listen to a promo copy of the album last April, although I had previously heard nothing about the band and had no idea who Patrick Walker (ex-Warning) or his bandmates Christian Leitch and William Spong were. Despite the vast distance between the music I heard and the territory of metal where I usually roam, I was overwhelmed by what I heard. Continue reading »

SCRAMBLED BRAINS FO’ BREAKFAST: NEW MUSIC FROM KRISIUN, CENSURA, THE BROWNING, WHITECHAPEL, AND SUBROSA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  75 Responses »
Oct 032011
 

I don’t have any scientific way of knowing the musical tastes of the people who visit this site, just rough guesses. My rough guess is that most of the music in this post will be on the outer edge of the comfort zone of most visitors, or maybe outside it altogether. But since I’m starting with Krisiun, maybe that will buy me some leeway from all our necrovorous readers on the final four entries in this round-up. And if it doesn’t, well, I’ve got teflon skin, so you can piss on me in the comments and it will roll right off, no harm done.

I admit that Krisiun is more down the middle of my own comfort zone, too, but for me, the outer edges of the zone are way out there, as the spectrum of this music proves. So, in addition to the new song from Krisiun, I found something to like about all the other new songs included in this post — from Censura (Ireland), The Browning (U.S.), Whitechapel (U.S.), and Subrosa (U.S.). Two of these new songs, by the way, are captured in well-made music videos, and so maybe you’ll be distracted by the moving pictures, though I hope you’ll get something out of the music, too.

KRISIUN

The three, mean-ass, Brazilian death-metal overlords in Krisiun have a new album on the way. Called The Great Executioner, it will be released by Century Media in Europe on October 31 and in the U.S. on November 1. About 10 days ago, Krisiun released a song from the album called “The Will To Potency”. Somehow, I missed it until this past weekend. It’s stupendous, titanic, mind-bending. It lashes together strikingly proficient technical musicianship, bursts of head-spinning melody, guitar solos so white-hot as to melt lead, and the voraciously unclean vocal roars we all know and love so well. And wait ’til you hear the song’s intro. Limber up your neck muscles and hear this (right after the jump): Continue reading »