ONE HELL OF A WEEK TO BE A METALHEAD

 Mosh Pit  17 Responses »
May 102013
 

(NCS writer BadWolf, who is based in Toledo, Ohio, shares some thoughts about a week that brought us horrors from Cleveland and a rude surprise in San Diego.)

Phew.

It’s been quite the week, hasn’t it? I’m not a higher-power sort of man, but if I were I would call this week a ‘test.’ In particular, it’s been a rough week to be a man with any interest in the well-being of women, in general. As a metalhead, and as an Ohioan.

Let’s recap:

Earlier this week, three women in Cleveland escaped from, according to estimates, a decade of private captivity. These three young women, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, were kidnapped and held against their will in what any reasonable person can assume was a private hell, set up for the sexual satisfactions of their captor. A six-year-old girl was found at the house, and is thought to be Berry’s daughter, born in captivity and conceived through rape. According to some reports, an unnamed victim said she was impregnated and forced to miscarry through blunt force trauma.

Fuck. Continue reading »

TIM LAMBESIS PLEADS NOT GUILTY; BAIL SET; FURTHER DETAILS OF PROSECUTION’S CASE COME OUT

 Metal News  17 Responses »
May 092013
 

I actually don’t plan to follow this morbid story every step of the way, but based on our web traffic count, there’s clearly been a lot of interest by NCS readers in the arrest of As I Lay Dying’s Tim Lambesis for allegedly attempting to pay someone to murder his wife, Meggan Lambesis. So, we’ll follow the story at least a little bit further.

The latest news (as reported here) is that Tim Lambesis was arraigned in Vista Superior Court (San Diego) this afternoon on one criminal charge of solicitation of murder, which carries a maximum penalty of 9 years in prison. He entered a plea of not guilty and bail was set at $8 million — although the prosecutors asked for bail in the amount of $20 million.

The court further ordered that if Lambesis makes bail, he is to have no contact with his wife or their three children. The next court date will apparently be a preliminary hearing on July 10.

Further details about the hearing and the prosecution’s case emerged from live tweets by Angie Lee, a freelance reporter for San Diego’s KFMB-TV who was in attendance. According to her tweets, prosecutors told the court the following: Continue reading »

TIM LAMBESIS (AS I LAY DYING) ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF HIRING SOMEONE TO MURDER HIS WIFE

 Metal News  14 Responses »
May 072013
 

Our last post was a joke. Unfortunately, this one isn’t. FOX5-San Diego and Reuters are reporting tonight that Tim Lambesis, lead singer for As I Lay Dying and Pyrithion and the man behind Austrian Death Machine, has been arrested  after he allegedly hired someone to kill his estranged wife. Here’s more from the FOX5 report:

“Tim Lambesis, lead singer and co-founder of the heavy-metal group As I Lay Dying, was arrested at a store on Vista Way in Oceanside about 2 p.m., after allegedly soliciting an undercover detective to kill his spouse, an Encinitas resident, according to sheriff’s officials.

Authorities began investigating Lambesis, 32, in the case on Thursday, when they received information that he allegedly was trying to get someone to commit the slaying.

He was booked into the Vista Jail on suspicion of solicitation of murder.”

The reports don’t indicate that Lambesis has yet been charged, merely arrested. But if the reports are correct that his arrest was based on statements he made to an undercover detective, you can bet those charges will be forthcoming soon. Continue reading »

IMPENDING DOOOOOOOOM

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Jul 262010
 

Earlier today we posted an album review without naming the band or any of the songs. Standing alone, that was a pretty useless act. What good is a review if readers don’t know who the fuck we’re talking about? But we did have a reason.

The band whose album we reviewed is Impending Doom, and some people tend to love them or dismiss them not because of the music but because they’re a Christian metal band — not just a band whose members happen to be Christians, but a band whose songs are inspired by their faith and who tour in order to spread the message.

The consequence is that you can’t read a review of their music without half the review being about the fact that they’re an unabashed Christian metal band — which is probably just fine with them.

But here at NCS, we don’t love em or detest ’em because of that fact. We focus on the music and the performances, and we happen to dig both. So we thought, just for the hell of it, we’d see what kind of reactions you had from our review without having those reactions influenced by the fact that this is Impending Doom.

Now that the mystery has been resolved, we’ll run our review again with all the camouflage removed. If you read the earlier review with the identity concealed and aren’t interested in reading it again, even with some details revealed, we’ve added something new at the end of the post (after the jump) under the heading “NEW STUFF”.  As always, feel free to flame or praise or yawn in the comments . . . Continue reading »

AS I LAY DYING

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
May 182010
 

As time has passed, we’ve found ourselves listening less and less to metalcore bands that really made a big impression on us a few years back. You could chalk it up partly to changes in our musical tastes and partly to our feeling swamped by the flood of generic metalcore bands trying to capitalize on what used to be the latest fad by combining chug-heavy riffs and growling with rancid emocore clean singing. In fact, we started this blog in part out of frustration with that phenomenon.

But listening less and less doesn’t mean no listening at all. There’s still something about metalcore (done right) that triggers the same positive feeling we had when the genre first emerged.

As I Lay Dying is one of those metalcore bands whose albums have consistently struck a chord with us — and in fact, we’re probably doing them an injustice with the metalcore label, because it’s become something of a bad word in our vernacular.

So, we’ll just toss that label aside and say this: The band’s new album, The Powerless Rise, is song for song their best one yet, and we’re really digging it.

The cool album cover by J. Bannon features a red-eyed skull exploding from below, and a similar image is on the fold-out CD insert, but with the explosion coming out the top of the skull. It’s a fitting image, because The Powerless Rise includes some serious skull-exploders — some of the most intensely aggressive music As I Lay Dying has yet produced. Take off your neck-braces and prepare to injure yourselves all over again, because this album overflows with music that will compel you to bang yo heads.  (more after the jump, including a track to stream . . .) Continue reading »