KICKBACK "No Surrender"

KICKBACK
"No Surrender"
(GSR)

Two bands had the biggest impact on me and my perception of underground music and aesthetics. ANTAEUS and KICKBACK. Both of them are parisian bands. I've seen both of them live and got to know some of their members during my studies in Paris from 1992 to 1997. Both of them have been controversial since the beginning, with outspoken frontmen that meant what they said. Rumors, facts and friction, violence, confrontation, loathing of the music business, exteme music at its finest... another day at the office!

It's been 10 years since KICKBACK's excellent "Les 150 Passions Meurtrieres" mini-CD. It left us begging for more with a more extreme, violent, fucked up approach than "Forever War" (one of my two all-time favorite albums together with SLAYER's "Seasons In The Abyss"). In the meantime we heard they split up... And then I went to see ARKHON INFAUSTUS the first time they played live in Athens (excellent performance, gay gig promoter). One of their guitar players, Damien told me that he was playing with KICKBACK and that the band was alive and rounding up new material. That was major fucking news.

A few months ago, the alarm rung again. KB would be ready to release a new album. A little bit later, 3 new tracks were streaming at www.myspace.com/kickback. Big fucking surprise! They were sounding more metal, even atmospheric at times, but yet it was still premium extreme hardcore material.

Now the album is here, the wait is over. Before listening to it, and eventhough the 3 samples were pretty damn promising, I acknowledged a reasonable possibility that I didn't like it *THAT* much. After all so many old favorite bands of mine disappointed me and became dull, boring and predictable as they grew old. Well, not those fuckers!

"Fuck hardcore, fuck your scene and fuck you". This motto is not some kind of empty promise. "No Surrender" marks the demise of modern hardcore and its rebirth. I am not saying they are the only ones, eventhough they are largely the band I prefer best.

The blackmetal riffs complete the negative nihilistik vision they already had in the past. Noisy, discordant bits make you feel unconfortable, creating tension and unholy dynamics. It is in general the more uptempo styuff they have written so far, possibly due to the new drummer. When things get too chaotik, fucking your brain, a monstrous beatdown, classic yet devastating will make you wanna kill somebody. Damien pushed the band into being more technical, and that is a good thing. Stephen's vokills have rotten with the years like a stinking corpse. He's on top of his business, putting to ridicule most of his peers (metal, hardcore and blackmetal alike).

If you didn't like that much KB until now, it is about time you give them another try. If you're into Converge, Most Precious Blood, Catharsis, Gehenna (US), Integrity, you'll be most pleasantly surprised.

Buy the motherfucker. "No Surrender" is one of the most intense and radical musical experiences on offer today. "No Surrender" is not an album to go to hell with, it is for those who are already there...

"This is for us, this is not for you"...

Panos Agoros 200999

"Noise vs. Subversive Computing" out now///Kinky Kong live poster

"Noise vs. Subversive Computing" 1GB USB Stick out now @ Computationally Infeasible Records!

Kontakt: pascal.cretain@gmail.com

KOMMPOUND,NAΦΘALYN,LUNAR MIASMA live sabbath20jun200999

NOISE/AMBIENT SPECIAL FORCES LIVE

sabbath20jun200999 @ KINKY KONG/Athens:

KOMMPOUND

NAΦΘALYN

(feat. Mantas: Voidhead, Dephosphorus)

LUNAR MIASMA

(ex-Red Needled Sea)

More details soon.

SUFFOCATION "Blood Oath" (Nuclear Blast)

This is the 3rd record since SUFFOCATION have returned. It is the best of them and the one that the hardcore fans have been waiting for since the mid-90's. As a matter of fact, the level of intensity with which "Blood Oath" was crafted is such, that it sounds like merely one year has passed since the release of "Pierced From Within".

This does not mean that SUFFOCATION are one of those pathetic old bands who returned, tried out something new and then when they saw it didnt work as expected, rolled back to their older popular style... Yes, they play as intensely as in "Pierced From Within". Yes, this is better than "Souls To Deny" and "Suffocation". Yes, as Mike Smith admitted to a discussion we had together for a Metal Hammer feature, they've held back and kind of compromised in the previous two records. Now they are back in full force and they want nothing less than total domination and mass recognition. If things dont work out as they want, they will quit at their peak.

Right. What's the deal here? The foundation of "Blood Oath" is "Pierced From Within"-like complex brutality. Their playing is challenging and stimulating. You definitely should not expect from those guys to suck their own dick with some gratuitous musical onanism.

On top of that there's some novelties for the SUFFOCATION style, which are definitely welcome. There's melodies on the guitars, technical parts that could be labeled as "prog" by some and most important of all: atmosphere. I realize this might sound scary to some, but there's not any reason for that. SUFFOCATION are still one helluva brutal band. The only twist is that not only they are bestial but also cerebral. I definitely like that! Tracks like "Dismal Dream" and "Provoking The Disturbed" are instant underground hits. The re-recording of "Marital Decimation" (erroneously marked as "Martial Decimation" on the tracklistings) from "Breeding The Spawn", their record with the weakest production, is a charm.

The only thing I DON'T like is John Ziggs' cover artwork that is pretty much mediocre. This is the way things have to be: a classic SUFFOCATION album must have cover artwork designed by Dan Seagrave! Period. It's just like that: we, the fans, tend to associate bands with some excellent covers that wrapped some of their finest moments. Truth is that most of them don't look back. But we can still complain! You want some examples? All right.

- SUFFOCATION "Effigy Of The FOrgotten" and "Breeding The Spawn"
- BOLT THROWER "Realm Of Chaos" and "Warmaster"
- METALLICA "Ride The Lightning" and "Master Of Puppets"
- etc.. etc...

Whatever. Another thing for us fans is that "Blood Oath" sounding so good, we cannot but wonder how it would be like with Doug Cerrito back on the guitars. Maybe one day we will find out! Until then, grabbing this album is a no-brainer. The way SUFFOCATION are focused on rythm and atmosphere is irresistible.

Panos Agoros 200999

CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE ANTI-CHEATER PATCH TO BE RELEASED FOR THE XBOX 360

According to a brief post by outspoken Infinity Ward PR kommander Robert Bowling at his blog, a new COD4 patch for the Xbox 360 is in process of certification by Microsoft in order to kill cheaters.

Since I am a COD4 trooper and haven't encountered any cheaters myself (well, except that one guy who wouldn't die on headquarters at shipment, who later told us that the program glitched for that single game and he hadn't done any mod at all), i did some research to find out what's the trouble about.

A quick visit at the game's official forums at http://forums.infinityward.com reveals that there's been an awful lot of complaining by community members during these last two weeks.

Apparently there's been quite a few cheaters ruining the show at ranked matches lately. There's a god mode when you can fly and are invincible, you can also run all around the map at light speed or in slow motion, etc.

It's been quite a surprise to learn about this, because until now online cheating and modding was largely reseved to PC users. Consoles were supposed to be immune. Oh, of course there's been the guys glitching on the maps and accessing areas outside the normal map, also those glitching and having their names first on the leaderboards with impossible scores. COD4 players with modded rapidfire controllers are rather common too. This allows them to fire semi-automatic weapons (typically the G3 assault riffle and the pistols) at full auto rate.

Here's a few examples of how cheating looks like:









Ok so how does work the mod which will be soon annihilated by the patch? The methodology which apparently applies to both CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE and CALL OF DUTY: WORLD AT WAR, consists of the following steps:

1-Transfer a gamesave to your PC from the Xbox 360 HDD using a transfer kit.

2-Edit the gamesave with a hex editor.

3-Do a search and locate the configuration commands. Change the values. There's a few dozen of parameters to play with (gravity, invincibility, ammo, speed of movement, etc).

4-Transfer back the gamesave on the Xbox 360 and you're good to go.

You can find detailed guides on the forums, like this one.

If we believe the interweb, the guy who found out first is known under the nickname of cheater912 and he's actually selling the mod through the webpage www.codtool.com for those who want to skip the hex editing part. If I got it right, you can download the modding program for free but in order to make it actually work you have to pay the guy $10 or $20. He's even selling mod tutorials for $100!!! Nice little business he got going huh?

The technical part is very interesting because consoles are still largely considered to be immovable boxes. It also demonstrates that hackers can take control and that we should expect far worst like stealing credit card details registered on XBOX LIVE or on PLAYSTATION NETWORK. So there's a lot to be done in terms of security and counter-hacker research.

As far as the actual gameplay alteration goes, well it sure looks like a lot of fun but for private matches only. It doesnt make sense to use it on ranked matches because except the moral part of ruining the party for the other players, there's the practical issue that you will be permanently banned from XBL since you'll be violating the terms of use.

What to do if you come across such an asshole on XBL? File a complaint with "cheating". If the guy plays a few matches he will get so many complaints on his ass that he will be banned soon enough.

Panos Agoros 200999

Noise vs. Subversive Computing out on 1st June 200999

COMPUTATIONALLY INFEASIBLE RECORDS 001

“Noise vs. Subversive Computing”

This is the “Noise vs. Subversive Computing” Project: A Collaborative release split between Noise/Experimental Artists and Subversive Technologists/Computer Hackers. Ten representatives from each camp were asked to contribute a piece of work which could be anything at all: an audio track, a drawing, a written passage, software, video, combination of all that, or anything else that can be converted to binary. The Noisicians had “Subversive Computing” as their central theme, and the Technologists worked with “Noise”.

This is the outcome:

NOISE:

0. BBBlood (UK) - Bicep Venoms Gut Virus [AUDIO]
1. Config.sys (DE) - Bit Bucket [AUDIO]
2. Family Battle Snake (DE) – Black Hat [AUDIO]
3. Francisco Lopez (ES) – Untitled 223 [AUDIO]
4. GEN 26 (SI) - Untitled [AUDIO]
5. Hellboy106 (GR) - stgzknmhtrka [IMAGE+AUDIO]
6. ILIOS (GR) - 4000 ĉevaloj kriegas Mi ami Vi [AUDIO]
7. KOMMPOUND (GR) - Softmod Exploit [AUDIO+WORDS]
8. La Jacquerie (IT) – Re: If you're angry don’t [AUDIO]
9. Sarah's Charity (DK) - Colour of Clarity [AUDIO]

SUBVERSIVE COMPUTING:

0. Ach3n0r (GR) - Noise Steganography [SOFTWARE]
1. Ashrae tosh & KaOS (BE/DK) - Netglitch [AUDIO+WORDS]
2. E (US) - Sifting through the Noise [WORDS]
3. EK (UK) - Rainbow [AUDIO]
4. G0rg0g0l (GR) - Gorgogoogle: Web, Search, Noise [SOFTWARE]
5. Gorrrrgar (RO) - My kind of Shithole [PHOTOGRAPHY MATRIX+WORDS]
6. Jazra Khaleed (GR) - Noise [POEM]
7. Pascal Cretain (DK) - Information Pollution [VIDEO]
8. Rodrigo Marcos (UK) - MySQL Sounds [VIDEO+SOFTWARE]
9. Stelios Douskos (US) - LawyerFish [SOFTWARE]

The merger is truly fascinating; explosive to say the least. The radical thinkers at work in here have the momentum, the mindset and the technical skills to crash Adaptive Firewalls, defy traditional definitions of music, “hack” live performance semantics and bypass Intrusion Detection Systems.

Only this is not Cyberspace. We are subtly injecting polymorphic shellcode into your reality, brainwashing you with white noise and reverse engineering your obsolete modus operandi.

Alas; you can’t pull the plug.


“Noise vs. Subversive Computing” out 01.06.2009
Limited release of 256 Numbered Copies in 1GB USB Stick format
Contact Pascal Cretain for Ordering Information

GLENN DANZIG “Black Aria II”

GLENN DANZIG
“Black Aria II”
(Evilive/Megaforce) 

This was worth the wait. Glenn Danzig’s second part of Alternative History of Theology through dark ambient sounds is ready for your sinful eardrums. Sporting the unglodly sexy cover from Bill Senkiewicz (Wolverine, New Mutants etc) this is one ritual thingie filled with more voodoo like drums , tons of more eastern mysticism aura , and ,yes, agonizing fem vox . There’s also the appropriate Danzig-geek little present on that “Abbandonment/Recreation”,track. Don’t wanna spoil this for you but ,fuckitall, I will. Glenn takes the old “whooo-aap” backing vocal track from Samhain’s “Halloween II” and places it in the midst of ritual drums and phantom-like polyphonies,composing one of his most chill-you-shitless moments ever to haunt the stereo since “Misery Tomb”. The rest is mute and dominated by church organ synth.All in all this is another case of Glenn dropping off ghis guitar and mic , sitting on the piano and giving you one more real reason to realise the futility of existence. “Black Aria II” ain’t no party music guys, gals and ghouls! 

Tsamashi ToYo