STUFF LEPERKAHN DONE FOUND AND DONE LIKED, PART 1 (TREPALIUM AND USNEA)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 292014
 

 

(As explained over the weekend, I’m taking a 10-day hiatus from rounding up new song and video premieres in order to focus on reviews, but fortunately we have at least one volunteer stepping up to fill the void. Here’s a post by Leperkahn that focuses on two recent premieres.)

Hey guys! Since Islander is taking a sabbatical from daily round-ups, I figured I’d take a stab at being his fill-in for a few days here, or at least until I realize that my problem sets won’t do themselves and Wealth of Nations won’t read itself. This shall serve as part 1, with future parts coming at likely very irregular intervals. If you feel like I’ve overlooked something that the peoples of the NCS universe should be cramming into their ears, feel free to shoot me an email at brendan@sdmetal.com. Anyway, herein we have two new song premieres, from opposite corners of both the globe and the metal spectrum.

TREPALIUM

A few weeks back France’s Trepalium unleashed upon us “Moonshine Limbo” (featured here), a glorious little ditty that was easily the best swing jazz/metal combo I’ve heard since Diablo Swing Orchestra’s last album back in 2012. It came replete with a bitchin’ horn section and the first time I’ve ever truly heard scat-screaming. I mention this because the group have now released the second song from their forthcoming EP Voodoo Moonshine, “Fire On Skin”.

The song is perhaps a bit less overtly jazzy than the title track – I didn’t hear the aforementioned bitchin’ horn section this time – but the arrangement and progression of the song is still rooted pretty firmly in jazz territory, only remaining death metal because of the instrument choices and Cédric Punda’s eviscerating roars. The jabbing verse riff in particular gave me the sensation that I was in the ring with Muhammad Ali at his prime, jolting left and right with each nasty hook the chugging riff planted into my sides. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ZAPRUDER — “CYCLOPS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 292014
 

 

The French band Zapruder made their advent two years ago with an EP named Straight From The Horse’s Mouth, and now they’re on the verge of delivering their debut album Fall In Line. The album’s title is an exercise in irony, because Zapruder plainly aren’t falling in line and they don’t want you to either. You’ll understand what I mean as soon as you listen to “Cyclops”, one of the nine tracks from the album that we’re premiering in this post.

Listening to “Cyclops” is akin to leaping on an infernal merry-go-round that’s spinning erratically (and dangerously), with flame-eyed horses bolting up and down like pistons in an engine with a mind of its own. Dissonant squalling chords mingle with skin-melting shrieks and cavernous roars, wind-shear speed gives way to a pounding dirge, knee-capping percussion coexists with almost ethereal reverberating lead guitar eeriness.  It’s unpredictable and unrelentingly intense music.

Both violent and cloaked in an aura of doom, “Cyclops” is heavy as hell and a fascinating and harrowing ride from a band who follow their own line. Continue reading »

BLACK CROWN INITIATE: “THE WRECKAGE OF STARS”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 292014
 

 

(DGR wrote this review of the debut album by Black Crown Initiate from Pennsylvania, which will be released tomorrow — Sept 30.)

It feels like music moves in ten-plus-year generational cycles, especially when it comes to heavy metal. This seems stupidly obvious, but the fact that it still continues unabated is pretty spectacular — because it allows people to sit around and prognosticate like true intelligentsia when it comes to even the most banal of subjects. You’ll have discs that come out right about the time a new generation can pick up on it and have their minds blown. In turn, they draw heavy influence from that specific time frame, and when it becomes their own turn to take the stage, it’s like watching the previous cycle re-incarnate, combined with some of the current sounds that are popular. And so, the sound iterates, especially in the case of heavy metal, as things move incrementally in different directions.

The past few years. especially, have really put the various spectra of death metal into the spotlight as both tech-death and progressive death have seen numerous new entries from young bands, groups who over the past decade have taken in so much of what began in the early aughts and now seek to put their own mark on it. Reading, Pennsylvania’s own Black Crown Initiate are one of those bands who have seemingly had the stars align for them. They are a young band who succeeded in finding the almost perfect combination of songwriting talent, musicianship, and artistic bravery to stretch well beyond their own genre conventions and managed to make quite the loud entrance with last year’s EP Song Of The Crippled Bull. You could tell, especially by our own review, that if Song Of The Crippled Bull was anything to go by, Black Crown Initiate were going to have a lot of heat behind them.

And so, we find ourselves looking to the band’s label debut, The Wreckage Of Stars, and if you haven’t quite figured out where this introduction is heading yet, let’s summarize it for you: There is a reason you’ve probably been hearing a lot about Black Crown Initiate over the past year, and if Wreckage Of Stars is anything to go by, you’re going to be hearing a hell of a lot more of them in the years to come. Continue reading »

DYING OUT FLAME: “SHIVA RUDRASTAKAM”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 282014
 

 

Shiva Rudrastakam by the Nepalese band Dying Out Flame is one of the most unusual, most inventive, and most instrumentally accomplished metal albums you will hear all year. It fuses together elements of death metal reminiscent of bands like Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel, Suffocation, and Behemoth with classical Hindu melodies and sanskrit chants. But it is far more than a stitching together of disparate musical traditions for the sake of creating a curiosity. It represents an authentic union of the creators’ passions, one that succeeds in finding an unexpected harmony in all these divergent ingredients.

An informative Decibel interview of the band’s co-founder, vocalist, and bass-player Aabeg Gautam reveals that the band’s name refers to the last phase of the burning of a corpse in the open air, an ancient Hindu sacrament designed to release the soul from the body after death, with fire acting as the medium between man and god. In the same interview Gautam calls the band “the instruments of Lord Shiva”. But even without these disclosures, the extent to which spiritual themes have inspired and fueled the band is abundantly evident in the fiery music itself.

The songs are impressively dynamic, ever-changing in ways that are fascinating rather than jarring. There is no doubt that the band could have recorded an album of pure death metal, both written and performed with an exceptional level of skill: In every song after the introductory track they unleash powerful torrents of brutal fret-burning riffs and hyper-active percussion with jaw-dropping flair. Yet this is only one facet of an intricately layered and vibrantly multi-textured work. Continue reading »

ONE FINAL ROUND-UP: BETHLEHEM, ENCOFFINATION, SKÁLMÖLD, ELEMENTAL NIGHTMARES

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 272014
 

 

As explained here, I’m taking a 10-day hiatus from searching for and writing about new song and video premieres, in order to make time for reviewing some albums I absolutely need to say something about. Before doing that, however, here’s one last batch of new things I found over the last couple of days that I thought were worth sharing.

BETHLEHEM

Germany’s Bethlehem, whose debut album may or may not be responsible for that amorphous genre label “dark metal”, have a new song up for streaming, the name of which is “Ein Kettenwolf greint 13:11-18”. All I really have to say about this depressive ballad is that I’d listen to more rock music if it sounded like this. Warning: clean singing to come…

The song will appear on the band’s sixth album Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia (fear of the number 666), which is their first in about five years. It will be released by Prophecy Productions on Oct 10 (Oct 14 in the U.S.) and is available for order here. Continue reading »

A PARTIAL HIAITUS

 Uncategorized  17 Responses »
Sep 272014
 


Artwork by Jeffrey Smith (for Judd Madden’s Everything In Waves).

You’re going to see some temporary changes here at NCS over the next 10 days, and I thought I’d explain why.

I’ve finally accepted the fact that I’m trying to do too much. Partly because of increasing demands on my day job, and partly because NCS has just gotten way busier than it used to be, I can’t do everything at the site that I’d ideally like to do. Something has to give.

I spend a big chunk of time every day reading e-mails and scouring the internet for metal news and for new song and video premieres, and then every day (or every other day) I spend more time writing about at least a few of the new discoveries that I think are worth sharing. I also write about new songs or videos that we ourselves have agreed to premiere. And I do other shit that doesn’t involve my own writing at all.

All of this has left me little time for reviewing new albums and EPs. My NCS comrades do their part, but we don’t make review assignments here — everyone writes about what they want to write about. And we’re diverse enough in our tastes that what I want to write about often doesn’t get reviewed at all if I don’t do it. Continue reading »

ARTIFICIAL BRAIN, PYRRHON, GIGAN: LIVE IN COVINGTON, KENTUCKY, SEPT 24, 2014

 Concert Reviews  6 Responses »
Sep 262014
 

 

(Austin Weber witnessed the live performances of Artificial Brain, Pyrrhon, and Gigan in Covington, Kentucky, on September 24, 2014, and provides this report and a big collection of photos.)

With this tour, three of the brightest and best modern American death metal bands have united to present one of the best tour lineups of the year — one with no crappy/boring support bands, and with each bringing a defined and unique identity to the table. All three share a similar convention-denying approach and an out-of-the-box nature.

So I made the hour-and-a-half, each way, trek to Covington, KY, near Cincinnati, to take in this most marvelous show. While I have often had Nik Vechery accompany me and take photos, I was unable to line that up, so I took the pictures as well. A few are scattered throughout the review, and the rest are collected at the end.

Unfortunately, the camera I borrowed from my roommate I had never used before, and due to putting Gigan up for the night on the evening preceding the show, I had no time to mess with various photo settings, exposure settings, and the like. So, while shooting the show I had fun going nuts switching up the ISO settings and varying the exposure speed to trippy effect, although I didn’t get as many pictures of Artificial Brain as I would have liked.

Still, I think I got some wild shots that express the energy and insanity of the bands who played. I missed most of the opening band, whose name I did not catch, so I focused on shooting and covering the bands who were touring. I was pleasantly surprised that the sound for the small venue in question, Backstage Cafe, was excellent and perfectly captured the spirit and vitality of all the bands present. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ADAM KALMBACH (JUTE GYTE)

 Interviews  3 Responses »
Sep 262014
 

(Austin Weber snagged a rare interview with Adam Kalmbach, the man behind Jute Gyte, and here it is.)

I’ve been a very big fan of the experimental microtonal black metal group Jute Gyte for a long time now, and recently reviewed his new album, Ressentiment, here at NCS. So I decided to try and set up an email interview with sole member Adam Kalmbach, and he was gracious enough to answer all of my questions. As you will see below, he is a very well-read, articulate, and intelligent artist.

********

I remember reading an old interview with you somewhere on the internet where you said that you had a lot of music written before you ever recorded anything. I mention that because I noticed at the credits portion of the Ressentiment album page on Bandcamp that this music was written in 2011-2012. Do you still have a glut of music to record, or are you working mainly from fresh material now?

Though very occasionally I come across something I wrote down but never recorded, I think the situation you’re referring is actually that I had a lot of music recorded but not released. Ressentiment, like Vast Chains and Discontinuities, was put together over a two-year span ending in 2012, but it is only now being released. I am happy to say that I am working on fresh black metal material now. I have a lot of electronic material I’m sifting through and endlessly revising but I suspect that will always be the case.

 

Were you ever a part of any bands pre- Jute Gyte that involved other people?

Nothing pre-Jute Gyte, though I’ve occasionally tried playing music with others. About five years ago I was part of a group with a bassist and drummer I am friends with, but we never made it past the rehearsal stage. Playing music with other people can be fun and educational but I am so accustomed to my own way of working that quotidian band stuff, like playing the same material again and again and not having total control over the material, seems burdensome. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VESANIA, SCAR SYMMETRY, DEATH WOLF, EXODUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 262014
 

 

I failed to pull together a round-up of new music yesterday — as you may have noticed, we were pretty busy with a lot of other goings-on at the site. What that means is that I now have two days’ worth of new things to pore over in deciding what to throw your way.

And man, it has been one hell of a week for new songs and videos. I’m having trouble remembering another one so filled with worthy new debuts. Unfortunately, this means I won’t be able to cover everything that deserves to be covered. But we soldier on as best we can.

VESANIA

Yesterday brought a torrent of news from this excellent Polish supergroup whose music my comrade Andy Synn once described as “crushing blackened-death metal with a lunatic, symphonic twist”. Vesania’s discography, as it then existed, was the subject of one of Andy’s SYNN REPORTs in 2012, but that report is about to be rendered incomplete, because… Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: BULLETBELT — “RISE OF THE BANSHEE”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Sep 252014
 

 

(We thank New Zealand-based metal writer and broadcaster Craig Hayes for the following introduction to our premiere of a full stream of the new album by New Zealand’s awesome Bulletbelt.)

 

Bands like Diocletian, Vassafor, Ulcerate, and Beastwars have done a lot to spread various strains of New Zealand metal around the globe in recent years, and there’s no doubt that the nation’s heaviest music is infecting more fans than ever. Of course, those bands are just the tip of the iceberg, because the New Zealand metal scene is packed to the gunnels with a diverse range of virulent bands, all showing a diehard strength of will.

Case in point: Bulletbelt.

The Wellington-based five-piece features long-serving members from New Zealand’s metal community, and draws a riotous crossover crowd at home. Bulletbelt’s fiery full-length debut, 2012’s Down in the Cold of the Grave, was certainly framed by black metal, but thrash, traditional metal, and punk rock’s vicious bite were all given free reign, too. Continue reading »

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