AN NCS PREMIERE: INTO THE STORM — “MURDER MURDER MURDER”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 272017
 


A little more than one year on from their 2016 album Where the Merfalo Roam the sludgy rockers in Seattle’s Into the Storm will be returning in February with a new split album with another Seattle band, Smooth Sailing, and today we have a single from Into the Storm’s side called “Murder, Murder, Murder“.

They do say it three times in the title, but you’d get the picture even if the track were untitled. Based upon the sound alone, this is musical murder with a verve fueled by wild-eyed lust for blood splatter and bone splinters, and perpetrated not with the sneaky sharpness of a stiletto but with the brutalism of crowbars and sledgehammers. It’s an invigorating bruiser of a track for sure. Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (BEST OF 2017 EDITION) BY SURGICALBRUTE

 LISTMANIA 2017  23 Responses »
Dec 272017
 

 

(For the 7th year in a row, I asked our old pal SurgicalBrute to weigh in with his year-end list of favorite albums and EPs. As expected, his list (presented in alphabetical order) adds names of underground releases that haven’t appeared before in our 2017 Listmania series, including some that (gasp!) include clean singing.)

 

What to say?….What to say?…What to say? I mean, was it a good year for metal…of course it was…that observation is trite and tired. It’s not 1996 any more, we’re not stuck using dial-up and getting our heavy metal information exclusively from magazines. There is a constant stream of new music to be found at your fingertips if you want it, and the chances of us ever seeing another year like 2002 (one of the weakest I can remember) are extremely unlikely.

How good was it, though? Well that depends. If you were looking for something new and unique, you were probably let down a bit, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s not what makes or breaks a year. I’m not looking for anything genre-defining, I just want to kick back and listen to some killer music, and by that measure I can’t find a single thing to be disappointed about.

So, with that said, let’s get on with the list….Enjoy! \m/ Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: EUCLIDEAN, BALMOG, BHLEG, SAMMATH, BLACK KNIFE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  12 Responses »
Dec 272017
 

 

I’m three days late with this week’s edition of SHADES OF BLACK, and still woefully behind in sharing new music in a blackened vein that I’ve discovered over the last month. I’m bound and determined to do at least one more of these features before 2017 is interred in a moldy grave, as long as I’m sufficiently unbound by other distractions.

This particular collection includes one complete new album, advance tracks from two more, some new live videos, and a new single.

EUCLIDEAN

To begin this selection of music, I want to strongly recommend Quod Erat Faciendum, the debut album of the Swiss band Euclidean, which was released on December 21 and came strongly recommended to me by starkweather and by Miloš. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: THE GRAND TOME OF ALBUMS THAT DGR ENJOYED IN 2017 (Part 1)

 LISTMANIA 2017  9 Responses »
Dec 272017
 

 

(As usual, DGR created a year-end list of great length, devoting a great many words to each listed item. Whereas your humble editor continues to fear that the site may collapse beneath this great leviathan of words if it its bulk were caged in a single post, this year we have split it up into only three parts instead of last year’s six. This part includes Honorable Mentions and the albums ranked 30-21.)

 

There are few things that I enjoy each year more than the yearly list roundup here at NCS — including taking the time to write out my own personal favorites. This is a post that I spend a large part of the year dreading, knowing that my penchant for massive verbiage in the face of all things common sense will turn around and bite me in the ass, and the stress implied therein of the constant re-reading and editing that goes into the joy of crushing one’s website editor under the sheer weight of text. Were the yearly list allowed to be a book, I would deeply enjoy witnessing the ever increasing size of the roll of toilet paper mine would have to be printed on throughout the year. Maybe one year I’ll actually be able to spring for two-ply and at least have some effect.

2017 on this end, was an oddly paced year that moved in massive fits and starts. It seemed like there would be a tremendous flood of music and then radio silence, save for the occasional spark of life that would illuminate an ever-darkening cosmos — a new star birthed just in time to realize that it can’t see any of its neighbors anymore. Believe it or not, there was actually one point at which I thought I’d be able to keep this thing down to a nice and trim twenty albums without falling off the deep end. But as the yearly crawl back through our review archives causes one to do, there was a whole lot of “oh fuck, that actually came out this year” uttered — which is a pretty good sign, as many of these albums have slotted into the constant-play role, alongside the many other discs that I’ve dedicated words to over the years. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST FROM BLACK METAL HQ

 LISTMANIA 2017  14 Responses »
Dec 262017
 

 

(As our 2017 LISTMANIA series continues, we are joined by a first-time list contributor who is the man behind the Black Metal HQ YouTube channel — which you can find HERE — and who we’ll allow to introduce himself further below. He presents his list in a form different from any others we’ve featured here.)

 

Welcome to my Year-End List of Black Metal related releases in 2017 (so far)! Although a bit premature — what would this world be without lists prepared as early as November? But who am I to judge, right? That might literally be the question some of you might have, so who am I? For all you antisocial misanthropists, please scroll down and get your dose of some great Black Metal; for all the others: enjoy a little introduction about Black Metal HQ.

To begin with, the person behind Black Metal HQ: Let’s just say I am your regular metal nerd who got into the genre nearly 20 years ago. To be more specific — I had my cherry popped at a small summer party by “Nightmares” from Iced Earth, which until today remains a very pleasant memory. Being instantly hooked on “metal” and drifting through a lot of metal genres with proportionally little Black Metal escalations I rediscovered the darker spheres through Spectral Lore’s III and Mare Cognitum’s Phobos Monolith in 2015. If for some reason you are not familiar with those two albums, please stop reading now, head over to Bandcamp, and come back in 2 hours after enjoying yourself (whatever floats your boat, yo). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2017: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JOHAN HULDTGREN (OBITUS)

 LISTMANIA 2017  9 Responses »
Dec 262017
 

 

(For the seventh year in a row (!), I invited my friend Johan Huldtgren of the Swedish black metal band Obitus — whose new album Slaves of the Vast Machine (reviewed and premiered here) was itself one of the year’s best black metal albums — to share with us his year-end list. Once again, he agreed. This list previously appeared on Johan’s own blog.)

 

Another year has flown by, in my case quite literally, so here we are again with a new edition of “albums I enjoyed this year”. From what I’ve seen of the lists posted here so far, many of my picks haven’t made others’ lists so I guess either my taste has diverged from that of the median NCS:er or you’ve all missed out on some worthy albums; hopefully it’s the latter and this will be useful for you. Continue reading »

POST-CHRISTMAS NECROSIS: ATOMWINTER, LIMOS, REX DEMONUS, HUSK

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 262017
 

 

I hope everyone had a good Christmas Day, even if the day itself is nothing special to you. As you may have seen, NCS was alive and kicking despite the holiday, with three premieres yesterday. And we’ll continue to kick for the rest of the week with a rollout of more year-end lists by NCS contributors and invited guests, plus assorted other posts.

I wasn’t able to get a SHADES OF BLACK post done for Sunday, but it’s coming soon… and may be a two-parter, because there’s a lot I want to write about. But to start the six days that remain before New Year’s Eve, I selected three recent songs and one new EP that sound like the antithesis of peace on earth, good will toward men, because I can only take so many demonstrably impotent platitudes of that nature before I have to dose myself with flesh-eating music.

ATOMWINTER

The consumption of flesh commences with a track from Catacombs, the new third album by the German harbingers of total death in Atomwinter. The album will be released by Trollzorn on February 9 (digital, CD, and gatefold LP). And isn’t that a hellishly fantastic album cover? Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LOST TO THE WAVES — “CRUCIFIED”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 252017
 

 

This makes the second time this year that we’ve premiered a music video for a song by the Boston-area band Lost To the Waves. The first time, last spring, we debuted a video for “Remember Me“, a song that was then destined to appear on the band’s EP, Nightfall. Nightfall was released not long after, and today, as 2017 winds its way to an end, we present the video for another track off Nightfall — a song called “Crucified“, which features guest vocals by Donnie Lariviere (ex-Death Rattle).

The song starts digging its melodic hooks into your head right away, but it starts pummeling and battering pretty quickly as well, and vocalist Ben Lavoie sounds like he’s coming straight for your jugular, fueled by scorn and rage. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: L’HOMME ABSURDE — “CLEANSING THE TEMPLE”

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Dec 252017
 

 

The 2016 album, Monsters, by the Russian band L’Homme Absurde was a compelling debut. Part black metal and part post-metal, both heavy as hell and completely captivating, it consisted of well-written songs performed with impressive skill that combined gripping, usually dark melodies, big rhythmic headbang triggers, and fiery, jugular-shredding vocal intensity.

It is thus welcome news that L’Homme Absurde will be releasing a second album next year, entitled Sleepless. And from that album we bring you the premiere of the band’s first music video. The name of the track is “Cleansing the Temple“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORTIS MUTILATI — “CREVANT-LAVEINE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 252017
 

 

Mortis Mutilati will welcome 2018 with The Stench of Death. That is the name of this French black metal band’s new album, the fourth one created by its mastermind and alter ego, Macabre, and its aroma will plague the air on January 1. A few songs have been released for listening so far, and today we have another one — “Crevant-Laveine“.

Consistent with the album’s title and with Macabre’s apparent attraction to funereal ceremonies and the beckoning of graves, “Crevant-Laveine” is steeped in gloom and infected with melancholy, but the song also experiences a kind of transformation, one that moves the listener’s mood in perhaps unexpected directions. Continue reading »

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