Feb 262018
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by the German genre-benders in Ancst, which will be released on March 2, 2018.)

 

There are certain albums which hit you hard immediately, with a violent, whiplash-inducing punch right to the face. Then there are albums which deliver a slower, deeper, longer-lasting burn.

But the best albums are the ones which manage to do both, smacking you upside the head and knocking you flat on your ass, while also leaving the sort of heavy bruising which guarantees you won’t be forgetting the experience any time soon.

Now Ghosts of the Timeless Void, the second album by German blackened ‘core-collective Ancst, is most definitely one of the former… but only time will tell if it’s also the latter. Continue reading »

Feb 262018
 

 

The debut album by Towards Atlantis Lights, Dust of Aeons, consists of four tracks thematically tied together in a narrative that plumbs the subconscious to reveal a magical remembrance of civilizations long dead and wisdom long forgotten, a discovery shrouded in the pain of loss and pointing toward the embrace of death. The music itself is as magical, as dramatic, and as heartbreaking as these tales brought forward from history’s depths in a dream.

The skill with which the album captures and conveys such powerful moods comes as no surprise, given the array of talents who have joined forces in this new group. The multinational quartet consists of vocalist/keyboardist Kostas Panagiotou (Pantheist, Landskap), bassist Riccardo Veronese (Aphonic Threnody, Dea Marica, Arrant Saudade), guitarist Ivan Zara (Void of Silence), and drummer Ivan Olivieri. Employing the tools of funeral doom and death metal, they’ve crafted music that’s beautiful, bereft, and wholly immersive.

The four songs on the album are significantly different in their durations. The opening song, “The Bunker of Life“, for example, exceeds 30 minutes, while the closer — which is the song you’re about to hear — is less than five minutes long. Yet although “Greeting Mausolus’ Tomb” is the shortest of the four tracks, it’s nonetheless spell-binding. Continue reading »

Feb 262018
 

 

The connoisseurs of extreme metal brutality at New Standard Elite are poised to detonate an obliterating new destructive device, in the form of the second album by Italy’s Unbirth. Entitled Fleshforged Columns of Deceit, the album is projected for release in April, but we have an electrifying burst from the album today through our premiere of the record’s opening track, “Tumults of Collective Anguishes“.

This new song is a fine example of Unbirth’s capacity to mount sonic assaults that are both savagely brutal and technically eye-popping. Flying at rocket-fast speed and with razor-sharp precision, the band create a feeling of heartless, frenzied viciousness, combined with skull-fracturing explosions of power. Continue reading »

Feb 262018
 

 

The fifth edition of Culthe Fest will take place on March 31, 2018, in the city of Münster, Germany. When the festival’s organizers invited us to help spread the word about the event as a co-sponsor, the answer was a no-brainer, based on one glance at the line-up. Feast your eyes upon these names:

UADA (USA)
THE GREAT OLD ONES (FR)
VERHEERER (DE)
HEMELBESTORMER (BE)
TURIA (NL)
ALBEZ DUZ (DE)
BELTEZ (DE)
VYRE (DE)

With only one exception, these are all bands whose music we’ve enthusiastically praised at our site — and the one exception (Vyre) are a band we’ve happily discovered for the first time as a result of their confirmed appearance at Culthe Fest 2018. So it wasn’t a difficult decision to lend our own putrid name to the event. The difficulty is that we’re far away from Münster and haven’t yet gotten the teleporter operational, because this would be a hell of a show to attend in person. If you can be there, you damned well should! Continue reading »

Feb 252018
 

 

I stared at my long list of recent black metal releases that I found appealing. My eyes drifted further down the list to all the releases and advance tracks from weeks past that I had wanted to say something about, but hadn’t. That daunted feeling that crept into my head like a bad old friend, it locked up my brain. To unlock it, I tried to allow instinct to take over, and speared these five names based on the thought that the flow of the music would provide some interesting twists and turns as you move through them.

ONIRISM

Upon encountering this one-man French band’s second EP, Sun, last year, I tried to sum up my reaction in these words: “Onirism isn’t the first band to combine utterly enthralling and transcendently beautiful sounds with the kind of savagery that makes you want to hide under your bed, but holy hell, they do it well.”

Later in the year I revisited Onirism through our premiere of a track from the band’s split with Pure Wrath, and left enthralled again. Continue reading »

Feb 242018
 

 

Two nights ago on my way home from a late meeting in Seattle I hit a patch of black ice less than a mile from my house. My car skidded off the road, rolled over, and landed on its side in a deep ditch. I missed hitting a telephone pole by two feet, but did destroy a mailbox and probably my car as well.

On the other hand, I’m unharmed, just a bit sore in a few places. I spent three hours sitting in a police car with a very decent officer while we waited for and then watched some remarkable tow-truck guys figure out how to get the car on its wheels and out of the ditch, in 20-degree weather in the middle of the night. The cop finally drove me home at 4 a.m. yesterday morning.

That scary incident fucked up my plans for a round-up yesterday. I’m afraid to go back and read the premieres I wrote after a sleepless night and in an addled frame of mind, but I sure didn’t feel up to writing anything I hadn’t already committed to do.

Anyway, the past week was another blockbuster in terms of new metal, and I’ve left a lot of stuff out of this post — which is still pretty long. I picked the music of the following five bands to provide a wide spread of different genres.

PRIMORDIAL

So far, the Irish troubadours in Primordial have released videos for two singles from their new album, Exile Amongst the Ruins, the second one appearing last week. Both songs will likely be surprising in some ways to Primordial fans, although Alan “Nemtheanga” Averill‘s remarkable voice is still front and center in both. Continue reading »

Feb 232018
 

 

Last month we ushered into the world a music video for a track named “Patiently Waiting”, which will appear on the new album by Slumlord from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. That album, Preview of Hell, will be released on March 7th, and now we have another Slumlord track to hurl at your head, this one for the album’s fourth song, “Into Bone“.

There wasn’t anything patient about “Patiently Waiting,” and Slumlord weren’t holding anything back either. The song is a take-no-prisoners onslaught of pure fury in which these metallic hardcore brawlers mixed blazing drumwork and heavy, harrowing chords; brute-force, stop-start jolts and ravaging riffs; vocals that are raw and rampant in their uncut rage; and a breakdown that’s hard enough to cause severe neck trauma. The new song doesn’t show any mercy either Continue reading »

Feb 232018
 

 

The black metal band Aetranok was spawned in the high desert of New Mexico in the small town of Aztec, but from the sound of their music you’d think they dwell in one of the lower levels of Hell. Their second album, Kingdoms of The Black Sepulcher, is set for release on April 26th by Symbol of Domination (Belarus) and Death Portal Studio (U.S.), and today we present the premiere of a lyric video for the song “Ov Precipice and Bestial Purity“.

The lyrics of the song proclaim that “the mantra of ruined angels vibrates the heavens to rubble,” and they celebrate the advent of an immaculate oblivion. “Here lies the abyss,” the vocalist shrieks in scorching tones, and the music matches all these words. Continue reading »

Feb 232018
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews three 2017 releases, by Coraxo (Finland), Deadspace (Australia), and Succumb To Demise (Kentucky).)

 

Despite the fact that I’m already overwhelmed by new and upcoming releases – next week alone I have Slugdge, Ancst, and Rites of Thy Degringolade lined up to review – I’ve decided to take some time out of my busy schedule to catch up on three albums which were released late last year and which, as a result, didn’t necessarily receive the coverage they deserved. Continue reading »

Feb 222018
 

 

We first encountered the Orlando-based progressive death metal band Monotheist through their impressive 2013 EP, Genesis of Perdition, which followed an hour-long debut album (Unforsaken) that had first appeared roughly six years earlier. The band delivered a single in 2016, and at last a second album has now been completed. Entitled Scourge, it will be released through Prosthetic Records on March 16th.

The new album continues to feature the eclectic interests and creative guitar performances of founder Michael “Prophet” Moore as well as the vocal ravages of JJ “Shiv” Polachek IV (7 Horns 7 Eyes, ex-Ovid’s Withering) and the drumming of Cooper Bates, but the line-up also now includes new participants: bassist Jose Figueroa (who we’re told is a rising star of the Orlando jazz scene) and second guitarist/vocalist Tyler McDaniel (ex-Gigan) from DeLand, Florida.

The first side of Scourge begins with “The Grey King” (which premiered here and includes a guest appearance by Christian Älvestam) and “The Great Chain At the Neck of the Earth”, and then it moves into a two-part composition. The first part, “Mark of the Beast I: The Image” functions as a two-minute prelude to the song we’re premiering today: “Mark of the Beast II: Scion of Darkness“. Continue reading »