PRIMORDIAL: “EXILE AMONGST THE RUINS”

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Mar 282018
 

 

(On March 30th Metal Blade will release Primordial’s new album, and Andy Synn reviews it below.)

 

Success, or so they say, can be a double-edged sword. And, if the reviews I’ve seen thus far are any indication, this is something that Primordial are finally discovering with the release of their ninth album, Exile Amongst the Ruins.

On the one hand are those people who have seen fit to declare this album a “masterpiece”, a “superlative triumph”, a “stunning success”, before they’ve even properly heard it, content as they are to blindly believe that the Irish quintet can do no wrong, while on the other are those whose reaction to Exile… can perhaps best be summed up as “slightly unhinged”, castigating the album as a titanic disappointment because it fails, in their estimation, to live up to the extremely high standards of their very best work.

And, of course, since so much of today’s music press is dedicated to the pursuit of exaggeration and excess over clarity and nuance, these voices have been amplified to the point where you’d be forgiven for being convinced that this album is either the best thing ever written, or the absolute worst… and nothing in between.

But the truth, unsurprisingly, is more complicated than that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEGEMONE — “Π”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 282018
 

 

There’s such a potent rhythmic drive to this song, like a big powerful engine with pistons hammering, and all that robust torque propelling a heavy machine forward in a way that elevates the pulse rate. We’re the passengers, carried along but also wanting to move our heads like pistons too, locked in to the movements of this gear-shifting juggernaut as it eats up the pavement.

As you’ll discover, that’s only one aspect of the song we’re helping to premiere today, but it’s an aspect with a primal, charismatic attraction. It’s a testament to the imagination of the Polish band Hegemone that what they’ve built around such a muscular musical drivetrain is equally seductive.

The song is “Π“, and it comes from the band’s new album We Disaappear, which will be released on May 11th by Debemur Morti Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CHAOS DOCTRINE — “MY DEMISE PT II: THE RAGE”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
Mar 272018
 

 

Chaos Doctrine fuel their high-octane music with ingredients that range from death metal to thrash, from groove to industrial, but they supercharge their hybrid metal machine with undiluted rage.

This quintet from Johannesburg, South Africa, have been releasing singles from their forthcoming debut album since last year So far, videos for three of them have been launched — “Cult”, “The Genocide Number”, and “FTG” — and today we’ve got a fourth one (and an accompanying video) primed and ready to rampage through your skull. It’s the second part of a two-part composition called “My Demise“, which Chaos Doctrine’s vocalist Dr. D explains in these words: Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MYRHOLT — “MØRKETID”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 272018
 

 

The Norwegian musician and vocalist Ole Alexander Myrholt has had a long and prolific career, one that began more than two decades ago and ranged across a multitude of groups and personal projects, but seemed to enter a hiatus around 2011 when his band Tremor was put on hold indefinitely. However, something changed when Myrholt stepped in to play drums for the Norwegian black metal band Mork in December 2016.

Since then, adopting the name Myrholt, he has been recording again, performing all instruments and vocals. Myrholt released a multitude of singles and two albums last year, as well as a two-track EP named Vinter earlier this month. And now a new EP entitled Mørketid has been readied for release, which we are happy to present it to you through a full stream of its five tracks. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HORRORGRAPHY — “IN A DARK TIME”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 272018
 

 

Despite the seemingly adamant rule pronounced in our site’s title, it should be apparent by now that we do make exceptions, and we’re about to make one now — or at least a partial exception. And in the case of the Greek band Horrorgraphy, the clean vocals are a vital, indeed an essential, ingredient in the music, for reasons you will soon discover.

Horrorgraphy are a new band, and their substantial debut album Season of Grief is set for release on April 14th, jointly by the Russian label Satanath Records and the Finnish label United By Chaos. The track we present today is “In A Dark Time“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FETO IN FETUS — “THE VANISHED LAND”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 272018
 

 

The last time the Polish death/grind band Feto In Fetus appeared in our pages was back in 2012 in the lead-up to their second album, Condemned To the Torture. They did participate in a five-way split in 2015 (Human Abattoir), but otherwise have been quiet since that last album. However, the silence is about to end — in spectacular fashion.

On March 30, Selfmadegod Records will discharge a new Feto In Fetus album named From Blessing To Violence, an 18-track neck-wrecking barrage that’s the source of the track we’re about to detonate today — “The Vanished Land“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEADLY CARNAGE — “THROUGH THE VOID, ABOVE THE STARS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 262018
 

 

Space is still the final frontier. We gaze with our own eyes into the sparkled black vault of the night sky or peer more closely through telescopes, and there we see the undiscovered immensity of our past and the harbingers of our future looking back at us, producing a sense of wonder, awe, and perhaps fear.

Metal bands across a wide range of genres have taken the cosmos as their subject matter, and tried to express in different ways through their music the different perspectives and emotions spawned by consideration of the universe and our own tiny, fleeting place within it. Within that spectrum of sounds, Italy’s Deadly Carnage have take their own place with Through the Void, Above the Stars, a new album that will be released through A Sad Sadness Song on March 30. We present a full stream today, preceded by these thoughts about what they’ve created: Continue reading »

MOURNFUL CONGREGATION: “THE INCUBUS OF KARMA”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 262018
 

 

(Our friend Vonlughlio from the Dominican Republic wrote the following review of the new album by Australia’s Mournful Congregation, which was released last Friday by 20 Buck Spin.)

 

Today as I write this, the 23rd of March, is the release date of Mournful Congregation’s The Incubus of Karma. I discovered them via their 2005 sophomore release, The Monad of Creation (which is my favorite release of theirs), and the seven-year wait for a new full-length has proved to be worth it. They did a fantastic work with this release.

For this small write-up I wanted to take some needed time to listen to all their catalogue (from the first album up to the new one). I like to do this after listening to the current release. I find it interesting to discover how a band’s sound has evolved (or not). I want to be able to make an overall assestment of the band’s work and to put a stamp on my favorite albums, and also to read the lyrics and the stories behind them, or to reflect on what I come up with in my head to make sense of them. Continue reading »

SLAVES BC: “LO, AND I AM BURNING”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 262018
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Slaves BC from Pittsburgh, which was released digitally and on vinyl on March 16th.)

Those of you who have been following the site for a while may be aware that Death Mask, the third (and, ultimately, final) album by blackened metallic filthmongers Lord Mantis was one of my favourite releases of 2014, and remains one of my most listened to albums to this day.

But the acrimonious collapse of the line-up which gave birth to that record, followed a few years later by the sad passing of drummer Bill Bumgardner (and the subsequent final dissolution of the band) meant that any hopes of ever receiving a similarly scathing and spite-fuelled follow-up were dashed forever.

In the intervening years between then and now I’ve kept my eyes and ears open for a band/album capable of hitting that same sick spot (with Phantom Winter coming closest), but had never found anyone capable of sending that same sadistic shiver down my spine… until now. Continue reading »

A REPORT ON NETHERLANDS DEATHFEST 2018

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Mar 262018
 

 

(Norway-based metal writer Karina Noctum went to Netherlands Deathfest on March 2-4, 2018. She wrote to us about her experiences. She probably had no thought that this would turn us a radioactive shade of green with envy, but all things have unintended consequences. She also arranged to have her words accompanied by a sequence of brilliant photos by Niels Vinck, also probably without any desire to stoke the putrid fires of jealousy in those of us who weren’t there, but strengthening the conviction that we damned well better go next year.) 

DAY 1

My journey from the frostbitten lands of Norway started pretty early. 4 am on friday. I arrived in Amsterdam after some hours and a trouble-free flight, this being the usual for Scandinavian airlines that boast of being the most punctual in Europe.

The cool thing about The Netherlands is that every trip to another city from Amsterdam seems to be within a range of no more than one-two hours. After wandering a bit in Amsterdam, I took the train to Tilburg through the somewhat boring landscape (the landscape of every other country in Europe seems boring on the surface if you live in Norway).

I planned everything for the fest a bit too late and found no accommodation other than a private house on Air B&B. I was both lucky to have found a place at all and kinda unlucky that the owners, in addition to being circus artists, were also nudists. Continue reading »

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