Islander

Mar 182024
 


In the context of the song premiere we’re about to bring you now, it’s a relevant coincidence that today is the birthday of Wilfred Owen, one of the first poets to depict the horrifying realities of war, instead of writing glorified, nationalistic verse. He served in the British army during World War I and was killed in battle at the age of 25. Here’s his poem “Anthem for Doomed Youth“:

Continue reading »

Mar 182024
 

(As you can see, we have a song premiere, but first, an album review.)

After listening to parts of Venomous Echoes‘ 2023 debut album, Writhing Tomb Amongst the Stars, this writer immediately spewed forth words while my mind was still boggled, among them such adjectives as “maniacal”, “freakish”, “insane”, and “demented”, and referenced the conjunction of “full-tilt demolition in the low end and spell-like alien wailings that seem to reach our shores from deep space”.

I also quoted a friend’s impressions: “If Choir meets Portal and Impetuous Ritual in Strapping Young Lad’s City is in your wheelhouse you can’t go wrong with this onslaught brought to you by Benjamin Vanweelden.”

Upon learning that Mr. Vanweelden had had recorded a second Venomous Echoes album that I, Voidhanger Records would be releasing this spring, I already knew that I would have to hear it, and that I would have to make sure before listening that I wouldn’t need my brain to function in even its usually disjointed condition for several hours afterward. No great shock to see that the album’s name is Split Formations And Infinite Mania.

Well, now I’ve listened, and I find myself in shuddering but exhilarated agreement with the label’s summing up of the new album as “an intimate and personal experience into a universal cosmic horror apocalypse”. Continue reading »

Mar 172024
 

Yesterday I read that in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parades in the Irish Channel of New Orleans, float riders toss cabbages and potatoes to the people on the street, a unique twist on the Mardi Gras practice of throwing strings of beads to revelers.

Although a flurry of cabbages would be entertaining, I’ll have to aim some other things at your head on this Paddy’s Day — spiky obsidian things dipped in poison or hallucinogens, some red with heat and some freezing.

Of course, I felt compelled to lead with music from a couple of Irish bands before crossing the waters east and west.

P.S. This column is late-appearing because I can’t hold my Saturday night Jameson shots and Guinness back like I used to. and my spouse and friends kept me up way past my bedtime. Continue reading »

Mar 162024
 


A hell of a party awaits below….

All the “big” names in this Saturday roundup of new songs and videos were suggested by my old friend and fellow NCS slave DGR — “big” in quotation marks because no surface-dwelling listener would remotely consider the music “radio friendly”.

But I still decided to throw in a few more subterranean offerings of my own choosing, all of it presented in alphabetical order by band name. That arrangement turned out to create some big twists and turns in the music.

ABORTED (Belgium)

First up, feast your eyes and ears on the music video for “Condemned To Rot” from Aborted‘s guest-studded new album Vault of Horrors. The guest stud on this one is Francesco Paoli from the NCS house band Fleshgod Apocalypse (does anyone remember when I used to call them that every time I mentioned them?). I’ll crib from my friend Andy‘s review of this album: Continue reading »

Mar 152024
 

Seven years have passed since Heresiarch‘s last album Death Ordinance (reviewed here), a long gap in new music segmented only by a pair of splits in 2019 and 2020 (the second of which, with Antediluvian, we premiered here). Now, at last, Heresiarch‘s second album Edifice is on the way, with a release date of April 12th established by Iron Bonehead Productions.

Our review of Death Ordinance referred to the music as “belligerent and bestial”, “militant, violent, and ruthless”, “an obliterating war metal juggernaut”, a “fusion of bloodthirsty primitivism and inhuman mechanisation”, and “a genuine tour de force”, with emphasis on “force”.

Even seven years later, no one would expect Heresiarch to make peace with the world or with their listeners, and on Edifice they haven’t. But as we’ll explain in more detail at a later time, the album’s unforgiving assault on the senses is a multifarious as well as nefarious experience, and the song we’re premiering today — “Noose Above the Abyss” — is a vivid and extremely unsettling sign of that. Continue reading »

Mar 152024
 

Having been first formed in 2012, the Spanish death metal band Devotion haven’t churned out their releases at a breathless pace. Their devotion to the old metal of death has been expressed more deliberately, and both the pacing of their releases and their stylistic evolutions have been influenced by lineup changes along the way.

What 2024 will bring us is the band’s third album in their dozen years of life, a record fittingly entitled Astral Catacombs that will be released by the Memento Mori label on April 22nd. To help introduce it, today we present a song whose title — and music — spawns thoughts of Lovecraftian terrors. Continue reading »

Mar 152024
 

(Our editor Islander wasn’t able to compile a list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs from 2023, but our supporter Vizzah Harri, a resident of Hanoi, Vietnam, has stepped in to fill the void. We’ve already published Parts 1-5 of his list (find those here), and now we’re proceeding with Part 6 — almost the final part.)

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies of ’23 Part VI (of 6.16… because the sacred number is 13, my mom is – no word of a lie – the 13th child and even though they grew up rather Christian, French-influenced paganism still had a strong hold and they called themselves the 12 after you-know-who’s acolytes, seeing as baby #12 sadly didn’t make it.  6+1+6 equals 13 and if isopsephy is mangled by the kind of imposter disordered numerologist that tattooed a clock pointing to 3:37 on his left shoulder seeing as his idol growing up was Anthony Kiedis and Scar tissue was exactly that length, then why not use that number as the final installment?

This gives you an idea where my style sprouts from, ‘that’ Riot Hyatt McCarthyword-salad spitter, sprinkle in some filth, and garnish it with the dust of your dreams served next to a walled orchard and you get my meander. 666 added up is just eighteen, ask the Greeks, they would know. And yes, I’m therefore doing an Islander and adding one more with links to all the tracks that there is not enough sand in the hourglass for to keep writing about last year. Continue reading »

Mar 142024
 

On March 15th — tomorrow! — the Quebec band Backstabber, now featuring a revised lineup since their last album, will release their new EP, a four-song assault called Patterns of Domination, but today we’re giving you a chance to hear all of it without delay.

Before we get into some detailed thoughts about the music, here’s the band’s description of what the EP represents:

“Loosely based on James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, Patterns of Domination delves into the 4 patterns that serve as means to canalize someone else’s attention and energy. Together, they form an endless cycle of consumption that completely breaks down the victim from the inside out. Like fresh air. These are the first songs with the new members of the band and they contributed a lot to this album.” Continue reading »

Mar 142024
 

On April 5th Ripcord Records will release II: Aging & Formless, the second album by the UK band Vnder A Crvmbling Moon, whose lineup features members of Garganjua, Conjurer, and Codex Alimentarius, and whose music could be thought of as a formulation of post-metal that incorporates elements of sludge and doom.

No music from the new album has yet been revealed, and so today’s reveal is a big one — the first single from this 7-song opus. Its name is “Breach The Sky“, and it comes in the middle of the album’s running order. Continue reading »

Mar 142024
 

What I’ve assembled for visitors today is an even dozen songs and videos from bands spread across six countries and a variety of genres (and at least one that’s not really metal), including death metal, black metal, sludge, doom, post-metal, progressive metal, deathcore, folk-metal, and some things that are harder to pin down. If you don’t find something to like, it must be because you searched for “no spring cleaning”.

One thing you’ll figure out fairly soon is that a lot of today’s songs rock out, providing some very catchy head-movers. There’s also singing (or close to it) in some of them (gasp!). But of course I’ve sprinkled in some ravagers too, and because I’ve arranged these songs and videos in alphabetical order by band name, one of those comes first.

AL-NAMROOD (Saudi Arabia)

The first song is “Lisan Al Nar” (Tongue of Fire) from AlNamrood‘s new album Al Aqrab, to be released by Shaytan Productions on June 9th. Continue reading »