Mar 082024
 

No long-winded introduction today, nor any long-winded impressions of the songs and videos either, because… there are so many of them!

Most of these choices (though not all of them) are from bigger names in the extreme metalverse. Most of them were also suggested by my NCS compatriots, because I didn’t do a great job of keeping up with new releases this week. I do plan to have another roundup on Saturday, as usual, and will dig deeper into obscurities, of my own choosing.

ULCERATE (New Zealand)

This first item is a rarity, just a news item without any music to go along with it. But it’s exciting news, and so I couldn’t resist. Continue reading »

Dec 242023
 

For reasons explained yesterday, this is likely to be the last Shades of Black column until we reach Sunday, January 21st, when I hope I can then resume.

I barely have time for this one before the iron hand of commerce rudely forces my nose down to the grindstone again, even though the nose is already ground down to a nub. So let’s get right to it.

P.S. If you don’t see something here you wish I had included, see yesterday’s explanation and then feel free to mention the release in a comment and share a stream link. Continue reading »

Nov 272023
 

If you include yesterday’s Shades of Black column, this makes four days in a row that I’ve been able to pull together a round-up of new songs and videos. That’s a rarity, explained by a confluence of events I won’t bore you by describing.

I’m not sure it’s a welcome rarity, because it may just add to a feeling of being overwhelmed by the volume of music that each week (hell, each day) brings. But that’s not my problem, is it?

Is it? Well it is, because I also feel overwhelmed. Join the club. This pleasant misery needs company.

UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN KULTEN (Chile)

You don’t really need any preparation, just a listening device, working ears, and a finger putting pressure on a digital arrow. But I have to further justify my existence, so… Continue reading »

Nov 212023
 

The odds are high that once you’ve seen the painting above by Paloma Pájaro that adorns the cover of TodoMal‘s new album The Greater Good, you won’t forget it. The odds are also high that it may perplex you. The choosing of the art was obviously unconventional, but then again, so is the music.

The Greater Good is the second full-length by the TodoMal duo of Christopher B. Wildman and Javier Fernández, following the release of Ultracrepidarian in 2021. As they conceive it, the new album follows dark paths, “where doubts about what is right or wrong, what we do in this world to earn redemption, or why we have a nefarious tendency to destroy what we love are depicted against a smoldering forest”. “The journey continues,” as they say, “despite the obstacles”.

And so we have a Spanish band whose name means something like “all is evil” or “all is wrong” ambitiously seeking “The Greater Good”. They put a lot of thought and work into making it a continuation from their first album that would both expand their ambitions and manifest them more precisely, and today you’ll be able to hear every minute of what they achieved in advance of its release on November 24th by Ardua Music. Continue reading »

Nov 162023
 

Released in the summer of 2021, Brahmastra was the debut album of Altars of the Moon. It first turned some heads because of the identities of the people who made it: Nathan Verschoor (Uada), Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves, Deeper Graves, ex-Nachmystium), and Heath Rave (Lotus Thrones, ex-Wolvhammer). It probably turned heads again when it became evident that the music was several big steps away from what might have been expected given the nature of the participants’ main musical endeavors.

Like other collaborations, this one was born in lockdown times, one of covid’s precious few silver linings. As a plague child, some might have expected it would quickly perish, a one-and-done union of talents. But time doesn’t heal all wounds, nor does it always still restless minds or silence voices. As it turns out, Altars of the Moon had something more to say.

And so now we’re on the verge of Disorder Recordings releasing a second Altars of the Moon album, this one named The Colossus and The Widow. The three collaborators came together again by long distance — Rave on vocals, Verschoor on guitars and synths, and Wilson on bass, guitar, and synth — but this time they were joined by another notable name, Alan Cassidy (The Black Dahila Murder), on drums. In addition, the new record features guest appearances on saxophone by Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) and on trumpet by Mac Gollehon (Duran Duran, David Bowie).

We’re now putting the results before you in full, preceded by our own thoughts as usual but also by these from Heath Rave: Continue reading »

Nov 062023
 

This is one of those “and now for something completely different” moments at our site, like coming home to find that all your furnishings have been replaced and people you’ve never seen before are there waiting for you. Startling to be sure, but if you don’t immediately exit and slam the door, maybe you discover that the unexpected changes are… to your liking.

Well, maybe you’ve seen or heard one of the participants in Sky Island before. He’s the one sitting behind the drum kit in the video you’re about to see. His name is Ben Fagerness, and he’s been violently hitting things in the Minneapolis death metal band Graveslave for almost a decade, and also in Gloryhole Guillotine.

Some of you might also recognize the other person in the video, Niilo Smith, though his participation in the wide world of metal and rock as a solo creator has been in a very different sector, most likely unknown to the usual visitors at this site. Continue reading »

Oct 312023
 

In the Pindus mountains of northern Greece there is a pass called Katara. We are told that according to the legend, “Katara got its name from a despot who around 1800 set out from Ioannina to go to Trikala city, but the bad weather in the area made it so difficult for him that he died on the way and he cursed the mountain”.

Many tragic stories have been written about this pass, and the Greek/Finnish doom-metal collective Aeonian Sorrow have now written their own, although their new album Katara, which will be released tomorrow, includes other stories as well — and it is dedicated to the memory of Georgia and Michail, beloved grandparents of the band’s singer Gogo Melone.

The lyric stories included in Katara do vary across the album’s seven substantial songs, all of them heart-felt, but they are stories of deep loss, despair, and anger — heart-breaking and harrowing, as well as heart-felt. Gogo has explained how they all came to be: Continue reading »

Oct 132023
 

For people who suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia today is a very bad day, a Friday the 13th, and one that dawns in the spookiest month of the year. But in the pentagram-loving world of metal, of course, it’s an excellent day to reveal new music, perhaps exceeded only by Samhain itself.

New music is indeed what we have for you today, a song from a new album by the UK avant-garde black metal pioneers Void, whose lineup features members of Dødheimsgard, Atramentum, and Dreams of the Drowned.

The album’s name is Jadjow, and it’s set for release on December 7th by Brucia Records. The song we present today is “Self Isolation“. Continue reading »

Oct 072023
 


Wayfarer – photo by Frank Guerra

Another Bandcamp Friday again overwhelmed the NCS in-box as bands, labels, and PR agents sought to capitalize on Bandcamp’s reduced take from sales. A similar deluge washed through social media, and every other channel where I look for new music.

It really is overwhelming, and probably self-defeating. Ironically, releasing new music on a Bandcamp Friday is probably the best strategy for getting overlooked — drowned in the flood.

It certainly adds to the stresses of creating this weekly column. I fantasize that the point of it is to help guide people toward musical gems, even though in even a normal week I know it’s still a very random process because I can’t listen to everything that might interest me or you. In a week like the last one, the process of sifting becomes an even more ridiculous challenge.

All I can say is that I enjoyed what you’ll find below, and hope that you make some valuable discoveries from it too. (And don’t bash me for overlooking a couple dozen more songs, not to mention complete albums and EPs, that would have been just as worthy of attention.) Continue reading »

Sep 192023
 

The stories and ideas that inspire the lyrics and music in metal albums are, at least in the minds of most listeners, of secondary importance to an album’s audio sensations, even when those narratives and notions were vital to the people who created the album. The same is true of stories about how an album came to exist at all.

To be honest, many times (most of the time?) a metal album’s conceptual themes just aren’t that novel or compelling, or they’re poorly rendered, especially in the lyrics. Just as often, the events that brought a band together and led to the making of the music, usually involving the surmounting of myriad misfortunes, turn out to be not very interesting, which in many instances might mainly be the fault of how the story is told.

In all these respects, however, the comeback album of the Belgian death/doom band My Lament is an exception to the norm. Continue reading »