SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AGRICULTURE, BLESSINGS OF MARA, CAVERN WOMB, DEVOURER, GOM JABBAR, OIL SPILL, URZAH

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 202024
 

This has been an unusual week for me. I broke out of my hermit-like existence (originally provoked by covid but comfortably extending to the present) and made a quick Wednesday-Friday trip to Texas for a celebration of an old friend. The travel part of it was an annoying hassle; the celebration part of it was great.

During that trip I didn’t accomplish much for NCS. Among the things I didn’t accomplish was paying attention to the emergence of new songs and videos I might want to celebrate today. I bookmarked a few things in even more random fashion than usual while away and quickly spotted a few more things this morning.

These roundups are never comprehensive; this one skims the surface even more lightly. Kind of like a flying fish briefly airborne, with bigger toothsome things hungrily rocketing up from below without warning, jaws gnashing for a bite. The following things jumped up and bit me. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEADSPEAK — “NO RESPECT – NEITHER FOR LIVING NOR FOR THE DEAD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 182024
 

The occult death metal band Deadspeak was formed in 2008 in Ireland, where its two Polish co-founders (Krakus and Tomasz Prokop) were then living. They recorded a pair of demos in 2008 and 2010, but then the band seemed to disappear for a long time.

Yet after returning to Poland the creative embers caught fire again and just last year Deadspeak released an excellent debut album named Human Alchemy (available here), a 44-minute work that they have described as “a blizzard of obscure riffs and strange melodies, fueled by hypersensitivity to society”.

Striking while the iron is hot, Deadspeak are already following up that album with a two-song EP that we’re happily premiering today. For these recordings, the Deadspeak duo of adventurous guitarist Krakus and venomous vocalist Tomasz were joined by guest bassist Ataman Tolovy and, as session drummer, the veteran hitter James Stewart (Decapitated, Berserker Legion, Bloodshot Dawn, ex-Vader, etc.). Continue reading »

AMIENSUS – RECLAMATION, PART 1

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Apr 182024
 

(Andy Synn brings you part 1 of a 2 part review, with the second to follow… later this year)

To start things off I should probably let you know that I’m lucky enough to have heard both parts of the upcoming Amiensus double-album, Reclamation, and thus my perspective on it is – inevitably – going to be somewhat shaped by my experience of the whole thing, rather than just Part 1, which I’m reviewing here.

Hell, when I first got my hands on it I was under the impression I’d be writing about both Part 1 and Part 2 simultaneously, only to learn later that the band had decided to split the release in two.

That’s not a bad thing though – in fact there’s been several occasions where I’d have preferred other bands do the same (it’s something that I wish Mastodon had done, for example, with Hushed & Grim, albeit for somewhat different reasons that I don’t have time to go into here).

If nothing else, it actually makes my job a little easier, as I can fully concentrate on just one half of this epic (in multiple senses of the word) undertaking, while also sneaking in a few tantalising teasers about what to expect from Part 2 later this year.

So, without further ado, let’s begin, shall we?

Continue reading »

SELBST – DESPONDENCY CHORD PROGRESSIONS

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 162024
 

(Andy Synn delves into the depths of the new album from Selbst, out this Friday)

I remember saying, way back in 2020 when Selbst released their second album, Relatos de angustia, that I wished the band could have received even half as much attention and acclaim as their Portuguese peers in Gaerea had gotten for their breakthrough release, Limbo, the month before.

To be clear, I didn’t say that to cast shade on Gaerea by any means – I’m looking forward to their new album immensely – it was more of a comment on how the media hype cycle for one artist/album can easily, and unintentionally, end up burying many equally deserving records.

Hopefully, however, that won’t happen this time (although there’s a new Blaze of Perdition album also coming out this week) as Despondency Chord Progressions thoroughly deserves not to have its thunder stolen by anyone or anything else.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: HERESIARCH, MAREA, RITES OF REGRESS, MOISSON LIVIDE

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Apr 142024
 

Well, though I feared that partying last night might make today a wasteland for me, an incipient cold kept me away from the party. The only silver lining from missing that birthday party is that I had a clear enough head to pull together this column, which includes reviews and streams of two new albums and two new songs from full-lengths that are on the way — the theme of which is that “Variety is the spice of life!”

HERESIARCH (New Zealand)

Heresiarch‘s new album puts me in mind of a stunning mountain that seizes attention from far away, looming by itself like a daunting edifice above mundane surroundings, like a Rainier or a Fuji or a Kilimanjaro. Only as you get closer do the details begin to stand out too.

Edifice is indeed the new album’s name, and we’re drawn to it initially from far away, the distance being the seven years that separate us in time from their first album, Death Ordinance, which still looms in the memory. Unlike the mountains named above, however, this one is erupting, and through its vulcanism is re-configuring as the explosions occur, the earth shakes, and the lava flows. In that way, new details take shape in the harsh crags, to leave new memories. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CROWN OF ASTERIA — “CYPHER”

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Apr 112024
 

We don’t know who first coined the term “atmospheric black metal”, but it has obviously stuck. Its meaning, however, despite its wide usage, is somewhat vague. It suggests music that is more geared toward the creation of mood or visions kindled in the imagination than, well, music based more centrally on riffs and riots. But that still leaves a lot un-defined.

The vagueness of the term makes it a big umbrella, or a big tent, or whatever you want to call a canopy that covers a lot of people and the different things they’re doing, including people whose activities spill them outside the covering.

Which brings us to Michigan-based Crown of Asteria, the distinctive solo project of the musically prolific Meghan Wood. Now more than 10 years into its existence, Crown of Asteria has amassed a lengthy discography, one that has exhibited as much experimentation as it has been threaded with through-lines.

But while no year has passed since Crown of Asteria‘s inception without something new from the project (and usually several or many somethings), it’s been more than five years since the last full album — a span that will be closed on April 12th with Fiadh Productions‘ release of a new Crown of Asteria album named Cypher, which is the subject of today’s premiere. Continue reading »

IN VAIN – SOLEMN

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Apr 112024
 

(In Vain‘s is out next week, and Andy Synn decided it deserved an advance review)

Scores, huh? What are they good for?

Absolutely nothing… well, most of the time anyway.

Let’s face it, when so many sites/zines are giving out nothing but 8s and 9s out of 10 (and don’t get me started on the ones who seem to think that adding a decimal point somehow makes them look better) the whole idea of assigning an arbitrary rating to things has been rendered even more meaningless than it already was.

I get it though, writers don’t want to lose access to promos and interviews, and a flashy score and an equally splashy feature quote (more often than not using the word “masterpiece” so as to even further dilute its meaning/value) is a great way to get yourself featured in PR emails and social media posts.

But is any of it actually good for the fans, let alone the bands themselves? Wouldn’t it be better to actually focus on providing some useful insight and analysis and, yes, even some actual criticism, so that the readers (and prospective listeners) actually take something away from what you’ve written beyond just the rating at the end?

Well, let’s find out, shall we?

Continue reading »

SRD: “VRAGMESITON”

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Apr 112024
 

(We present Didrik Mešiček‘s review of a forthcoming new album by the Slovenian black metal band Srd, along with a full stream of the album.)

In all my years of writing album reviews, I’ve somehow never covered one of my fellow Slovenian bands, so it’s about time we tick that off the list as well and therefore I’ll be talking about Srd’s new release, entitled Vragvmesiton, today. The band is widely considered to be one of the best acts in Slovenia’s surprisingly numerous, albeit internationally unknown, scene, and for them this will be their third full-length record since their inception in 2016 and it’ll be released on April 19th, 2024 through On Parole Productions.

There are few bands of which I have such an intimate knowledge of their discography, mainly as I have a bad habit of not really checking out earlier releases, but Srd is definitely an exception. Whilst their debut album, Smrti sel, had some indications of where the band wanted to go, it was also quite clear that the band was still trying to find itself, and they did so in Ognja prerok where Srd developed their own unique and consistent sound a lot more and switched to having all of their lyricism in Slovenian.

The evolution with these two releases felt very natural, however it’s with Vragvmesiton that the band strays from that path and seems to meander through some twisted and chaotic Satanic black metal maze. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MOTHER OF ALL — “GLOBAL PARASITIC LEVIATHAN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 102024
 

I have no competent statistical evidence to back up this assertion, but it seems like the way most metal bands work is that the music comes first and then the vocalist, who may or may not be an instrumental performer, comes up with lyrical themes and words that might have no connection to whatever the other songwriters were feeling and thinking when they cooked up the music.

That is probably not the way things have worked in Mother of All. This band is the brainchild of Danish musician Martin Haumann, and although he has surrounded himself in Mother of All‘s recordings with some very talented instrumental performers to augment his own prodigious talents, it’s he who is the lyricist and the songwriter, and the lyrical themes have been crafted with such conceptual focus and adamance of belief that it seems unlikely they were an afterthought. More likely, those themes were in mind when much of the music was written.

On the other hand, the music on Mother of All‘s new album Global Parasitic Leviathan, which we’re premiering today just days from its April 12 release, is so fantastically exhilarating that it may create a disconnect in the minds of listeners from what the album is about. But let’s begin with what the album is about…. Continue reading »

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