Nov 112019
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Colorado-based Blood Incantation, which will be released on November 22nd by Dark Descent Records (NorthAm) and Century Media (Europe), and features artwork by Bruce Pennington.)

The rapid rise of Blood Incantation can, when all is said and done, be attributed to a combination of a few different factors.

First and foremost, of course, is that fact that the Colorado quartet are just a fantastic Death Metal band. No caveats, no equivocations.

They’ve got the technical talents, they’ve got the songwriting skills, and, perhaps more importantly, they’ve got just the right blend of sounds – proggy enough to keep themselves from being boxed in with the rest of the “old school” revivalists, but “classic” enough to appeal to the nostalgia-hounds – to reach a surprisingly wide audience, both young and old.

Then there’s the group’s blissfully baked, “I’m not saying it was aliens…”, aesthetic which, when combined with their impressive songcraft and easy meme-ability (the scraggly logo, the hesher-friendly merch designs, the far-out ’70s sci-fi artwork) has given rise to a near-perfect storm of viral fame and critical acclaim that’s seen the band go from “relative unknown” to “next big thing” in just a few short years.

And while there’s definitely a little bit of home-grown hero-worship going on with some of their more rabid (typically American) fans, the truth is that the band’s highly-anticipated second album makes a strong case for why you need to start believing the hype.

Well, most of it anyway… Continue reading »

Mar 182019
 

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(The following review of the DECIBEL Magazine Tour‘s stop in Atlanta last week was written by Tør, a self-professed metalhead, data nerd, and ex-academic, who first appeared at our site with a post based on his Ph.D. dissertation on the spread of metal across national  boundaries. All the wonderful photos in this review were also made by Tør.)

The night got off to a good start: I was able to dodge the dreaded Atlanta traffic relatively easily on my way to catch Morbid Angel, Immolation, Necrot, and Blood Incantation on the Decibel Magazine Tour 2019.

I arrived at The Masquerade just in time to witness a solid mid-week crowd greeting Denver’s Blood Incantation with a warm Southern welcome. The band have been praised as one of the most promising acts in modern death metal and it’s easy to see why: They masterfully sailed through a thirty-minute opening slot by taking the crowd on a journey of progressive and cerebral death metal complete with slow enchanted passages and downright hard-hitting choruses. The technical ability and overall performance on display were quite astounding and solidified their place as one of the most innovative newer death metal acts in my mind. Continue reading »

Jan 122017
 

 

I know it’s damned late in the day for another post — probably past bed-time for some of our readers across the Atlantic — but I’ll be damned if I let another day go by without resuming the rollout of this Most Infectious Song series. This train must keep on rolling! (If you’d like to see the songs that preceded these three or learn what we mean by “most infectious”, go here.)

I continue to have fun picking combinations of songs for each installment. The three songs in this one are musically quite distinct, although all of them display phenomenal musicianship, but they do have a few things in common. Perhaps the most obvious one is a fascination with SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE….

MITHRAS

I assume I don’t need to provide much of an introduction to the new Mithras album, On Strange Loops. Nevertheless, I assume I’d have to pay some wretched price if I mentioned Mithras without quoting from my friend Andy Synn’s review, so here goes: Continue reading »

Oct 182016
 

cdf-monday-morning3

Monday morning, Oakland waterfront

This wraps up our coverage of the second installment of CALIFORNIA DEATHFEST, which took place from October 14-16, 2016, in Oakland, California. As was true of my posts on Day One and Day Two, I haven’t written fulsome reviews of the performances I saw on the final day, though this time I have included a few more impressions than in the earlier installments — but I’ve once again included photos and videos I made using my iPhone.

Yes, this is a half-assed way to document a festival compared to what you will probably see from a few of the more well-healed metal publications out there who employed professional photographers and videographers. However, because “Half-Assed” is in fact my middle name, I’m being true to myself. Continue reading »

Sep 192016
 

Reviews in Haikus

 

(Andy Synn brings us a new installment in his series of album reviews in haiku. Three reviews of three lines each come after the jump. With music, of course.)

Despite what I’ve seen suggested by certain slightly ill-informed commenters recently, Metal’s obsession with space and the vast potential and possibilities of the great beyond is nothing new.

Let’s be honest for a second – a bunch of the genre’s progenitors were massive nerds who stole took inspiration from some of sci-fi’s biggest (and some not so big) names to feed their lyrics and concepts, and this basically laid the groundwork for everyone from Agalloch to Obscura to Wormed to draw their own inspirations from the same deep well, be it the pulpiest of science fiction or the hardest of science fact. Sometimes both.

So for the latest edition of this column I’ve selected three fantastic albums which, to date, haven’t been covered properly here on NCS, each of which firmly and confidently puts its own spin on the great interstellar enigma and our place as insignificant motes of fleeting life within the vast and unending void. Continue reading »

Jun 222016
 

Dysrhythmia-photo by Johnny DeBlase
photo by Johnny DeBlase

 

We’ve posted so many “Seen and Heard” collections this week that I decided to give that heading a break, though that’s what this post really is: another collection of somewhat randomly observed news and new music that I thought was worth spreading around. And because we’ve posted so many of these collections recently, I decided to cut back the volume of this particular one, too — though I do think the selections I’ve made here make nice complements to each other.

DYSRHYTHMIA

Guitarist Kevin Hufnagel and bassist Colin Marston could be resting on their laurels after their standout work on the new Gorguts EP, Pleiades’ Dust (not to mention Marston’s performances on the new releases by Withered, Krallice, and his own Indricothere project) , but instead they and drummer Jeff Eber are bringing out a new Dysrhythmia album. Entitled The Veil of Control, it’s the band’s seventh studio full-length and their first since 2012’s Test of Submission. According to today’s announcement by Profound Lore, it will be released on September 23. Continue reading »