OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 7): GOATWHORE, GAEREA, GLOSON

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2022  5 Responses »
Jan 102023
 

Not for the first time, and it won’t be the last time, I picked today’s three additions to this list by focusing on song candidates by bands whose names begin with the same letter. That made the selection process less mind-boggling for me. It’s not a recipe for overall success, because I don’t have enough days left to cover every letter in the alphabet, and because not all letters are equally deserving in this context. But it worked well for today, when these three bands jumped out at me as I gazed at the Gs. Or, we could say I managed to find the G spot.

GOATWHORE (U.S.)

Angels Hung From the Arches of Heaven was another album where we could throw a dart at the track list and come up with a song for this list wherever it landed. As DGR wrote in his extensive review, it’s another testament to a level of consistency that has made Goatwhore a “cultural touchstone within the heavy metal music community,” providing “big riffs, big sections, and room-filling music matched equally in terms of heaviness,” and with “just enough surprise to keep things exciting”. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: GLOSON — “THE RIFT”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Mar 172022
 

 

All of the old-timers here at NCS have their own musical tastes, which are probably best portrayed as a Venn diagram in which there are areas of intersection but also swaths of area that largely stand apart from each other. But the Swedish band Gloson are one of those bands in which we all overlap in our enthusiasm for the music. And thus it’s a genuine thrill for us now to present a full stream of their new album, The Rift, which is set for release this coming Friday by Indie Recordings.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, our own Andy Synn presented a review of the album just yesterday. He called it “by some margin the best Post-/Sludge Metal album I’ve heard so far this year — surpassing even Cult of Luna‘s fantastic new record”, an album that “has most certainly re-set the bar for 2022, and only time will tell if anything else can match it”.

He then proceeded to explain why, should you need any further persuasion to dive into the full stream today. Continue reading »

GLOSON – THE RIFT

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 162022
 

(Andy Synn descends into The Rift, the astonishing new album from Sweden’s Gloson)

Let me ask you something… what is it that makes one album, or one artist, better than another?

It’s not a question with an easy or simple answer, I know.

There are some people, for example, who seem to believe that being more accessible – more listenable, more likable, more relatable – is something that inherently makes an artist/album better, as their music is now capable of appealing to a wider audience.

On the flip-side of this, though, there are also those who affirm that becoming more challenging, more difficult, more complex – in any of a variety of different ways – is the only true way to keep getting better as a band.

Ultimately, of course, it’s all somewhat subjective, and each of us will have a slightly different set of criteria, a different suite of sensibilities which need to be satisfied (or not), in order to make that judgement for ourselves.

So when I tell you that The Rift, the second album from Swedish quartet Gloson is by some margin the best Post-/Sludge Metal album I’ve heard so far this year – surpassing even Cult of Luna‘s fantastic new record (a statement which I’m sure will inspire much shock and consternation amongst many of our readers) – chances are that some of you will believe me, and some of you won’t.

But that’s fine. Because it’s still true either way.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GLOSON, BLACK CILICE, UNDER THE CHURCH, FLESH OF ONCE DEMENTED, CREATURE, DECAYING

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 092021
 

 

I hope you’re having a good weekend already, and I hope what I’ve chosen for this round-up of new songs and videos will make it even better. As usual, I had a lot to choose from based on discoveries from the past week. I thought about resorting to another “Overflowing Streams” deluge to get more of them in front of you, but decided instead to exercise a rare bit of discipline.

In making these choices I was influenced by previous knowledge about the music of five of these bands (all of whom are personal favorites) and knowledge about the past work of one of the creators, even though he’s creating under a new guise.

GLOSON (Sweden)

The first track here, “Impetus“, is a massive and unearthly song, one that takes a sledgehammer to your spine and claws at your mind. The central riff abrasively roils and darts; the ritualized drum rhythms go off like bunker-busting bombs; the yells and roars are harrowing. The song twists the tension dial, becomes sweeping, and then boils and pounds, the intensity unrelenting. You best get ready to flex your neck too.

The accompanying video made by Ulf Blomberg is as dark and unnerving as the music, but you can’t take your eyes off it. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 3): GLOSON AND HATH

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  2 Responses »
Jan 072020
 

 

Welcome to the third installment of this evolving list (you’ll find the first two here). Can you guess why I decided to put these two songs together?

GLOSON

After a certain point everyone becomes increasingly shorter as they age, typically losing almost half an inch (about 1 centimeter) every 10 years after age 40, mainly due to spinal compression and diminishing bone density. But you don’t have to wait for that creeping decline. You can get it all over with right now. The pounding that Gloson administer in “Usurper” delivers decades of spinal compression in minutes. Continue reading »

GLOSON: “MARA”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 162019
 

 

(This is DGR’s review of the new EP by Sweden’s Gloson, which was released on April 5th by Black Lion Records.)

The sinister atmospherics that run throughout Gloson’s newest EP Mara — coming in two years after their excellent full-length Grimen — are entirely by design and not a happy accident. If any band has shown a keen mastery of the frightening undertone to their music in recent years, Gloson would be included in the discussion. Our premiere of Mara’s first song “Usurper” touched on the song’s sense of presence early in the writeup, drawing contrast to our compatriot Andy’s review of Grimmen and then highlighting the continued intensity that “Usurper” picks up and carries forward on their newest release.

Gloson describe the concept behind the EP on their Bandcamp page for Mara as such:

The concept of our new EP Mara is about our subconsciousness while being asleep; being stuck between the realm of dreams and reality. Portraying personal demons has usually been the agenda of Gloson, and the most graphic and terrifying ones occur during such states.

So if there was any thought that the almost sixteen minutes of crawling sludge and doom across two songs was going to play nice, then Gloson seek to wipe that away fast. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GLOSON — “USURPER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 252019
 

 

In fairly short order the Swedish sludge/post-metal band Gloson have plowed a massive furrow through the landscape of metal — and not the kind of furrow in which pliable earth has been turned, but more like a deep, jagged track carved through granite. We’ve had the pleasure of watching this happen from the beginning, and done our own small part to spread the word, following them from their eye-opening 2014 debut EP Yearwalker through the release of their stunning first album Grimen in 2017. Along the way we hosted premieres, and chose songs from each of those releases for our lists of the years’ Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

It is thus with great pleasure that today we present the premiere of a video for a song from Gloson’s new EP, Mara, which will be released on April 5th by Black Lion Records. With “Usurper“, Gloson have again created something that’s immediately in contention for our Most Infectious Song list, and, at last, have hit upon visual imagery that’s a match for the prodigious power and unsettling, unearthly atmosphere of their music. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 13): JUPTERIAN, FORGOTTEN TOMB, GLOSON, HATE, MARTHYRIUM

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  2 Responses »
Jan 262018
 


Jupiterian

 

As you can probably tell, I’m beginning to feel the pressure of time running out. If I’m going to finish this list by the end of January I may have to do more of what I’m doing today — packing more songs into each of these posts than I’ve been doing. Although I doubt I’ll have time to add five each day, I’m able to do that today.

And the key word for today’s installment of the list is “crushing”.

JUPITERIAN

There’s heavy, and then there’s HEAVY.  As metals go, Lead is heavy, but Iridium is twice as heavy as lead. As metal bands go, Jupiterian is the Iridium of heavy music. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GLOSON — “ANTLERS”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 142017
 

 

“Antlers” is one of the staggeringly good songs on Grimen, the most recent album (released by Art of Propaganda earlier this year) by the Swedish sludge/post-metal group Gloson, and it’s the subject of a live performance video that we’re premiering in this post, a video that’s just as riveting to watch as “Antlers” is to hear.

This is the second live Gloson video that it’s been our privilege to premiere; the first one (for the song “Cringe”) debuted here in April. Like that one, this new one was also filmed and edited by Gustav Bondeson (whose web site is here) at Kajskjulet in Halmstad, Sweden, on February 25th 2017. And as was true of the video for “Cringe”, the sound in this one is the live audio, recorded during the performance (mixed and mastered by Christian Larsson). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GLOSON — “CRINGE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 102017
 


Photo by Jari Välitalo

 

We loved Grimen, the debut album by the Swedish sludge/post-metal titans who call themselves Gloson, released earlier this year by Art of Propaganda. To borrow a few words from Andy Synn’s review at our site, “Grimen is an album with, for want of a better word, real presence. Something which makes it impossible to ignore, and impossible to forget…. There’s just something about this music, something so uniquely dynamic and utterly overpowering, that I find myself irresistibly drawn to it again and again, as if it has its own inescapable gravity…. [A]lthough it’s only February, I think I’ve already found one of my albums of the year.”

Early last fall, five months before the album’s release, Gloson delivered its first single, a stunning song called “Cringe“. And now we have the good fortune to be the bearers of an amazing new live video for that very song. Continue reading »

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