Jan 232023
 

We have seven weekdays left before the end of January, which marks my self-imposed ending of this list. Seven days before I ought to stop, and like every other year, the impending end adds to my anxiety levels because I know I have so many more songs I’d like to include and not enough room to include them all. To begin this final seven-day stretch I decided to concentrate on shades of black metal.

BLACKBRAID (U.S.)

Seemingly out of nowhere this indigenous black metal project from the Adirondacks made a big splash in 2022 with a debut album denominated I. The size of the splash was measured by how often it appeared on year-end lists, both here and in many other locations across the web. For those of you who somehow missed the album despite all the attention and acclaim it received, I’ll borrow some words from Andy Synn’s NCS review: Continue reading »

Aug 192017
 

 

Two days to go until the total eclipse. I’m lucky to be in a beautiful place in Wyoming that lies within the path of totality, which cuts across the United States from Salem, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina.

After some carousing and late-night stargazing with friends, I slept like a dead man and wasn’t sure whether I’d write anything for NCS on this lazy morning. I had a few half-baked ideas that I was noodling over, and then I got word that Volume 5 of Crushing Intolerance had been released on Bandcamp. That wound up blowing the other ideas away like dust in the wind. Continue reading »