WHAT I’M LISTENING TO THIS YEAR — PART 3

 Listmania, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Sep 082014
 

 

(NCS contributor KevinP shares his latest quarterly round-up of albums that he commends to your ears.) 

We’re getting toward the end of the year and the amount of quality releases hasn’t slowed down one bit.  And there are even more to come as well (Wolfheart, At the Gates, Bloodbath to name a few just off the top of my head).  Here’s 5 more albums you should defintely check out.

Majestic Downfall/The Slow Death split

http://chaos-records.bandcamp.com/album/split

Once this is officially released on September 15th, you should be able to hear all 6 songs (3 by each band), but one listen to the Majestic Downfall track, “The Dark Lullaby”, should give you all you need to know.  The Slow Death is no slouch on this by any means.  Very good and competent funeral-esque doom.  So I don’t blather too much, start listening and see my review here [Editor’s intrusion: I don’t know why I’m letting Kevin link to his own review. I’m going to review this split and it’s the only one you’ll need to read.] Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MASTER’S HAMMER, AZOOMA, DAY OF DOOM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
May 192014
 

To help start the new week, here are some new songs and related news that I came across over the weekend.

MASTER’S HAMMER

The Czech band Master’s Hammer began recording music in about 1987, with a 14-year hiatus between their third album in 1995 and their fourth one in 2009. Their sound evolved over those many years. In Darkthrone’s biography (here), Fenriz has referred to the band’s debut album Ritual as “actually the first Norwegian black metal album, even though they are from Czechoslovakia”, but later releases incorporated wide-ranging styles of music, including folk and classical.

Yesterday Master’s Hammer released their sixth studio album, Vagus Vetas, through the band’s own label, Jihosound Records, where it’s now available for order. Physically, it’s a very attractive release (some photos of the CD and the 12-page illustrated booklet that comes with it can be seen here), and it includes 12 songs. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any one of them on-line, but I do have a teaser video. Continue reading »