NOVEMBERS DOOM: “HAMARTIA”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  2 Responses »
Jun 022017
 

 

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Novembers Doom, released in April.)

 

This past weekend in Baltimore I was… well, “harangued” might be too strong a word… by DGR for failing to produce a review of this album, something which I’d apparently promised to do several times over the last couple of months.

So, suitably admonished and abashed, here’s my attempt to fulfil my obligation, starting with a little bit of historical context for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 3): VALLENFYRE, HIDEOUS DIVINITY, NOVEMBERS DOOM, ADRIFT FOR DAYS, DIREWOLVES

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Apr 082017
 

 

I had planned to conclude an ever-expanding round-up of new music and videos yesterday, but missed my target. Based on the gagging and gurgling sounds, I think my arrow hit someone in the throat.

So here we are, a day late, and late in the day also. Plus, it’s a Saturday, which means damn few people will even discover this post, and to exacerbate the problems I’ve thrown in music from ten bands, which is probably more than most people have patience for. Oh, but it could have been so much longer! I still have much more music to recommend, some of which will be in tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK feature.

Because this third part of the week-long round-up has metastasized to such a great extent, I’m dividing the tumor evenly into two parts, which means there will be a Part 4 a bit later today — and I’ll also be brief with my own words. Enjoy the music… and do share your own reactions in the Comment section if you’re so inclined.

VALLENFYRE

Vallenfyre‘s new album is Fear Those Who Fear Him, set for release by Century Media on June 2nd. This is an eagerly awaited return from one of our favorite bands, and the video below is for the album’s first single, “Kill All Your Masters”. Continue reading »

NOVEMBERS DOOM: “BLED WHITE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Aug 202014
 

 

(In this post DGR reviews the new album by Novembers Doom.)

Chicago-based Novembers Doom are a band of many, many albums over the span of a twenty-year career, and many musicians if you want to be funny,. They’re also a band of many descriptors, hailed as a variety of things over the years — a death metal group, a doom metal band, a gothic-doom metal band — and often incredibly hard to pin down. Some even go so far as to call them America’s answer to Opeth… which I’ve seen in more than one review.

With such a long and storied career the band have pretty much earned the right to be whatever the fuck they want at any given moment, but they’ve always stuck to a pretty strong foundation comprised of doom with a heavy gothic influence a la My Dying Bride, a death metal band, and a mournful, clean-sung group that absolutely thrives on despair.

It’s a bastard offspring of differing genres, but ones so closely related that Novembers Doom figured out not only how to combine them but also how to jam them together so well that nobody really veers close to their style. Bled White, with its spare cover art, is only the group’s latest chapter in a very large book at this point. It sees the band sounding as strong as they’ve ever been, and fully confident.

Some of the best and most miserable work they’ve have ever kicked out lies within the album’s hour-and-eight-minute run time — establishing it as a worthy successor to the band’s previous records and also providing an excellent starting point for people who’ve long heard the name but have never jumped in before. Continue reading »

FIVE OF MY FAVOURITE . . . BANDS WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN HUGE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  39 Responses »
Apr 112013
 

(Andy Synn is back with yet another of his five-item lists of favorite things.)

TheMadIsraeli’s review of the newest Killswitch album (which I still haven’t actually gotten around to listening to) got me thinking, mostly about missed chances and wasted potential. As a fan of KsE, even I have to acknowledge that, due to a variety of factors, some beyond their control, some due to their own decision-making, the band may have squandered some of their early potential.

That may sound rather harsh; it’s not meant to be but it may sound it. But I think it’s unfortunately an accurate assessment of things as they stand. Losing Jesse, the stalling of their initial momentum while they recruited Howard, the more simplistic, mainstream leanings that sanitised their most recent work… all these combined with the general state of the music industry and some unfortunate timing, have meant that the band never reached the “megastar” status which was, however fleetingly, hinted at by their early potential.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Killswitch Engage are pretty damn mainstream, at least by metal standards, right? Well that’s kind of my point… we often forget, we proud underground warriors, that for most bands, being part of the metal “mainstream” means fuck all to the “actual” mainstream. Bands with legitimate underground cred who get the merest sniff of wider exposure are immediately attacked for “selling-out” even when they’ve not changed a thing, they just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

But what I’m talking about here are five bands who had the possibility, however slight, of achieving real recognition (mainstream or otherwise), real status, without sacrificing their integrity or identity, but for whom it never quite “happened”. Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN’S CRITICAL TOP 10 OF 2011

 Listmania  18 Responses »
Dec 152011
 

(This is the fourth in Andy Synn’s week-long series of posts looking back at albums released this year. Andy previously provided his lists of the year’s Great albums, the Good ones, and the most Disappointing ones, and tomorrow we’ll have his Personal Top 10. Today, we have his list of “The Critical Top 10”. For more explanation of what all this means, plus Andy’s picks for the year’s best EPs, visit this location.)

So here’s the penultimate list of the week, the first of two ranked top-tens. This list will include the albums that I think are the very best of the best, the ones that best combine creativity, artistic ambition, song-writing, and performance. Regardless of my personal feelings and preferences, these are the albums that I think are critically superior to others. Though the ranking of them was difficult (as it always is when trying to compare artists and albums across metallic sub-genres), I’ve tried my best to give a sense about the critical and objective factors that led to each record earning its respective position on this list.

Although the potential candidates for the list were unavoidably influenced by my own listening tastes — I do, after all, only really tend to select the albums that I feel best qualified and most inspired to review – I have done my best to keep personal preference as far away from these judgements as possible, something that I hope will become clear when you see tomorrow how different the list of my top ten “favourite” albums of the year is from today’s list.

So here are the ten releases I think best represent the year critically. The ten that, ultimately, would be my choices to represent the year in metal music for posterity. Some of them have appeared quite commonly on other lists, albeit perhaps weighted differently, while others have largely been ignored by other sources thus far. Enjoy . . . Continue reading »

THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING

 Uncategorized  23 Responses »
Nov 222011
 

(Andy Synn wrote the following opinion piece.  If we don’t get some comments on this one, I’ll be quite surprised. Andy’s got some questions at the end, and we’d love to hear your answers.)

Here’s a question that’s been on my mind for a while now; what do we do when our heroes let us down? What happens when the bands we love go off the boil, make weird creative decisions, or just simply move away from playing the music for which we fell in love with them?

Music is an intensely emotional topic, and one which promotes a peculiar kind of loyalty to develop in those of us who love it deeply. As metal fans in particular, we seem to embody the very extremes of this trait; treat us well and we will die for you, cross us and our wrath and enmity shall be eternal. Indeed, once a certain line is crossed it’s very common to see a band written off as “dead” by any number of their former fans.

Most recently, however, I’ve been trying to take positive steps when confronted with this situation. Rather than entering into either a) a defensive flame war on behalf of our fallen heroes, or b) seizing on the opportunity in order to heap my own well-earned scorn on the victims of this public derision, I have instead been taking the fall of our chosen heroes to promote potential successors who are ready and waiting to step up and take on the mantle.

This does, however, raise one further issue: to what extent we, as metal fans, are willing to accept our heroes being replaced and (if that is the case) do we actually always have one eye out for the Next Big Thing – not the one who’ll necessarily sell the records and get the airplay, but the one who will step into the well-worn shoes of our heroes once they have gone to the sacred feasting halls of Valhalla?

Now 3 particular albums/events inspired these thoughts recently… Continue reading »