Dec 242019
 

 

Contrary to an accusation that one of my NCS comrades recently leveled at another one, I don’t hate fun. In fact, I love it, and I enjoy seeing other people have fun. And so, although the imminent Christmas holiday means nothing to me, I’m sure I speak for all of us here (except maybe one of us) in wishing you some joy.

To ameliorate the possibility that you will have nothing in your stocking but a lump of coal because you’ve been so baaaad, and to help relieve the brain death that the stresses of the holiday season demonstrably produce, here are a few gifts from us to you.

REPLICANT

This New Jersey death metal band turned out a hell of a debut album in 2018’s Negative Life, which Steve Schwegler (of Pyrrhon, Seputus, and Weeping Sores) beauatifully reviewed for us. I’ll excerpt just a few of his thoughts about that album: Continue reading »

Jun 092018
 

 

I feel like a broken record in writing this sentence, but will say again that my list of new songs that have appeared just in the last two weeks, and seem worth checking out, is enormous — more than 50 tracks long at this point. The paucity of SEEN AND HEARD posts over that period, due to the paucity of time I’ve been able to devote to NCS as a result of other distractions, means that the list has grown at a much faster rate than I’ve been able to whittle it down through listening and writing.

So, I came up with an idea for making headway against the tide: Rather than compiling “playlists” of four or five songs (or more) as is usual for the SEEN AND HEARD column, I’m going to spend at least the next week creating much shorter collections, under a new title, limited myself to only two tracks per post. This is the first of those. I hope to do this on a daily basis, but may fail.

CROCELL

Honestly, I’m not sure what happened here. Many of the scribblers at NCS, including me, have been devout fans of Crocell. And yet they came out with their fifth album in March (Relics) and until today we’ve said nothing about it. Having completely overlooked it, I haven’t even heard the record. But this new lyric video will cause me to remedy that glaring omission pretty damned quick. Continue reading »

Jun 152016
 

Nylithia video clip

 

Last night I decided it was time to pull together another round-up of new music and videos that I’ve been enjoying. By the time I had finished sifting through a lot of stuff in an effort to provide both quality and variety, I had a collection that seemed too long for a single post, so I’ve divided this one into two parts. The way things go, I’ll probably come across more new things this morning that will be worth adding to Part 2 before I post it. To begin….

NYLITHIA

“Bludwolves” is the tenth track on this Vancouver band’s 2015 debut album Hyperthrash. It happens to be a song that we premiered last fall. It also might be my favorite song on a very strong album — and so I was stoked to see that it had become the subject of a new Nylithia music video. And when I saw the video, I got even more excited. Continue reading »

Mar 082016
 

Katatonia 2016

 

If you recall yesterday’s “Seen and Heard” round-up, I explained that I had fallen so far behind that I had a list of 30 new tracks from over the last week that I thought were worth exploring. And sure enough, the list has only grown, because so many other good new things popped up in the last 24 hours. So I’m starting with the four newest items and concluding with four from last week.

KATATONIA

Yesterday brought details about the next Katatonia album, as well as a very brief teaser video. This will be their tenth studio full-length, with the title of The Fall of Hearts. It’s set for a May 20 release by Peaceville Records. Here’s the artwork (by Travis Smith, of course): Continue reading »

Dec 222015
 

Misantrof 8th Antichristmas cover

 

I got far enough ahead on readying today’s year-end lists and album premiere for posting that I actually found some time to go surfing through the interhole and the NCS in-box in search of new things. Here are a few of the items I found. I’m saving some others for Christmas Day, because I feel a personal obligation to ruin the holiday as best I can.

MISANTROF ANTI-CHRISTMAS

Speaking of ruining the holiday, Misantrof ANTIRecords, the (intentionally) non-profit label masterminded by Carpathian Forest’s Daniel Vrangsinn) is once again giving us a hellish present. For the 8th year in a row, the label is releasing the Holy Fucking Antichristmas Compilation. And day by day, they’ve been adding fragments to the cover art for the comp. What you see above is the nearly complete picture as it appears today on Misantrof’s Facebook page (here). Continue reading »

Oct 072015
 

Nylithia-Blüdwolves

 

About a week ago we happily reported that Vancouver’s Nylithia had finally announced the release date for their debut album Hyperthrash. It has been a long time coming, but the band have given us plenty of reasons to get excited about it — and today we’re bringing you one more, through our premiere of the album’s tenth track of 12: “Blüdwolves“.

The story of our acquaintance with Nylithia began in March 2012, when we discovered the first three songs they had released for the planned album, each of which was accompanied by separate artwork and videos — “Trainsaw”, “Immersed In the Maniacal”, and “Vein of Creation”. And then in September of that year we had the pleasure of debuting the title track — “Hyperthrash”. Continue reading »

Sep 282015
 

Wombbath-Downfall Rising

 

Well, some days around here (like last Friday), it’s a drought. But when it rains, it pours. Already today we’ve posted a two-part round-up of new music and videos by DGR (here and here), along with KevinP’s list of top albums released this month, including still more music streams (here). And I’ve found time this morning before leaving town again for my fucking day job to compile this additional collection of new streams (along with one doomy news item contributed by Grant Skelton).

I do worry that on days like this we’re subjecting readers to absolute sensory overload. But I obviously don’t worry too much about it… so here we go:

WOMBBATH

I’ve been singing the praises of the Wombbath’s new album Downfall Rising since hearing the first teaser from it, and now the entire album is out and available for streaming — so I’m posting the album stream as the first item in this round-up. Continue reading »

Jul 272015
 

Mgła artwork

 

I spent most of this weekend catching up on new music (and making a few discoveries of older music, too). I compiled one round-up on Saturday, another one devoted to black metal yesterday, and that still wasn’t enough. So I’ve collected more new music or videos from five other bands in this post. Contrary to appearances, I do have a life — but it wasn’t devoted to much else besides metal since Friday.

MGŁA

Yesterday brought a most welcome announcement that I wasn’t expecting: The fantastic Polish black metal band Mgła has completed the recording of a new third full-length album named Exercises In Futility, and it will be released in the late Summer of this year on the Northern Heritage and No Solace labels. It includes six tracks and 42 minutes of music — and yesterday one of those tracks became available for listening. Continue reading »

May 252013
 

I first found out about this riveting ensemble of maniacs from Vancouver in March 2012 (writing about them here), and then last September we had the pleasure of debuting a Nylithia song called “Hyperthrash”. In a nutshell, they’ve been working on an album also called Hyperthrash, releasing one song at a time for download, with separate artwork and videos for each song. So far, four songs are available — “Trainsaw”, “Immersed In the Maniacal”, “Vein of Creation”, and the afore-mentioned “Hyperthrash”.

Very late last night the band uploaded their newest official video, and this one is for “Vein of Creation”, a song that originally had its premiere at MetalSucks in December 2011. It gives me an excuse to paraphrase what I’ve written before about the band’s music: This ain’t no retro-thrash. It’s thrash from some accelerated parallel universe. It’s a balls-to-the-wall, fret-burning, drum-shredding, neuron-twisting explosion. It’s a head-wrecking combo of blazing speed, eye-popping intricacy, neck-slapping grooves, and a fuckton of exuberance.

And as for the video . . . the Vein of Creation monster is among us, and ready for a good time. Continue reading »

Jan 042013
 

Herein: an assortment of new music and one new video I discovered over the last 24 hours from a couple of bands previously featured at NCS and a couple of newcomers.  Varied and interesting stuff all the way around.

LAGO

This band from Phoenix is one of the newcomers. According to Metal Archives, they released a five-song EP (Marianas) via Pale Horse Recordings in 2010, which I haven’t heard yet, and then last month they released a new two-song demo entitled Tyranny. Last night I saw a recommendation of Tyranny from one of my Facebook friends and decided to give it a spin. Sure glad I did.

On Tyranny, Lago deliver something that sounds like a cross between old-school Morbid Angel and late-stage Behemoth, plus interesting elements that you won’t find in the music of either of those bands, such as the noodling bass notes and incredible guitar solo in “The Tyranny of Men”.  Both songs are rhythmically dynamic (and rhythmically compulsive) and expertly played. And the vocals are also deep as ocean trenches and monstrous, in the vein of something like Disma’s Craig Pillard (though some banshee shrieking also makes a brief appearance in the second song).

This is really fuckin’ impressive stuff! Continue reading »