GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, NOVEMBER 2021

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Dec 022021
 


Kayo Dot

(Here are Gonzo’s album recommendations from among those released during November 2021.)

And just like that, November came and went.

While most of us are probably still unpacking the bullshit that 2020 brought, it’s hard to believe that we’re only a month away from 2022. Follow me for more proof that we’re living in a simulation.

Though November was a flash in the pan in the big scheme of things, the music that was released during those 30 days have sent my year-end list plans into a tailspin. Too much good stuff, not enough time to listen to it all.

That said, the stuff I did get around to spending time with was damn good. Four albums in particular have made the cut this month. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “MOONFLOWERS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 012021
 

 

(DGR continues an extensive series of reviews this week with the following take on Swallow the Sun‘s new album, which is out now on the Century Media label.)

Swallow The Sun are at a point now in their careers that they’ve become an institution in the realms of all things moody and melancholic. It’s been a journey too, one that has been exceedingly well-documented and at times absolutely heart-wrenching – and not just musically – and in my own personal case, one dating all the way back to 2007’s Hope album. The band are already at two decades of slow, frozen, and moody doom music and it has been interesting watching their trajectory into and out of funeral doom, fuller-sounding death metal, and even moody-rock music. Here at NCS we are very well acquainted with all of those journeys – especially since yours truly is now on the third review for the band with this most recent release.

Moonflowers arrived on November 19th via Century Media Records and comes to us nearly two and a half years after 2019’s When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light. Granted, when you consider that seven of Swallow The Sun‘s eight mainline releases have hit during a period between November and February, you could argue that the group have carved out quite a niche for themselves in the colder months of the year. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BANDCAMP FRIDAY (TOO MANY NAMES TO PUT IN A POST TITLE)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 062021
 

 

Over the last few days my NCS comrades (well, mainly DGR) have been shoveling links at me for new songs and videos, in anticipation that I would put together a round-up by today — which is a Bandcamp Friday. Most of those links were for music by bigger-name bands. The thought was that I could also add more obscure names, and that the allure of the bigger names might help introduce the lesser-knowns to more fans.

The problem is that the pile of links has grown to gargantuan proportions, which has made it tougher for me to insert as many other discoveries as I might want and still write up some thoughts about everything. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow. Here’s the A-to-Z deluge I have for today, in alphabetical order.

ARCHSPIRE (Canada)

Prepare for relentless high-speed bludgeoning and crazed fretwork mania as a big rabid mastiff barks in your face at equally high speed. Exhilarating! Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2019’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 21): GAAHLS WYRD, SWALLOW THE SUN, ARCTIC SLEEP, KLONE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2019  5 Responses »
Feb 012020
 

 

I missed two weekdays in the rollout of this list, and I want to make up for that, so that’s the justification for breaking my promise to finish this list by the end of January. I have this installment today, and I’ll have another one tomorrow, and then on Monday I’ll tie things up with a black bow by listing all the songs from start to finish. Of course I won’t really be finished, because a ton of deserving songs will have been omitted. I will just have forced myself to stop.

Today’s four songs are all well-deserved exceptions to our porous rule about singing. The musical styles of the songs are all different from each other. All together, they make for an enthralling (and infectious) playlist.

GAAHLS WYRD

Wil Cifer reviewed GastiR – Ghosts Invited for us, and concluded with this paragraph: “This is one of the few albums this year that I have been able to just leave on a let-play all day, on endless repeat, and not get bored with it. If you do not need your black metal to live on blast alone and prefer the feel of darkness, then this is more than worth your time”. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: CHILDREN OF BODOM, SWALLOW THE SUN, WOLFHEART, SUMMONER’S CIRCLE — LIVE IN ATLANTA, APRIL 11, 2019

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 182019
 

 

(On April 11th our Atlanta-based contributor Tør returned to The Masquerade venue to take in Finnish-heavy performances by Children of Bodom, Swallow the Sun, Wolfheart, and local openers Summoner’s Circle. He sent us this report, along with a large batch of his own excellent photos from the show, most of which appear after the review.)

The traffic makes me want to ditch my car in the middle of I-75 and move to Europe. I get to The Masquerade customarily late but manage to catch a bit of the openers, Summoner’s Circle.

On their Facebook page the Knoxville outfit describe themselves as “a six-piece theatrical metal band that blends elements of doom, death, black and progressive metal into what they refer to as simply Epic Metal”. While genre-blending is not my cup of tea, I am pleasantly surprised by the solid display on stage. These guys are serious about what they do and the costumes and imagery match the grandiose sound they produce. Check out their first full-length, Tome, if you haven’t already done so. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “WHEN A SHADOW IS FORCED INTO THE LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 052019
 

 

(DGR reviews the newest album by Finland’s Swallow the Sun, which was released on January 25th. All photos accompanying this review were made by Jussi Ratilainen.)

Of all the reviews that are currently piling up on this end of the internet spectrum — and every year there will always be a handful in this situation — Swallow The Sun‘s latest album When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light (released at the tail end of January) is one of those which has taken the longest to write — and not because you’re viewing the result of a drunken bet to see how many words we can fit onto a page.

There’s a whole swath of reasons for that: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SWALLOW THE SUN, AKROTHEISM, OUR SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON US, TERRE, THE STEEL WOODS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 182019
 

 

Within the world of heavy metal, the new year is in full swing. I’ve noted more than four-dozen new songs, EPs, and albums that have been released just this week alone and that, at least on a superficial level, seemed worth checking out. But for me it hasn’t been the best week to go exploring. With multiple premieres to write each day, and the time required to compile new installments of our evolving 2018 Most Infectious Song list (one more of which is coming later today), almost all my free time has been consumed.

By chance, however, I woke up at an even more ungodly early hour than usual this morning, and got far enough ahead on today’s planned posts that I spent a bit of time digging into that giant list of new things that appeared this week. I didn’t get far, but, serendipitously, everything I checked out proved to be appealing. All those new discoveries are collected here. Be forewarned: this list includes a healthy dose of clean singing, and one not-metal track.

SWALLOW THE SUN

Swallow the Sun threw more than a few people off-balance when they released the single “Lumina Aurea“ last month. But since then they’ve followed it with two tracks from their next album, When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light, which will be released by Century Media on January 25th. The first was “Upon the Water“, and then more recently they debuted a video for the song “Firelights“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON CHRISTMAS DAY: ROTTING CHRIST, SWALLOW THE SUN, ÖRNATORPET, DEATHCHANT, MORTAL SCEPTER (AND A LOT MORE)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 252018
 

 

If today is a holiday for you, we hope you’re enjoying it, regardless of whether it has any ecclesiastical meaning to you. If it’s not a holiday for you, we hope it will be a good day for you, too.

We don’t observe any holidays at NCS, not because we’re against them, but because from our first year the goal was to post something every day of the year, a goal we’ve kept with very rare exceptions. I can’t exactly remember why I set that goal (come on, it was 9 years ago!), but probably because I thought our best chance of getting readers was to be out there on days when there was no competition. Now, we keep doing it out of sheer stubbornness.

Since it is Christmas Day, I thought about exclusively going with metal that has some kind of holiday theme, but with a trio of exceptions at the end of this giant new-music round-up, I tossed that idea out the window, unless you count the introductory music from Rotting Christ. And why wouldn’t you?

ROTTING CHRIST

My NCS colleagues and I seem to be having a disagreement about RC‘s new album The Heretics. One of us, who shall remain unnamed, thinks it’s repetitive and boring, a distillation of the sound of the last three or four albums but lacking in dynamic peaks and troughs. A couple of us (including me) acknowledge that it’s basically Rotting Christ firmly in their established groove, but is nonetheless a whole lot of fun. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2015’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: (PART 19)

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2015  3 Responses »
Feb 072016
 

Zatokrev-Silk Spiders Underwater

 

As I explained at the outset of this list, I didn’t have it finished when I began it. I’ve been making it up as I go along, without any pre-set idea of how long it would be. But since we’re now a week into February of 2016, I’m forcing myself to bring it to an end by this time next week. It hasn’t been easy, but I spent hours yesterday going through my still-massive list of song candidates and I’ve now got things in place in my head — or at least these things.

Beginning today and continuing through next Sunday I’ll post three new songs for the list each day. Except for next Sunday’s installment, I know which three I’ll post each day. And at the end, I’ll still have many more songs I’d like to post. But all good things must come to an end, and so this exercise will, too.

For most of the installments in the series up to now, I’ve grouped the songs according to certain themes, usually some kind of genre similarity in the groupings. But for most of the remaining installments, I’m focusing on variety, and grouping the songs together in ways that I think make for interesting listening, moving from one song to the next. To see the other songs on the list up to this point, click this link.

ZATOKREV

This band is so damned good. I feel that they haven’t yet gotten the widespread and tumultuous celebration that they deserve. I picked a song from their last album (The Bat The Wheel And The Long Road To Nowhere) for the 2012 edition of this list, and I’ve picked one for 2015 as well, because 2015 brought us another great new Zatokrev album — Silk Spiders Underwater… Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “SONGS FROM THE NORTH I, II & III”

 Album Reviews  16 Responses »
Nov 302015
 

Swallow the Sun-Songs From the North

 

(In the longest review we’ve ever published, DGR assesses the mammoth new three-disc album by Finland’s Swallow the Sun.)

We’ve had this disc for a bit. I know we’re late on this, but I hope to make it up you guys by essentially deep-diving and excavating this album, as there’s a ton going on with Songs From The North I, II & II that deserves to be highlighted.

I have become one with this album. It is inside me, and I am inside it. At this point, I consider myself the Jacques Cousteau of album reviewers — minus the whole being French, deep-sea diving, and talented part, but still. I believe the analogy holds on its own merits. I have stared into the abyss through the eyes of this album and asked if there was anything worth saving, and still my heart said, “No”.

Songs From The North is an album that a lot of folks have been approaching with equal measures of dread and excitement. A huge cause of this is obviously down to the fact that the up-front description of Songs From The North was essentially this: doom metal band from Finland decides to release a triple-album — as in, not one disc, or two discs, but three separate platters of music. Continue reading »

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