OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 13): HIPPOTRAKTOR, TEN TON SLUG, IHSAHN

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 202025
 

(written by Islander)

Welcome to the lucky 13th Part of this list. In line with my original plan of posting a new installment every weekday until January expires, I now have 9 Parts left to go. Out of line with previous years’ lists, I’ve already planned which songs to include in each of those remaining Parts, though I suspect I’ll still make revisions because my brain won’t stay still and it’s so fucking difficult to stare at all the worthy songs I haven’t made room for.

As for today’s installment (and most of the ones still to come), I have grouped the songs together because they include certain stylistic ingredients that I thought would fit them together well. But you’ll be the judge of that, of course. To see the songs in the preceding 12 Parts, use this link. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WHERE THE LIGHT FADES — “TORN OUT”

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Jan 202025
 

(written by Islander)

A new week dawns at our site, and with it we bring a song premiere that’s the dawn of a new EP by Where The Light Fades, a Toronto-area band that arose during the pandemic from the ashes of Astaroth Incarnate.

This new EP is a three-song offering entitled Into The Depths of The Black Creek, and it will be released on January 31st by the Northernshadow label, which previews it this way:

Expect a mixture of black, doom, and some melodic death metal in the vein of Wolves In The Throne Room, Imperium Dekadenz, Mgła, Darkthrone, Taake, and early Katatonia.The lyrics are based on life, death, and grieving – something anyone can relate to. Continue reading »

SHEDFROMTHEBODY – WHISPER AND WANE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 202025
 

(Andy Synn finds that the fourth time continues to charm when it comes to Shedfromthebody)

With 2025 finally starting to get into gear, it’s time for us to start looking ahead and planning out what artists and albums we’re going to review over the next few months (and beyond).

That being said, it’s always important to leave a little bit of wiggle room in your schedule for an unexpected surprise or two… such as the recently-released new album from Finnish “Doom-gaze” chanteuse Suvi Savikko, aka Shedfromthebody.

Continue reading »

CHRONICLING CORRODED CRENELATIONS OF RESONANCE – LONGFORM MUSINGS ON KOKESHI, MESARTHIM, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, LYCOPOLIS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 202025
 

(As the title of this post signifies, our Vietnam-based contributor Vizzah Harri shares some thoughts about new music by kokeshi, Mesarthim, Imperial Triumphant, and Lycopolis, but in this month of beginnings and transitions he also shares a great many other abundantly-linked thoughts before getting there, many of them concerning “theft and intertextuality within music.”)

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” – ultimate guitar user quote… originally by H.P. Lovecraft

It was 210 days left in my 40th year when I started writing this. One of my exes recently said the reason I’ll remain single for life is because I refuse to grow up, probably also why my articles read like they were written by a teenager on crack. 210 is a Harshad number. Harshad originates from the Sanskrit harṣa (joy) + da (give), meaning joy-giver. I for one rejoice in the bliss of discovering new music gushing in from my headphones.

2024 was the year of the dragon, a word which finds its origin in the Greek drakōn or ‘serpent’. 2025 will be the year of the snake, from 蛇 or Shé in traditional Chinese, or Hebi in Japanese Kanji which refers to “the winding thing.” This bodes well for what is to come for the dragon sharing so much of its hoard with us in music. And their etymologies being so linked one could only imagine 2025 to be as prodigious in output. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: RUINOUS POWER, DAKÛ, NECRODANCER, BESNA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jan 192025
 

(written by Islander)

What is the correct adjective for the genre of music known as Black Metal? Is it “blackened“? I think not. “Blackened” is a word I often see applied to the music of bands who play something other than Black Metal but add ingredients that people think are drawn from Black Metal, even if it’s nothing more than shrieks, blizzard-like tremolo riffs, or blistering blasts, even though none of those elements is unique to Black Metal.

So if “blackened” really isn’t right, then what is? Other adjectives commonly used to describe Black Metal are even less specific to the genre — words like “grim,” “cold,” “nihilistic,” “misanthropic,” or “kvlt,” and for some kinds of Black Metal they don’t fit very well at all.

How about “Black Metallic“? Linguistically, it appears to be accurate; “metallic” is an accepted adjective for things relating to or being a metal, and there’s also an accepted definition of “metallic” that refers to “having a harsh or rasping sound.”

There’s a risk that if “Black Metallic” were accepted, it could become a noun. After all, the term “Classical Music” originally might have been intended as an adjectival phrase but is now a noun, and has been for a very long time. But I don’t think it would be terrible if people used “Black Metal” and “Black Metallic” interchangably. Of course that will never happen. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: IN THE WOODS…, BONG-RA, DESSIDERIUM, NOMADIC RITUALS, AGHARATH, BRAT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 182025
 

(written by Islander)

I’m going to a memorial service today for a friend who died of brain cancer. First time I’ve been in a church since the last church funeral I attended, which was pre-covid. During covid I attended two memorial services via zoom, one for my best friend, the other for my most important mentor, both of them killed by the same disease that then kept their friends and family from remembering them in a shared physical space.

The arc of life being what it is, the longer you survive, the more chances you’ll have to show up for those who succumbed before you have. I really don’t want to go to today’s service, or any of them. Who does? But at some point in the distant past I learned from what other people did when I lost family members I loved: I learned the importance to the survivors of showing up, of being present, even if you don’t utter a word. Most of the words you might utter would sound so clichéd anyway that they’d risk coming off as phony even if they aren’t.

I make this dreary report only to explain why I’m late in posting this Saturday roundup and why it’s shorter than I wish it were. My head has been clouded by sorrow and dread since waking up, remembering the last times I sat with my friend when he could no longer speak and now daunted by the prospect of what’s coming later today. All that slowed me way down, though the music I did manage to investigate blew away those clouds, even if only temporarily, and even if sometimes they replaced them with other clouds. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 12): BENIGHTED, BAT, CELL PRESS, I AM THE INTIMIDATOR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  3 Responses »
Jan 172025
 

(written by Islander)

For today’s Part 12 of the list I had enough time to pack in four songs, and I wanted to get these four songs out together because (at least in my own mind) they have a kind of throughline of visceral appeal. The first and last one are just batshit wild, while the two in the middle are more mid-paced but are real good neck-punchers, and kind of crazed in their own ways.

To find the preceding 11 installments of this list, use this link. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SPOILED — “ZOMBIE HUNTERS”

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Jan 172025
 

(written by Islander)

With a pair of launching-pad EPs behind them, the Italian hellraisers in Spoiled are now on the verge of releasing their debut album Collapse, which will be discharged in February by the Portuguese labels Gruesome Records and Selvajaria Records. The labels preview what’s coming with this description:

This release delivers 15 tracks of blistering, violent, and fast-paced Thrash/Crossover at 250 BPM. Inspired by legends such as D.R.I., S.O.D., Slayer, Iron Reagan, Crumbsuckers, Ratos de Porão, Raw Power, Nuclear Assault, and Municipal Waste, Collapse is a high-octane homage to the genre’s greats.

Today we have a more concrete preview, as we premiere a video for the album track “Zombie Hunters” — a song that uses familiar legends of the ghoulish undead as a metaphor for a different kind of plague. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MACERATION

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Jan 172025
 


Photos by Anna Vibeke Johansson – Nation North

(Following their It Never Ends… comeback album in 2022, which arrived 30 years after their debut, the Danish death metal band Maceration will soon return with a new one named Serpent Devourment that’s set for release by Emanzipation Productions on January 31st. What we have for you today is a very good interview by our contributor Zoltar of Maceration‘s Jakob Schultz.)

So yeah, fuckin’ sue me: I never really liked Maceration‘s 1992 debut A Serenade in Agony. Ok, let me correct this: I liked it but I never loved it you know? It felt exactly like what it was supposed to be, that is, an almost too-ambitious-for-its-own-good attempt by some locally popular thrashers (in that case, Invocator), after having sniffed in the air that the tide had turned to catch up with the times and thus what was THE thing back then, aka death metal.

But the production somehow didn’t fit and the songs were too long, the biggest draw for me being the presence of then nineteen-years-old Dan Swanö from Edge of Sanity and the fact that his trip to Denmark to meet up and record his vocal parts allowed him to quickly snap a picture of an eerie layer of clouds from the plane’s window which ended up as the cover artwork for Pan.Thy.Monium’s debut album Dawn Of Dreams (yes, I’m that kind of nerd, sorry not sorry).

So even with the surprising return, yet still as a session member only, of Swanö three decades later on their comeback album It Never Ends… I didn’t have high expectations to be fair. That is until I saw Ola Larsson‘s sublime Cthulhuesque artwork and listened to its opening track, “Lost In Depravity”. Full of, wait, freakin’ drenched in, HM-2 delight and far more in-your-face and damn brutal than its clumsy predecessor, it simply ripped. And on the top of it, Swanö gave one of his (and it seems last as a growler) vilest performance ever, as if wanting to show his former friends in Bloodbath how it’s done. Did I like it? Boy, I freakin’ worshipped that album from the get-go. Check mate. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 11): OPETH, BORKNAGAR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  2 Responses »
Jan 162025
 

(written by Islander)

In yesterday’s installment of this list I think it’s fair to say that I spelunked pretty far underground with the selections, and (to mix my metaphors) veered off the beaten paths we usually beat around here. And so it seemed appropriate today to bounce back with songs from two bands of long standing and widespread veneration, both of whom released standout albums last year (though the first one wasn’t without its fan controversies).

I should add another explanation for today’s choices: I listened to hundreds of songs last year and found many of them infectious, as I define the word, far too many to include all of them in this list. And so part of what I try to do is to make choices that also provide a reflection and survey of metal in 2024, though in all cases my own tastes are still in command.

To find yesterday’s unconventional installment and all the other Parts of this list so far, click this link. Continue reading »

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