Nov 292011
 

We are pleased to re-post some early remarks by Matti Riekki from the Inferno (Finland) web site about Swallow the Sun’s fifth album, Emerald Forest and the Blackbird, which will be released on Feb. 1, 2012, by Spinefarm Records. Thank dog for Google Translate:

“Swallow the Sun’s boss Juha Raivio said recently Inferno haastiksessa band from the forthcoming album to tell stories.

“If you mirror this against the Emerald Forest and the Blackbird is the atmosphere like a colorful blend of narrative, but the brutal teachings Grimm production, and even M. Night Shyamalanin life and fantasy adventures of the world movies.

“Musical waves are familiar in a large scale, tunnelmamelodisen matelumetallin marks go, but the trip can be found quite surprising ports, which should be enough to explore in the corners for a long time. Let’s just say this, that if one of the O-beginning with the band moving away from the metal market, annoying, this disc may be found in moments of comfort. (And do not now, pliis, take this, so that StS sounds like it is now beginning with the O-band. The question is more about building a political parable of the song.)

“Speech Shares, clean and rough vocals korinat alternate style, and the plate is sovitusten behalf of a good and balanced reverb. As far as the quality of the compositions, so deuce take, for the most part the songs do not leave a huge mind squeezing all correct any invalid. Right now, huimin kipale typeonegatiivisen atmosphere of the north end of the rotation period of a hymn on April 14th, which gets all the body hair sojottamaan smalliron bar. So is the man as the porcupine.

“Listening to the sum of the three in one sentence: I think this is definitely the most interesting Swallow’ta bushes, then come as a surprise debut. Invalid kaamosmasennella here.” Continue reading »

Nov 292011
 

(NCS writer BadWolf provides this review of the new album by Cormorant, which is still streaming at NPR, and which BadWolf calls “the album of the year.” )

These times are trying. The throat of winter is upon me here in the Midwest as my country prepares to enter its third year of depression and poverty, its eleventh of war. I drive home from work, NPR has nothing but bad news, and the only metal I can find on the radio during daylight hours is The Devil Wears Prada on the local Christian station. It was just Thanksgiving, what have I got to be thankful for (besides my family, friends, and relatively good health)?

Cormorant.

When these Bay Area wunderkinds released their debut, Metazoa, it was an amazing experience lost amidst a bumper-crop of instant-classics. Cheers to the underdog, the completely independent album that fought for our attention against heavyweights like The Way of All Flesh, ObZen, Crack the Skye, Watershed, and Blue Record.

Three years later, the follow-up, Dwellings, has arrived.

For those who are unaware, Cormorant’s music fuses narrative drama and melodic riffage. They borrow techniques from nearly every metallic subgenre, as well as folk and even classic rock, but don’t adhere to a single school of heaviness. This is the mixed martial arts of extreme music—Amon Amarth riffage into Ved Buens Ende weirdness. Their songs can be long, short, or anywhere in between. Those people put off by Opeth and Enslaved’s new records should find Cormorant to be a more than worthy successor. Continue reading »

Nov 292011
 

About the only way you could get Nachtmystium to stand still would be to nail their feet to the floor. Blake Judd and company are just too musically peripatetic to expect that what comes next will resemble what came before. Or at least that’s what I thought. But Nachtmystium and Chicago black metal band Murmur are releasing a 7″ split EP on a Lithuanian label called Inferna Profundus Records, which will include a new track from each band, and here’s what Nachtmystium has said about their contribution to the record:

“Our track is a total return to form, harking back to the writing styles of “Demise” and “Instinct: Decay”. This is a good sneak peak of what’s to come on our next full-length, which we intend to start recording in January / February, 2012 and will be released world-wide on Century Media Records.”

The 7″ vinyl can be ordered from Inferna Profundus here and will be available for shipping in a week or two. Following the vinyl release, Nachtmystium’s new track, “I Wait In Hell”, will also be released digitally via iTunes, Amazon, and other online music outlets via Century Media Records.

So, is the track really a throwback to Demise and Instinct:Decay? Well, hearing is believing, and I like what I hear (from both bands). After the jump, we’ve got a clip that includes two-minute segments from “I Wait In Hell” and Murmur’s song, “Shuttle I”. Continue reading »

Nov 292011
 

I have a feeling that not many of our readers spend much time at Pitchfork. Extreme metal isn’t exactly Pitchfork’s main brand affiliation. BUT, well-credentialed metal writer Brandon Stosuy has recently revived a monthly metal column at Pitchfork called Show No Mercy, and yesterday he posted his list of “The Top 40 Metal Albums of 2011”. I thought it was a fine, diverse list, and so I’m reprinting it here.

I haven’t heard all the albums on the list, but I’ve heard the majority of them, and if I had the energy and the mental clarity to make a Top 40 list of my own, I think many of the titles on Brandon’s list would be on mine, though not necessarily in the same order (of course). His list is also missing some albums I’ve liked a lot this year — for example, the 2011 releases by Krisiun, Vallenfyre, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Taake, Esoteric, Kroda, Thy Catafalque, Vader, Insomnium, The Devin Townsend Project (Deconstruction), Decaying, Decapitated, Entrails, Ghost Brigade, Xerath, Solstafir, Revocation, Alghazanth, Flourishing, Septic Flesh, Byfrost, Origin, The Black Dahlia Murder, Noctem, The Konsortium, Shining, Acephalix, Kartikeya, Infestus, Anaal Nathrakh, Rudra, Moonsorrow, Puteraeon — and there are more. I’m not saying I’d put all these albums in place of a like number on Brandon’s list, but there would certainly be some replacements. Still, I do like his list.

After the jump, take a gander at the Pitchfork Top 40 — but you should also visit the page where the list appears at Pitchfork because it includes well-done brief descriptions for each of the top 26 albums on the list, plus tracks to stream for each of those. You can get there via this link.

One more thing — that Tombs album that made it to the top of DECIBEL’s year-end-best list (as we reported yesterday) finishes very fucking high on this list, but not at the top spot. That honor goes to . . . well, you’ll see. Continue reading »

Nov 282011
 

As the end of 2011 approaches, we are about to be deluged with lists of the year’s best metal. We’re going to be doing again what we’ve done the last two years — publishing (1) lists of the year’s best albums by our regular writers, by guest contributors, and by our readers, and (2) our list of 2011’s most infectious extreme metal songs. As usual, we’re going to invite your participation in this frenzy of listmania at our site. Details about how you can do that will be coming later this week.

Listmania has already started at DECIBEL magazine — the only U.S.-based print metal mag still worth reading, in our humble opinion. The January 2012 issue will include their annual list of the Top 40 best extreme metal albums of the year. We haven’t yet received our copy here at NCS, but this morning we learned that DECIBEL has named Path of Totality by Brooklyn-based Tombs as the “Album of the Year”.

We’ve featured music and videos from Path of Totality several times this year, and it’s definitely one of my own favorite releases of 2011. So, congrats to Tombs for this signal recognition by DECIBEL. After the jump, you can stream the whole album, and if you like what you hear, it’s available on the Tombs Bandcamp page (here). Also after the jump, check out a cool video of Tombs performing live on a Hudson River metal cruise on October 22. We featured this video previously, but one good turn deserves another. Continue reading »

Nov 282011
 

(Here, TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Arizona’s Vektor.)

Originality is a loaded word when talking about music of any sort.  Some would argue there is no originality any more, that we have exhausted every worthwhile note combination, every beat, every possible syncopation and harmony imaginable.  If you’ll notice, and correct me if I’m wrong dear NCS readers, I have never used this word once in any of my reviews to describe a band’s sound as a whole.  I feel, however, that when it comes to intergalactic blackened space death jazz thrashers Vektor, “original” is exactly the word that must be applied.

No one else out there sounds like these guys, and they do what they do with unmatched conviction. I don’t know how many of you who read NCS heard this band’s debut album, Black Future, but to deny the UTTER SHEER FUCKING INSANITY of the music on that album would definitely be foolhardy. Vektor kind of fell off of my radar, though, after I listened to Black Future so many times that it created its own black hole and collapsed its own universe into it.  It was only like last fucking month that I found out Vektor would be releasing a new album entitled Outer Isolation.  To say I was pumped would be a huge understatement. To say that this album takes Vektor’s sound to the next level would be an even bigger fucking understatement.

For the uninitiated, Vektor play a crazy, fuck-nuts hybrid of thrash metal, black metal and death metal with jazz coloring.  But they don’t just add small doses and elements of these styles; they fully incorporate and combine them in all of their glory into cohesive, atom-smashing assaults.

In a nutshell, Vektor’s sound is something that by all conceivable logic should be impossible to pull off with such proficiency and legitimacy.  One would expect that their strategy would lead them in a completely directionless meandering, with a train wreck at the end (and that’s the ending I think just about anyone else would reach if they were to attempt what Vektor has done). That Vektor has avoided those pitfalls is part of what makes this album truly stand out.  The number of bands who have genre-blended this seamlessly and successfully I think could be counted on your fingers. Continue reading »

Nov 282011
 

(Andy Synn has had the chance for an advance listen to the next album from Abigail WilliamsBecoming — which is not due in stores until January 24. As you’ll see from Andy’s review, it made quite an impression.)

Very much an album of music put together as an individual artistic statement, Becoming effortlessly embodies that central paradox of black metal; the more the bounds and prescribed rules of orthodoxy are stretched, the more the central tenet of the genre, “do what thou wilt”, is given shape and form.

Throughout the 55+ minutes of music contained on this disc, the group weave a tapestry of their influences together into a sound that, whilst still woven through with slender, gossamer threads which tie it to the past, is fuller and more realised, yet at the same time more dream-like and unearthly, than anything that has gone before.

The venomous ire of the vocals remains undimmed, each spiteful tirade and scornful diatribe spat forth with vehement fury like flames from the mouth of hell itself, raising them above the empty cascades of hollow invective that  spill from the mouths and minds of so many of their so-called peers.

The scathing incandescence of the guitar work melds restrained technicality with devastating, brazen intensity, the guitarists thrashing, scratching and clawing at their instruments like those possessed, underpinned throughout by serpentine bass-lines which flow and undulate seductively through the warp and weft of the music and by the towering drums of Zach Gibson, who gives a varied and multi-faceted performance whose monstrous speed and colossal power is matched only by its unyielding grasp of the many intricate subtleties and nuances of performance and restraint required to give breadth and depth to the lengthy and complex structures of each piece.

In addition to all this, however, it is the group’s use of real strings and piano work that is one of the strongest and most distinctive elements on the entire album, manifesting in a manner which eschews the predictable “symphonic” approach in favour of more subtle and refined compositions. This more classically inclined ideology sees a wealth of keyboard tones and stringed accompaniments employed as singular instruments in and of themselves, each designed to contribute in a specific and precise way to each song, adding another voice to the choir of rapturous instrumentation without ever succumbing to the devilish temptations of symphonic pomp and excess. Continue reading »

Nov 282011
 

Thanks to Metal Bandcamp and MaxR, I discovered yesterday that Cormorant has made its new album, Dwellings, available for pre-order on Bandcamp (here). This supplements the now-closed exclusive pre-order option that the band offered earlier in the fall through their blog page.

As MaxR reported, you can choose between 7 different packages ranging from the download-only for $7 up to a bundle that includes the CD, a t-shirt, a zip-up hoodie, and the album download for $50 (plus shipping). The CD comes in a 6-panel Digipak, which includes the hand-drawn vertical panorama cover artwork by Alice Duke, full-color on-disk design, and a 12-page booklet containing lyrics and liner notes.The pre-orders will ship on December 7, which is the day after the official album release.

Maybe best of all, for people who are as impatient as I am, if you make a pre-order, you get an immediate download of three tracks from the album. Like MaxR, I went with the shirt+CD option and got me that immediate download in the bargain. The band is also now streaming those three tracks on their Bandcamp page. You can find two of them streaming elsewhere (“Junta” and “The Purest Land”), but as MaxR noted, the third one didn’t seem to be currently available anywhere except at Bandcamp.

That third song is called “The First Man”, and it’s now available for purchase all by itself for $1. A few words about the song, plus the song-stream, follow the jump. But as of this morning, the whole album is now streaming at NPR, whose writer Lars Gotrich had this to say about the record: “Dwellings is, far and away, the best metal record of 2011: an emotionally and musically complex album which wrestles with our desperate and sometimes violent attempts to secure a place in history.”

By the way, speaking of the fantastic Dwellings album cover by Alice Duke, you should check out her on-line portfolio here for more fantastic-ness. Also after the jump: the full vertical piece of artwork, of which the cover is only a part. Continue reading »

Nov 272011
 

Here we have three one-man projects, one recently signed to a major label and the others unsigned, and all of them worth a listen: Liberteer (California), Amputation Spree (North Carolina), and Morgh (Pennsylvania).

LIBERTEER

Liberteer is the creation of SoCal resident Matt Widener, a former Marine, a former member of Exhumed, and the bass player for Cretin. Widener’s previous solo project was called Citizen. Earlier this month, Relapse Records announced that it had signed Liberteer and will be releasing the band’s debut album, Better To Die On Your Feet Than Live On Your Knees, on January 31, 2012. Widener had these comments about the Liberteer project:

“My thoughts on politics slowly changed over the past six years. In Citizen I had a sense of outrage about our government, but because it still supported the idea of state, it doesn’t make much sense to me now. I’ve come to embrace the ideas of anarchy. The old band name, Citizen, represents a system of exclusion and nationalism, things I can’t stand now, so I had to rename the band and change a lot of things. I think the good things about the music are still there—the thematic, major-key riffs, the d-beats and blasts—but the message is now pure.

“The album is one long song, with a handful of the coolest riffs reappearing as leitmotifs, like a pissed off opera made of blasts and d-beats. It’s utterly relentless. Plus, there’s a training montage at the halfway point.”

Seeing this in a press release was enough to pique my interest. I’m particularly curious about the “training montage”. But what sealed the deal was listening to the title track. Continue reading »

Nov 262011
 

Last night, Oregonian black-metal icons Agalloch played a special show in Tel Aviv, Israel. Through the wonders of the interhole, a high-quality video of the show’s opening has already surfaced. It depicts the usual Agalloch incense-burning ritual that takes place before the live music starts, followed by “They Escaped the Weight of Darkness” and “Into the Painted Grey”. A second video features the band performing “Odal” and “Of Stone, Wind, and Pillor”. The video quality of both clips is excellent, and the sound quality is decent. As a die-hard Agalloch acolyte, I have to feature these videos (after the jump). They’re reminders of how fucking much I’ve enjoyed the Agalloch shows I’ve seen.

And this also gives me an excuse to report other Agalloch news that I meant to say something about a while ago: Agalloch has established a Bandcamp page and are using it to distribute eight (mainly acoustic and ambient) tracks of music, available for purchase individually, that previously appeared on compilations or hard-to-find EPs and LPs. You can stream and buy them HERE, including the epic 18-minute song “Scars of the Shattered Sky”, which originally appeared as a bonus “D side” track on the Ashes Against the Grain LP. I picked one of those songs to play for you after the jump, too.

“Temples of magma stream across the grey
The arc that transcends my iconic pride . . .” Continue reading »