Jun 282017
 

 

July 1st is the date set for the release of the debut album by Cleveland-based Contra. Entitled Deny Everything, it will come at you via Robustfellow Productions/Shifty Records. Today we’ve got a full stream of the album for you.

The very first half-minute of the album’s first track, “Human Buzzsaw”, tells you that the Contra crew know how to cook up thick, swampy, bluesy, physically compulsive riffs, and as the song proceeds you find that the band are equally adept at lacing their music with trippy soloing and draping it in a cloak of gloom. You’ll also experience the scraped-raw tirades of vocalist Larry Brent, which help to give the music a hard edge of incipient violence (and mental instability). Continue reading »

Jun 282017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli wrote this review of the debut album by the Norwegian/Polish band Liverum.)

Gojira has disappointed me as of late. Sure, I reviewed L’Enfant Sauvage with enthusiasm at the time, but there were a few conditions my enthusiasm was contingent upon. A: the assumption that the album was a one-off that was not a sign of things to come; B: the hope that the blatantly more commercial elements and attempts to be softer that they’d been teasing at since The Way Of All Flesh were just a phase; and C: the wish that the next album wouldn’t dial back the very essence of this band even further.

While co-writers of mine enjoyed Magma I thought it was nothing short of blasphemy to the Gojira name. Since then, I’ve looked for bands that channeled Gojira, not in precisely literal musical terms but at least in spirit, for sure. Continue reading »

Jun 272017
 

 

(Todd Manning rejoins us with a review of the debut album by Indiana’s Steed.)

In the age of all things old become new again, we often see modern day Metal musicians looking to the genre’s forefathers for guidance, and Indianapolis-based quartet Steed have certainly learned their lessons well. Their debut full-length, Surrounded by Cowards, was issued near the end of April courtesy of Small Hand Factory Records, who successfully tapped a similar vein recently with Kulthammer’s Oath.

The key here is Steed’s ability to meld the songwriting chops of the genre masters with the grit of today’s underground. Album opener, “Speed Weed Steed” sets the stage with its venomous mix of underground Thrash and Motörhead. There is an undeniable Punk edge to the proceedings as well, the kind of swagger that is sure to keep their audiences drinking and fist-pumping, engaging in all things lawless and belligerent. Continue reading »

Jun 272017
 

 

On the final night of the Roadburn Festival in Tilburg this year, Norway’s Ulver used the main stage as the setting for an album release show, performing all the songs from their latest album The Assassination of Julius Caesar, though not necessarily in the order of the album presentation. Segmented by instrumental interludes and enhanced by a spectacular light show, it was a performance that by all accounts was a great success, even if it might have caught some onlookers by surprise if they hadn’t yet heard anything from this new record (which we reviewed here). On the other hand, for those familiar with Ulver’s musical odyssey, the experience of being surprised is no longer a surprise — it is to be expected.

Many other bands performed on Day Four of Roadburn, but the formidable concert photographer Levan TK — whose photo essays from the first three days we’ve posted previously (collected here) — concentrated on Ulver, talking with Kristoffer Rygg before the show and shooting a multitude of photos during the performance. For this final installment in his pictorial memorial to Roadburn 2017, we present Levan’s selection from those photos. If only we could have been there, too…. Continue reading »

Jun 272017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli review the new album by Dying Fetus, which is out now on Relapse Records.)

I’m just going to say it. If you don’t like Dying Fetus, nay, LOVE Dying Fetus, you don’t like death metal. I can think of no other band that has better personified the sonic violence, technical excess, genuine anger, uncompromising legacy, and lack of pretension that death metal is all about than Dying Fetus.

John Gallagher has been at this shit now for TWENTY-FOUR YEARS. He’s the godfather of the messy, grimy, seizure-inducing style of tech death, and his sound and approach to songwriting have never been successfully emulated, although no one really even dares to try. Who else is mixing technical death metal, grindcore, NYHC, and slam so well right now? Nobody that I’m aware of, and especially nobody who does it so organically, honestly, and with such passion and dedication. Continue reading »

Jun 272017
 

 

(New Zealand-based writer Craig Hayes (Six Noises) returns to NCS with this review of the new album by his countrymen in Heresiarch, which will be released on July 7 by Dark Descent.)

 

So here it is, Death Ordinance, the long-awaited full-length debut from New Zealand black/death wrecking machine Heresiarch. It’s no exaggeration to say that Death Ordinance is one of the most anticipated releases in the annals of Antipodean metal, and fans of belligerent and bestial metal the world over have been counting the days until the album’s release. That’s because Heresiarch deliver a singularly brute force audio onslaught –– aka everything you want in an obliterating war metal juggernaut.

Heresiarch are militant, violent, and ruthless; and hell, there’s even a whiff of spurious controversy about them too. All of that’s fuelled the band’s defiant mythos, which Heresiarch reinforce by delivering some of the most remorseless underground metal around. Continue reading »

Jun 272017
 

 

(DGR once again takes over round-up duties at our metallic fortress, presenting news and new music from six bands.)

This weekend was glorious if you were in a death grind sort of mood, as it felt like Friday was the first crack in a dam about to burst from a small handful of bands. Austria’s Distaste put out a new EP entitled Todt (which is curently name-your-own-price), and Belgium-based grinders Leng Tch’e and their fellow countrymen in the restless Aborted both began streaming new songs from their upcoming releases.

In fact, in compling this roundup I felt I had to temper the blade a little bit by tacking on something that wasn’t just raw fury from front to back, so Samael find themselves paired up alongside an EP announcement for Australian tech-death wonders The Ritual Aura and an ambient teaser that, were we not aware of just how heavy those guys can get, would be fairly calming. So, if you were looking to start your day without a massive pile of non-stop guitar batterings, relentless drumming, and vocals fired at the speed of a machine-gun, my friend…you’ve come to the wrong place. Continue reading »

Jun 262017
 

 

Yesterday, in the first part of this week’s SHADES OF BLACK, I recommended five recently released albums and throttled my tendency to put my own impressions into words. In this concluding part I opened the throttle, sort of. The music of nine bands is included here, ranging from individual advance tracks or singles to full albums or EPs. I know it’s a lot, but you’re men and women of steel, you can handle it… probably.

DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT

Most of us here were enormous fans of this German black metal band’s last album from 2015, Stellar. My friend Andy went so far as to call it in his review “a near-perfect snapshot of the genre. Its power and its potential. Both what it is, and what it can be.” And on August 25 we’ll have another album from this band, one entitled Finisterre. Continue reading »

Jun 262017
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Australia’s Somnium Nox, released last month by Transcending Obscurity Records.)

When you say the words “Atmospheric Black Metal” what most people seem to think of these days are the shimmering soundscapes and ethereal melodies characteristic of the so-called “Post-Black Metal” scene.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually a fan of many of those bands who fall under that vaguely defined “Post…” umbrella, but when I think about the term “Atmospheric Black Metal”, I think of bands like Wolves In The Throne Room and Altar of Plagues, bands for whom atmosphere is about more than just the simple juxtaposition of ambience and dissonance, it’s about texture and tension, mood and momentum.

It’s something that isn’t painted in broad strokes, but which is built up, painstakingly, piece by piece, into something altogether greater than the mere sum of its parts. Continue reading »

Jun 262017
 

 

(About 14 months ago Neill Jameson began a series for our site in which he recommended music in the vein of dark and negative hardcore. We posted a second installment in the series a few months later (here), and after that Neill compiled other lists of recommendations in different genres, including black metal. You can find all of these previous lists via this link. Now we’re fortunate to have Neill back with us for a third collection of negative hardcore.)

 

A year or so ago I started with the project of forcing my tastes unto others through these lists and in the spirit of having two ouroboros tattoos I figured I’d circle back to the first subject, which was dark and negative hardcore. I’m fitting one extra in from my usual format because I think this will probably conclude this genre, at least for the moment. So with that fascinating introduction let’s just jump into it. Continue reading »