SEEN AND HEARD (BY DGR): THE KENNEDY VEIL, BELPHEGOR, DAGON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Aug 282017
 

 

(DGR prepared the following round-up, featuring three items of news and new music that surfaced last week.)

Last week was a densely packed week for metal, with a lot of huge names like Arch Enemy, Ghost, and Mastodon all releasing music videos, and that wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg in metal news. There was so much that seemed to land backloaded onto Friday that it seemed like metal had just decided to spin up into one of its whirling torrents of destruction modes. Thus I once again step in to write about some of the things that caught my interest within the tornado of heavy metal that thrashed about over the week.

This time around we’re going to do a little traveling again, with two musical releases from Sacramento’s The Kennedy Veil, and Austria’s Belphegor, and then we’re going to take a look at the crowdfunding campaign from Lansing, Michigan’s own Dagon and their latest quest to write more ocean-themed death metal.

THE KENNEDY VEIL

It’s been some time since we last heard from Sacramento’s hyperspeed death metal group The Kennedy Veil. In the time since 2014’s Trinity Of Falsehood, The Kennedy Veil have seen the addition of a new vocalist, Monte Barnard, whose resume includes a ton of live vocalist work for groups like Alterbeast, Fallujah, and Thy Art Is Murder, in addition to having been the vocalist for The Antioch Synopsis and the short-lived Soma Ras. Last week the band were finally able to release details about their new disc, Imperium — which is due out October 20th — as well as release a new song, which premiered at Decibel. Continue reading »

EMPYREAN THRONE: “CHAOSBORNE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 282017
 

 

(DGR wrote this review of the new album by Southern California’s Empyrean Throne.)

There exists an alternate reality where the fusion of black metal and death metal, instead of favoring the atmospheres of the icefrost and bleak of the black metal side, took on the more mechanical and firebreathing aspects of the death metal spectrum. Where most blackened death metal tends to favor the ritual and romanticized pomp-and-circumstance theatricality loaned to it by its colder atmosphere-favoring brethren, in this alternate reality it instead leaned toward the heavier groove.

It’s not often that you see the phrase “sun-baked” attached to a disc, yet here we stand with Southern California act Empyrean Throne and their brand of symphonic bombast layered over a large feast of mechanized death metal, with the black metal aspect providing its ritual airs and snarling nihilism to the overall affair.

The group’s recently released album Chaosborne sounds like it was written from within a furnace, every song pushed to the maximum in terms of volume, and the instrumentation following suit, making grandiose sweeping movements from one carved-out blast to the next one. It envisions a world in which the entire planet is basically the high-desert, segments of sand so dry that it looks like it was created in a kiln and shaped into tiles, and those somehow still managing to crack under the heat of the sun. Continue reading »

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY, KEEPING IT TRIBAL WITH CLANN AN DRUMMA, AND GETTING LOST IN THE MAZE OF TERROR

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 272017
 

 

I made a swan dive into a lake of tequila last night at a friend’s birthday party. I surfaced this morning but I’m not swimming very well at the moment. Unfortunately, this means there will be no SHADES OF BLACK column today. I hope I’ll get it finished in time to post tomorrow. But in addition to this morning’s trio of reviews (which I wrote yesterday before the swan dive), I wanted to leave something further with you today.

I guess everything is coming in threes on this Sunday. Here are two videos and one-half of a split that I happened upon yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed. Apart from that coincidence there’s no real rhyme or reason for grouping them together in this post.

NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY

National Space Agency is an organization based in Sydney, Australia. The identities of its members are Classified — literally, their names are all “Classified“. They describe their music as “Cinematic Stoner Metal from Outer Space”. Their stated mission is to “regulate alternate timelines and parallel universes to restore the one true reality”. However, their new video fractured my reality. Maybe the pieces are being assembled into some new shape within my head, or what’s left of it. We shall see. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP: REBEL WIZARD, PALEOWOLF, BØG

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 272017
 

 

I spend so much of each day scurrying around to find and write about new songs from forthcoming releases and to prepare introductions for our own premieres that I rarely have time to write my own reviews of full releases, except in the context of introducing our premieres. On a whim I decided to stop scurrying for 24 hours and share at least a few thoughts about three recent releases I’ve been enjoying.

REBEL WIZARD: THE WARNING OF ONE

The new Rebel Wizard EP is out now. It’s described as “Four anti-shamanic pre-fetal negative metal anthemic warnings of ‘one'”. You should listen to it. You should especially listen to it if you have a taste for the kind of creativity that turns out music which is off of metal’s most familiar beaten paths — although you could also think of it as music that creates intersections of well-loved pathways that usually diverge. Continue reading »

METAL FOR MIXED COMPANY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  29 Responses »
Aug 262017
 

 

I’ve been in this situation more than once, and maybe you have too: I’m hanging out listening to music with people who don’t have much interest in metal and don’t know much about it (though everyone seems to have heard of Metallica), but they’re trying to be polite, so they ask if you’d like to pick something for everyone to listen to, in between whatever they’re playing.

I was in this situation last weekend, which is why I’m thinking about it. It wasn’t the first time, it won’t be the last. I don’t always come up with the same answers. It’s usually whatever pops into my head first. But either consciously or subconsciously, I’m usually thinking about catchy riffs, infectious rhythms, and melodies that people can latch onto fast. It’s usually tempting to steer clear of harsh vocals, but sometimes I just don’t give a fuck about that. Depends on the company I’m keeping and my own mood. Continue reading »

PARADISE LOST: “MEDUSA”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 252017
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Paradise Lost, which will be released on September 1 by Nuclear Blast.)

Not that long ago, the idea that Paradise Lost would, twenty years into their existence, be undergoing a well-deserved critical and commercial renaissance, would have been seen as… well, if not outright laughable, then certainly a little far-fetched.

That’s not to say that the band’s foray into the realms of dark, synth-heavy electro-rock was a complete failure (I’ll gladly go to bat for Host any day of the week) but, even so, there was a time when the band’s star seemed very much on the wane, and unlikely to ever ignite in the same way again.

And yet, ever since the release of 2007’s In Requiem the grim Northerners have been on a steady upswing, one which has seen them growing ever darker, ever heavier, and ever doomier over time, ultimately culminating in the utterly monstrous Medusa, one of the darkest, heaviest, and doomiest albums of their career. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NEPHREN-KA — “WATCH AND LEARN”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 252017
 

 

Nephren-Ka, a group of French brutalizers with a welcome thematic devotion to the universe of Frank Herbert’s Dune, made a very impressive full-length debut with 2013’s The Fall of Omnius. Four years later, they are returning with a new opus named La Grande Guerre de L’Epice, which will be released on October 13 by Dolorem Records. And although it’s predictable that people may wonder whether the band will fall prey to the dreaded sophomore slump, fans can rest easy. The early signs are that Nephren-Ka have moved from strength to further strength.

The new album, which includes French lyrics for the first time on some of the tracks, is a concept record consisting of nine chronological phases based on the Houses prequel stories written by Frank Herbert’s son and deals “with the attempt to create synthetic Spice and the ensuing imperial war”. We are very happy to present today one of the new album tracks, a slaughtering experience entitled “Watch and Learn“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ASAGRAUM — “CARRIED BY LUCIFER’S WINGS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 252017
 

 

In January of this year I haphazardly encountered (and then wrote about) two tracks — “Black Triangle Temple” and “Transformation” — which appeared to be the lone finished recordings by Asagraum, a two-woman band composed of Dutch guitarist/vocalist Obscura and drummer T. Kolsvart, who is Canadian but lives in Norway. They founded Asagraum in 2015, though both women have performed with other groups (T. Kolsvart, for example, has been a live drummer with the likes of Craft and Isvind, and Obscura is also a member of Draugur). I reported at that time that they had ambitions to release a debut album this year — and soon those ambitions will be realized.

On September 29, the Finnish label KVLT will release Asagraum’s debut album, Potestas Magicum Diaboli, which features artwork by Depravarts and Khaos Diktator Design. The album includes those two excellent tracks that I discovered in January plus six more, for a total of running time of 44 minutes. In May, one of those remaining six (“Black Sun Prayer“) also appeared on YouTube, and today we present the premiere of another: “Carried By Lucifer’s Wings“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PRIMORDIAL (ALAN AVERILL)

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 252017
 

 

 

(Greek writer John Sleepwalker of Avopolis.gr brings us another interview, and this time we have his e-mail discussion with Alan Averill (Nemtheanga), frontman of Primordial and Dread Sovereign and the once (and perhaps future) Blood Revolt. This interview was conducted in anticipation of Primordial’s headlining appearance at the Arcane Angels festival in Athens on September 16, 2017.)

 

It’s been 3 years already since Where Greater Men Have Fallen. A release considerably dark, compared to the ones that preeeded it. Do you believe Primordial lost a part of their darkness along the way, or maybe it has transormed in more subtle ways? 

Have we lost a part of it? I don’t know about that… the last album is definitely darker, for example, than the debut. Or in my opinion any of the first 4 albums. If we did lose our darkness, then how is the last album darker than the ones before? Strange question. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): OMEGA, ANTICHRIST SIEGE MACHINE, SEITA, SLOWLY BUILDING WEAPONS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 242017
 

 

Suppressing the nagging worry that we’re once again overwhelming you with too much new music, I present Part 2 of today’s two-part round-up. Part 1 included recordings by five bands, and this one has music from four more.

OMEGA

I begin with a song called “Sidera” off the debut album by a band ambitiously named Omega. Entitled Eve, it will be released by Dusktone on Oct0ber 1, and it’s apparently based on the 15th century Voynich manuscript, an illustrated volume written in a language that to this day has never been deciphered (read more here).

The participants in Omega are reportedly members of such other bands as Hanging Garden, Nostalgie, Deadly Carnage, Ashes of Chaos, and they’ve been working on the album for four years, with the aim (according to a description on Bandcamp) of creating “a subconscious experience, an atavistic expression that tends to destroy our deepest convictions, which are always limiting and promising”. Continue reading »

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