OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 13): JUPTERIAN, FORGOTTEN TOMB, GLOSON, HATE, MARTHYRIUM

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  2 Responses »
Jan 262018
 


Jupiterian

 

As you can probably tell, I’m beginning to feel the pressure of time running out. If I’m going to finish this list by the end of January I may have to do more of what I’m doing today — packing more songs into each of these posts than I’ve been doing. Although I doubt I’ll have time to add five each day, I’m able to do that today.

And the key word for today’s installment of the list is “crushing”.

JUPITERIAN

There’s heavy, and then there’s HEAVY.  As metals go, Lead is heavy, but Iridium is twice as heavy as lead. As metal bands go, Jupiterian is the Iridium of heavy music. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 12): ADVENT SORROW, A HILL TO DIE UPON, AETHERIAN, DEVILGROTH

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  3 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

Another day, another edition of our Most Infectious Song list, with a trio of black metal tracks and a song that might be a bit of a cheat.

ADVENT SORROW

With their 2015 debut album, As All Light Leaves Her, Australia’s Advent Sorrow made a beneficial change in their sound. As Andy Synn wrote in his review, they “shed the symphonic grandeur that permeated their debut EP in favour of an all-round darker and more desperate form of borderline DSBM-style sonic despair… resulting in an album of bleak, harrowing melody and torturous metallic agony that errs closer to the sound of Infestus or early Shining than it does the more dramatic Dimmu Borgir-isms with which the band first made their name”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SKJULT — “INTO THE VOID”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

Cuba is home to the black metal band Skjult, through which its lone member Conspirator channels his dark and devilish creative impulses. 2016 brought forth Skjult’s first album, Within the Flesh, and on February 21st of this year Satanth Records and Black Metal Propaganda Deutschland will jointly release the second one, a 41-minute assault entitled Progenies Ov Light.

The new album, which consists of seven songs and a bonus track that appears as a tribute to Trond Alastor Nefas (Urgehal/Beastcraft), reflects changes in Skjult’s musical direction as compared to the first album. Two songs have appeared so far in the run-up to the album’s release, and today we bring you a third one: “Into the Void“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SPIRITUAL DECEPTION – “SPIRITUAL DECEPTION”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

It should be evident by now that many Italian death metal bands have undergone gene-splicing experimentation, introducing the speed of cheetahs and the ferocity of wolverines into their DNA, along with cybernetic augmentation that enables machine-like precision in the execution of their jet-fast musical assaults. But if more evidence were needed, we present for your consideration the debut self-titled EP of Spiritual Deception from Milano, which is being released today.

The EP’s eye-catching cover art by Chebakov (who also created the art for Hideous Divinity’s Adveniens album, among other works) ought to be sufficient inducement for you to lend the EP your ears, but I’ll try to provide further temptation. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): HUMAN SERPENT, KAVYK, THE KRYPTIK, LIVING ALTAR, NIPHREDIL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

Yesterday I posted the first Part of this three-part collection of new or recently discovered black metal. If the rest of my life will cooperate, I should be able to post Part Three tomorrow. As previously explained, I arranged all the music in alphabetical order by band name and then divided the list into thirds. And so tomorrow’s music comes from bands whose names follow the letter N — unless I find something else I want to tack on, or forget how to alphabet.

HUMAN SERPENT

My comrade DGR pointed me to For I, the Misanthropist, the third album by the Greek band Human Serpent. I don’t think we’ve written about Human Serpent before, although in preparing to write this post I saw that the band’s last release (just a few months ago) was a 20-minute collaboration with Isolert, who I have tried to expose to our readers on a couple of previous occasions. That’s a release I need to listen to (and you can listen to it here as well). Continue reading »

REPLICANT — “NEGATIVE LIFE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

(We present a guest review of the new album by New Jersey’s Replicant, written by Stephen Matthew Schwegler, a member of Pyrrhon, Seputus, and Weeping Sores.)

Being a songwriter in a vastly under-appreciated but densely populated genre, the importance of a strong identity seems, to me, paramount. To be fair, I am biased in the case of the band Replicant. I love single-word band monikers. I love brutal and atonal slamming death metal. I love Pete/Mike/Matty as individuals, and my band has played shows with them numerous times now.

That being said, the creature that is Replicant inhabits a long-missed niche in death metal for me. Concise and elegant, their simplistic namesake tells you everything you need to know about the band before ever hearing the music. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2017’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 11): PARADISE LOST, GOATWHORE, ZIGGURAT

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2017  3 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

Welcome to Part 11 of this list. Without further introductory verbiage, let’s proceed with three more tracks.

PARADISE LOST

Medusa was one of those albums that popped up repeatedly in the Top 5 of year-end lists published by print zines and “big platform” web sites that we included in our year-end LISTMANIA extravaganza. Some of the albums in the upper reaches of those rankings were suspect, having the whiff of big-name pandering. But not this one… this one deserved all the honors it got (and of course it appeared on many of our own year-end lists).

To paraphrase something that Andy Synn wrote in his review of the album, it was almost shocking to realise that somehow, almost thirty years on since the release of their debut, Paradise Lost were right back at the very top of their game. As Andy also opined, Medusa is “utterly monstrous” — “one of the darkest, heaviest, and doomiest albums of their career”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AVSLUT — “PESTILENS”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

In 2016 the Swedish black metal band Avslut released a very promising debut EP named Vanskapt, and now comes the time for their first full album, Deceptis, which will be released on February 23rd by Osmose Productions. Two tracks from the album, “Deceptis” and “Terra Mater”, have previously appeared, demonstrating that Vanskapt was no fluke, and today we have a third one for you.

“Pestilens” is a good demonstration of Avslut’s ability to integrate moving, atmospheric melody, of the kind that fires the imagination, gripping rhythmic propulsion, and blood-rushing savagery. Osmose proclaims that “Avslut is a weapon”, and you’ll get no argument here, but they are more than that, as “Pestilens” proves Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BIND TORTURE KILL — “VISCÈRES”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

There are no tender mercies on Viscères, the new album by the French maulers in Bind Torture Kill. There is no mercy at all, no prisoners taken, no glass-half-full outlook on the future. But there is staggering power, frightening intensity, and the kind of visceral impact that usually triggers a fight-or-flight response in the average human.

Viscères will be released on January 26th by WOOAAARGH. The label describes the music as “chaotic blackened hardcore”, a charred form of Converge or Trap Them that should also appeal to fans of Baptists, Employed To Serve, God Mother, and The Rodeo Idiot Engine. You can judge for yourselves, because today we present a full stream of the album — preceded by some thoughts of my own. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ACHERONTAS, ALGHAZANTH, BASALTE, CLARET ASH, COVERED IN FLIES, DRUDKH, GOAT SEMEN

 SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Jan 242018
 

 

Because of an event-filled out-of-town trip last weekend I wasn’t able to prepare a SHADES OF BLACK column for Sunday, or anything for Saturday. Fortunately, DGR stepped in with a 3-part SEEN AND HEARD round-up that launched on Saturday and continued through Monday. Now I’m going to do something similar, with this column’s usual focus on black metal. I’ve amassed a substantial collection of new music and a few news items that also interested me. I’ve organized them in alphabetical order and divided the list into three parts, with the goal of posting Parts 2 and 3 tomorrow and Friday.

Of course, in the meantime the odds are that I’ll find something else I’d like to include, which may necessitate screwing up the alphabetized ordering.

ACHERONTAS

I’m beginning Part 1 of this collection with the first of a trio of enticing news items I’ve included here. As announced today by Agonia Records, the Greek occult black metal band Acherontas (whose gear is pictured above) will be releasing a seventh studio album this spring. Yes, it’s true that Acherontas released an album only last year — Amarta अमर्त (Formulas of Reptilian Unification Part II) — but that’s no reason to be any less excited to receive a new one.

As for why this new one is appearing so quickly on the heels of the last one, the press release we received included this statement by the band: Continue reading »

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