Andy Synn

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLEARxCUT – SONGS OF DESIRE ARMED

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 152022
 

(Andy Synn presents Songs of Desire Armed, the upcoming second album by CLEARxCUT)

While my love of Hardcore has been well-documented by now, there are still certain things about it which don’t always sit right with me (and I don’t just mean karate-dancing in the pit, whose ignorant, “look at me”, attitude has always seemed antithetical to the communal mindset of the genre).

In particular, despite supposedly being founded on principles of brotherhood and community, a lot of Hardcore bands/fans can be rather elitist and exclusionary – especially when it comes to emphasising the “brother” part – and while there have been a lot of moves towards changing this in the years since I first got into the genre, there’s still a fair way to go until Hardcore as a whole will be able to truly say that it practices what it preaches.

There are, however, still a lot of bands who both talk the talk and walk the walk, and CLEARxCUT – a vegan, anarchist, anti-fascist and straight-edge Metallic Hardcore collective made up of, among others, both current and ex-members of Implore, King Apathy, and Heaven Shall Burn – are unequivocally one of those bands, expressing their beliefs and ideals not to exclude or impugn others but to engage and inspire by example.

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WRETCHGOD – STYGIAN BLOOD RITUAL

 SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 112022
 

(Andy Synn uncovers a shiny new gem of an EP by Nebraska’s Wretchgod)

There’s a good chance that I won’t be around at NCS much this week, due to pressing business with my own band.

That being said, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pen a few words about Stygian Blood Ritual, the debut EP from abyssal Blackened Death Metal quintet Wretchgod.

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AN NCS PREMIERE: MOANHAND – BLEEDING BIRD

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 072022
 

(Andy Synn presents a brand new single from Moanhand – whose debut album, Present Serpent, was one of his top releases of 2021)

It’s impossible to begin writing today’s article without acknowledging the terrible elephant in the room.

It was just last year that I found my listening time dominated by numerous bands and albums from Russia, but now, in light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the seemingly daily reports of new and fresh atrocities being committed there, that seems like a lifetime ago.

Some of you, I’m sure, will be very much against the idea of us covering any Russian bands right now, but one thing that has become clear to me – after seeing all the protests, hearing all the bands, artists, and organisations speaking out against the invasion – is that the Russian government is not the Russian people, and the voices inside Russia decrying this war deserve to be heard.

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BLACKER THAN THE BLACKEST BLACK: TERZIJ DE HORDE / ULTHA / VANHÄVD / VIMUR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Apr 062022
 

(Andy Synn gazes into the abyss once more and finds four excellent albums gazing back!)

The debate about what is or isn’t “Black Metal” is probably one that’s never going to end.

And, honestly? That’s ok. Because as long as the debate is still going on it means that no-one has successfully codified and constrained the genre, leaving it free to continue to explore and expand its artistic boundaries.

Truth be told, I have less of an issue with bands being called “Black Metal” when they aren’t than I do with this weird idea some people (and bands) seem to have that slapping the label “Black Metal” on something somehow makes it good, or gives it some sort of veneer of credibility.

Let’s be honest, there are quite a few groups out there – some of them quite well-known – whose music would be just as good with or without the tenuous “Black Metal” tag which has been applied to them, but whose fans would riot and protest (online, anyway) if you tried to take it away from them, because they feel like they’d be losing something in the process.

Thankfully we don’t have to play any such semantic games with the four artists/albums I’ve selected for today’s article, as they are all clearly Black Metal, while also showcasing the vivid variety of both voice and vision which the genre embraces.

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THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 052022
 

(Andy Synn is back with another quartet of albums which may have flown under your radar last month)

March of 2022 certainly seemed to be a busy month for new releases, that’s for sure.

But, then, aren’t they all?

What I think made last month feel like a particularly packed one, however, is the fact that the last week or so was especially stacked with new albums – quite a few of which came as complete surprises to me – that it made the whole thing seem that much more overwhelming.

Obviously, of course, I won’t be able to cover all – or even a significant fraction – of them here in today’s article but I still think you’ll be pleased with what I’ve chosen to highlight (and I may or may not have also slipped one from last month into tomorrow’s piece too) as what I’m about to present you with is four different flavours of deathly delights drawn from across the Death Metal spectrum, most, if not all, of which will likely be totally new to a lot of you.

So let’s not waste any more time, shall we?

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THE SYNN REPORT (PART 144): IDOL OF FEAR

 THE SYNN REPORT  1 Response »
Mar 312022
 

Recommended for fans of: Shining, Blut Aus Nord, Dark Fortress

Ok, so this officially makes three Black Metal centric editions of The Synn Report in a row, and I swear I’ll try and change things up in April, but the release of the new album from Canadian iconoclasts Idol of Fear earlier this month meant that I couldn’t resist making them the focus of this article.

It helps that the band are an atypical example of Black Metal (some have tagged them as “experimental”, though I think that’s pushing it a bit far), as while the genre’s fundamentals are still a part of their sound they are, more often than not, incorporated and arranged in a pleasingly unorthodox fashion.

The guitars, for example, don’t hesitate to spin up some terrifically twisted tremolo melodies when they need to, but are just as often to be found strutting their stuff in a ghoulish, Shining-esque groove, or cutting loose with some strange, proggy solo work.

Similarly, the snarling vocals are delivered with a crisp sense of clarity and a wealth of cruel character, rather than just attempting to sound as evil and nasty as possible, and while blastbeats do make an appearance here and there, the overall pace of the music is far slower, and the drumming far more measured and intricate, than your average bunch of blackened blasturbators.

Combine that with an overarching atmosphere of encroaching darkness and dread (similar in many ways to the vaunted “Dark Metal” of Bethlehem) and you’ve got a trilogy of albums seemingly purpose-built to challenge your expectations when it comes to Black Metal!

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MESHUGGAH – IMMUTABLE

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 282022
 

(Andy Synn goes big with the new album from the inimitable, immutable, Meshuggah, out this Friday)

As you may know, if you’ve been hanging around this site for any length of time, we don’t always bother to cover the big names and famous faces.

After all, the big dogs already tend to get more than their fair share of attention and acclaim – since  they’re usually the ones with the bigger budgets, the best PR reps, and the most backing – so any coverage we might add would just be a drop in the ocean, relatively speaking.

Plus there’s the fact that, after a certain point, these sorts of bands just become “too big to fail”. No matter what the critics say – most of whom, let’s be honest, don’t want to risk rocking the boat by saying anything negative anyway – their fans are pretty much always going to pre-order their new stuff, so we’d be much better off dedicating our efforts to where, and who, they can actually make a difference.

There are exceptions to this rule, however, and I’m making one today for the new album by Meshuggah.

Not because, as some have already written, it’s “the band’s best album yet” (it’s not) or “a major step in their evolution” (it’s really not… though there are certainly seeds of something…) but because it’s a perfect example of an album which deserves a fair and balanced appraisal but which, due to the impenetrable aura of hype which surrounds the band these days, is unlikely to get it.

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BÂ’A – EGRÉGORE

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 242022
 

(Andy Synn reflects upon good and evil while listening to the new album from French extremists Bâ’a)

We are, or so it appears, in the middle of yet another Black Metal boom period.

Last week alone saw the release of new albums from (amongst others) Black Fucking Cancer, Dark Funeral, and Slægt, this week we’ve got new stuff from Falls of Rauros, Kanonenfieber, and Kvaen (which I’ve already written about here) and just within the next month we’ve also got new albums from Vimur, Vanum, Feral Light, Suntold and more all on the way.

Of course, with such a blackened bonanza of killer concoctions coming out it would be easy for some of the less well-known, less (in)famous, artists to be overlooked, which is why today I’ve chosen to turn my attention towards Egrégore, the upcoming second album (set for release this Friday) from French firebrands Bâ’a. Continue reading »

KVAEN – THE GREAT BELOW

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 232022
 

(Andy Synn checks out the new album from Kvaen, set for release Friday, to see if the band’s fire still burns as brightly)

I’d hazard a guess that most – if not all – bands, when they’re first starting out, do so with the dream that their first album is going to be the sort of massive breakthrough that instantly puts them on the map and establishes them as a force to be reckoned with.

What a lot of them probably don’t consider, however, is that this sort of instant, straight-out-of-the-blocks success can be both a double-edged sword and an albatross around your neck.

After all, I’m sure we can all name a number of bands whose debut immediately got them over with the fans but who, for whatever reason, never quite managed to achieve that same level of impact or intensity again.

Case in point, Kvaen‘s debut album, The Funeral Pyre, was unquestionably one of the best albums of 2020, one which seemed to come out of nowhere and immediately establish the band (in reality the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Jakob Björnfot) as a force to be reckoned with.

Two years have passed since then, however, and the impending release of the project’s second album, The Great Below, now has two major questions hanging over it… can lightning strike in the same place twice?

And, if so, can Kvaen capture it in a bottle once again?

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