(Another months is in the history books, and so it’s time for KevinP to name the releases from last month that most impressed him.)
May has been the most ecletic month of the year so far. Interesting and all over the map (as you’ll see below). I guess that’s why it took me more time than usual to decide on the final pecking order. I went back and forth a few times, even shuffled albums in and out. Damn you metal for making me THINK 😉
Anyways, here we go… Continue reading »
NCS and Oregon’s Arkhum go waaaaay back. We first featured the band in July 2010 (here) on the strength of rough mixes of their first three songs and the eye-catching artwork for the album on which they were destined to appear — Anno Universum. We’ve written about them many more times since then, and today we’re happy to bring you a premiere of the first new Arkhum music since their second full-length in 2013, Earthling (reviewed here). It’s a pre-production demo of a song named “The Skies Do Give Succor”, which in final form will appear on the band’s third album, projected for release in early 2016.
An aura of gloom and doom shrouds “The Skies”, its grim, dissonant guitar melody writhing around the somersaulting bass notes and the potent drum beats, which move from tribal pounding to bursts of machine-gun blasting. Kenneth Parker’s scathing shrieks tear like claws against skin, relenting long enough for the song to slow and drift into a bass-led interlude whose sombre tones are accented with the clash of a cymbal and Stephen Parker’s delicate guitar work. Continue reading »
(Our Kansas-based friend Derek Neibarger — the man behind the Godless Angel death metal project and the inventor of the Cat Hand Rest©, brings us his interview of Johnathan Matos of Abiotic.)
I recently caught up with guitarist and founding member, Johnathan Matos, to talk about the new album, new band members, and breakfast. Continue reading »
Poland’s Disloyal have been recording music since the late 1990s, with three albums to their credit, beginning with 1999’s Pessimistic. There have been significant changes in Disloyal’s line-up over the years, with only drummer “Jaro” Paprota remaining from the group in its original configuration, now joined by guitarist Artyom Serdyuk (Deathbringer, Thy Disease, Amentia, Woe Unto Me), bassist Kolya Kislyi, and vocalist Krzysztof Bendarowicz (Deathbringer). The new line-up have recorded a fourth album entitled Godless, and today we bring you the premiere of the album’s seventh track: “Mors Imperator Mundi“.
With so many changes in the band’s line-up since their last album (2008’s Prophecy), it’s perhaps reasonable to consider Godless a new beginning, and this new song is a sign of the changes. Continue reading »
Sunday is an odd day to choose for song premieres. But for a band whose rise to prominence has been as meteoric as Ghost B.C.‘s, I guess it doesn’t really matter — word of a new song will spread regardless of it coming out on one of the sleepiest days of the week. And yes, yesterday Ghost B.C. released a new song, named “Cirice“.
The song will appear on the band’s new album Meliora, which is now scheduled for release on August 21 via Loma Vista Recordings. The new song and the new album feature a new front person, anointed Papa Emeritus III and described as the “three-month-younger brother” of the band’s last Papa Emeritus. What’s more, the song comes with its own cover art — and it’s available for free download, here: Continue reading »
Can it be? Is it truly seven days since last we gathered here to unburden ourselves? Oh, my congregation, I weep for you, and for the sins you must have accumulated. How they must weigh upon you.
But rejoice, for the time of absolution is at hand once more!
As always my children, you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine… Continue reading »
This weekend’s posts at our site will be few and far between. My wife and I will be venturing into the wilds of eastern Washington in a couple of hours to attend a wedding late this afternoon, followed by the usual post-nuptials carousing. I’m not sure when we’ll get back home tomorrow or what condition I’ll be in, but it’s likely that all we’ll have at NCS tomorrow will be another edition of Father Synn’s Metal Confessional (be sure to start mentally enumerating your sins so you’ll be ready to spew them forth in all their vile putridity). Before disappearing, I do have a couple of randomly chosen selections of new music that I came upon in recent days and really enjoyed.
BEARSTORM
As you know, we follow the releases of Baltimore’s Grimoire Records very closely, because they’re so consistently good. The latest release is coming on June 30 (CD and digitally), and it’s an album entitled Americanus by a Richmond, Virginia, band named Bearstorm. I haven’t heard the full album yet, but the one song from it that’s now available for streaming is very good. Continue reading »
Here are a couple of new things (one new song and one new video) that I thought I’d recommend before the work week comes to an end. They’re both instrumental pieces, but that’s about where the similarity ends.
TEMPEL
A couple of days ago Arizona’s Tempel premiered another new song (“Descending Into the Labyrinth”) from their forthcoming album The Moon Lit Our Path — which will be released by Prosthetic Records on June 16. I meant to write about it sooner than now, but my fucking day job derailed my plans. Better late than never, I hope. Continue reading »
Last month we featured an advance track named “Horns ov Gaia” from GTRD, the second album by Germany’s Thornesbreed and their first in 12 years. Now we bring you the premiere of another track, “Dividua Anima Pt I“.
“Horns ov Gaia” was a very intense, gripping, dark piece of music, with slower, harrowing segments pulling you in, and then rapacious blasting segments proceeding to tear you apart. “Dividua Anima Pt I” makes use of similar weapons. Its beginning is slow, pitch black, and dissonant, the constant vibration of the riffs and the explosive drumbeats accompanying what sounds like the enraged howls of a demonic bestiary to create a supernatural aura of doom and derangement. Continue reading »
I’m getting a late start on the blog this morning. I spent hours on the phone with world leaders attempting to answer their urgent questions about an array of socio-economic and security crises. After a while I got tired of it and just started repeating a convenient mantra, “FUCK THE FACTS”.
AHAB
That album art up there is fucking fantastic. I have very high hopes for the album, too, which is the first one from German’s Ahab in four years. The title is The Boats of The Glen Carrig and it’s a musical interpretation of a 1907 horror novel of the same name written by William Hope Hodgson (more info about the book can be found here). Continue reading »