Islander

THE THRILL IS GONE

 Metal News  7 Responses »
May 152015
 

 

From the obituary in The New York Times, May 15, 2015:

B. B. King, whose world-weary voice and wailing guitar lifted him from the cotton fields of Mississippi to a global stage and the apex of American blues, died Thursday in Las Vegas, The Associated Press reported. He was 89.

His death was reported to The A.P. by his attorney, Brent Bryson.

Mr. King married country blues to big-city rhythms and created a sound instantly recognizable to millions: a stinging guitar with a shimmering vibrato, notes that coiled and leapt like an animal, and a voice that groaned and bent with the weight of lust, longing and lost love. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HIDEOUS DIVINITY, COFFINS, TEMPLE OF DAGON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 142015
 

Hey there. I thought I’d quickly throw a few new things your way that I found earlier today. Then I have to go do something that actually pays my bills. Regrettably, on some days there seems to be a limit to how much unvarnished fucking off I can do at my job.

HIDEOUS DIVINITY

There’s a new play-through video for one of the best songs on Hideous Divinity’s latest album, Cobre Verde. The song is “The Alonest of the Alone”, and though you may be expecting a guitar or drum video, because most people seem to find more sex appeal in those things than a play-through on the humble bass, this is A BASS VIDEO. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AIRLINES OF TERROR — “U.F.O. = TESLA”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 142015
 

 

The Italian band Airlines of Terror will be releasing their second album Terror From the Air on June 25 via Goressimo Records, and today we premiere for you a lyric video for the album’s first single — “U.F.O.=Tesla” — with artwork by Michel “Away” Langevin of Voivod.

If you’re a fan of The Day the Earth Stood Still and other sci-fi movies from the 1950s, you’ll get a big kick out of the video, and I think you’ll get a big kick (in the head) from the song, too. Continue reading »

GET TO THE POINT: CALVIN ROBERTSHAW (MY DYING BRIDE)

 Interviews  1 Response »
May 142015
 

 

(KevinP brings us this “Get To the Point” interview with Calvin Robertshaw, guitarist of My Dying Bride, who have a new album coming later this year.)

K:   I’m not going to rehash ancient history too much.  I’d rather focus on the here and now, plus the future.  Buuuut, you’ve been away since 1998 and as soon as they announce Hamish’s departure, they announce your return.  I gotta assume you’ve kept in touch over the years or had previous talks of rejoining the fold?

C:  Yes, after leaving, I stepped away from music completely for a couple of years before they approached me and asked me to tour manage. That lasted for 3-4 years before the birth of my son. We’ve always kept in touch since then.  I’ve been with Andy’s sister for 17 years.

Andy initially approached me in 2013 about the possibility of filling in for Hamish at a couple of shows.  But nothing ever came of that, until mid 2014, when I was asked about rejoining full time. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ACCURSED SPAWN — “BURNED INTO STERILITY”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 142015
 

 

Accursed Spawn get their game faces on in their new video — you’ll see soon enough — but first, a bit of background information.

Accursed Spawn were spawned in Ottawa, Ontario, and appear to have spent their formative years in a slaughterhouse. Or at least that’s the inference we draw from their music. They have two EPs to their credit, the most recent being 2014’s Putrid, which is the source of the song featured in the video we’re about to premiere: “Burned Into Sterility“.

The band don’t waste any time getting to the meat of the matter in this track. Right out of the gate they explode in a brutal, hyper-accelerated frenzy of munitions-grade drumming, machine-gun riffing, and guttural roaring. There’s no let-up as the song proceeds either. If anything, it just burns hotter and hotter, reaching a boil with the swarming guitar work that lights up the song’s finale. Continue reading »

NE OBLIVISCARIS: “HIRAETH” / “SARABANDE TO NIHIL”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  11 Responses »
May 142015
 


photo by Svartwerk

(Here, Andy Synn reviews two EPs by Australia’s Ne Obliviscaris that were distributed as limited-edition rewards for participation in the band’s successful crowd-funding campaign for financing of international tours.)

As much as I acknowledge that Citadel by Ne Obliviscaris is a fine-fettered beast of an album, one which rightly appeared on a lot of end-of-year lists, my personal feelings towards it are a bit more muted than some.

Oh, the instrumentation is certainly as flawless and inventive as anything you might care to mention, and the compositions impressively complex and creative, but to me the whole somehow seems less than the sum of its parts.

For one thing it’s clearly written to be almost self-consciously “progressive” in nature and this, combined with a few other things (the fact that there’s only three proper “songs”, the seeming disconnect between the clean vocals of Tim Charles and the rest of the material), means that it just doesn’t work for me in the same way their debut did.

And apparently I’m not alone in feeling that way. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PYRRHON — “THE MASS”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
May 142015
 

 

(In this post Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a song from the new EP by New York’s Pyrrhon.)

After last year’s outstanding album, The Mother Of Virtues, I had no expectation of hearing new music from Pyrrhon for a while. Yet here we are a year later and they’ve already churned out an impressive new EP called Growth Without End set to drop on June 2nd (both vinyl and digitally). We here at NCS felt it supremely fucking necessary to help spread the word about it, and now we offer up a disturbingly brilliant new track called “The Mass” to infect your earholes.

It’s probably best to take a deep breath before listening to “The Mass”, because it will immediately throw you into a deafening war zone of caustic and spastic riffing, schizoid vocal exorcisms, booming bass-lines, and bafflingly complex drum-work. Once it has thoroughly decimated you, the track unfolds into a slower mid-section replete with eerie grooves, taunting you in demented fashion, until it shifts back into the chaotic vortex with which it began. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TJOLGTJAR — “THE FIFTH MASS AND HER WORKS”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
May 132015
 

 

Fans of idiosyncratic black metal should be rubbing their hands in anticipation over Taste the Divine Wrath. That’s the name of a new LP-length split by The Meads of Asphodel and Tjolgtjar that’s due for release on June 2 by Eternal Death Records. Last week Terrorizer premiered one of the tracks by The Meads of Asphodel (here), and today we bring you one by Tjolgtjar: “The Fifth Mass and Her Works”.

With 11 full-length albums and numerous shorter releases spawned over a 17-year period, Tjolgtjar has been nothing if not prolific. The band is the alter ego of J.R. Preston — one of many that bears his imprint (including the late lamented Blood Cult, who we featured here not long ago) — and the music associated with his name has been far from conventional. This new track is no exception. Continue reading »

ESSENTIAL ENTRIES: APRIL 2015

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
May 132015
 

(In this post Dan Barkasi continues his monthly series recommending music from the previous month.)

Welcome back to Essential Entries. April has already passed, and it’s hard to believe. It feels like we – at least those unlucky enough to live in areas that deal with winter – were just freezing ourselves stiff, and now the temperatures are in the 80s. Thank goodness. Winter is awful. Thankfully, good music is the antithesis of such, and we’re loaded this month.

Also, my apologies for getting this up a bit late. Yours truly was out of town for over two weeks, and that resulted in a ton of catch-up listening in order to do this right. No way will this column ever be done half-heartedly!

With that out of the way, let’s get to the tunes.

 

Abyss – Heretical Anatomy

Gritty Canadian death metal. Abyss proves that it’s not all maple syrup and politeness up there. Equal parts catchy and punishing, this proves to be a great debut full-length. Continue reading »

INTERVIEW OF DAWN OF AZAZEL (RIGEL WALSHE)

 Interviews  1 Response »
May 132015
 

 

(New Zealand-based metal writer and broadcaster Craig Hayes brings us this interview with Rigel Walshe of New Zealand’s  Dawn of Azazel, whose phenomenal comeback album was released on April 28.)

A couple of weeks ago, long-running New Zealand death metal titan Dawn of Azazel released The Tides of Damocles, the band’s first album in six long years. Formed in 1999, Dawn of Azazel are a crucial band in the history of New Zealand extreme metal. Their 2003 full-length debut, The Law of the Strong, is a 100% blistering and battering classic. And, over the years, Dawn of Azazelhave toured the globe, reaped acclaim from all corners of the metal underground, and received high praise in the press at home and abroad.In 2009, after the release and touring for Dawn of Azazel’s third album, Relentless, the band went into hiatus. Frontman Rigel Walshe wanted to further explore career options outside of the music sphere at the time. And it’d be fair to say the return of Dawn of Azazelin 2015 has been greeted with rapturous applause both at home and offshore.The band headed back to Mana Recording Studios last year to record, mix and master The Tides of Damocles, and there’s no question that Dawn of Azazel have returned with a ferociously aggressive, dynamic, and wholly skull-cleaving album. No Clean Singing caught up with frontman Rigel recently to talk about the band resurfacing, his reflections on his time away from the metal underground, and what the future holds for one of death metal’s premier cult bands. Continue reading »
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