Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: MIDNIGHT ODYSSEY — “STARLIGHT OBLIVION”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  6 Responses »
May 062015
 

 

At the very end of last year we had the pleasure of premiering “Hunter of the Celestial Sea”, an advance song from the new album by Australia’s Midnight Odyssey, Shards of Silver Fade, and today we’re equally delighted to bring you another. What you’re about to hear is “Starlight Oblivion“. It will require more than the usual amount of your time for a single song, but the time you invest will be repaid with handsome dividends. And I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t emerge from the experience in the same frame of mind and mood as when you begin the journey.

The song is more than 18 minutes long, one of eight in a double-album release that includes more than 2 hours and 20 minutes of music. It fully merits the adjective “immersive”. It’s a sweeping celestial voyage of shimmering ambient sounds, galvanizing rhythms, melodies that tug at the heart, and an array of vocal expressions that are all mesmerizing. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PARADISE LOST, PRIMORDIAL, DE PROFUNDIS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
May 062015
 


Photo by Ewan Cawood

 

A flood of new music and videos appeared yesterday. I found a dozen of them I’d like to recommend, but I’m squeezed for time at the moment, so I’ve made some hard choices and picked three for this post. Perhaps I’ll be able to collect a few more later today — though it’s likely that as this day wears on even more good new music will appear. Anyone who thinks there’s something wrong with the state of metal in 2015 is just WRONG.

PARADISE LOST

My Facebook news feed blew up with friends posting about the new Paradise Lost video yesterday. Most of the links were accompanied by exclamations of surprise and praise. To those I’ll now add my own.

The song is “Beneath Broken Earth” and it appears on the band’s forthcoming album The Plague Within, due for release on June 1 by Century Media. The video was directed by Ash Pears. Here’s a quote about the song and video by the band’s guitarist Greg Mackintosh (who we hope has recovered from his recent mishap on stage in Seattle with Vallenfyre): Continue reading »

INTER ARMA, YAUTJA, AND HORNSS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL (MAY 2, 2015)

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
May 062015
 

 

(Guest writer Ben Manzella returns to NCS with this review (and his photos) of performances by Inter Arma, Yautja, and Hornss in San Francisco on May 2, 2015.)

Saturday night in San Francisco; if this peninsula of a city doesn’t already feel crowded during the week, you feel it on the weekends. This weekend was interesting, though, considering that in one Saturday night you had to clearly define whether live music was your priority or instead stay in keeping with the modern culture and hype. Basically, sit at home or in a bar eating overpriced food for an overpriced event that ended up being underwhelming (the Pacquaio-Mayweather fight) or go see a metal show. For me it was never a question, the metal show was always going to win; but then it came down to which one?

See, 924 Gilman (a non-profit, volunteer-run, all-ages club beloved by the punk and hardcore scene) was hosting The Body and Full of Hell along with an assortment of what I assume was mostly local support, including Kowloon Walled City; Septic Flesh and Moonspell were incanting their darkness in Oakland; and then Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco (a bar turned venue as of almost 25 years ago) was hosting Inter Arma and Yautja with local support from Hornss. You see the choice I made. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: POSSESSION — “CEREMONY”

 Premieres  7 Responses »
May 052015
 

 

“Belgium’s Possession are moving from strength to hideous strength. They began precociously with their 2013 demo (His Best Deceit), took forward steps with their 2014 EP (Anneliese — reviewed here), and have made even more progress with their second EP, 1585-1646. Equal parts morbidly atmospheric and  rifftastically raging, it’s an unholy union of black, death, and thrash metal that’s well worth adding to your musical arsenal.”

And that’s how I began my review of 1585-1646 in the middle of last month. I heaped more words of praise on top of this blazing pyre of music, but the main point of this post isn’t to see my own words again (no matter how thrilling that may be), it’s to let you hear another new song from this EP.  Continue reading »

DENDRITIC ARBOR: “ROMANTIC LOVE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
May 052015
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by Dendritic Arbor, which is out as of today on Grimoire Records.)

Both black metal and grind share quite a bit of common ground when you think about it; both styles revolve around creating ugly fucked-up music that traditionally lacks any sense of conventional melody, but more importantly, are the two styles of metal most often referred to as “noise” by people who aren’t fans. While black-metal-infused hardcore/grind/etc has become quite a thriving trend these days, up until now I never felt impressed by almost all of it, save for last year’s Plebeian Grandstand record and very few others. However, when I first heard of Dendritic Arbor last year courtesy of their track “Genie” through Islander, I knew these guys were something special, a band who had finally married the two styles in a way that benefits both, and more importantly as creators with their own unique compositional style. Their sarcastically titled new record, Romantic Love, is one of the best albums you’ll hear this year. I goddamn guarantee it.

Romantic Love starts out entrenched in hellfire and contempt for all life with album opener “Murmuration End”, a merciless patchwork of blackened sonic plagues and thundering, complex grind, schizophrenically fighting each other for control of the song’s direction. This is a trait common to many of their tracks — switching from grind-fueled black metal, to black-metal-fueled grind. I’ve yet to hear anyone else do it as well or as memorably as Dendritic Arbor. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE DEAD GOATS — “DON’T GO IN THE TOMB”

 Premieres  8 Responses »
May 052015
 

 

About 10 days ago I enthusiastically praised a new EP entitled Don’t Go In the Tomb by a Polish band named The Dead Goats, and today I have the pleasure of bringing you a full stream of the EP.

I’ll resist the urge to just re-print every word from my review, and tell you this instead: This EP doesn’t wear out its welcome. I’ve found myself going back to it repeatedly since first hearing it. It’s become my new-found fix when I’m in the need for a jolt of high-energy rampaging, accompanied by the sweet tones of chainsaw guitar and skin-flaying vocals. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GESPENST, ORTHODOX, PYLAR, ARCH ENEMY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 052015
 

 

Here’s an assortment of new music I discovered over the last 24 hours with some help from friends. Needless to say, I urge you to give all of it a listen.

GESPENST

Gespenst is a new Danish black band with some experienced members — vocalist/bassist Galskab, for example, is also a member of Woebegone Obscured, Dwell, and Black Dementia, as well as a former member of Horned Almighty and a live performer with Glorior Belli.  Gepenst have recorded a debut album named Forfald (Danish for “Downfall”), and yesterday they uploaded for streaming an excerpt of one of the album’s songs that blew me away when I heard it (it comes with some eye candy on YouTube).

The song’s name is “Life Drained To the Black Abyss”, and it’s a long one. Even the excerpt is more than 7 1/2 minutes long; as I learned from the band, the complete track runs more than 12 minutes. The album as a whole includes over 40 minutes of music, but only four tracks, so each of them is likely to be a long-form piece. Continue reading »

PARENTS (REMEMBERED)

 Mosh Pit  14 Responses »
May 052015
 

Ares Kingdom in Berlin, 2011 — photo by Anan Tan

I’m doing something I don’t think I’ve ever done before — re-posting on the site something we’ve previously published (with just a few word changes). There’s a reason why I’m doing this, which you’ll find in a postscript at the end.

I wrote this almost exactly five years ago, when this site was about six months old. I was a little inebriated when I wrote it; I tend to get emotional when I’ve had a few shots. But re-reading it last night, for the first time since I wrote it, I decided it still reflects what I believe. And I think there’s a decent chance that very few people who are visiting our site these days will have seen it five years ago anyway; we’ve grown a bit since then. So, here we go…

******

I suppose this topic is sappy, and sappy isn’t metal. But maybe it really is. You be the judge. And if you conclude this is just too much emotional tripe, chalk it up to an excess of tequila

What motivated me to write about parents (besides too much tequila) was my recent piece on an awesome KC band called Ares Kingdom and their album Incendiary, and some messages we received in response to it. In addition to praising the music, I praised the album art — the kind of thing that many bands do poorly, and that’s often lost in our download culture when it’s done well. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: TEMPEL, POTERGEIST, EARTHSIDE

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
May 042015
 

 

We’ve had a very busy day at our site, but I didn’t want to sign off on this May the Fourth (be with you) without recommending three new songs, two of which come with videos. Two of these are also instrumental tracks and the third involves a lot of clean singing — and so you know I really like them, because these kinds of songs tend to be rarities around here. I hope you enjoy them, too.

TEMPEL

Tempel’s new album The Moon Lit Our Path has been very high on my list of eagerly anticipated 2015 albums, in light of how very much I enjoyed their debut album On the Steps of the Temple. I got even more excited when I saw the album’s cover art by Lucas Ruggieri. And I have to say that, somehow, I’m now even more excited after listening to today’s premiere of a song named “Carvings In The Door”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WITHIN DESTRUCTION — “CARNAGE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 042015
 

 

The Slovenian death metal band Within Destruction released their debut album From the Depths in 2012, and they’re now at work on their second full-length. But while work on the album proceeds, tomorrow they will be releasing a new single entitled “Carnage“, and today we’ve got for you the premiere of the song along with a music video.

In a nutshell, “Carnage” is just a hell of a lot of fun. It also raises a lot of hell. It’s loaded with gut-punching percussion; thunderous grooves; swarming riffs; and an effusion of hair-raising shrieks and growls. There’s even a melancholy, serpentine melody to go along with some headbangable, mosh-triggering breakdowns.

If you’re the sedentary sort, this high-energy music may not suit you — or maybe it’s just what you need — because it’s tough to sit still while it runs rampant through your head. Continue reading »

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