Here are two videos that caught my eyes and ears this morning, one from an old favorite of this site, one from some surprising newcomers.
BYZANTINE
The old favorites are West Virginia’s Byzantine, whose new album To Release Is To Resolve, to no one’s surprise, is fantastic (and reviewed here for us by TheMadIsraeli). Two days ago Billboard premiered a video for the song “The Agonies” off the new album, but I only caught up with it today. Continue reading »
(DGR reviews the latest album by the Dutch band Carach Angren., which is out now on Season of Mist.)
One of the things I love about Carach Angren is how divisive they are amongst the staff at this site. For some, they’re “LARP-Friendly black metal” and for others they’re an enjoyable band. When it comes to a genre like symphonic black, I own up to it time and time again that I am, in large part, an idiot.
I scratch the surface of the genre but it has been a huge blind spot for me, as has black metal as a whole; when it comes to the great divide of metal, between the black metal and the death metal guys, I tend to fall on the death metal side of the spectrum. I like my fair share of death metal bands masquerading as black metal groups, but rarely the traditional, ethereal, and anguish-fueled howls or the purposefully roughly-produced walls of sound of the early generations of proper black metal — which roughly translates to me being perfectly OK with Carach Angren and their symphonic horror tomes.
I think a large part of this is how you see the band. For me, Carach Angren are a group of storytellers who happen to really love their camp. They’ve never been the most black metal thing out there, and frankly, their stories have never been the most traditionally black metal out there, having covered a battlefield or two and even doing a nautical-themed disc, though the latter has become a bit more common and has been done increasingly well by other bands. The only thing you can be sure of is that the body count on a Carach Angren disc is probably going to be high and no one is going to escape happily. I’ve never had a thought of , “Well, this oughta end just swell for this character!”, when listening to a Carach Angren album, instead just counting down the minutes until their inevitable end. Continue reading »
Editor’s Note: KevinP and I are sharing this post, even though he doesn’t know he’s having to share it with me. In the first part you’ll find another installment in his “Get To the Point” interview series, in which he puts a handful of questions to Lioc F., the main man behind the multinational industrial/death/drone/doom band Autokrator. And after the interview, I have a few thoughts about Autokrator’s self-titled debut album, which was released digitally earlier this year and is due for physical release by Iron Bonehead on May 29.
“GET TO THE POINT”
K: Since you are a fairly new band, (formed in 2014) and I know nothing about your origins, please tell us about Autokrator?
L: Autokrator was born out of the ashes of my former project, N.K.V.D. I wanted to turn on a death-drone side for years, still with industrial influences, so I created Autokrator. And I recorded the album with musicians I was in connection with. Continue reading »
Exactly two weeks ago our Norwegian friend Gorger provided us with a glowing review of the debut album by London’s Crom Dubh. Lo and behold, now we have the chance to share with you a full stream of Heimweh.
I could stop there and simply let the music speak for itself, but some of Gorger’s words of praise deserve repeating, because this album genuinely is unusual — and unusually good:
“Someone put the band in the black cubicle on Encyclopaedia Metallum. I can only acknowledge this as long as we add that the band has torn down the decayed walls to some adjoining cubicles. Crom Dubh is a band that must be heard. The music the band plays is founded in black metal, but with so much more to offer. The sound has a dirty dissonant touch, and a certain timbre that is unique in itself. The band mixes atmospheric, melodic, and folk-metallic elements, but with a complete lack of respect for genre conventions…. Continue reading »
The creative flames that light the imagination of black metal bands in Greece seem to have become bonfires over the last year, as we have been the beneficiaries of one stellar release after another from that country — and now one more is on its way: The Athenian dragon cult Serpent Noir are poised for the release on Walpurgis of their second album, Erotomysticism. It will be delivered via Daemon Worship Productions, and today we present to you the premiere of one of the new rituals, a song named “Al Runa“.
Serpent Noir have crafted this new album through a Draconian collaboration, following the Left Hand Path — the path of the Red Dragon — through gateways into other worlds of spiritual freedom and hidden potential. When you listen to “Al Runa”, you do get the sense of participating in a ritual, and of a gateway opening.
At the beginning, the pace of the song is stately, the deep bass tones and measured drum beats providing the rhythm of a processional, the dissonant guitar harmonies preparing the way forward, the chanted words providing the incantations. But soon enough, the music catches fire — the riffs begin to writhe and the drums to hammer as the intensity of the music grows. The chants don’t disappear entirely, but they’re joined by echoing, inflamed exhortations and the piercing voice of a shimmering lead guitar, which creates eerie melodic traceries, like spiraling smoke in a vaulted cavern. Continue reading »
(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a full stream of Perdition, the debut album by Italy’s Necrosy.)
In recent years the Italian metal scene, and specifically the death metal scene, has been taking the metal community by storm with a never-ending barrage of top-notch releases and a seemingly endless supply of new bands popping up all the time.
Here at NCS, we’ve kept our eye on this region and have written about it countless times, from the country’s most well-known powerhouse acts to its plethora of new talent. In the spirit of our love affair with the rampaging and vicious death metal that Italy churns out with ease, we bring your attention to an up-and-coming new band called Necrosy, with this early stream of their soon-to-be-released debut full-length, Perdition. Continue reading »
At the end of this post we bring you the premiere of a multifaceted song named “Harrowing Winds” from the self-titled third album by California’s WRVTH, which will be released in June.
WRVTH (pronounced “wrath”) were once known as Wrath of Vesuvius, and this new record follows a 2009 EP (A World In Peril) and two previous albums, Portals Through Ophiuchus (2010) and Revelation (released by Mediaskare Records in 2013). But even if you are familiar with the band’s previous efforts, the new album reflects some changes in musical direction, along with that alteration in the band’s name — and “Harrowing Winds” is a signpost to those changes.
When I first heard the opening minute of the video clip for the song, I was having trouble squaring it with the little “Unique Leader” logo in the bottom right of the video frame. The shimmering, reverberating guitar harmony is tranquil, even transcendent. But as the song evolved, that Unique Leader connection became more understandable, just as the song became darker, more extreme, and more unpredictable. Continue reading »
Those with long memories may recall that last October we reviewed two tracks that had surfaced from a forthcoming demo by the Swiss band Antiversum. Since then the Irish label Invictus Productions has arranged for the release of the demo — entitled Total Vacuum — and we now bring you the premiere of all four of its songs, in all their horrifying glory.
The demo is well-named in one sense: Total Vacuum creates an atmosphere of bone-freezing gloom, summoning immense vistas of a heartless, malignant cosmos. The demo begins and ends with eerie ambient sounds that include deep groaning tones and piercing electronic shrieks, effectively summoning sensations of dread and implacable menace. But in between those chilling bookends, Antiversum embark on a void-faring excursion that’s loaded with harrowing encounters. There is life in this vacuum, even if it is utterly alien and frighteningly voracious. And unlike a vacuum, it’s massively heavy and disturbingly oppressive. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn reviews the forthcoming sixth studio album from the Ukrainian band Kroda — GinnungaGap-GinnungaGaldr-GinnungaKaos — and we also have for you the premiere of the album’s fourth track, “Чорні Хребти Карпат” (Carpathian Black Spines).
There are some albums you just never really get on with. Not that they’re necessarily bad, but albums you just don’t “click” with, for whatever reason. Where the pieces just don’t seem to line up properly and the overall package just seems lacking.
Then there are albums that you fall in love with instantly, where even their tiniest flaws seem to have a necessary place in the grand scheme of things.
This is one of those albums. Continue reading »
Yes, it’s true, we shove about 100 new songs in your face on a daily basis, but we know your face holds a lot of songs, so we need to keep shoving. Be sure to chew them well and don’t try to talk while you’re doing it, ’cause you could choke to death.
GRUESOME
Surely you know about Gruesome by now, because we’ve certainly written about them enough, and we even premiered a song from their debut album Savage Land. They give new meaning to the phrase Total Death Worship.
As of yesterday, the whole album became available for streaming. I don’t know why you wouldn’t go listen to it, unless you’re in a coma, in which case we wish you a speedy recovery and a pain-free removal of the catheter. Don’t forget to share photos of that for our collection. We’re thinking about turning them into a large-format NCS coffee-table book, The Art of Catheter Removal.
Where was I? Oh yeah, there’s a stream of Savage Land at Decibel. It’s an exclusive, so you and your catheter will need to go here to listen, and you’ll both be glad you did: Continue reading »