Islander

KATAVASIA: “VIRGIN BLOOD”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 032015
 

 

In early February we introduced you (here) to a new Greek “supergroup” named Katavasia, through KevinP’s interview with the band’s guitarist Astrous (Aenaon) and the world premiere of a song from the band’s debut album, Sacrilegious Testament. Today, Katavasia have unveiled another new song from the album, entitled “Virgin Blood”, and we’re sharing that one with you, too.

For those who missed that earlier post, the band’s line-up also includes vocalist Necroabyssious (Varathron), guitarist/bassist Achilleas C (Varathron/Aenaon), drummer Foivos  (Agnes Vein), and keyboardist Haris (Hail Spirit Noir/Transcending Bizarre?). In addition, the album includes guest appearances by Sakis of Rotting Christ, and Sotiris Vayenas of Septicflesh — who provides a guitar solo on “Virgin Blood”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NEOLITH — “IZI.IM.KURNU-KI”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 022015
 

 

We’ve had the pleasure of premiering two decimating new songs by the Polish band Neolith from their fourth album, Izi.Im.Kurnu-Ki. — and today we have the privilege of helping to premiere a stream of the entire album on its release day.

As good as those first two songs were (“Of Angel and His Orison” and “Enlil”), the album as a whole is equally good. It’s a dynamic combining of melodic death metal and black metal, both atmospheric in its creation of a chilling, infernal aura, and absolutely pulverizing in its frequent explosions of grinding/thrashing riffs and hammering grooves.

The band make effective use of keyboards throughout the album, principally to enhance the music’s eerie atmosphere, but also to help the guitars carry the infectious melodies that move like slithering serpents through the high-speed bombardments and strafing runs that Neolith unleash. Continue reading »

AN NCE PREMIERE: OCCULT 45 — “HUMAN ABHORRENCE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 022015
 

 

After releasing a debut EP, a couple of demos, and a split with Drones for Queens, Philadelphia’s Occult 45 have signed with Broken Limbs Recordings for the release of a new EP named Human Abhorrence — and we’re bringing you the premiere of a full stream right now.

The seven tracks on Human Abhorrence will only take about 12 minutes of your time, but Occult 45 pack a lot of highly varied mayhem into those minutes. If you’re like me, your first impulse after finishing it will be to let it run rampant through your head all over again, just to pick up what you missed the first time through. Continue reading »

GET TO THE POINT: MIKA LAMMASSAARI (MORS SUBITA)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Mar 022015
 

(In this new installment of KevinP’s interview series, he talks with Mika Lammassaari, guitarist of Finland’s Mors Subita, who have a new album named Degeneration coming out soon — and we’ve also got the official lyric video for the new album’s first single, “End Complete“.)

K:  So it’s been 4 years since the release of your debut album, Human Waste Compression, fill us in on what’s going on?

M:  To be quite honest, the last 4 years have been just a mere glimpse, it´s gone past so fast. During this time we´ve toured with Mors Subita and written the new album, obviously. Unfortunately, we also had a couple changes in the line-up, so that has caused a few grey hairs.

All in all it´s been a lot of great moments and we´re more than excited to be releasing the successor to HWC. Right now, we´re doing the final prepping for the release of the new album and rehearsing a lot with the band. Continue reading »

FAITH NO MORE: “SUPERHERO”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 022015
 

 

Faith No More, in their early days, made a huge impact in the evolution of my musical tastes. The news that they were reuniting and recording a new album (Sol Invictus) made me about as giddy with excitement as an old fart like me can get. I’m still excited, especially after hearing the second song from that new album, which is entitled “Superhero”.

The new song premiered at Marvel.com, of all places — which I think is pretty cool in and of itself — along with an interview of Bill Gould. The band has also revealed the cover art for Sol Invictus, which features an image from Ossian Brown, a member of Coil and Cyclobe, who also published the book Haunted Air” in 2010.

As for the song, I’m really digging “Superhero”, perhaps most especially because of the dark, mesmerizing, piano-led melody that eventually takes it over. Listen below: Continue reading »

GHOST BATH: “MOONLOVER”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 022015
 

 

(Wil Cifer reviews the debut album by Ghost Bath, which comes out on March 17 via Northern Silence, with a full-album stream at the end.)

The Deafheaven comparisons will overflow Ghost Bath’s ethereal tub, but at its heart Moonlover favors its depressive black metal side over any of the shoe-gazing it flirts with. The opening “Golden Number” uses more synths and piano than Sunbather had as an entire album. On “Happyhouse” the band make it even clearer that the depressive elements are more important to them than the shoe-gazing. They drill into the blasting section, their drummer attacking with more feral precision than Deafheaven.

The crystalline ringing of the guitars in “Beneath the Shade Tree” is darkly beautiful, though it is just an interlude that gives some breathing room before the first part of “The Silver Flower”. From this point on the album takes a turn away from more vocal-centered music into atmosphere and ambience, dragging you along for a session of melodic hypnosis before the blast beats kick you off the cliff. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “INTERSTELLAR” BY SICKENING HORROR

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Mar 022015
 

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a song from the new album by the Athenian metal band Sickening Horror, to be released by Deepsend Records on March 17.)

Like a lot of people, I first heard about the Greek technical death metal band Sickening Horror in 2007 by seeing the mention that drummer George Kollias (Nile) was in the line-up on their first record, When Landscapes Bled Backwards. He departed after the release of that album, but the band has continued on just fine without him.

We last heard from them when they released their worthy sophomore follow-up, The Dead End Experiment, back in 2009. Then the band seemed to drop off the map for a few years, finally emerging toward the end of last year with an announcement that their third album, Overflow, was on the way. Today we give you a tantalizing taste of what Overflow is all about with our premiere of a new song entitled “Interstellar“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: OF WOLVES — “DEAD WAIT”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Mar 012015
 

 

I discovered an album named Evolve by a Chicago band named Of Wolves in the summer of 2013, and it made a big impression, a lasting impression. As discussed in my recent interview of the band’s vocalist/guitarist Steve Sherwood, Of Wolves have been working on a new album that they’re hoping to complete and release before the end of this year, but in the meantime they have a brand new video for one of the songs from Evolve — “Dead Wait” — and we’re premiering it right here, right now.

As I attempted to explain in my review of Evolve, the album is an eclectic mix of music, but if there’s a unifying thread in the songs it’s the frustration and fury that drives them. Lyrically, Of Wolves have vented their anger at everything from churches to governments to pervasive greed to the treatment of Native Americans to the mass of their fellow citizens (aka “sheep”) who allow themselves to be brainwashed, duped, and distracted from protecting their own self-interests — and as you’ll see in a minute, they don’t mince words about it. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 73: SUN SPLITTER, EPOCH, DRÄUGR, AU-DESSUS

 MISCELLANY  15 Responses »
Feb 282015
 

 

I don’t write installments of this long-running series with any kind of regularity, so I always begin by reminding people how it works. On a very random basis I pick bands whose music I’ve never heard before (usually bands whose names I’ve only discovered recently) and I listen to one or two songs, usually from their most recent releases. I write my immediate impressions of what I’ve heard, and then I stream the music so you can make up your own minds.

This experiment differs from just about everything else we post on this site because I don’t know whether I’ll like the music before writing about it. Granted, I tend to get enthusiastic about a very wide range of metal from a very wide range of bands, and in the case of the four bands that are the subject of this MISCELLANY excursion, three of them were recommended recently by friends whose opinions I respect — so that’s a bit of a cheat on my self-imposed rules for the series. Anyway, here we go…

SUN SPLITTER

I heard about this Chicago band through a recommendation from one of the nameless members of Venowl. I’ve now forgotten what topic we were discussing that prompted the recommendation, but I hung on to the name, as well as the link to the Sun Splitter Bandcamp page. Their most recent release is an album named Time Cathedral that came out in January of this year. Continue reading »

THE BLACK METAL WARFARE TOUR (MAYHEM, WATAIN, REVENGE): LIVE IN SEATTLE

 Concert Reviews  6 Responses »
Feb 272015
 

 

(In this post BadWolf reviews the live performances by Mayhem, Watain, and Revenge at El Corazon in Seattle on January 27, 2015, with photos by Madison Lieren.)

For a minute there I was so inundated with European black metal, its tropes, and its lyrical hullabaloo, that I forgot about the genre’s troubled, violent, church-burning past, and in a sense that’s where I wanted to be from the get-go, since unlike some people I actually found the genre’s flirtations with homicide and terrorism to be a turn-off before I actually listened to the music.

Leave it to Norway’s Mayhem, original purveyors of quote-unquote dangerous black metal to drag me back into my discomfort zone by headlining the Black Metal Warfare tour, a nationwide trek wherein the second generation provocateurs, alongside Watain and Revenge, inspired mosh pits, threw blood on the crowd, and peddled tee shirts lionizing “Panic, Terror, Arson, Metal, Chaos.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” I thought to myself, looking at the merch rack hobbled in the corner of Seattle’s El Corazon, “I fucking love blowing stuff up. Silly me, where *did* my balls go?” A prescient thought, as the night wound up being a testament to testicular fortitude. Continue reading »

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