Islander

BARING TEETH: “GHOST CHORUS AMONG OLD RUINS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 252014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by Baring Teeth.)

The time has finally come for renowned quirky Texas death metallers Baring Teeth to show the world another plane of terrifying sounds and squalor. As if their first album, 2011’s Atrophy, in all its demented brilliance, was not enough of a jaw-dropping testament to their skill and uniqueness, they set their aims at a higher and different place on Ghost Chorus Among Old Ruins, giving us is a wide range of dynamics within each song — like a massive fight for control between frenetic, entrancing splinters and the colossal depths of quicksand, whose power ultimately derives from its slow, suffering burn.

Not only have they moved further from the realms of their Obscura-influenced debut, they’ve managed to expand their sound. It would have been easy and standard for a metal band like this one to keep the same blazing tempo and stylistic formula the second time around. Yet this time Baring Teeth offer more cesspools and sinkholes to drop into, sucking up more of the music like a slow-draining black hole, while also offering full-scale onslaught the likes of which will make your face melt just a bit too much to recover from in one sitting. Continue reading »

CONCERT PICS: JUCIFER, OHLM, AND NEW BRAVADO — LIVE IN LOUISVILLE, NOV 19, 2014

 Concert Reviews  4 Responses »
Nov 252014
 

 

On November 19, 2014, Jucifer, Ohlm, and New Bravado put on a show at the Headliner’s Music Hall in Louisville, Kentucky. Photographer Nik Vechery, whose work has accompanied show reviews at NCS on many past occasions, witnessed the destruction and documented what he saw in the photos you’re about to see.

We didn’t have any writers at this event, so the only written description we can provide is the message Nik sent along with the photos:  “It was a killer show. So damn loud I couldn’t hear the drums sometimes, hah.”  As someone who has seen Jucifer before, I have a keen sense of what he means: Jucifer play with gut-liquifying levels of volume — and they do it really well. If you’ve never seen the rituals of this nomadic sludge metal death drone amplifier cult, you need to. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2014: REVOLVER’S 20 BEST ALBUMS OF 2014

 LISTMANIA 2014  16 Responses »
Nov 252014
 

 

As part of our year-end Listmania series, we re-publish “best metal album” lists compiled by certain “big platform” web sites and selected print zines. Today, we bring you what Revolver magazine thinks are the 20 best albums of 2014, as posted yesterday on the magazine’s web site.

Let me be very clear, because someone always seems to misunderstand what we’re doing here: We’re not endorsing these lists we filtch from other places (though some are certainly better than others). We’re especially not endorsing this one. To be fair, Revolver doesn’t pretend to limit its coverage to metal. And to be even more fair, I haven’t listened to half the albums on this list, so what do I know?

Still… not endorsing this one. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THE MORNINGSIDE — “ECLECTICISM CRAWLED INTO ITS HOLE”

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Nov 242014
 

 

(In this post we present an interview of The Morningside from Moscow, Russia, conducted by A. Strunitzkij and introduced by our contributor Comrade Aleks. All photos are by Olga Goleva.)

We could discuss for a damned long time how much of Katatonia and Agalloch has left the works of The Morningside since they released their first album The Wind, The Trees And The Shadows of the Past in 2007. But the new album by this band from far Moscow, Letters From The Empty Towns, only pours oil onto the flames of this controversy. Highly energetic, fierce, and ghostly cold, this album returns us to the dark and melancholic world of The Morningside.

The whole band is here today. Let me introduce you to The Morningside with its most constant (and I hope – eternal) line-up. They are Igor Nikitin (vocals, guitars), Ilya Egorychev (bass), Sergey Chelyadinov (guitars), and Boris Sergeev (drums). I would like to thank my comrade-at-metal A.Strunitzkij for this interview. Continue reading »

AN INTERLUDE: SOEN — “THE WORDS” (A NEW VIDEO)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Nov 242014
 

 

I was going to save this new video for a round-up of new things that I hope to write for tomorrow, since time is short at the moment. But then I thought, why wait?

The band is Soen and the song is “The Words”, from their new album Tellurian, released earlier this month by Spinefarm Records. If you’re unfamiliar with Soen, the members are drummer Martin Lopez (ex-OPETH, AMON AMARTH), bassist Stefan Stenberg, vocalist Joel Ekelöf, and guitarist Kim Platbarzdis.

“The Words” is a beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking song, and so is the black and white video that was made for the music. It’s light years away from what we usually feature at this site, a true exception to our “rule”, but very much worth hearing and seeing — which you can do next. Continue reading »

GOATWHORE: “CONSTRICTING RAGE OF THE MERCILESS”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Nov 242014
 

 

(DGR provides this review of the latest album by NOLA’s Goatwhore.)

Stupid late, and we know it, but as the end of the year approaches one of our worst habits is to panic  — or more correctly, I panic, because most of the guys on the site are pretty relaxed — about the massive number of albums that came out during the year that we didn’t get around to reviewing. Not only that, but there’s always two or three un-reviewed albums where it feels right to provide a forum for our users to discuss the disc alongside our own feelings on the album. Goatwhore’s Constricting Rage Of The Merciless is one such disc.

It was an album that, as far as I know, was suddenly just “Out”, and the only review we were able to stammer out for it at the time was one of Andy’s haiku reviews. While those are great and a fun exercise, and I do recognize the difficulty in trying to hammer a disc down to just three lines where I prefer to go the opposite route and provide massive walls of text, sometimes there’s an album in there that I generally regret not being able to give the full “review tome” treatment. Continue reading »

FESTIVAL UPDATES: EISTNAFLUG, TRONDHEIM METAL FEST

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Nov 242014
 

We have a couple of festival updates to share with you:

EISTNAFLUG

I’ve been gleefully following the line-up announcements for next year’s edition of the Eistnaflug festival in Iceland. With each new announcement I’ve wondered to myself, “How can they top this?!?” — and then they do.

Before last week the festival was already going to be headlined by Behemoth, Enslaved, and Godflesh, and then last week the organizers added Carcass to the top of the bill. In addition, they announced that Norway’s Kvelertak will be appearing — as well as eight additional Icelandic bands. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: VYRJU — “BLACK”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 232014
 

 

Vyrju began as the one-man project of Norwegian musician Jan F. Lindsø, but Vyrju’s debut EP Black also features session drums and clean vocals by Tim Yatras (Germ, Austere, ex-Nazxul, ex-Woods of Desolation). I’m a fan of Tim Yatras, and it was his participation in the recording that originally attracted me to it — well, that and the three big skulls on the EP’s cover, of course.

In a word, Black is captivating. The melodies in each of the four songs, with the exception of the short instrumental piece “Gone”, have a sombre and even depressive air, but they’re memorable and often beautiful in their own grim, ravaged way.  Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GRAFVITNIR, ELDVÅG, ARMAGEDDON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 222014
 

 

Happy Saturday to one and all. It’s not exactly a happy Saturday for me because I’m away from home for the old fucking day job and won’t get back to Seattle until December 6 or 7. While toiling away in distant environs I do hope to continue posting at least one new thing of my own each day, in addition to contributions from others.

This morning I had the chance to check out some new songs, from which I sifted the following three that I recommend to your earholes.

GRAFVITNIR

Grafvitnir are a three-man occult black metal band from Sweden who describe themselves as “the faceless emanations of primordial chaos”, and based on the new song I heard this morning, I can believe that. Continue reading »

KUNSTZONE: “ESCHATON DISCIPLINE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 212014
 

 

(DGR reviews the debut EP by Kunstzone.)

There are a couple of names that I expect to see whenever an industrial metal project slides across ye old NCS promo desk. If it comes from one of those names, then I immediately start looking for the other batch — because if the name Alex Rise seems familiar to you and you’ve been following NCS then you know of his Tyrant Of Death project, and there’s a circle of musicians around him that seem determined to crossbreed into as many different projects as there are available combinations, most of which tend to be heavy on the electronic noise and programmed drums.

One of the more commonly observed names is an enigmatic entity named Candy — who has gone to tremendous lengths to hide its identity — responsible partly for President Streetwalker (which to this day remains the earliest I have ever gotten in on the ground floor for a band), the noisy as all hell Khaozone, and a myriad of other works including contributions to T.o.D vocalist Lucem Fero (Omar)’s own solo releases. Continue reading »

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