Islander

BASALTE: “VESTIGE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Nov 132014
 

 

This is a prime example of an album that came out of nowhere, one that I easily could have overlooked, but that turns out to be one of the most surprising and enjoyable things I’ve heard in months. The album’s name is Vestige and it’s the debut work of a three-person Montréal black metal band name Basalte.

Vestige consists of three long songs (from 9 minutes to almost 17), “Mirage”, “Luminaire”, and “Obtuse”. They are guitar manifestos, strange journeys across distortion-shrouded alien soundscapes that sometimes seem like the eruption of volcanos on a Saturnian moon and then at other times shine like the Saturnian rings themselves, shimmering with the glint of sunlight on ice crystals. The drumming is just as unpredictable and just as transfixing, like a comet with a mind of its own that moves around and through the cosmic lightshow, heedless of the pull of gravity. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LOTUS THIEF — “MISERAS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 132014
 

 

When someone describes an album by telling you that you’ve never heard anything like it before, you may greet such a claim with skepticism. So I’ll just say that I’ve never heard anything quite like Rervm before. It’s the debut album of a San Francisco band named Lotus Thief, and today we bring you the premiere of the album’s second track, “Miseras”.

Lotus Thief consists of two members, Bezaelith (Botanist, Mina Loy, The Night Falls) and Otrebor (Botanist, Ordo Obsidium). The fact that both have been involved in the unique music of Botanist may suggest certain musical associations, but Lotus Thief follows a different musical path, albeit one just as unusual. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ZOM, SELVANS, XII BOAR, KVILE I KAOS, BITCH WITCH, PARASITIC EXTIRPATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Nov 122014
 

I’ve amassed a sufficiently large number of recommended new songs and videos over the last couple of days that I’m mainly going to just toss them your way in this post and hold my own commentary about the music to a minimum. I realize that this comes as a crushing blow to all of you, but somehow the music will just have to speak for itself today.

As you’ll discover, I’ve intentionally provided a broad array of musical styles to keep you off-balance.

ZOM

This makes the fourth time we’ve written about Dublin-based ZOM this year. Their debut album Flesh Assimilation is coming on November 24 via Dark Descent, with artwork by Zbyszek Bielak. Yesterday, DECIBEL premiered another advance track from the album, “Conquest”. It sure as fuck conquered me. Continue reading »

ANOTHER EISTNAFLUG UPDATE

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Nov 122014
 

 

We’ve been tracking pretty closely the announcements by the organizers of Iceland’s Eistnaflug festival about the bands who will be appearing there next July. Even before today, the line-up was ridiculously good — but today Eistnaflug made it even more ridiculous by naming ten more bands to the festival schedule — including the mighty Enslaved, joining Behemoth and Godflesh as a co-headliner. This will be Enslaved’s first appearance in Iceland.

With today’s announcement, the line-up now includes nine Icelandic bands including the Icelandic band of the hour, Sólstafir, as well as the legendary Icelandic institution HAM (whose surprise appearance at the recently completed Iceland Airwaves festival was featured in another post on our site today). The other seven bands announced today are Börn, Dimma, Grísalappalísa, Lights on the Highway, Momentum, Muck, Saktmóðigur, and Severed. Continue reading »

A DISPATCH FROM ICELAND AIRWAVES

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 122014
 

 

(We welcome our guest Jeff from the Life In the Vinyl Lane blog, who sent us this report on the Iceland Airwaves festival plus a few of his photos.)

“We are going to play a few songs about friendship and love… and hate! And the first song is about trucking.”

So began the set of Iceland’s heavy metal grandfathers, HAM. We are HAM!

It’s hard to believe that just yesterday I was in Reykjavik, Iceland, still in the afterglow of Iceland Airwaves 2014, and today I’m back in Seattle. Doing laundry and paying the bills that piled up while we were gone. How quickly things change.

If you’re not familiar with Airwaves, it’s a five-day music festival held in Reykjavik, a festival that covers just about the entire gamut of musical styles and genres, all seemingly, except country and jazz. It started in 1999 with a handful of bands playing in an airplane hanger and has morphed into a sprawling celebration of music spread out throughout downtown Reykjavik, featuring over 200 bands playing in every conceivable location – dedicated music venues, bars, clothing stores, hair salons, and a tent located outside a hot dog stand. You can’t walk a block without hearing live music. And it’s awesome. Continue reading »

BUCKSHOT FACELIFT: “LIVING GHOSTS OF THE NORTH SHORE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Nov 122014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by NY’s Buckshot Facelift.)

When I was fortunate enough to see (and cover here at NCS) the Artificial Brain, Pyrrhon, and Gigan tour in Covington, Ky, a few weeks back, I also had the honor of speaking with Artificial Brain swamp monster/wookie/vocalist Will Smith. He even gave me a copy of his old band Biolich’s material, a group I adored long before Artificial Brain or Buckshot Facelift came into existence. I’ll embed a song by them at the end of this review for those interested. (The band started out as a Demilich worship act, but evolved into something much more eclectic later on. Biolich even had the superbly talented guitarist Andrew Hock (Castavet) in their ranks, but not many know that either.)

But to get back on topic, in the course of our conversation Will let me know that his other band, Buckshot Facelift, had a new EP coming out soon. He graciously gave me a physical copy in order to check it out — under one condition: He told me to be honest with how I felt about it. And honestly, its fucking awesome, hence this review. Continue reading »

NCS YEAR-END TRADITIONS ON THE WAY

 Uncategorized  38 Responses »
Nov 112014
 

 

Every November here at NCS we renew a few year-end traditions that have been a part of our site since the early days, and I thought now would be a good time for a reminder, since we depend on our readers for help in rolling them out.

First of all, we’re approaching another birthday for our putrid site. We made our first post on November 21, 2009, and by resorting to higher math with the aid of a calculator, I’ve determined that in 10 days we will be five years old! We won’t need your help with that celebration when the blessed day arrives — we’re capable of patting ourselves on the back all by ourselves. We do accept presents; cash is preferred.

Second, we will soon be starting our year-end LISTMANIA series. There are three parts to that endeavor:  We publish year-end lists of metal’s best albums that we find on certain “big platform” websites and zines; we publish year-end lists by our own staff writers and by special guests; and we provide a platform for our readers to post their own lists of favorite releases from the year that’s nearing an end.

We’ll need your help on that last part, so put your thinking caps on and start winnowing down what you’ve heard into the best of the best — we’ll invite you to start sharing your lists in about 2 weeks. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ANICON AND BELUS (A SPLIT)

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 112014
 

 

Anicon and Belus are two New York bands whose names I’ve been hearing for a while, but whose music I’ve begun exploring only recently. Together they produced a split this past June, which was co-released on 12″ vinyl by Fragile Branch (U.S.) and Dead Section Records (Denmark), with each band contributing two tracks. The songs of each band are also now available on their respective Bandcamp pages, with one bonus track (linked below) — and they’re all really impressive.

ANICON

Anicon’s ranks include members of Trenchgrinder (vocalist/guitarist Owen Rundquist) and Krallice (drummer Lev Weinstein), as well as guitarist/vocalist Nolan Voss and bass player Alexander DeMaria (ex-Alrunes). They have two long songs on the vinyl split, “A Crown On Every Head” and “Blood and Stone”, and a third song (“Current of Ash and White”) comes as a bonus on the digital download. Continue reading »

TOURISM: BEHEMOTH AND CANNIBAL CORPSE TO HEADLINE A WINTER 2015 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

 Metal News  8 Responses »
Nov 112014
 

 

Just minutes ago, Poland’s Behemoth posted an announcement on their Facebook page that they will be co-headlining a North American tour this winter with Cannibal Corpse, with support from Aeon and Tribulation from Sweden. The tour starts on January 28 in New Orleans and concludes on March 7 in Ft. Lauderdale. It includes six Canadian dates as well as stops in 21 U.S. states.

You will be delighted to know that the tour stops in Seattle, because whatever makes me happy necessarily makes you happy.

What a fucking pleasant way to begin the new year. General admission tickets go on sale this Friday and VIP tickets are on sale now — here. The full schedule of dates is as follows: Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 52: THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR

 Exceptions to the Rule, THE SYNN REPORT  5 Responses »
Nov 112014
 

(In this 52nd edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy Synn reviews the album-length discography to date of Colorado’s The Flight of Sleipnir, whose forthcoming fifth album will be reviewed in a subsequent post.)

Recommended for fans of: Agalloch, Moonsorrow, The Gates of Slumber

Forgive me oh readers, for I have not Synned…

That’s right. The entire month of October went by without a single edition of The Synn Report to please your eyes and ears with a taste of new and/or under-appreciated music. And for that I must apologise. Between work, travel, and some crazy nights out… I just haven’t had chance to sit down and set metaphorical pen to paper. Until now.

The Flight of Sleipnir is the brainchild of  two individuals, David Csiscely (Drums, Vocals, Guitars) and Clayton Cushman (Guitars, Vocals, Bass, Keyboards), two men joined together by a clear and passionate love of heavy metal, heartfelt melody, and heroic Norse folklore.

With four albums to their name – and a fifth, V., soon to be released (expect the review for that by the end of the week – the pair have certainly managed to craft themselves a distinctive sound over the years, whose earth-shaking, doomy power and sombre, progressive inclinations incorporate binding threads of folk-inflected melody and slithering strands of blackened fury.

Whole segments of their material aren’t strictly metallic at all, comprising lengthy acoustic passages and folkish murmurations, where smooth chords ripple and plucked strings sing out clear notes of melody and harmony. Yet when these guys do go heavy they do so with some serious conviction, their brawny riffage and booming drums providing the backing for a characterful mix of ravaged, throaty roars and stirring, cleanly-sung harmonies. Continue reading »

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