Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: IGNOMINOUS — “THE COMING FALL”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 262024
 

(written by Islander)

The three seasoned Greek musicians who joined together to form the black metal band Ignominous — just in time to confront the Covid assault — have introduced themselves and their debut album Dawn With No Light through these striking words:

“Ignominous is the pain in our veins, the scream in our hearts, and the shadowed path in our souls — a journey we embarked on many years ago, even before we met each other. The dawn with no light symbolizes our endless struggle, the bleeding of our symbols, and the long journey we have taken together. We have entered the eternal night, and in embracing the shadows, we find true life as the dawn with no light approaches.”

No doubt, the turmoil expressed in that statement has deep and distant origins, but it was exacerbated by more recent events. As noted above, these three joined together in 2020 but the pandemic slowed their work, and by March 2021 all their rehearsals ceased due to severe Covid-related health issues that afflicted bassist Anestis Nekhromancer.

However, the band rose again at the dawn of 2022 and completed the writing of the songs that are now encompassed by their full-length debut, which will be released in early October. As a vivid sign of what they’ve accomplished, we now premiere a song from the album named “The Coming Fall“, presented with a lyric video. Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE: WURM FLESH, EXORBITANT PRICES MUST DIMINISH, ORPHEUS OMEGA, SERPENTHEIR, COLACON

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 262024
 


Wurm Flesh

(As we’ve nearly broken into the final quarter of the year, DGR decided it was a good time to do some more catching up on reviews that have been percolating in his head, and so here are five of them that might collectively scramble your own head.)

While sifting through the pile of music that I’ve been gathering up over the years for these shorter, less officious and stuffy – my preferred writing style – review collectives I’ve found that I often have a small blockage of grind releases building up against the wall. There hasn’t necessarily been a particular overarching guide as to what gets written about and when with these, as it’s more of a panicked attempt to spread the word about a few of them before year-end season hits, and I lock myself in a closet with the laptop and a caffeine-fueled fit of pique and do so much writing that I end up having zero thoughts for a month afterward.

However, this bout is my attempt to help get a few of those out there, as well as to aim for something a little shorter and then round off with two releases from way opposite ends of the spectrum that I’ve been enjoying in between checking out the shiny latest and greatest that have come tumbling down the pipeline over the last few months.

Combining this with an absolutely fucked-up concert slate for my corner of Northern California and you can see exactly where the compulsion for coverage is starting to take over, with the sense that these things need to happen now. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MARCHE FUNÈBRE — “AFTER THE STORM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 252024
 

(written by Islander)

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget. That is how memory works. Pain and suffering etch themselves onto your soul, while joy seems to be a fleeting whisper you can barely hold onto. It is this paradox of memory that haunts us all, leaving us to wonder what we are, what we were, and what we might become.”
— The Road by Cormac McCarthy

“I stand beneath the open sky, at the setting of the sun. The still waters stretch before me to the distant horizon and the clouds drift slowly across the vast canvas of the sky – a brilliant blending of deepest blues, rich purples, vivid red and warm orange. Yet for all the open vista, the space and freedom, I am trapped; suffocating in a labyrinth of black desperation. The cold walls of insurmountable sorrows and confusion contain me and I am imprisoned by past scars that have become infected, poisoned by the cruel, slow venoms of grief, loss and guilt. I built this maze, but I have long since forgotten the way to freedom…”
— Marche Funèbre

I probably could have left those two quotations and moved right along, without further embellishment, to the premiere stream of Marche Funèbre‘s new album After the Storm (set for release by Ardua Music on September 27th) that we’re hosting today. I had the second one already. Purely by coincidence, I saw the first one shared on social media just as I was finalizing this premiere article. It’s from a devastating and unforgettable work by the late Mr. McCarthy, and seemed entirely suitable to the experience of the album, which is itself often devastating — and I suspect will be very hard to forget as time passes.

On the other hand, those quotations could also be a bit misleading, because it turns out that After the Storm is as vibrant and as heart-pounding as it is heart-aching. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FATHER BEFOULED

 Interviews  No Responses »
Sep 252024
 

(French NCS contributor Zoltar returns today with an interview he recently conducted with Justin Stubbs, the focus being on Father Befouled and their newest release via Everlasting Spew, but also touching on the status of Stubbs‘ other projects.)

While their early years were plagued by various, and a tad reductive, accusations of simply trying to be more Incantation than Incantation themselves, from their 2012 album Morbid Destitution Of Covenant onwards, Father Befouled have been carefully crafting their own brand of dark death metal, one release at a time, with 2022’s Crowned In Veneficium proving to be another highlight.

By the time you’ll be reading this, the band will be in the middle of a two-week European tour with label mates Fossilization. As they have a new EP out named Immaculate Pain, whose video for the title-track was premiered on NCS on July 30th, we took that opportunity to talk with their main man Justin Stubbs about this new slab of brutality, their latest line-up shift. and why he will always have something blasphemous to say. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WARLUST — “SOL INVICTUS IN UMBRAE SATANAE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 242024
 

(written by Islander)

Warlust is the kind of name chosen by a band who want to broadcast that their main interest is sonic violence, without nuance or mercy, wholly devoted to musical experiences that provide the reptile-brain thrills of ugly and unrestrained barbarity.

But it turns out that even a band named Warlust is capable of more than that, and this German band who took that name prove it in spades on their new third album Sol Invictus In Umbrae Satanae, which we’re premiering today in advance of its September 27 release by Dying Victims Productions.

Hell, it even proves they’re capable of… progression (a dirty word in come circles, but not intended as an insult here). Continue reading »

HAR: “CURSED CREATION”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 242024
 

(In late August the Berlin-based Israeli band Har released their debut album on Dark Descent, and Todd Manning has given us and you the following impressions of it.)

Some releases just possess a visceral impact that some of their contemporaries lack. Such is the case with the debut full-length from Berlin’s Har. Cursed Creation, issued recently by Dark Descent Records, displays Har’s ability to draw from many of metal’s most extreme niches to create a harrowing listening experience.

Tim Grieco’s monochromatic artwork might be the first clue to unlocking the various elements of Har’s sound. Eschewing some black metal bands’ pastoral album art, this cover looks like some kind of gridwork blurred into abstraction. It betrays a certain coldness that reminds one of the urban and sometimes bleak futurism embraced by the Norwegian scene in the mid-to-late ‘90s. Har does sidestep the more techno elements that sometimes came from that scene, but albums such as Mayhem’s Wolf’s Lair Abyss and Satyricon’s Rebel Extravaganza do seem to inform their sound. The mid-paced break that interjects itself between the blasting of “Chronocide” seems to veer in that direction. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRYPT OF REASON — “STARGAZER”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 232024
 

(written by Islander)

Today, on the eve of its September 24 release, we premiere a full stream of Stargazer, the debut album by Crypt of Reason from Homiel, Belarus.

The road toward completion of the album was not an easy one. Five years after forming in 2008, the band released their debut EP Creation of Despair. But after completing the writing of their first full-length, the band’s main songwriter Pavel Minutin unexpectedly passed away in 2016.

Crypt of Reason ultimately decided to finish their work on the record that became Stargazer, and they have dedicated it to Pavel‘s memory. They introduce it with a line from Solaris, the fantastic science fiction novel written by the great Stanislaw Lem:

“Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: A COMMEMORATION OF THE DARK SOLSTICE

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Sep 222024
 

(written by Islander)

In the Northern Hemisphere today marks the autumnal equinox, the first day of fall and the point in which the Sun is directly above the equator and the hours of day and night are nearly equal (equinox is a Latin word for “equal night”). In the Southern Hemisphere, today marks the vernal equinox, the first day of spring.

From here on in the north, darkness will steadily increase, no longer merely equal, until we reach the winter solstice, which this year happens on Dec. 21, and then the process will begin to reverse.

I know you didn’t come here for astronomical info, and I’m confident that nearly everyone stumbling into this post already knew all that, but in a Sunday column devoted to black- and black-adjacent metal it’s hard to resist the observation that darkness now begins its reign once more, a coronation that doesn’t always fall on a Sunday.

To commemorate the ascending reign of darkness in our skies, here’s some dark music for you. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (15 BANDS, 16 SONGS)

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 212024
 

(written by Islander)

Yesterday morning my fellow NCS slave DGR sent me the names of 11 bands whose new songs he thought would make good fodder for this Saturday roundup. That was on top of more than a dozen new songs and videos I had on my own list. What to do?

Putting two dozen new tracks into this roundup seemed excessive, if not for you then certainly for me. That’s just way too much work. I thought about just embedding all the streams, without any further info or my own priceless commentary. I even thought about asking someone who’s on Spotify (which I am not) to make a playlist of all the songs and sticking that in here, which would have been an even lazier strategem.

I figured out a solution. It’s not a great solution, just a compromise, and like all compromises it leaves the contending parties unhappy (the contending parties here being two argumentative parts of my brain).

The songs below are alphabetized by the name of the band that made them — another lazy strategem, but one that has resulted in some amusing and interesting contrasts and complements. Nostalgia had something to do with some of these picks (that will be obvious when you come to them). This collection also includes more than a few exceptions to our “rule” about vocals and some curveballs that dive outside our usual strike-zone (sometimes at the same time). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GRAVA — “THE GREAT WHITE NOTHING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 202024
 

(written by Islander)

The 2022 debut album from the Faroese/Danish sludge/post-metal metal trio Grava was an unusually compelling union of visual and musical art. If you’ve seen the cover of Weight of a God (here) and then listened to any of the songs, you already know how well the image matched the crushing music and the album’s utterly bleak conception.

That cover was conceived with one track principally in mind, a song named “Crusher” about a man condemned to be trampled to death by a work elephant in front of a crowd of onlookers, told from the point of view of the condemned man, who sees the beast as the manifestation of a god — a perception that connects to the album title.

All the songs on Weight of a God portrayed different instances of a human being meeting death, seen through their eyes at the last moment. Grava continue telling such harrowing tales on their follow-up album The Great White Nothing, which we’re about to premiere in full, one week away from its release by a trio of labels.

Once again, the cover art (again created by Johannes Larsen) vividly connects to some of those terrible stories, and to the album’s title, as explained in introductory comments provided by vocalist/guitarist Atli Brix Kamban: Continue reading »

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