Islander

Aug 162024
 

The last time we hosted a premiere from Torrefy‘s forthcoming fourth album Necronomisongs we used the album’s remarkable cover art as the jumping-off point. As you can see, it portrays the performance of a hellish orchestra, stripped of flesh but not stripped of their deathless desire to perform, and the song we premiered itself sounded like the demented revels of a devilish orchestra — fast and frenzied, brazen and baroque, and perpetually veering in a multitude of different but diabolical directions, creating an extravagant display of technical pyrotechnics and crazed yet sharply executed ebullience.

Today, as you can also see, we’re premiering another song by these unconventional Canadian black/thrashers from Necronomisongs, and this time our jumping-off point concerns the inspirations for the album tracks: Each of them is based on a favorite book of Torrefy vocalist John Ferguson.

The song we previously premiered, “Enslaved New World“, was inspired by a fantasy series called The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Before that, the band had revealed the album’s first single, “Of Wind and Worm“, along with an electrifying performance video. That song, as perhaps you might guess based on its title, was inspired by Frank Herbert‘s Dune.

And today we have a song incited by a Stephen King novel. As John Ferguson explains: Continue reading »

Aug 162024
 


Photo Credit: Thirdxposurephotography

(Looking forward to the impending August 30 release of a new album by Deceased, Comrade Aleks reached out to the band’s co-founder Kingsley “King” Fowley for an interview, and that resulted in a very engaging and wide-ranging discussion, which you can now read below.)

The legendary Deceased returns with a new full-length album, though “return” is a wrong word, because they’ve kept an active pace since 1985 and (almost) never stop. The band’s lineup is pretty steady and the new album Children of the Morgue was recorded by Deceased founder Kingsley “King” Fowley (vocals), Les Snyder (bass) who joined the crew in 1988, Mike Smith (guitars) who’s been in the lineup since 1990, Shane Fuegel (guitars) since 2006, and “youngest” member Amos Rifkin (drums) who had to replace untimely departed Dave “Scarface” Castillo in 2019.

The crew prepared an album full of driving death and thrash metal hits, proving to be damn heavy, alive, and creative despite the band’s respectable age. And we were honoured to interview Kingsley himself, a most friendly and communicative death metal undertaker. Continue reading »

Aug 162024
 

(DGR is attempting to clear out a backlog of reviews he has been planning for some time, beginning today with a collection of writings for four bands who released records in May of this year.)

You could probably set your watch by this – right down to the opening sentence even – but it seems once again that the back half of the year has crept up faster than one might expect, which means it is now time for the honoured tradition known as ‘clearing the slate’.

These are quicker, more stream of consciousness reviews than I generally prefer to do, and although the brevity is certainly appreciated, it does still kind of bother me personally that I’m not quite diving as deep into an album as I would generally like to.

This may come as shocking but even though I’ve had extended periods of radio silence on the site throughout the years, that doesn’t mean I’ve necessarily stopped listening to music. Instead, the musical net behind the good ship DGR remains constantly deployed, and full, even after I’ve removed and returned any protected species to the their homes in the wild.

What you see here are albums that’ve slowly built up in the collection over the year, some recent and others very clearly and assuredly not so recent. Some of these are even releases that I intended to write about before fucking off for the entirety of May, when I jammed out something like eleven or twelve reviews so the site wouldn’t go completely dark while we were all out in the wild that is both Terror Fest and Deathfest.

Either way, if I don’t at least attempt to kick this boulder downhill, the act of leaving so many releases I’ve been listening to without at least something to help get them to a wider audience is going to bother me until December… when I’ll be doing this again during year-end list season. Continue reading »

Aug 152024
 

(Today we share with you Didrik Mešiček‘s report on the fourth and final day of the star-studded Tolminator festival in his home country of Slovenia, which ran this year in late July. It’s again accompanied by excellent photos, including another large Flickr gallery at the end, made by Katja Torkar/Bloodbat Photography. For Didrik‘s reports on the festival’s first three days, go here, here, and here.)

The final day began with a bit more fever which also meant a bit more cocaine (still a joke, calm down) and that meant I couldn’t wait for the entire thing to be done. Combined with the lineup being mostly thrash this, wasn’t my favourite day, yet Saturday started with a band that seemed like it could be interesting – the Italian Astral Paralysis.

Metal Archives lists the band as progressive death metal and while their actual playing wasn’t bad there weren’t too many hints of anything progressive. Given that this was the only band on the lineup that went anywhere near proggy vibes, that was disappointing and definitely something I’ve been missing. The band’s biggest problem is, however, the vocalist who was stiff on stage and looked quite terrified. His vocal skill is good, he just needs to relax and play a lot of shows and that should be a lot easier and result in this band going places. Continue reading »

Aug 152024
 

The metal band Floscule, which features members from Silvern, White Ward, and Obrij, is based in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, a city with a shipbuilding history near the Black Sea in the southern part of the country, and an important transportation hub. As this source reports:

“In February and March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian military forces attacked Mykolaiv and placed it under siege. Ukrainian forces barred Russian forces from the city, though Russian artillery continued to shell it. By July, half of the pre-war population had left the city…. On 25 March 2022 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded Mykolaiv the title of Hero City of Ukraine due to the Battle of Mykolaiv.”

On September 27th, Vendetta Records will release Floscule‘s debut album, entitled Ї. Tomorrow, the band will release one of the album’s songs as a digital single, and we’re premiering it today with a lyric video. It has a history that connects with what Mykolaiv experienced in early 2022, and what the entire country has been experiencing as a result of Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion, with no end in sight. Continue reading »

Aug 142024
 

(written by Islander)

It’s only Wednesday and the week has already seen the release of a lot of notable new songs and videos. Taking advantage of the fact that I only had one premiere on the calendar for today, I decided to pull together some of the new sights and sounds so that the usual Saturday roundup this week might not be as obese as the one I did last Saturday.

SCHAMMASCH (Switzerland)

Yesterday Prosthetic Records announced the sixth studio effort by the Swiss band Schammasch, and the second in their The Maldoror Chants series, which draws upon a 19th-century surrealist book entitled Les Chants de Maldoror. The new album is named The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean, and it’s set for release on October 25th. The themes of the album, based upon those texts, are captured in these words: Continue reading »

Aug 142024
 

Take a moment to reflect upon all you’ve done wrong in your life, or at least all you did wrong yesterday: The careless, stupid decisions. The petty jealousies. The pointless cruelties. The opportunities not seized, and the forgiveness not given. Think about all that, and maybe you’ll understand, as you bleed out, how well you deserve the merciless beating you’re about to suffer at the hands of Heinous Exsanguination.

This Los Angeles band clearly picked their name in an attempt to sum up the intent behind the music they decided to make — not just bloodletting, but odious and abominable bloodletting, both blistering and brutalizing.

And even if you don’t carefully ponder the meaning of their name, take a look at the artwork up there, which adorns their debut EP The Stench of Decaying Flesh, and you’ll get the message, a message not just reinforced by the EP’s title but also by the name of the EP track we’re premiering today: “Vile Rotting Mess“. Continue reading »

Aug 142024
 

(Today we share with you Didrik Mešiček‘s report on the third day of the star-studded Tolminator festival in his home country of Slovenia, which ran this year in late July. It’s again accompanied by excellent photos, including another large Flickr gallery at the end, made by Katja Torkar/Bloodbat Photography. For the reports on Day One and Day Two, go here and here.)

They say all things come with their consequences. And that must be why I woke up with a fever on day three. Not exactly how you want to start the second half of the festival, but ah well. Time waits for no man and after consuming an obscene amount of cocaine (for legal reasons, I want to make clear that this is a joke) I felt normal enough to continue and start the day early for once as Patroness was opening at 11:50AM.

Tolminator does try and sort of make the days thematic by subgenres and so Friday had a bit of a stoner/doom vibe and the Belgians fit somewhat into that larger bracket. The band has only one released album, Fatum, from 2022, and therefore limited material but the vocalist is utterly deranged. For some reason his pants had one of the pantlegs cut off, he poured a bottle of ice tea on his head, and showcased a generally nihilistic approach to the entire show. At least you can’t say we weren’t entertained. Continue reading »

Aug 132024
 

(written by Islander)

A few weeks ago the Greek band Föhn released a video for “Bereft,” the first advance track from their debut album Condescending, which will be released on August 23rd by Hypaethral Records in North America and These Hands Melt in Europe. I paid attention to it after seeing the album described as “avant-garde funeral doom” and realizing that the song included performances by two saxophonists. I then urgently wrote 330 words about it, just the one song.

Granted, “Bereft” is more than 13 minutes long, but even 330 words probably still didn’t do it justice.

When I spilled all those words I didn’t know we would be asked to host the premiere of a second song from Condescending, but that happened, and so I’m afraid you’re in for a lot more words. But mainly what you’re in for is yet another profoundly powerful piece of music, this one named “A Day After“. Continue reading »

Aug 132024
 

(Below you’ll find Daniel Barkasi‘s reviews of 8 albums released in July that he enthusiastically recommends to you.)

As summer continues its dreadful humidity-laden romp, I’m reminded of a bit from Robin Williams’ (RIP legend) Live on Broadway standup special where he talked about climate change. More specifically, “It’s beyond Global Warming at this point – it is cooking!” Just over 22 years ago, and he got it like only Robin could. Seriously, watch that entire special if you want to writhe in pain from laughter. Some of the references may be dated to some younger than dirt, but man it’s a good time from one of the funniest people to ever live.

Going from my “If I go outside, I’ll be peeling sweat-ridden clothes off like a layer of Saran Wrap” Florida life, a subject that’s been bugging the crap out of me is generative AI. More specifically, it’s application of generating album artwork – and we use the term artwork in this case very loosely. It’s not artwork at all, but a prompt-drive monstrosity that almost always looks like cheap junk. Continue reading »