Islander

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ARGILE

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Jul 232024
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ extensive recent interview with Philippe Courtois of Misanthrope fame, with a special focus on the Misanthrope spinoff Argile and the completion this year of Argile‘s trilogy of albums.)

Argile is the doomy branch of French intellectual extremes Misanthrope and it rarely emerges from the underground. While Misanthrope have been steadily recording albums and performing for over 35 years, Argile have been moving modestly and heavily from album to album.

Spleen Angel is the band’s third full-length work, and it is separated from the previous full-length by a huge break, counting 14 years. The album was recorded with a full Misanthrope line-up: Philippe Courtois (vocals), Jean-Jacques Moréac (bass, keyboards), Gaël Féret (drums) and Anthony Skemama (guitars).

Argile sound absolutely doomy, but unbridledly artistic, and do not restrain their impulses by genre conventions. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE OTHER SUN — “DAIMON, DEVIL, DAWN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 222024
 

Here at NCS we like to think that in deciding what music to write about we avoid getting stuck in any ruts. Variety, after all, is a powerful antidote to the poison of boredom. And besides, we don’t want people to get too confident in thinking they know in advance what they’re going to experience whenever they land here. If our choices don’t at least occasionally pull people out of their “comfort zones”, then we’re failing by our own lights.

Having said that, the album we’re premiering below is in almost all ways vastly different from the music that populates our own ever-expanding spectrum of musical coverage. Because it is so different, there may be a risk that some of our visitors will shy away from it. However, I fervently hope that won’t happen, because Daimon, Devil, Dawn is a most skilled form of sonic sorcery that should not be missed. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, THE SHIVA HYPOTHESIS, FÖHN

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 202024
 


Photo Credit: Francesco Esposito

For those of you who don’t treat our posts as among your daily essentials of life, or at least like a free oxygen mask in the vicinity of a chemical train derailment, I’ll mention again that I won’t have much time for metal this weekend.

Today is the start of an annual two-day outdoor gathering of toilers at my day job and their families. For some of us it began last night, something akin to an alcohol-fueled pre-fest for concert-goers. It was jolly, and left me somewhat jumbled this morning.

That relatively mild mental affliction, coupled with the fact that the real festivities will begin soon, have left me constrained in what I can do in this Saturday roundup. If you don’t see a Shades of Black collection tomorrow, you’ll know that my Sunday-morning affliction was more severe and my sleeping-in more prolonged. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOE BEARER — “ROTTEN TONGUE”

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Jul 192024
 

We find ourselves in an unusual but not unheard-of situation at our site: featuring the music of a band we know almost nothing about other than the music we can hear.

In this instance the band’s name is Woe Bearer. It is a duo consisting of H., who performed guitars and bass, programmed the drums, wrote the lyrics, and mixed and mastered the recording, and T., the vocalist. We don’t know where they’re from or anything about their backgrounds.

They’ve recorded a debut album named Thriving Within the Absurdity of the Human Plight, which will be released on digital and tape formats by Onism Productions on August 23rd.

And that’s what we know… apart from the startling music you’re also about to hear now. Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME VII: WE’RE HALFWAY THERE

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Jul 192024
 

(With the month of June now behind us, Daniel Barkasi returns to NCS with a collection of eight albums released in that month which have drawn his favor.)

No, we’re not about to break out into the chorus of “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Though to be completely transparent, I do enjoy the cheesiness of Bon Jovi. But we’re not talking about New Jersey hair rockers today, beyond this brief mention.

June has been a strange month that we mostly would like to forget. We endured a family tragedy that still has me rattled – things are settling, but loss hurts deeply and tends to linger. Always keep love at the forefront of everything you do, because nobody knows what awaits tomorrow. Words to live by from this rando. I know, I know – we’re about to go over a bunch of extreme metal and we’re talkin’ ‘bout love. Sorry, Van Halen – who also rules. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FURZE

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Jul 192024
 

(Comrade Aleks has brought us the following interview with Woe J. Reaper, the maniac behind the Norwegian “Black Psych Metal” band Furze, whose latest album Caw Entrance is out now.)

Trondheim-based black psych metal project Furze has a proper discography, and their eighth album Caw Entrance was released on 5 April 2024 by Devoted Art Propaganda from Polytriad Fingertips. Once again Woe J. Reaper supplies his followers with quite eccentric black metal filled with old school vibes and macabre delivery.

And yes, yes, Furze’s founder keeps the same approach to recording and delivery of his material — it’s better to quote him directly:

“You don’t like the production? Oh, luck gently off! Coherently we advise all listeners to grab a nice pair of headphones and listen to this album that way. No background listening sessions will work and not even your stereo for that sake. It’s strange but true: special details were impossible to secure into both ways of listening. Don’t worry: lots of work was laid down with mastering too, and what’s closer to a simple level adjustment from the mix worked like a superhorse so the result is clear: Headphone listening sessions are the only way to enter one’s Caw Entrance.”

I welcome you to learn more about Woe’s motivation and what BLACK PSYCH FUCKIN’ METAL is. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GAEREA, HAR, HAMMERFILOSOFI, LAGO, CAGED BASTARD, THE SPIRIT, ARA SUBVERSOR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 182024
 


Photo Credit: Chantik Photography

I’m so far behind in pulling together roundups of new songs and videos for NCS that I can’t even think of an appropriate metaphor. Maybe like a marathon runner who takes an arrow to the knee just as the starting gun goes off and is still writhing on the ground when the last runner crosses the finish line — but I’m even more behind than that.

Another metaphor comes to mind, the one about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step. This is a journey I won’t finish, if finishing means catching up, but here’s a single step (actually 7 steps, to be less metaphorical and  more precise).

P.S. I decided to lean pretty hard into black, death, and blackened death metal on the especially incinerating and obliterating end of the spectrum, with something dark and hallucinatory more or less in the middle. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ALIOTH BOREALIS — “THE MAUSOLEUM OF ALL HOPE AND DESIRE”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jul 182024
 

One of my tasks at NCS is to monitor the e-mails sent to our site. This is a tedious and terrible job. We get about 200 of them every day, at least half of which arrive because (perplexingly) we’re on mass lists used by some PR agents to promote non-metal music we have less than zero interest in. For other reasons many of the others don’t fit what we do around here (e.g., they’re “newsy” items or concern metal bands whose music isn’t in our wheelhouse).

Some days I don’t even have time to skim the subject lines. When I do, I try to pay particular attention to e-mails coming in from bands themselves, i.e., people who don’t have PR agents or labels backing them. I figure they need more help from sites like ours than groups who have some professional machinery behind them.

Of course, most musicians aren’t naturally talented self-promoters, and so (no criticism intended), a lot of band e-mails don’t set the hook quickly or effectively. However, the one I saw from Alioth Borealis definitely did do that. Check this out: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE DEPRESSICK — “FADED.EXE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 172024
 

The Depressick don’t disguise the emotional states that fuel their music. It’s right there in the name they chose, a representation of gloom so deep that the hopelessness becomes illness. It connects with the place they call home, a densely populated and historically impoverished suburb of Mexico City named Nezahualcoyotl. We’re told that the “negativity, misery, poverty, sickness and filth” of their environment contributes to their music’s bleakness.

The band’s gut-wrenching musical journey so far has produced the 2017 debut album Carcinoma and eight shorter releases and splits. And it truly has been a journey. They haven’t forsaken their dark roots in DSBM, but have allowed them to extend into other soils, and the results have become manifest in their forthcoming second album faded.exe, which we’re premiering below in advance of its July 19th release by Tragedy Productions/End My Life Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PNEUMA HAGION

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Jul 172024
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ very interesting interview with Ryan Wilson from Texas-based Pneuma Hagion, whose new album will be released to hideously infect our minds next month, courtesy of Everlasting Spew Records.)

This duo from Texas consists of Ryan Wilson (all instruments, vocals) and Shane Elwell (drums). Both of them have had rich activity in metal and non-metal projects for years, and the new album of Pneuma Hagion From Beyond provides us Lovecraftian horror-influenced, death-metal-oriented material filled with inhuman, fierce, and raw aggression.

According to the official press-release “From Beyond explores Lovecraftian ideas of horrifying extra-dimensional entities forcing their way into the causal universe by infecting the minds of humans”. Sounds exciting! It’s Pneuma Hagion’s third full-length album since 2015, so without doubt it’s the most focused and well-built material and it’ll be available from Everlasting Spew Records on August 30th.

Meanwhile, you can listen the album’s first track “Harbinger of Dissolution”, which we premiered here, and read the following interview with Ryan. Continue reading »

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