Islander

UPON STONE: “DEAD MOTHER MOON”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 282024
 

(Our writer DGR finally made his way to the debut album by the San Fernando Valley melodic death metal band Upon Stone, which was released in January by Century Media Records, and was moved to write about it at length in the following review.)

Upon Stone were a heck of an anomaly when they first appeared in the early part of 2024. Seemingly emerging out of the aether with a full-length album and a professed love for melodeath, it was eyebrow-raising to see the group gaining enough steam to grab headlines in the early part of the year, right about the time everyone is still on their post-end-of-year list collection comedown.

Admittedly, we’re late to the bus on this one. Upon Stone‘s first full-length Dead Mother Moon has been on the back-burner since its mid-January release, mostly waiting for a gap in time when we could truly explore the album’s deepest reaches but also to take a deep glance at why the band might’ve garnered such interest with its melodeath necromancy in the year 2024: a time in which even the old-guard are glancing over the mid to late ’90s era efforts of a lot of those bands in favor of material more in line with music from the mid-aughts. Continue reading »

DRIPPING DECAY: “RIPPING REMAINS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 242024
 

(Hot on the heels of their blistering debut album, Festering Grotesqueries, Portland’s Dripping Decay spewed forth a new EP in January 2024 via Satanik Royalty Records, and DGR finally caught up with it, provoking the following review.)

Always being behind the eight ball when it comes to playing catch-up with music releases has proven to be the best sort of motivator in a twisted perversion of the idea.

When you have a deadline upcoming there’s always a sense that you can relax a little, and we have been lucky enough to receive our fair share of early promo works that have allowed us time to really soak in a release and absorb as much as it can offer. But the ones where we miss the bus or discover later? Now it feels like we owe them, which is strange given that many of these are ones we’ve found on our own time or became part of our own private collections to dive into.

This is the case with Oregon’s Dripping Decay and their late-January EP Ripping Remains (we did receive a timely promo, btw). Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FUNERAL STORM

 Interviews  No Responses »
May 242024
 

(Not long ago the Greek black metal band Funeral Storm released their newest album, and on its heels today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of the band’s Wampyrion Markhor Necrowolf.)

We go further into the catacombs of Hellenic Black Metal, and this time Funeral Storm is our guide. This band started by Wampyrion Markhor Necrowolf in 2001 under the name Raven Throne, then he changed the moniker to Funeral Storm in 2002, but took a pause in 2007 that lasted until 2012.

That was the real start of the band as the records finally began to appear: split albums, compilations, and finally the first full-length Arcane Mysteries (2019), which gained its portion of praise and helped to win Funeral Storm its share of recognition.

Now, five years later, the band is back with Chthonic Invocations. I’m not sure that you’ll find the answers to all the questions this album may raise, but at least we tried. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: CHAOS AND CARNAGE – MAY 6, 2024 – THE ORPHEUM, TAMPA, FL

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
May 222024
 

(Daniel Barkasi provided us the following extensive report on the Tampa stop of the ongoing Chaos & Carnage Tour. All photos by: Brittany Barkasi @Turn off the Thunder)

The tour package dubbed Chaos & Carnage admittedly hasn’t always been a can’t miss for this scribe. Early adoptions didn’t completely appeal to my tastes, though there always have been a band or two that were very much in my wheelhouse. Variety is the spice of life, after all. Some have been outright dismissive of this tour package due to deathcore being a “dirty word,” but I’d argue that it’s way more logical to take each act on their own merits and go from there versus casting a wide net of negativity due to a label. You do you, though!

This year’s edition boasts the most varied and intriguing lineup to date. The mighty Cattle Decapitation are an all-timer, and were announced to be co-headlining with Carnifex. Support comes from Humanity’s Last Breath, Rivers of Nihil, The Zenith Passage, Vitriol, and Face Yourself. That’s a lot of bands that will get the blood pumping, and more importantly for yours truly, a diverse smattering of sound variances which could offer something for even the most discerning. Continue reading »

CARRION VAEL: “CANNIBALS ANONYMOUS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 222024
 

(Here, DGR devotes about 1400 words to extolling the virtues of Carrion Vael‘s newest album, which is out now on Unique Leader Records.)

There was a period maybe five or six years ago where a band like Carrion Vael would’ve found a good handful of compatriots within their current label home of Unique Leader Records. Their brand of high-speed melodeath, light implementing of symphonics to help break up the constantly whirring lead guitar, and tech-death hybridization has gone under a few names throughout the years – even cheekily referred to around here once as ‘black dahlia murder-core’ – but there was one pretty distinct carrier of that strain of metal, and at the time many of those groups would’ve been ensconced within the loving brutal bosom of Unique Leader.

However, things changed and something interesting happened within real time as the label’s priorities seemed to shift, favoring the low-and-slow approach of many up-and-coming deathcore groups, or leaning heavily into the brutal deathcore monstrosities that were being born out of former brutal death and gore-focused bands.

Nowadays the label is a tri-headed monstrosity of its own and many of the groups who were playing the high-speed, highly-technical style found a home in labels like The Artisan Era – whose own bands like Inferi found themselves leading the charge in recruitment – and Willowtip seems plenty happy to cast their net in those waters as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DISTORTED REFLECTION

 Exceptions to the Rule, Interviews  No Responses »
May 212024
 


Left to right: Stelios Pavlou, Kostas Salomidis, Vangelis Yalamas

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Kostas Salomidis, founder of Sorrows Path and of the now-ongoing Distorted Reflection, whose debut album Doom Rules Eternally was released earlier this year on Iron Shield Records.)

All of us come from traditional metal in many of its forms; thus, sometimes we publish here the stories of very clean singing bands, and it never hurt anyone (as far as I know). Although our readers are rather into Hellenic Black Metal, a well-known cultural phenomenon, today we have for you an example of Hellenic Doom, a rare thing in itself.

Distorted Reflection’s essence is rooted in the code of the first Greek epic doom band Sorrows Path, as its founder Kostas Salomidis left Sorrows Path two years ago in order to start something new and still traditional. As a result, Distorted Reflection’s first album Doom Rules Eternally serves as a good representative of traditional yet quite epic doom.

Kostas (guitars, vocals) joined his efforts together with Stelios Pavlou (drums) and Vangelis (bass, synths), but if it was a sort of declaration, he invited three guests to take part in the creation of this album, and one of them is the now 70-year-old Ross the Boss, Manowar’s original guitarist.

Now you know what to expect from Doom Rules Eternally, and I invite you to learn more through this interview with Kostas. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLOVEN — “THE MADNESS OF SERPENTS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 212024
 

It seems unlikely that any musical artist records a cover of a song unless the song means something important to them. Oh, undoubtedly we might find examples where someone just made a cynical calculated effort to draft off the talent of someone else for their own benefit, but more likely it’s a sign of genuine affection and admiration, and that’s what we have in the song we’re premiering below.

In this instance the obscure Canadian solo project Cloven recorded a cover of “The Madness of Serpents” by The Devil’s Blood, expressly as a tribute to the late Selim Lemouchi. It may also be a farewell to Cloven as well as Lemouchi, though we understand that before the end comes there will be a Cloven album that includes the recording you’re about to hear. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISKORD — “ONWARD! TO NOWHERE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 212024
 

This makes the sixth time we’ve written about releases by the Norwegian band Diskord since discovering them in 2013 and the third time we’ve premiered music from one of those releases. In straining to describe their methods, we’ve previously used such words and phrases as “bizarre”, “chaotic”, “mind-shearingly abrasive”, “disorienting”, “unpredictable”, “avante-garde-filtered and technically played”, and “a source of considerable fascination and continuous thrills”. As one of our writers wrote about their 2014 EP Oscillations:

[T]hey seem to have transcended not only genre boundaries, but the confines of flesh as well. They exist among the cracks in reality, guided by hidden horrors unknown to most in a realm where few have dared to venture. Oscillations is bestial discomfort refined, progressive while residing in primordial murky depths, an oasis for those who thirst for ghastly evil sounds, memorable riffs, and strange batshit insanity. Continue reading »

CONVULSING: “PERDURANCE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 212024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of a new album from the Australian one-person band Convulsing, which was released this past March.)

If we can offer a bit of advice – armchair psychiatrists that we are around here – do not let anyone ever tell you that you’re going to have a good time with Convulsing‘s third album Perdurance.

Perdurance is not a ‘good times, happy fun times’ album. It’s a dissonant and ugly piece of work, one that is abrasive enough to smooth barnacles off of a ship. Perdurance is cavernous and noisey, Perdurance is expansive and heavy, but under no circumstances could you look at the bent contortions of Convulsing‘s third album and think to yourself ‘well, that’ll be a pleasant trip through the void’. Continue reading »

LIVE IN VIETNAM: SUFFOCATION, GATECREEPER, BLOOD SERPENT, THANH DUC, DIARSIA, DISTRICT 105 — 27 MARCH 2024

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
May 202024
 

(Our Hanoi-based correspondent Vizzah Harri prepared the following report of a hell of a show that took place in Ho Chi Minh City, aka Saigon, on March 27, 2024. Uncaptioned images in the article were made by him.)

The late eighties and early nineties must have been suffocating times – there were 6 bands formed around the same period with the name Suffocation. Though the band that formed in the same year that Soviet troops finally withdrew out of Afghanistan was the one that prevailed.

Suffocation needs no introduction for being groundbreakers in the genre of death regarding brutality and technicality. If anyone didn’t know, they’re from Long Island, home to the NYC boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, the former of which has some of the coolest metal bars any side of the Atlantic. I for one am really lucky to have not been born too late to witness Saint Vitus perform in the eponymous bar named after them.

Jesuit, if translated phonically, will sound like dễ sử in Vietnamese, which means ‘easy to use’ and the line followed unto the Latin of ‘lesous’ leads us to the catch 33 of salvation. These missionaries were extremely successful and had a massive influence on the eventual subjugation of the ‘J’ or ear-shaped French Indochina. An area that according to Wikipedia covered less ground than the three sovereign nations of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam of today.

Vietnam and Cambodia together are about 9 Long Islands smaller than France at 512,247 square kilometers (km2), which is about 20 Long Islands (3,629 km2) bigger than Arizona and the State of New York as one (436,554 km2). If you follow my bulletproof logic here… it’s been almost 20 years since Suffocation from Long Island visited this humid ‘little’ corner of the world. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries