Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AS THE SUN FALLS — “AURORA”

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Apr 122024
 

For the sake of As the Sun Falls and the people who filmed the video you’re about to see, we hope they pulled it off in one take so as to avoid frostbite. The expansive snowbound setting (filmed against the backdrop of Nummela, Finland) is dramatic, and the band’s members are heavily bundled and throwing themselves into the performance in a way that surely got their blood rushing — but it still looks icy cold.

Yet with a song named “Aurora” and a band who make their home in “the frozen heart of Finland”, the setting was a natural choice. And the video well-suits the music itself, which gets the heart pounding, creates a bitter and desolate chill, and beautifully but hauntingly shimmers like the aurora borealis. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: CEMETERY OF SCREAM

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Apr 122024
 

(Following some delays on our part, today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with guitarist Marcin Piwowarczyk from the Polish band Cemetery of Scream, who trace their birth to the ancient year of 1992 and still go strong.)

I’m a long-time Cemetery of Scream fan. I remember those innocent days when me and my buddy shouted out the lyrics of “Anxiety”, their best-known song from the first album Melancholy, at a local graveyard. I remember how I watched and appreciated the metamorphosis the band went through from death-doom to… to some experiments within the genre that could be classified as “gothic”. And though I knew that those times, those vibes, won’t return and the band have changed too much, I awaited their new material.

There was a huge break since the release of their last album Frozen Images. It saw the light of day in 2009, and I knew that new songs were already prepared in around 2016. So what happened? It took too much time, yet here they are.

Sleaszy Rider Records released Cemetery of Scream’s sixth album Oceans in November 2023, and here we are with the band’s original guitarist Marcin Piwowarczyk. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CROWN OF ASTERIA — “CYPHER”

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Apr 112024
 

We don’t know who first coined the term “atmospheric black metal”, but it has obviously stuck. Its meaning, however, despite its wide usage, is somewhat vague. It suggests music that is more geared toward the creation of mood or visions kindled in the imagination than, well, music based more centrally on riffs and riots. But that still leaves a lot un-defined.

The vagueness of the term makes it a big umbrella, or a big tent, or whatever you want to call a canopy that covers a lot of people and the different things they’re doing, including people whose activities spill them outside the covering.

Which brings us to Michigan-based Crown of Asteria, the distinctive solo project of the musically prolific Meghan Wood. Now more than 10 years into its existence, Crown of Asteria has amassed a lengthy discography, one that has exhibited as much experimentation as it has been threaded with through-lines.

But while no year has passed since Crown of Asteria‘s inception without something new from the project (and usually several or many somethings), it’s been more than five years since the last full album — a span that will be closed on April 12th with Fiadh Productions‘ release of a new Crown of Asteria album named Cypher, which is the subject of today’s premiere. Continue reading »

SRD: “VRAGMESITON”

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Apr 112024
 

(We present Didrik Mešiček‘s review of a forthcoming new album by the Slovenian black metal band Srd, along with a full stream of the album.)

In all my years of writing album reviews, I’ve somehow never covered one of my fellow Slovenian bands, so it’s about time we tick that off the list as well and therefore I’ll be talking about Srd’s new release, entitled Vragvmesiton, today. The band is widely considered to be one of the best acts in Slovenia’s surprisingly numerous, albeit internationally unknown, scene, and for them this will be their third full-length record since their inception in 2016 and it’ll be released on April 19th, 2024 through On Parole Productions.

There are few bands of which I have such an intimate knowledge of their discography, mainly as I have a bad habit of not really checking out earlier releases, but Srd is definitely an exception. Whilst their debut album, Smrti sel, had some indications of where the band wanted to go, it was also quite clear that the band was still trying to find itself, and they did so in Ognja prerok where Srd developed their own unique and consistent sound a lot more and switched to having all of their lyricism in Slovenian.

The evolution with these two releases felt very natural, however it’s with Vragvmesiton that the band strays from that path and seems to meander through some twisted and chaotic Satanic black metal maze. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MOTHER OF ALL — “GLOBAL PARASITIC LEVIATHAN”

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Apr 102024
 

I have no competent statistical evidence to back up this assertion, but it seems like the way most metal bands work is that the music comes first and then the vocalist, who may or may not be an instrumental performer, comes up with lyrical themes and words that might have no connection to whatever the other songwriters were feeling and thinking when they cooked up the music.

That is probably not the way things have worked in Mother of All. This band is the brainchild of Danish musician Martin Haumann, and although he has surrounded himself in Mother of All‘s recordings with some very talented instrumental performers to augment his own prodigious talents, it’s he who is the lyricist and the songwriter, and the lyrical themes have been crafted with such conceptual focus and adamance of belief that it seems unlikely they were an afterthought. More likely, those themes were in mind when much of the music was written.

On the other hand, the music on Mother of All‘s new album Global Parasitic Leviathan, which we’re premiering today just days from its April 12 release, is so fantastically exhilarating that it may create a disconnect in the minds of listeners from what the album is about. But let’s begin with what the album is about…. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT

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Apr 102024
 

(Last week we forced Andy Synn to listen to and review The Monolith Deathcult‘s new album, and this week we forced Comrade Aleks to interview TMDC‘s Robin Kok, and although we can’t affirm that Aleks got away unscathed, he did provide us the interview… below….)

The Dutch band The Monolith Deathcult began its underground career more than twenty years ago with quite brutal and moderately unbridled death metal, which over time was symphonized, electrified, industrialized, and decorated with various, often unexpected, samples. It sounds scary, but, for example, one of The Monolith’s past hits “Fist of Stalin” gained an exorbitant number of plays on streaming services, and on YouTube the views of this video amount to almost a hundred thousand, which is not bad.

As the years go by, The Monolith has changed within the framework of the formula discovered by its members, but the composition of the group has remained unchanged for many years: Michiel Dekker (guitar, vocals), Carsten Altena (keyboards, orchestrations, guitar, vocals) and Robin Kok (growls, bass). If we take into account the band’s tendencies towards electronic sound, then we can assume that their drums are programmed, but for several years now the invariably professional guest drummer Frank Schilperoort has been working in this position. He also worked with The Monolith Deathcult on the new album, released in April by Human Detonator Records, The Demon Who Makes Trophies of Men, which we spoke with Robin Kok personally about. Continue reading »

CONCERT REVIEW: WAYFARER PRESENTS “AMERICAN GOTHIC,” BLUEBIRD THEATER, MARCH 29, 2024

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Apr 092024
 

(Below we present our Denver-based contributor Gonzo‘s wonderful review of a unique show in March by Wayfarer performing the entirety of their American Gothic album, with support from Paul Riedl, Munly and the Lupercalians, and some special guests.)

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in my lifetime, metal music turned into the audial equivalent of Sriracha: You can add it to anything.

And few bands really understand this in the way Denver’s Wayfarer does. Their fusing of black metal’s raw underbelly with Old West lyrical themes and imagery is one of the best musical marriages happening in metal right now. They’re a huge part of what makes the Denver metal scene the unending adventure that it is. Any chance to see them perform live is a momentous occasion.

So when the quartet announced they’d be riding out to the Bluebird Theater for a one-night-only performance of their 2023 opus American Gothic, featuring some special guests that I’d never see coming, you could be damn sure yours truly would be present for it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DOGTAG REMAINS — “HILL 731”

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Apr 092024
 

Dogtag Remains are a death metal band from Greece, and their debut album Forgotten Battlefields is now set for co-release by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Australis Records (Chile) on April 25th.

As both the band’s name and the new album’s title suggest, the band have focused the subject matter of their music on war and all its madness, terror, and destruction — and the music itself renders those themes with devastating power and electrifying intensity, while also oppressively dragging listeners into the sinkholes of agony and hopelessness that inflict warfare’s victims.

Many of the new album’s 8 songs are apparently based upon historical events that the band wish us to remember, and that includes the one we’re premiering today — “Hill 731“. Continue reading »

DÅÅTH: “THE DECEIVERS”

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Apr 092024
 

(Below we present Wil Cifer‘s review of the new comeback album from Atlanta-based Dååth, which will be released by Metal Blade on May 3rd.)

After a decade-long hiatus bands often return to a musical landscape that has shifted. With metal, the stakes are higher. Headbangers are like addicts who build a tolerance requiring an ever-increasing level of sonic stimulus to get the same results. This leaves musicians with the choice of either cashing in on nostalgia or trying to find their place in the new musical climate. Producer/ guitarist Eyal Levi finds a balance between the two with Dååth‘s new album. Levi might be the sole original member, but he brought long-time growling machine Sean Z along for the ride. Sean’s multitracked performance lends to this album’s massive sound. Continue reading »

BENIGHTED: “EKBOM”

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Apr 092024
 

(Benighted‘s new album Ekbom comes out this Friday, April 12th, via Season of Mist, so the time is right to present DGR‘s review… which proceeds in phases.)

Benighted are old friends around here – No Clean Singing has taken the banner up for the band for a long time and have been covering them in one form or another since 2009(!).

We’ve covered their EPs, singles, and albums and there’s a pretty hot chance that your author here has been involved in a large part of that.

The high-speed core of Benighted‘s evolution into deathgrind form was found pretty early on, and well, they’ve danced into and out of -core, black metal, and brutal-death-inspired circles but they’ve always cycled back around to the sort of relentless blastbeating backbone that is their foundation.

For the last couple of years they’ve subsisted on a somewhat steady drip-feed of singles that allowed them to get the horror movie craze out of their system during the pandemic downtime, and Ekbom – upon first listen – doesn’t really mess around with the formula.

But it doesn’t take long – nor many listens – for the band’s latest album to start revealing itself as being something more. Continue reading »

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