Islander

AN NCS INTERVIEW: HAMFERÐ

 Interviews  No Responses »
Mar 222024
 

(Today Metal Blade is releasing a new album from the Faroe Islands-based death/doom band Hamferð, and to help celebrate the event we’re sharing Comrade Aleks‘ recent interview with Hamferð guitarist Theodor Kapnas.)

Wow! Time flies by! It seems that the last interview we did with Hamferð here happened in 2014. Back then we discussed with the band’s vocalist Jón Aldará the debut album Evst, but I believe there was another interview a few years later, though my memory sometimes fails me. However, it’s March 2024, and Hamferð’s third full-length work Men Guðs hond er sterk is ready to be released on March 22nd.

Metal Blade Records presented two new tracks “Ábær” and “Hvølja” recently, and the album promises to be another gorgeous monument of epic Nordic death-doom, with Faroese lyrics of course. The band’s sound evolved a bit as far as it could be heard, but there’s always something worth talking about with such a man as Theodor Kapnas, Hamferð’s guitarist. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: MUNICIPAL WASTE, GHOUL, NECROT, AND DEAD HEAT IN L.A., MAR. 5, 2024

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 212024
 

(Our friend Ben Manzella caught the March 5 Los Angeles stop of the recently concluded Brainsqueeze Tour 2024, featuring performances by Municipal Waste, Ghoul, Necrot, and Dead Heat, and brought us the following report and his own photos of the event.)

While I can’t claim I’ve been to every venue in Los Angeles, it is still rare I get to attend a show at a venue that has recently opened for business. After the ticket demand proved beyond the capacity of the original venue, The Tankcrimes Records Brainsqueeze tour headlined by Municipal Waste managed to find a more fitting space in the Bellwether.

Along with being the Brainsqueeze tour, this tour is also a celebration of 20 years since the release of Municipal Waste’s record Waste Em’ All. Along with Municipal Waste on the tour are Ghoul, Necrot, and Dead Heat. While every band is heavy in their own right, each band is as similar as they are different; whether that was considered or not, this lineup sold out the Bellwether, which is just over double the capacity of the originally scheduled venue on a Tuesday night. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE BLEAK PICTURE — “MEANINGLESS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 212024
 

The image on the cover of the debut album from the Finnish duo The Bleak Picture is striking. It shows a group of people paused in their normal daily movements (except, perhaps, for the police) and staring at a dark hunched figure, or maybe two of them, on the precipice of some catastrophe, lost in either horror or mourning or both. The origins of the devastation are hard to decipher, but the ruination is apparent.

Gazing at the image, it does seem to connect with the title of the album — Meaningless — but the exact nature of the connection, even though it feels right, is as mysterious as the exact nature of the catastrophe in the cover image.

Well, it would have been an interesting question to ask composer/instrumentalist Jussi Hänninen and lyricist/vocalist Tero Ruohonen what that image depicts and why they chose it, but alas, the thought came too late. But maybe it’s for the best, because there are mysteries in the music too — and catastrophes and mourning and something like a search for meaning. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PONTE DEL DIAVOLO

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Mar 212024
 


photo by Cristina Ferrero

(Through the good graces of Season of Mist, the distinctive Italian black/doom metal band Ponte del Diavolo released their debut album last month (reviewed here by our own Andy Synn), and that provided the impetus for Comrade Aleks to reach out for the interview we now present.)

Even though black metal in its pure, true, and evil form isn’t associated with Italy, there are a few interesting bands there with their own authentic view of this genre. Sometimes their uniqueness is rooted in a mix of black metal with other genres, sometimes it’s their native aesthetic or cultural references, and sometimes it’s both.

Ponte del Diavolo was founded in 2020 by Abro (bass), Laurus (bass), Segale Cornuta (drums), Nerium (guitars), and Erba del Diavolo (vocals). Only Abro and Laurus previously played in different death, black, and doom metal bands; as for the other members, Ponte del Diavolo was a new outfit.

Season of Mist released Ponte del Diavolo‘s debut album Fire Blades from the Tomb on the 16th of February. These six stories of authentic and passionate romantic black metal with doom influences and female vocals are complimented with a cover of Nick Cave’s “Weeping Song”, another good reason to pay attetion to this album.

We had a talk with several of the band’s members about the new album and other things. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DÅÅTH, NOCTURNUS AD, OUBLIETTE, ROPE SECT, UFOMAMMUT, VALE OF PNATH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 202024
 

It has been a very busy week for the release of new songs and videos, and the week is only half-way through. Some of my fellow NCS slaves have tossed a lot of them my way, and I’ve ferreted out others.

Even though I’ve included quite a lot of them in this roundup, more are still running around the prairies waiting to be corralled. I hope I can lasso a few more before the weekend, assuming my lathered-up pony doesn’t hit a gopher hole and pitch me over its head into a hard landing.

DÅÅTH (U.S.)

This site sprang to life in November 2009. Just a couple months later we published our first annual list of “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“, and Dååth‘s “Wilting on the Vine” was one of the 10 we selected. That’s how long ago we started following this Atlanta-based band, though they had been releasing music for six years before that. But after one more album in 2010, the band fell silent for what turned out to be a very long time. Continue reading »

TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHIES PART 6.16 (SONIC WALL OF SOUND TO LA CHAIR À CANON (FODDER) TACTICS)

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2023  1 Response »
Mar 202024
 

(Our Hanoi-based supporter Vizzah Harri reaches the end of his 6.16-Part selection of infectious songs from 2023. Find the preceding Parts here.)

Chiffonnier is a dirty word

“Effervescence just like chiffonniers

assumed as having one role, yet

aggrandizement of innate embodiment

illusive in so far as seeing it as is. Continue reading »

ATROPHY: “ASYLUM”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 202024
 

(We present Wil Cifer‘s review of the first Atrophy album in 34 years, recently released by Massacre Records.)

Despite growing up on it in the ’80s I do not cover much thrash. Most of the new thrash bands just fetishize the sound of Combat Records bands circa 1985. While that was a pivotal time for metal, nostalgia only goes so far. Arizona thrashers Atrophy were never a household name when it came to thrash, but their 1988 album Socialized Hate was an overlooked classic. I gave the album an overdue revisiting, before diving into the band’s first album in 34 years.

The first thing that is evident here is that, at 59 years of age, sole founding member Brian Zimmerman’s voice has held up extremely well, for a vocalist who has not been all that active over the years. His delivery on this album carries the familiar narrative of their earlier work, though it seems he has spent some time thinking about what he did on those albums, as the phrasing is more nuanced.

The session players Zimmerman gathered to make this album might not be big names of thrash, but hungry players who took the opportunity and stepped up to show they were just as capable as any of the veteran thrash bands out there. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ENDLESS LOSS — “TRAVERSING THE MEPHITIC ARTERY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 202024
 

Through their first two releases, Australia’s Endless Loss opened the floodgates of words here that attempted to capture the exhilaration of being sonically destroyed and chilled to the bone.

We referred to their 24-minute 2016 debut demo, Solitary Starless Beast, as “a catastrophic demolition job”, with “dire and desolate melody slithering along through the maelstrom”. We characterized their 14-minute 2022 EP Bloodletting Narcotic Divination as “brutally bludgeoning and psychotically violent stuff, but also hallucinatory and esoteric”.

We spilled out a lot more words, but you probably get the point. This Adelaide duo’s amalgam of black and death metal was violently ruinous enough to appeal increasingly to fans of bestial war metal, but also displayed a kind of fiendish intelligence and ingenuity that gave the music more dimensions than unmitigated bombardment and evisceration.

And so, while the prospect of an Endless Loss debut album created the thrills that come to some of us when anticipating a slaughter-fest, it also created curiosity. Would Endloss Loss continue opening other dimensions through their music, and how effectively would they do that?

We and you have our answer today, because we’re presenting a full stream of that album — entitled Traversing the Mephitic Artery — in advance of its March 25th release by Nuclear Winter Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INELEGANT MASS — “LOWER MYSELF”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 192024
 

Those of you who perused the daily news yesterday (though why would any sane person do that?) would have quickly halted in your tracks upon seeing this headline:

“500-pound mound of pythons found in Florida marsh”

Reading further, you would have found a photo and a description of a discovery made by a team of trackers (e.g., here) — a 7-foot wide mound of Burmese pythons in the midst of mating season.

Of course, it’s mere coincidence that this report surfaced just before our premiere of a song by a band named Inelegant Mass. Or is it? Continue reading »

NECROPHOBIC: “IN THE TWILIGHT GREY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 192024
 

(Below you’ll find DGR‘s review of the new album by Sweden’s Necrophobic, released on March 15th by Century Media Records.)

Mark this as one of the most profound statements you’ll ever read on this site: As NCS has grown older and followed the careers of many a heavy metal band, we seem to be reviewing more and more albums that have hit double-digits in a band’s discography. Who would’ve thought the passage of time would be such a crazy thing?

It’s taken Sweden’s Necrophobic a while to get there – their first having been released in 1993 – but they’ve actually kept to a surprisingly consistent amount of time between albums over the years. They’ve never fully fallen into the ‘every two-to-three-years’ album schedule that many career bands do, and beginning with 2002’s Bloodhymns, the gaps between albums have remained steady, hovering at around three-and-a-half to four years. Continue reading »

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