Islander

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ABORTED, BORKNAGAR, COFFINS, DEICIDE, HIGH ON FIRE, KATAKLYSM, MIDNIGHT, MY DYING BRIDE, ULVER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Feb 172024
 

Oh look! I made a round-up of new songs and videos! Make the motion for slapping me on the back from afar, or at least patting my pointy head.

Yeah, it’s been a long damned time since I pulled one of these things together. Beginning in late January I kept thinking my life would get back to normal after 6 or 7 weeks of being ruthlessly pounded by my day job, but the pounding unexpectedly continued.

I’m at the point of doubting everything, but now it really does seem like my long dark night of the soul has ended, and I can resume what passes for normal activity around the ruined halls of NCS. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CELL PRESS — “ORIGINAL URANIUM BABY”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 162024
 

About 3 1/2 years ago we premiered the self-titled debut EP of the Montreal band Cell Press on the eve of its release. We opened our introduction this way:

“If we could see your faces when you listen to it, there would be a great temptation to write nothing about the music and just watch your expressions change as all the surprises hit you like battering rams, expressions that might range from joy to panic to spine-tingling fear, and perhaps revulsion too. But since we can’t see you, on we go….”

And on we went, somewhat spoiling the surprises by referring to the music as “mad, mauling, and mind-bending — sometimes fiery and frenzied, sometimes cold and brutally destructive, and almost always so viscerally gripping that it makes your whole body want to move (even if some of the movements are spasms)”.

And so we couldn’t help but experience a kind of deviant glee when learning that Cell Press would be releasing their first full-length this March, a work named Cages, and more deviant glee when realizing we’d have the chance to premiere the video you’re about to witness for the second single off the album. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GÉVAUDAN

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 162024
 

(The UK doom metal band Gévaudan put out a hell of a good album in Umbra last fall, so good that Comrade Aleks felt compelled to reach out for an interview, and the results are his very engaging conversation published below with Gévaudan bassist Andy Salt.)

The “Beast of Gévaudan” was a nickname of a semi-mythical man-eating wolf from French folklore. The creature made about 250 attacks on people in the Gévaudan region from 1764 to 1767, hence its name.

Several heavy bands are named after the beast, and the Hertfordshire doom metal quartet have carried it since 2013. Gévaudan was the first band for Andy Salt (bass) and David Himbury (drums), as Bruce Hamilton (guitar) had already performed in the stoner band Burn the Yeti, and Adam Pirmonhamed (vocals) had previously sung in the progressive thrash formation Manufacture.

First, the EPs Message for the Damned (2014) and Litost (2016) were released, then the group collected enough material for the full-length album Iter (2019), after which the presence of such a promising doom metal unit could no longer be ignored in the underground. So, by the end of 2023, Gévaudan came out with their second big work – Umbra. The album consists of one track with a duration of 43 minutes, and this is not nearly as scary and depressing as it might seem. This deep, emotional doom metal with epic (as well as progressive and psychedelic) touches has its original blend with recognizable traces of some classic acts.

A few of my doom-hooked friends recommended me Umbra, and it’s something each doom-head needs to know. Andy Salt told us a lot about the band’s and album’s backgrounds, so here we go. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ARIS SHOCK

 Interviews  No Responses »
Feb 152024
 

(After some unforeseen delays on our part, today we are honored to bring you Comrade Aleks‘ in-depth interview with Greek metal writer and historian Aris Shock, focusing on his two landmark books about Hellenic black metal, and with hints about the third one to come.)

It’s an extremely rare case, but today we’ll speak not with a musician, but with a journalist. The paper books turn into artifacts, the runs drop low, and you won’t get rich writing about underground metal bands, I know. But some metalheads turn to keeping the old-school attitude, and that’s why we have a kind of small vinyl renaissance, reprinting some old fanzines, and so on.

Today we’ll speak with Aris Shock, who started to release a printed fanzine Shock! Aesthetics in 2001 covering extreme music and horror movies. His interest in both led him to the idea of focusing on covering and supporting the local underground scene. Thus, the Rites of the Abyss book was written. As Aris’ first book explored and revealed the history of such phenomena as Hellenic Black Metal, his second work was the natural continuation of the first one, as The Serpent & The Pentagram is the biography of Necromantia, one of three core representatives of the genre.

We did the interview with Necromantia‘s spiritual leader The Magus a few weeks before this one  regarding his new album and this book [published here], so the interview with Aris is one more logical link in the chain of events related to the world of Hellenic Black Metal for me personally. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SUN OF NOTHING — “GHOST”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 152024
 

Metal genre labels begin to resemble scrambled eggs cooked with onions, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes, with a sprinkling of cheeses and spices. The thought comes to mind in contemplating “experimental post blackened sludge metal”, which is how some have characterized the music of the long-lived Greek band Sun of Nothing.

But just as a flavorful breakfast scramble causes the mouth to water, Sun of Nothing‘s music is also very enticing, even though it might also make you think it’s the last meal you’ll be eating before the world ends. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: KELEVRA — “CLEANSE WITH FIRE”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Feb 142024
 

On March 8th the Canadian metal band Kelevra (from Regina, Saskatchewan) will release a new album named Oneiric, which follows by a significant 8 years their last record, 2016’s Lividity.

For all of us, those 8 years brought an immense amount of change and challenge, and no exception was allowed for Kelevra. Among other hurdles they had to surmount, their bass player Adrienne suffered severe heart damage caused by an extremely rare and usually lethal autoimmune disorder, damage that led to multiple surgeries, the implementation of an electronic device (which powered her heart even as she continued playing live shows), and eventually a heart transplant.

We mention Adrienne‘s experience here at the outset, because she is one of the performers you’re about to see in a guitar-and-bass playthrough video for a thrilling song named “Cleanse With Fire” off Kelevra‘s new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HANDS OF GORO — “DEMONIZER”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 142024
 

What shall you give your love on this Valentine’s Day? This person advises against store-bought flowers because they’re not planet-friendly. Boxes of sweets that rot teeth and burgeon butts? Maybe not the best idea either. Is there anything you can do that isn’t damaging in some way (even though love is almost always damaging at some point)?

How about showing your affection with a gift of some thundering music that includes “elements of anthemic, epic, traditional heavy metal with torrents of harmonized savagery and brief ventures into the likes of punk, classic rock, and more”?

That’s the PR come-on for the self-titled debut album by Hands of Goro, which is set for release on March 1st. It’s a seductive come-on, and becomes even more seductive when you see that the band’s three participants include members of Spirit Adrift, Nite, Slough Feg, and former live members of Carcass and Angel Witch. Continue reading »

OBSCURA QALMA: “VEILS OF TRANSCENDENCE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 142024
 

(We bring you DGR‘s review of a new EP by the Venetian band Obscura Qalma, which was released earlier this month by the Dusktone label.)

The nice thing about Italian symphonic death metal group Obscura Qalma is that they make absolutely no pretense of the style of music they’re going to make nor are they hiding who their influences are.

Obscura Qalma have been kicking around since 2018 and already have two albums and a few EPs – though one of each of those is the instrumental and orchestral version of songs from a previous album, much in the same way Fleshgod Apocalypse have taken to including the purely symphonic tracks as bonuses to their full-lengths recently. Adding to their name, all you need to do is look at a press photo of the band and you can tell there’s likely going to be a rich vein of SepticFlesh running through the group’s DNA.

Obscura Qalma don their lab coats and joyfully smash their death and symphonic elements together, cackling all the while, with lightning crashing in the background. Drawing heavily from the occult for lyrical inspiration – recently pulling large buckets up the well from the Aleister Crowley mines – Obscura Qalma are playing in a very wide musical sphere. The group’s latest EP Veils Of Transcendence punches in at four songs and a little under twenty minutes of boulder-heavy death metal with a huge symphonic and synth line buttressing the events and doing the melodic heavy lifting. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STELLAR REMAINS — “WASTELANDS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 132024
 

Let’s pretend you can’t listen to Stellar Remains‘ new EP right now, even though you can if you just scroll further down the screen you’re now looking at.

Let’s take our game of make-believe a move further and pretend you have no idea who this band is and have never heard a note of its music. That requires less suspension of disbelief, because Wastelands is in fact the first release of Stellar Remains, and only one song from the EP has been available for streaming before today.

Moreover, all that most of us know or could find out about the band (apart from that one song) is that it’s the solo work of Brisbane-based Dan Elkin, who has no resume on Metal-Archives yet.

So, if you indulge all this pretending, then you have to put some amount of weight on what we now have to say about Wastelands. How nice for us. Continue reading »

PERSEFONE: “LINGUA IGNOTA: PART I”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 132024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of a new EP by the Andorran band Persefone, which was released not long ago by Napalm Records.)

A guarantee with Andorra’s Persefone is that you are going to get a lot of music. Persefone have made a career out of albums hybridizing progressive metal, melodeath, and as wide a smattering of other genres as they could into a form of tightly controlled chaos with multiple vocal approaches serving as the icings on the cake.

They’re a full-album band and very rarely, throughout a surprisingly long career, have done any sort of single or EP as part of their discography. Persefone have always dealt in releasing densely packed albums, and as of 2022’s Metanoia were up to a grand total of six.

With all of those elements making up Persefone‘s career it is surprising that the band have seen relatively little change on the lineup front – especially since they really found their groove with 2013’s Spiritual Migration. Since then, other than a re-recording of their first album Truth Inside The Shades in 2020, the band have refined upon the eastern sprituality subject matter and massive keyboard-wall approach to their writing style.

Which is why it is both fitting and very interesting that the group’s newest release is just an EP but also has a ‘Part I’ tacked onto its name. Continue reading »

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