Islander

METH. — “SHAME”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 062024
 

(We present Wil Cifer‘s intriguing review of an album by the Chicago band meth. that was released last Friday by Prosthetic Records.)

Imagine a band that does not feel the need to adhere to any of the conventions we have heard a thousand times over from all the other bands that push the limits of heavy. Chicago’s meth. is such a band.

Less unsettling evil haunts their new album Shame than say a band like Portrayal of Guilt, who are not far removed from their sonic zip code. You can pinpoint the sub-genres they touch upon, such as the deliberate pound of dense distortion that could be called sludge. Most of their vocalist’s screams carry an anguish that is similar to what we hear from black metal vocalists. Yet unlike those bands, they do not just relegate themselves to doing it throughout the entirety of a song much less the entire album. Continue reading »

TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHIES OF ’23 – PART 1 (OF AN UNKNOWN NUMBER)

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2023  No Responses »
Feb 052024
 

(Vizzah Harri was not necessarily invited to write about the most virulent verses and lullabies of the year just past, but he did ask rather nicely (read: forcefully) whether he could give it a shot in the dark. This guest says he works in education, is an occasional scribbler of self-proclaimed abstract poetry bordering on obscurantism and his only real skill is that of finding mistakes in the work of his (su)peer(ior)s. Not to mention his affinity for keyboard-racing. He resides in Hanoi, Vietnam.)

According to the CDC, infectious diseases can be either bacterial, viral, fungal or parasitic in nature (other than the CDC link, unless you somehow reverted back to troglodytical proclivities and missed it completely this time ’round last year, them be the greatest hits of 2022’s most infectious lists). There also exists a rare group of mephitic and contagious diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.

TSEs or prion diseases are a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative brain disorders with long incubation periods; progressing rapidly once symptoms develop, they are always fatal. I’m not saying that this list is so noxious it might kill you, but something has to kill you in the end, albeit the biggest predator here is the presence of overlong sentences. Full disclosure and disclaimer up next: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOUNDS — “ZOOPHAGIST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 052024
 

It’s always a pleasure to come across a song name that sends us running for the dictionary, even when it’s a name whose meaning we might be able to guess after dividing it into its component parts. If you guessed that “Zoophagist” refers to an animal that eats every other animal available to it, you get a gold star.

However, in the case of the song you’re about to experience courtesy of the Chicago band Wounds, that creature isn’t one you can find in any zoo or earthly wilderness. As the song’s chilling lyrics describe, it is instead a collective of lethal things that have captivated the mind of their captor in a lab in outer space and thereby achieved their escape.

In the words of the song, these things eagerly anticipate what will come next after they make their way to our solar system: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: CRIMSON TWILIGHT, ANTEINFIERNO

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Feb 042024
 


Ash

Sometimes we must confront grim tasks head-on and grapple with them, rather than shying away. And so I forced myself to calculate how much time has passed since the last time I did one of these columns. The answer is, six weeks ago, the day before Christmas.

Countless creatures making up thousands of species are born, live, and die within a six-week span. Hell, males among the American sand-burrowing mayflies live less than one hour after reaching adulthood, and females have just five minutes to breed before they die. Let’s have a moment of silence for them, please.

Thank you.

Even thinking about what has happened to me over the last six weeks to produce such a void in this Sunday column is a grim contemplation. Knowing what I have ahead of me next weekend, there will likely be another void next Sunday. But for now let’s contemplate more pleasurable grimness. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HETEROMORPHIC ZOO, SHIVER DOWN, AUTGER, MOÌNE, VOLLOÍOM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 032024
 

I’m still slowly trying to get back into the swing of things here. But it has been slow, and will continue to be slow for the next couple of weeks, thanks to continuing pressures from my fucking day job.

For example, the only metal I listened to over the last week was the music I’d committed to premiere. I also made almost no effort to scroll through the usual flood of NCS e-mails and other messages that have arrived since last weekend, or to open tabs for music to listen to later — “almost” being the operative word, because I did tuck away a few randomly noticed links.

Speaking of e-mail flooding, yesterday was another Bandcamp Friday, which resulted in an even bigger flood. I expected a vision of an old man herding animals two by two into a big wooden boat, a vision that never materialized because I made no effort to scroll through the in-box. I guess sometime this weekend I’ll at least give it a skim, in case any Nigerian princes are trying to share millions of dollars with me. Does that still happen?

Anyway, here are a few appealing underground things I did manage to check out beginning very early this morning. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABYSSUS — “UNDER SIEGE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 022024
 

As their name portends, the Greek death metal band Abyssus did not arise to shine light and love on a miserable world, but to submerge it into deeper darkness and more relentless savagery. Since the release of their debut EP a dozen years ago, they have not wavered in their dedication to musical renditions of blade-sharp barbarism, esoteric terrors, and punk-fueled mayhem, nor allowed mercy to mediate their music.

The band’s latest descent is an EP named Under Siege. It was released without much fanfare near the end of last year, and so the title of this feature plays fast and loose with the “premiere” word, which is something we almost never do. But the chance to help spread the word about Under Siege was just too tempting, especially now that it’s being offered by Chaos and Hell Productions on CD. Continue reading »

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME I: WHAT DID WE (ALMOST) MISS LAST YEAR?

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 012024
 

(Daniel Barkasi, an NCS writer from long ago, has returned here with the first installment in a planned monthly column. In this inaugural edition he recommends 10 albums released last year that deserve a closer look.)

Welcome NCS readers to my first, brand new column of music that’s been bouncing around in my often deranged cranium. I feel vigorous.

What we’re going to be doing here is highlighting releases that have – at least, according to my spidey senses – slipped under the radar and haven’t gotten much attention or buzz. We’ll cover an undetermined number of these unsung heroes monthly. Most of these will be relatively current and put out within the last few months, but I also don’t want to be that rigid all the time, so we’ll do so liberally and make sure to add a release date for each entry.

For this inaugural piece, I’m going to highlight a few albums from 2023 that were unsung gems that deserve a little love, in no particular order. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DÖDSRIT — “CELESTIAL WILL”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Feb 012024
 

For their forthcoming fourth album Nocturnal Will, the Swedish band Dödsrit have created a remarkable musical symbiosis. Their hallmarks of black metal and crust punk are still there, but the music is also elaborate and frequently elegant, the melodies intensely moving and immediately memorable.

And there’s a reason why the new album’s cover art depicts a stricken knight, on his knees in a wintry plain and head bowed beneath glowering skies, because the music seems to cast its gaze back to an ancient age of valor and bloodshed, of triumph and death, of devotion and suffering, so much so that we’d venture the guess that devotees of medieval black metal will relish this as much as metalpunks will.

As evidence of what we’re trying to convey, we present today the premiere of the album’s second single, “Celestial Will“, in advance of the record’s March 22nd release by the Wolves of Hades label. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NECROWRETCH — “SWORDS OF DAJJAL”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 012024
 

With 15 years of recordings and performances behind them, the French extreme metal band Necrowretch likely need no introduction to the horned denizens of this site, nor any added fuel of anticipation for their forthcoming fifth album Swords of Dajjal, which we’re presenting today on the eve of its release by Season of Mist.

But it’s worth knowing that the new album was one of those unexpected fruits of the covid pandemic, which ruined the band’s touring plans in support of their just-released fourth album but provided a pause they used for the creation of this new fifth full-length. And thus Necrowretch spent more time writing and fine-tuning Swords of Dajjal than they’d ever spent on previous releases.

Not only that, the band changed their gear, their sound, their tuning, and even initially wrote the songs on acoustic 12-string guitar. The result, as described by the band’s vocalist and rhythm guitarist Vlad, is the group’s “most black metal record, with splashes of death metal here and there”.

He adds: “Whereas on the previous album all tempos were pushed to the extreme, there’s far more variety here to be found. It also gave us free reins to reach a more mystical, Biblical if you will vibe”, fed by Vlad‘s experience living in Turkey in the late 2010’s. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JANUARY 2024

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jan 312024
 

(Gonzo returns with another end-of-month roundup of recommended releases, this time shining a light on albums and EPs released by six bands in January.)

January is such a bullshit month.

It’s cold as all fuck, everyone’s burned out – financially, emotionally, professionally – and shows/tours are few and far between. To pile it on, it’s also customarily a terrible month for new music. I wasn’t expecting to unearth much during my monthly search of metal’s grimy underbelly to include in this feature.

Lo and behold, I was dead fucking wrong. 2024 has already seen so many good releases in just over three weeks that I actually had to figure out what not to include here. (Coincidentally, three of the releases are from France, so make of that what you will.)

Regardless of geography, the sharp rise in early-year quality in 2024 is making me rethink old paradigms. Is the January curse on its way out? Am I reading too much into this? Is reality a lie? Are the machines reading my thoughts? Fuck. Continue reading »

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