This isn’t DGR‘s annual year-end list. That might yet come. This is the second Part of a four-Part collection of reviews that we started rolling out yesterday, focusing on 2023 albums we hadn’t managed to review before. You’ll find his full explanation for what he’s doing here at the beginning of Part I. Continue reading »
(We’re extremely pleased to present a great discussion between our Comrade Aleks and Malokarpatan‘s Adam Sičák, an interview that delves into the band’s past, present, and possible futures.)
The Slovakian band Malokarpatan is well-known to those who appreciate authentic old-fashioned metal. They combined proto-black and heavy metal with avant-garde themes and told grim stories taken from native folklore and history.
The first nine years of Malokarpatan‘s career were full of recordings and gigs, but now with the release of the fourth album Vertumnus Caesar, they’re going to focus only on the composition of the new material.
We interviewed the band’s mastermind Adam Sičák about two years ago (here) and covered the band’s entire discography which consists of three albums at the moment. Now it’s time to discuss Vertumnus Caesar, and Adam always has a few good ideas to share. Continue reading »
Here, we’re doing something we almost never do — premiering brief excerpts from songs off a forthcoming release. Such things are mere teasers, even more teasing than the premiere of a complete song from an album or EP that you can’t yet hear in full.
So why did we cave in and sweep away our usual reticence to brutally tease our visitors? You’re about to find out. Continue reading »
(This week we begin presenting year-end lists from NCS writers other than Andy Synn, who finished his NCS list week last Friday. To begin this week, here’s a year-end Top 20 list from Wil Cifer.)
Given the world’s present apocalyptic trajectory this year’s Top 20 Metal Albums list might be the last of these lists I make. The tone of my listening this year shifted in a more nihilistic direction. I listened to more death metal this year, which might have less to do with becoming acclimated to living in Tampa and more to do with celebrating death as an inevitable end to this cycle of life. Metal has always been my therapeutic outlet. Even before I was formally diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, I used Doom metal to lean into my depressive episodes. Now I am more intentional with this ritual, so there might be a decent dose of doom ahead. Continue reading »
(This isn’t DGR‘s annual year-end list. That might yet come. This is the first Part of a four-Part collection of reviews, focusing on 2023 albums we hadn’t managed to review before.)
Every year we do this; the final clearing of the slate before the annual list-making season begins. This year will be no different, because like every other year, I’m also opening this with an apology to the bands included.
Normally my reviews tend to be long-winded and wordy as can get because I enjoy the long-form dissection of an album – no matter how repetitive in my choice of phrases as I may get – and the final clearing tends to be shorter. It was my intent not to do so this year but life happened.
Not only that, life happened hard and life happened in such a way that I’m going to have a very, very difficult time talking about it for a long time and I’m not entirely convinced that we’ll ever be any definition of ‘okay’ again around here, so much as we are just getting by and in a permanent state of ‘recovering’. It’s been tough.
But, I haven’t forgotten about this because as much as we’ve spoken about how life and work kick our asses and the website takes a backseat, this is one of my few outlets. As a result, I’m not sure if I have it in me to do my usual end of the year clusterfuck – though I will try – but I do want to at least get some words out about the last remaining groups of releases that have haunted my ‘to review’ notes over the year. Continue reading »
Here’s the final entry in the part of our annual LISTMANIA orgy where we share lists of metal from “big platform” web sites and print zines — the kind of places that get a lot more eyeballs on them than filthy little metal-only hovels like ours — as a way of getting a view about what “normal” people are being told is the year’s best metal.
Rolling Stone magazine should need no introduction, so I’m not going to provide one. Three years ago we didn’t include a Rolling Stone metal list in our year-end LISTMANIA series — because they didn’t publish one. Although we surmised that they had jettisoned the idea permanently, their Top 10 metal list made a return in 2021, and in 2022 they expanded the list to 15 names. This year it’s 11 (so of course they made a Spinal Tap joke). Continue reading »
We’re at an inhospitable time of year for the release of new music. Ardent metal fans tend to be looking backward in reflection rather than keeping their eyes on what’s coming from the near horizon or noticing what just dropped in front of them, and of course everyone is immersed, whether in joy or misery, in the distractions and chores of the inescapable “holiday season”.
And yet, as always, the end of the year brings musical gems, even if they sadly may go unnoticed, and The Sept‘s new EP MMXXIII is one of those.
But let’s be clear up-front: This isn’t a pretty, sparkly gem. It has many facets, but their edges are jagged and may leave you bleeding if you’re not careful, and the colors are obsidian. Staring too long may also bring about madness. Continue reading »
Reading year-end lists that someone other than you made tend to provoke mixed feelings of validation, perplexity (which sometimes verges into anger), and discovery. The opportunity for discovery is the main reason we here at NCS devote so much space to our annual LISTMANIA extravaganza, even though we know those other feelings will also be in the mix of reactions. The list we’re re-publishing from Bandcamp Daily will probably be no different in any of these respects.
Bandcamp, of course, has become a vital platform for the digital release of music of all stripes (and physical merchandise as well) since its founding in 2007. Bandcamp used to release an annual compilation of performance statistics, but I haven’t found a similar report since the one they released for 2017. However, the main Bandcamp page today reports that “Fans have paid artists $1.23 billion using Bandcamp, and $193 million in the last year.”
Those are staggering totals, and some part of those enormous sums has been the result of Bandcamp’s laudable decision to continue the monthly tradition of “Bandcamp Fridays” that they began during the height of the pandemic. Continue reading »
Stereogum easily qualifies as one of the “big platform” web sites whose year-end lists of metal we perennially include in our LISTMANIA series. Of course, the site appeals to an audience of music fans much larger than devoted metalheads, but its staff includes a talented and tasteful (though dwindling) group of metal writers who, among other things, are responsible for the site’s monthly “The Black Market” column, which has been a great source of discovery for extreme music for 11 years running now.
It follows that Stereogum‘s annual metal list is one I especially look forward to seeing every year, and the 2023 edition is out now (as of yesterday). As usual it consists of only 10 entries, with accompanying reviews of the choices by Ian Chainey and Wyatt Marshall. And yes, as I write this, the image at the top of the Stereogum list is the image you see above. I don’t know why it says 2022. Continue reading »
For someone like this writer, who has played no musical instrument since rebelling against compulsory piano lessons as a pre-teen, watching talented musicians perform is like watching a magic show.
Watching metal musicians perform at aggressive speeds is even more magical, and perhaps watching drummers is the most fascinating, because after all they’re using all four limbs doing four different things at any moment but usually without sounding like four trash cans crashing down some stairs.
And so I tend to be attracted to playthrough videos by drummers, including the one you’re about to see, which features skinsman Priyam Srivastava performing on the song “Vibora” by The Second Fovea. Continue reading »