Islander

SAVAGE LANDS: AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRK VERBEUREN AND SYLVAIN DEMERCASTEL

 Interviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Nov 302023
 

About 10 days ago we were halted in our scurrying tracks by a video for a song called “The Last Howl” from Savage Lands, a metal charity project whose goal is to help preserve the forests of Costa Rica and the creatures that live there.

Savage Lands and that song have already gained a lot of attention, in part because of the people who participated in making it. The Savage Lands project was founded by drummer extraordinaire Dirk Verbeuren (Megadeth, Scarve, etc.) and musician-turned-activist Sylvain Demercastel (a current resident of Costa Rica). For “The Last Howl” they brought in guitarist Andres Kisser (Sepultura) and vocalist John Tardy (Obituary), as well as vocalist Poun and bassist Etienne Treton from the French band Black Bomb A.

The song was great, and so was the video (and we said so here), and so we jumpted at the opportunity to interview Dirk and Sylvain as a way of helping to spread the word about a very worthy cause, and very worthy music. That conversation follows, but you really should take in “The Last Howl” first: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VORGA, MOURNING DAWN, CHAPEL OF DISEASE, EXITIUM SUI

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Nov 292023
 

Oh look, what a surprise, another roundup!

After months of posting 3-5 musical features a day, we’re in a bit of a lull here. Life has thrown boulders at some of our writers and I think others are focusing on year-end lists. I’m still writing premieres every day of course, but still feel compelled to try to have more than just one or two of those as the sole content of our site on a given day, and I happen to have had more time than usual for roundups over the last week or two. So, here’s another one!

Most of these are “hot off the presses”. I think they will all cause you to catch your breath or your breath to catch, albeit in different ways.

VORGA (Germany)

I had to start with the song “Voideath” so I could stick Adam Burke‘s fabulous cover art for Vorga‘s new album Beyond the Palest Star at the top of this page. Can you blame me? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SYLVAN AWE — “PILGRIMAGE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 292023
 

The artwork on the front of Sylvan Awe‘s new album Pilgrimage (their third) is one that will make most people stop in their tracks and stare for a while. It’s a slightly cropped and inverted image of a 1920 painting by the German artist Ferdinand Leeke, who died three years after completing it. The title is “Parsifal on the Way to the Grail Castle“.

Leeke seems to be best known for his depiction of scenes from Wagnerian operas, most of them commissioned by Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried after his father’s death. “Parsifal on the Way to the Grail Castle” doesn’t seem to be one of those 10 commissioned paintings, but may have been similarly influenced, given that Wagner did compose an opera called Parsifal, based on the legend of the Grail Knight.

What that legend has to do with Pilgrimage is open to conjecture, though Parsifal himself engaged in a pilgrimage back to the sanctuary where ailing Grail Knights kept watch over the Grail, after Parsifal vanquished the necromancer Klingsor and retrieved from him the Holy Spear (which pierced the side of Jesus as he died on the cross), ultimately reuniting it with the Grail. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THUNRAZ — “BORDERLINE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 282023
 

The Estonian band Thunraz, the solo project of Madis Jalakas, has been in a creative surge from its inception, releasing a pair of EPs and a pair of albums since 2018. If anything the surge has strengthened, because Thunraz is following its latest album Revelation (released about five months ago) with yet another album that comes out today, on CD and digital formats.

The new album is entitled Borderline, and it includes nine songs, one of which — “You and Me” — we premiered a few weeks ago, along with a head-spinning red-shifted video. Today, of course, we’ve got all of it for you. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN KULTEN, LITOSTH, CHALLENGER DEEP, DROWNED, TVINNA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 272023
 

If you include yesterday’s Shades of Black column, this makes four days in a row that I’ve been able to pull together a round-up of new songs and videos. That’s a rarity, explained by a confluence of events I won’t bore you by describing.

I’m not sure it’s a welcome rarity, because it may just add to a feeling of being overwhelmed by the volume of music that each week (hell, each day) brings. But that’s not my problem, is it?

Is it? Well it is, because I also feel overwhelmed. Join the club. This pleasant misery needs company.

UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN KULTEN (Chile)

You don’t really need any preparation, just a listening device, working ears, and a finger putting pressure on a digital arrow. But I have to further justify my existence, so… Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ETT DÖDENS MASKINERI — “KULTURKRIGET”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 272023
 

Kulturkriget is the name of the forthcoming second album by the Swedish hardcore punk band Ett Dödens Maskineri, whose name seems to translate to “a machine of death“. As the album’s title forecasts, its lyrical themes explore “the tumultuous battleground of the culture war that saturates every facet of modern existence,” dissecting issues that range from “identity politics and media manipulation to ideological clashes.”

Anyone with eyes to see and ears to here knows that society in almost all of the world is fractured more severely than it has been in generations, and there seems no imminent way out of it, the fractures so deep and jagged that repairing them would seem to require some kind of wizardry beyond the capacity of mere mortals.

The music on Kulturkriget is undeniably in line with such thoughts — bringing forward intensely evocative melodies that are bleak and furious, heart-broken and seeking escape, desperate but defiant. The piercing and haunting power of the melodies and the relentless dynamism of the music is part of what makes the album stand well out from the pack, but it’s still a punk album at its core, and so it’s also raw and raging, confrontational and caustic, and a damn good antidote for anyone whose adrenaline is at low ebb. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MISERY SPELL, FLUKT, REVA, SATANIC WITCH

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Nov 262023
 

This is one of those Sundays when I didn’t have any inkling of what I might choose before beginning to choose. I had so little inkling that I spent some time searching out where the word inkling came from since I didn’t know. (The answer is at the end of this post. Hint: it has not a drop to do with ink.)

Lacking any preconceived ideas I just started wandering through very recent releases, to see what might take hold. Hopefully what I chose will take hold of some of you too.

MISERY SPELL (Russia)

It took all of about two minutes for me to feel completely drenched by the music on this Saint Petersburg band’s new album Абсолютная тьма (“Absolute Darkness”), which was released just yesterday. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON SATURDAY: MORBID SACRIFICE, MOTOROWL, KRASSEVILLE, TORPE, TRIUMPH OF DEATH

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 252023
 

I woke up before the sun rose today because it’s harvest season and I have crops to gather.

Ha Ha, no that’s horseshit. I have no idea why I woke up before the sun on this Saturday morning, especially given the number of adult libations I consumed (as usual) on Friday night.

The only good that came of the early rising was my ability to experience the coldest morning of the year so far, at least where I live near Puget Sound. As I slurped my coffee and inhaled the first cigarettes of the day in the blackness outside, my phone reported 35°.

On further reflection, my opening line wasn’t entirely horseshit. I do have crops to gather in, musical crops… the time of reaping is ever upon us here. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BLACK FRIDAY: VREDEHAMMER, BLOOD RED THRONE, NECROWRETCH, DVVAD, AKKAMOTH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 242023
 

Here in the U.S., where I am, it’s been a holiday week. For the rest of the world, it was just another Thursday. The holiday continues today, but even elsewhere in the world it’s not just another Friday.

For decades here, the day after Thanksgiving has marked the beginning of shopping season for the upcoming Christmas holidays, but it seems to have spread its infection elsewhere, even in the world of metal, based on the volume of e-mails I’ve received offering discounts on records and merch from locations in Europe as well as North America.

Well, why fight against the tide? Today, for one day only, we’re offering a 50% discount on the price of subscriptions to NCS, which is normally zero. Get ’em while they last.

I resisted the obvious temptation to limit today’s collection of new music to black metal, but it’s all still pretty black. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CLOVEN — “ASTONISHMENT OF HEART”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 242023
 

Sometimes we know an encyclopedia’s worth of information about a metal band, especially those who’ve been around for decades and play to packed arenas. Other times we have almost nothing other than the music. This is one of those times.

All we know about Cloven is that they’re from somewhere in Canada and that sometime in the future, most likely next year, they will release an album named Chance Encounter of Flesh and Nail. We’ve also been told that the song from the album we’re premiering today was a decade in the making. But that’s all we know.

Nosy people that we are, we’re left curious, but even when we know a lot about who is in a band, where they’re located, what inspired them, etc., etc., it’s still the music that must carry the day, and “Astonishment of Heart” does that. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries