Islander

LISTMANIA BEGINS: THE DECIBEL TOP 40 FOR 2023

 LISTMANIA 2023  17 Responses »
Nov 172023
 

It has become an annual tradition at our putrid humble site to launch our year-end LISTMANIA orgy with the appearance of DECIBEL mag’s Top 40 list, because they always seem to burst from the starting gate sooner than anyone else — and they’ve done it again this year, just a few days later than they did in 2022. There’s also the fact that, in my humble opinion, DECIBEL is still the best print publication out there for fans of extreme metal, and their list always generates healthy discussions, so it’s a fitting way to launch the latest LISTMANIA season apart from the list’s early-bird status.

The DECIBEL 2023 list will officially appear in the magazine’s January 2024 edition, which hasn’t yet hit my own mailbox, but DECIBEL again decided (for the ninth year in a row) to scoop their own list rather than letting leeches like me leak it. They published the list on-line yesterday, and so I can now again re-publish their list without too much guilt, beyond the sheepishness that comes from being one of the factors that forced them to start outing themselves in the first place. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FOETAL JUICE — “GROTESQUE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 162023
 

“Foetal Juice! Foetal Juice! Foetal Juice!”

OK, so some of you were born too late to get that warped reference to a certain excellent 1988 movie. The choice of name isn’t the only thing humorously warped about this UK death metal band, who make sure you know where they’re from in the spelling. Their outrageously vulgar song-naming traditions are even more over the top.

In fact, it’s likely that their putrid plays-on-words will be one of the first things that come to mind for anyone who’s encountered their previous releases. And make no mistake, they haven’t cleaned up their act on their new album Grotesque, whose title rigorously adheres to principles of truth in advertising.

But anyone who’s encountered their previous releases, and especially 2020’s Gluttony album, also know that Foetal Juice have a helluva lot more going on in their music than gruesome and raunchy humor. They could be reciting treatises on generally accepted accounting principles and the songs would still blast your head open like a cantaloupe on the receiving end of a shotgun.

And as you’re about to find out, there’ still more going on in Grotesque than we’ve already hinted at. Yes, it’s gross and traumatizing, and rabidly vicious, but it’s also galvanizing in the way of a big precision-made turbine. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ALTARS OF THE MOON — “THE COLOSSUS AND THE WIDOW”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 162023
 

Released in the summer of 2021, Brahmastra was the debut album of Altars of the Moon. It first turned some heads because of the identities of the people who made it: Nathan Verschoor (Uada), Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves, Deeper Graves, ex-Nachmystium), and Heath Rave (Lotus Thrones, ex-Wolvhammer). It probably turned heads again when it became evident that the music was several big steps away from what might have been expected given the nature of the participants’ main musical endeavors.

Like other collaborations, this one was born in lockdown times, one of covid’s precious few silver linings. As a plague child, some might have expected it would quickly perish, a one-and-done union of talents. But time doesn’t heal all wounds, nor does it always still restless minds or silence voices. As it turns out, Altars of the Moon had something more to say.

And so now we’re on the verge of Disorder Recordings releasing a second Altars of the Moon album, this one named The Colossus and The Widow. The three collaborators came together again by long distance — Rave on vocals, Verschoor on guitars and synths, and Wilson on bass, guitar, and synth — but this time they were joined by another notable name, Alan Cassidy (The Black Dahila Murder), on drums. In addition, the new record features guest appearances on saxophone by Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) and on trumpet by Mac Gollehon (Duran Duran, David Bowie).

We’re now putting the results before you in full, preceded by our own thoughts as usual but also by these from Heath Rave: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HINSIDES — “HINSIDES HÖRS DJÄVULSKLOCKANS URKLANG”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 152023
 

Roughly two years ago we premiered the debut album from the Swedish black metal band Hinsides (whose name means “Beyond” in English). We spilled a great volume of words about that album, beginning with these:

“The album’s name is Under Betlehems brinnande stjärna, and it is a confluence of surprises that create what might seem to be paradoxical results, harboring music that at first blush is so willfully abrasive it might repel rather than attract, but turns out to be exhilarating and unexpectedly enthralling — even magical.”

Now we’re very happy to spread the word that Hinsides is returning with a second full-length, ushered from an infernal realm into our own by Shadow Records and Regain Records. The name of this one is Hinsides h​ö​rs dj​ä​vulsklockans urklang, which can be rendered in our own mother tongue as “From beyond the ancient chime of the devil bell is heard,”, and what we have for you today is the debut of its title track. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HORRIFIER — “DERANGED SANITY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 152023
 

“Old school repulsive death metal from Oslo, Norway.” That’s how Horrifier themselves portray their music. Their label Personal Records drops references to the spirits of Repulsion and Autopsy as well as nods toward “the new wave of Norwegian deathrash” in the vein of Obliteration, Sepulcher, Inculter, and Condor.

Horrifier haven’t been around long, having come together only in 2022, and the members don’t look like they were alive when their major influences were laying down rotten foundations for death metal in the late ’80s.

But sometimes, and this is one of those times, something very good comes from people who aren’t trying to re-live their own distant youth but are right in the midst of it right now, and have found the right inspiration (along with bullet belts all ’round).

See for yourselves (or rather hear for yourselves) by lending an ear to Horrifier‘s “Deranged Sanity“. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: SUCKING LEECH — “ERRORDYNAMIC”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 152023
 

(What we have for you here is DGR‘s take on a new EP by the German band Sucking Leech, released in mid-October of this year and still ruining everything in its path.)

There’s a certain amount of filth to be expected from grind as a genre. For as much as we love the ultra-precise, teeth-shredding, and super-fast world wherein songs appear as musical flashpoints before exploding and then disappearing just as quickly, there is always a somewhat grosser side to that world. One wherein the slop of the music is part of the appeal and the plug-and-play aspect is taken quite literally, with recordings sounding like the band legitimately just plugged in their gear, only turned on the volume nob, and then proceeded to go to town for twelve or thirteen minutes bathed entirely in distortion and reverb.

It’s noisy and abrasive but that is also the point; you’re coming to it because the idea of the drums sounding like they’re falling out the back of a moving truck is enjoyable. The bands that comprise that world of grind aren’t just flinging their instruments around, and obviously the music can remain fairly conventional to the grind world, but it’s the barely contained and heavily constrained chaos that keeps things interesting.

It’s why Sucking Leech‘s Errordynamic EP in mid-October caught our eyes. Sounding like a cross-bred catastrophe of Napalm Death, Rotten Sound, and Pig Destroyer mid-fistfight, Sucking Leech don’t stray tremendously far from that chaotic and maddening world of grind, but for a four-piece manage to sound monstrous all the same. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: NEURECTOMY — “OVERWROUGHT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 142023
 

(Our old friend Austin Weber again returns to NCS, and this time he’s introducing our premiere of a new album by the technical/brutal death metal band Neurectomy.)

In the immortal words of Twin Peaks: “That gum you like is going to come back in style.”

Outside of the overwhelming and well-warranted love Archspire has garnered in the scene, technical brutal death metal that both leans into and focuses on extreme shredding, chaotic tempo shifts, and is just all-in on not giving a damn about being “listenable” has largely gone out of style.

And again, I know/love Archspire, and technically, Archspire is still sort of doing this, as is Origin, but overall this type of sound is sort of a now-lost sub-genre within technical brutal death metal. For a while there, it was a very active style thanks to Viraemia, Beneath The Massacre, Anomalous, Brain Drill, and countless others. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RANK AND VILE — “WORSHIP”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 142023
 

Four years after their debut album Redistribution Of Flesh, Portland’s ingeniously named Rank and Vile will detonate a new album named Worship on November 17th, with the pin pulled by Modern Grievance Records.

It really is an explosive weapon, this album, one that discharges a blast front of violent deathgrind but also inflicts bunker-busting grooves and is equally well-calculated to stir up electrified pits of sweat-soaked humanity in the pit.

The album is also well-timed, because its high-octane fuel is politically charged rage and its method is punishment. It is, first and foremost, a musical catharsis, a weaponized reaction that (in words from the label’s PR materials) “takes shots at flabby politicians, hypocritical religious fanatics, and fence-sitting sycophants”. Theocrats, autocrats, and plutocrats may not get the justice they deserve in the outer world, but they sure as hell get it in the inner world of this record. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THRONEHAMMER

 Interviews  No Responses »
Nov 142023
 

(Not long ago Supreme Chaos Records released a new album by the part-British, part-German doom band Thronehammer, and shortly before that august day Comrade Aleks spoke with the band’s vocalist Kat Shevil Gillham. Today we present that discussion.)

Thronehammer is a doom metal band formed by guitarist Stuart West (Obelyskkh, Versus the Stillborn-Minded and so on) in 2012. Slowly he formed the full lineup, and one by one albums started to appear.

Usurper of the Oaken Throne (2019) and Incantation Rites (2021) were good ones, but the new full-length Kingslayer which was released on the 3rd of November by Supreme Chaos Records is another thing. I agree with the album’s official press-release, which says “The nine epic new movements on Thronehammer’s Kingslayer culminate into the band’s most versatile material to date, with more metal energy than ever fueling the album, with their riff savagery fully on display in every track”.

Thronehammer’s singer Kat Shevil Gillham shared a few thoughts about the new stuff and the situation around the band not long before the release. Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2024: LINE-UP ANNOUNCED, TICKETS ON SALE

 Metal News  No Responses »
Nov 132023
 

No Clean Singing has been a proud sponsor of Northwest Terror Fest since its inception in June 2017, not just helping to spread the word but adding the (mostly) able bodies and (mostly) addled minds of our staff to the production of the fest as it has happened on stage. And now we’re doing it again.

As previously announced, Northwest Terror Fest will again take over the Seattle underground with a three-day cavalcade of dark, dangerous, and diverse sounds on May 9th to May 11th, 2024. What hasn’t been previously announced, but has now been made public as of today, is who you’ll get to see on stage. Here’s the lineup: Continue reading »

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