Islander

SHADES OF BLACK: PHANTOM WINTER, AKVAN, VARATHRON, OLHAVA, A PREGNANT LIGHT, SORT SIND, APANTHROPY

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Oct 292023
 

Yesterday’s roundup was a very, very big one. With so much time on my hands this weekend, I planned to make today’s blackened roundup equally large, paying no attention to whether anyone would have the fortitude to go through a dozen entries yesterday and another dozen today.

When I woke up this morning I somewhat came to my senses and decided to cut this back from what I’d initially selected — providing seven recommendations instead of 12 — mainly because I didn’t think I’d have the time to get a dozen ready to go before I have to go. I hope to say something about the others in the near future.

PHANTOM WINTER (Germany)

I’m going to begin with a regrettably rare example of a great song presented through a great video, each one complementing the other. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AUTOPSY, THE BREATHING PROCESS, BRODER, CATTLE DECAPITATION, CRUST, HEILUNG, JOB FOR A COWBOY, KALANDRA, OPHANIM, PLAGUE OF THE FALLEN, VASTUM, VEMOD

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 282023
 


Autopsy – photo by Nancy Reifert

Prepare for… a lot of sentences that begin “Prepare for….”

It’s a little way for me to say very little about what you’ll hear but without me feeling like I’ve done nothing to induce listening or to thank the bands.

The shorthand is necessary because the past week produced so damn much music I’d like to recommend, and because I got lots of suggestions from other people, including my compadres Andy Synn and DGR. Their picks and mine, which produced a mix of bigger bands and more obscure bands, are arranged here in alphabetical order by band name.

Prepare for… lots of twists and turns…. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HEBEPHRENIQUE — “NON COMPOS MENTIS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 272023
 

The Australian band Hebephrenique chose a name that may contort the part of your brain responsible for making sense of letters and checking new words into the vocabulary library. We’ll make it easier, since we’ve already done a bit of research:

Hebephrenique seems to be the French word (without accent marks) for hebephrenic, which refers to a “disorganized” type of schizophrenia, one “typified by shallow and inappropriate emotional responses, foolish or bizarre behaviour, false beliefs (delusions), and false perceptions (hallucinations).” So says this source.

That this is what the band had in mind when they chose their name is guesswork on our part, but their debut EP Non Compos Mentis provides circumstantial evidence that we’re on the right track. Continue reading »

AUTARKH: “EMERGENT”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 272023
 

(In the following review our writer DGR takes a deep dive — a very deep dive — into the strange musical worlds created by the Dutch band Autarkh on their new album Emergent, which is set for release on November 10th by Season of Mist.)

One would suspect that a band like Autarkh are going to feature on heavy metal websites more due to their ethos of being as experimental and unapproachable as possible than their particular chosen instrument configuration. The wildly artistic group were founded on blurring multiple genre lines, and that includes the world of heavy metal, with large handfuls of other things – difficult to describe as they may be.

The group’s sophomore album Emergent walks further down that pathway, metal not just because the band like themselves a distorted guitar, or their history as being a branch budded off the tree that was Dodecahedron, or the fact that they’ve done a drone/doom set at the more high-minded world of Roadburn under the name Autarkh III – as far as I know, there is no Autarkh II: Autarkh Takes Manhattan out there just yet – but the band will also likely grab ears among metal’s crowd due to their usage of it as a style to further accomplish whatever strange and haunted otherworldly goals they may have had in mind. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE: GREAT FALLS AND RADIATION BLACKBODY

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 262023
 

On October 27th — tomorrow! — Ancient Temple Recordings and 7 Degrees Records will jointly release a new 7″ split by Seattle’s Great Falls and Brooklyn’s Radiation Blackbody, and today we’re presenting a stream of both bands’ contributions to the split.

The news of this release seized our attention mainly because of the presence of Great Falls. Even though Metal Archives hasn’t yet seen fit to include them, the band’s 2023 album Objects Without Pain is one of the most emotionally intense and stupefyingly heavy records you’ll find this year, and a worthy candidate as we get closer to year-end listmania.

At least for those of us around the NCS hovel, Radiation Blackbody was a new discovery — and, it turns out, a very good one. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: PORTA NIGRA

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 262023
 

(In July of this year Soulseller Records released Weltende, a new album by the German extreme metal band Porta Nigra. It led Comrade Aleks to contact the band, and the following interview with guitarist/bassist Gilles deRais  was the result.)

German band Porta Nigra is labeled as “avant-garde black metal”, and it seems to be truth. It was founded in 2010 by Gilles deRais (guitars, bass) and O. (drums, vocals), who recorded two full-length albums as a duo. But sometime after, Porta Nigra turned into the full band, and now they’ve returned come with the fourth full-length album Weltende.

This authentic material has a rich cultural background, rooted in both Belle Époque and Fin de Siècle, so don’t expect an ordinary black metal deviltry from this band. We tried to learn more about Porta Nigra and Weltende from Gilles deRais and in some way we succeeded.

(The interview was initially done for the Spanish magazine This Is Metal, and I’m glad to share its full version here.) Continue reading »

TIDES OF KHARON: “ANCIENT SLEEPER”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 262023
 

(DGR has finally completed a review of the latest EP, released last June, by Tides of Kharon from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.)

Believe it or not we actually do have a history with Canadian group Tides Of Kharon. Up to this point we’ve covered every EP the band have released – no full-length albums as of yet – most recently the 2021 release of Titanomachy alongside British group Ghosts of Atlantis in a two-fer review collective. June saw the Greek-mythology inspired melodeath group unleash a new one in the form of Ancient Sleeper, closing out a two-year gap of silence from the band in exchange for another five songs and near half-hour of music.

Tides Of Kharon‘s chosen release method feels a bit like checking in with the band as they forge and hammer new material, working on their sound and experimenting with the wide vareity of approaches that the genre has available to them. Both expert and continual student, Tides Of Kharon absorb into their sound as much as they issue forth, all in service of the particular tales they have chosen to craft a song around this time. Ancient Sleeper then, could be considered the newest check-in with the band. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PEINE KAPITAL — “PEINE KAPITAL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Oct 252023
 

“It’s hard to be optimistic in such a fucked up world. Because we witness violence and ugliness on a daily basis, we can’t help but make music that is aggressive and filthy.”

With those words, the French doom-sludge trio Peine Kapital have announced their self-titled debut album, which will be released on October 27th by the respected Sludgelord Records. And those aren’t empty words. As you’ll learn for yourselves today through our complete streaming premiere of the album, Peine Kapital is a truly harsh, harrowing, and immensely heavy experience. Continue reading »

TITO’S WEEKLY METAL RECS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Oct 252023
 

(Today we launch the first of what we hope will be many playlists from our Italian friend Tito Vespasiani, who introduces himself below. This first one is 20 tracks long, with specific commentary in this post about a select few and an embedded stream of everything at the end.)

Hello everyone!

I’m Tito Vespasiani, your friendly neighbourhood death metal aficionado. I do A&R for Everlasting Spew Records, manage a few bands (it all started with Hideous Divinity back in 2012), book shows internationally and in Rome through my agency Death Over Rome, and most of all I love making playlists for people and sharing music with everyone all over the world.

Here’s the first edition of my weekly recommendation playlists. It will be on Spotify (here) as it’s the platform I find most comfortable but I’ll also include other links for those not using it. I’m providing a quick introduction to some of the tracks, but not all, ’cause I don’t wanna bore you to death.

But if you’re down to chat about metal, hit me up on Facebook or on instagram: @tito.vsp Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NEBELKRÄHE

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 252023
 


photo by Afra Gethöfer Grütz

(Comrade Aleks has brought us an unusually good interview with the thoughtful founder and guitarist of the unusual German black metal band Nebelkrähe, whose first album in 10 years will be released on October 27th by Crawling Chaos.)

NCS readers have already had an in-depth look at Nebelkrähe’s new album ephemer. This German band returns with their third album after a ten-year hiatus, and their sophisticated blackened metal.

There was much said about them in the previous video premiere post and there will be a lot said in this current interview. We spent enough time with Nebelkrähe’s guitarist Morg, and I hope that this interview will not only answer your questions about the band but also will stimulate you to search for more. Continue reading »

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