Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DRATNA — “FOMÓRAIGH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 222023
 

In past years we’ve written extensively about the music of the Belfast-based solo black metal project Dratna, following their course across four EPs and a 2022 debut album (Fear Gorta & Tales of the Undead) since the first release in 2018. It has been a remarkable excursion, and one that has fueled increasingly high expectations for each new release.

We didn’t expect another Dratna album so soon, but that is what we have — a new full-length named Fom​óraigh that will be released on May 26th by the distinctive NY label Fiadh Productions. Maybe expectations were a bit tempered given the relative speed of this follow-up, but that trepidation only made the new record even more astonishing to hear.

In its inspirations and themes the new album draws on Irish mythology and the landscape of The Mourne Mountians. In its music, to use the rudest form of summing up, it interweaves atmospheric and raw black metal with folk music performed on a wide array of instruments, rich symphonic overlays, and hints of doom. It unfolds like a head-spinning, eye-popping musical pageant, one that seems to have one foot in an age lost to the millennia and another in the hear-and-now. Continue reading »

THE OCEAN: “HOLOCENE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 222023
 

(On Friday of last week Pelagic Records released a new album by The Ocean. DGR has thoughts about it. Many thoughts about it. Most of them are included in the review below, which unfolds as a journey through more than a decade of time.)

May 10th, 2010 – Walking through the park nearby my house, attempting to distract myself from an ongoing period where the only thing in life that isn’t going sideways is work. In an attempt to expand my musical horizons and thanks to MetalSucks posting about them consistently, I have picked up on The Ocean and their album Heliocentric. It has been the soundtrack to multiple walks like this in an attempt to understand why it seems to appeal to so many people, which is difficult to explain to a guy whose previous musical experience has been either in the -core scene or very Euro-centric melodeath until one day “Swallowed By The Earth” hits just right and we’re off to the races.

November 9th, 2010 – Anthropocentric has been released as part of the group’s continual pattern of pairing albums together. In the six-month gap the band have become an obsession and I wind up reviewing the album for The Number Of The Blog – the first website I’ve written for and at this point was basically co-editor. I enjoy it and its more up-front aggression and metallic atmospheres than Heliocentric, but the pairing etches itself into my brain. Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST WEEK

 Metal News  2 Responses »
May 222023
 

The fifth edition of Northwest Terror Fest will take place in Seattle on Thursday through Saturday of this week (May 25-27), preceded by a pre-fest show on Wednesday night. No Clean Singing is the principal sponsor, and three of us here (Andy Synn, DGR, and myself) will be on-site working the fest. Rumor has it that another one of us (Gonzo) will be in the audience.

This means there will be a few adjustments in our usual weekly NCS routine. Since I write almost all of our premieres, there will be none of those on the festival days this week, and it’s extremely unlikely there will be a Saturday roundup or a Shades of Black post next weekend, or any other roundups of new songs and videos this week.

However, this doesn’t mean we’re going to be short on content. In anticipation of the festival work ahead, Andy has already completed two reviews and might get a third one done before he boards his flight from the UK tomorrow. Not to be outdone, DGR has already sent in 25 reviews (I’m joking, he only sent in 11 reviews), and I’ve got one in the queue from our friend Grover too. On top of that we have four interviews available from Comrade Aleks, and Todd Manning has already written a premiere feature.

As for the festival itself, I doubt we’ll be writing any coverage during the event. Based on our past experience working the first four editions, it’s a whirlwind of craziness, with a lot of very late nights and bleary-eyed mornings, and grabbing every fleeting second available to catch parts of the sets. Speaking of which, here’s the lineup, day by day: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DUSK CULT, BLACK SORCERY, GRÅANDE, MELTED BODIES

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 212023
 

This Sunday’s tour through the black arts is shorter than usual. Unexpected conflicts have arisen in my day. The confliction in the music was planned.

DUSK CULT (Australia)

Behold, our revelation statement
Bow down, before a dying sun
Yielding, to midnight manifesto
We’ve only just begun

Those words are some of the lyrics to “Black Cloud Worship“, a new song that this Australian band presented two days ago through a dramatic video wherein revelations occur on a rocky, wave-drenched shoreline. I had some idea what to expect from this duo (who are members of Be’lakor and Rainshadow), based on the manifold strengths of their 2021 debut album Embrace the Lunar Age, but the music still left my heart pounding hard. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: KHANATE, KATAKLYSM, TEMPLE OF DREAD, BLACKBRAID, HALFLIGHTED, ANIMA HERETICAE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 202023
 


Khanate

I began this morning like I’ve begun every morning since the start of the pandemic: sitting on the deck of my home in the forest drinking a triple-espresso, smoking cigarettes, and reading the local, national, and international news on my phone.

It’s not something I can recommend in good conscience. Smoking is bad for you and the news is almost invariably depressing. But today the birds around me were in full song and the news included a story about a woman who had a “loud and full body orgasm” during the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony as performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The article where I learned about this included a link to a list of “The 10 Best Orgasm Symphonies”, compiled by British music journalist Norman Lebrecht in celebration of the woman’s scream. The article also quoted opera soprano Renée Fleming: “Let’s not forget that the word ‘climax’ is a common musical term. It has to do with musical tension and its release.”

With this in mind, I started making my way through my gigantic list of new songs and videos from the past week or two, listening for climaxes. If you get one while listening to what follows, just keep that to yourself. (Joking of course — I want to hear all about it!) Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TERRA BUILDER — “INTERPLANETARY PORTAL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 192023
 

As far as we know, the first hint of what the German band Terra Builder had concocted for their debut album Solar Temple was a song named “Abyss” that first surfaced on the Transcending Obscurity Records label sampler released in January of this year. What kind of musical message did it send us?

Well, in a nutshell, it communicated the band’s desire to beat the living hell out of people and gouge out their guts, while simultaneously pouring nightmare fuel into their ears and screaming bloody murder in their faces. Viscerally propulsive, insidiously infectious, and fear-inducing in its atmosphere, it proved to be a damned good teaser for this solar temple they had made out of death metal and grindcore, along with hints of sludge and black metal.

Patiently biding our time, we’ve been waiting for more, and now we (and you) have more. We haven’t been exposed to the whole album yet, nor do we know its release date, but we have been given another track to share with you, and this one is named “Interplanetary Portal.” Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: PENNY COFFIN – “CONSCRIPTED MORALITY”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 192023
 

(Our long-time writer DGR has been very busy catching up with recent releases that struck his interest in different ways, and today we begin a daily run of reviews that will carry on through next week. This one is for a new EP by the Scottish band Penny Coffin that was released in April via Dry Cough Records and At With False Noise.)

We’ve long specialized in stumbling headfirst into the world of the oppressively dark and suffocating. Rarely would you see a website describe itself as having a knack for something and it certainly couldn’t be said that we’re skilled seekers of the style; it’s more like a drunken crash through the wall when the entrance door is just two feet over. The latest one to send that shock to our system – or be rudely awakened by our door-crashing — is the group Penny Coffin and their latest release.

Penny Coffin come to us by way of Scotland with their third EP – the band currently on a schedule of one EP a year – Conscripted Morality. Conscripted Morality saw release in early April and was one of the many tumbling into the whirling abyss of the internet discoveries that found themselves captured in the great content maw, with the purpose of allowing us to investigate when things here sort of lightened up.

Playing a style of grossly-heavy death metal with an emphasis on brutalizing and equally brain-rotting guitar chug, it’s shocking that the band haven’t fought their way onto this here site before, because Conscripted Morality‘s brand of bleak-and-grey mud is perfectly suited to find some listeners around here. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GALLOWS RITES — “WITCHCRAFT AND NECRO DESECRATION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 182023
 

Portugal’s Gallows Rites are as un-pretentious as they come. In their debut EP Witchcraft and Necro Desecration they announce their steadfast devotion to Lucifer, and never swerve from it. The music is a black thrashing glorification of the lord of Hell and all his minions, often primal and primitive but thoroughly saturated by the stench of sulphur and exulting in the kind of sonic sorcery that brings visions of witches’ covens to the mind’s eye.

Gallows Rites thrive in the fast lane, just as devoted to music that would stir up mosh pits into bloody froths as they are to the glory of the Lightbringer. But they also switch gears and moods in these five songs, in ways that make them even more attention-grabbing.

You will experience all this for yourselves today, because we have a premiere stream of the EP in advance of its release tomorrow — May 19th — by Helldprod Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INFERNAL CURSE — “BLACK MASS SHEPHERD”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 172023
 

As you could quickly conclude if you searched our site for the words “Infernal Curse“, it’s always welcome news around here when this Argentinian black/death metal band surfaces with new music. The latest welcome news is that on June 23rd Infernal Curse will release their third album in a career that now spans 15 years. The name of the new one (a classic example of truth in advertising) is Revelations Beyond Insanity, and it will arrive via Iron Bonehead Productions.

If you haven’t yet explored this group’s evolving discography, it’s a hell of a trip. There are definite through-lines — bestial barbarity and barely controlled chaos among them — but the band have also moved in more mind-bending directions, using their undeniable savagery as a morphing vehicle for spawning blood-congealing hallucinations and visions of hideous grandeur. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: UKĆ — “UNCERTAINTY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 172023
 

I first encountered the music of UKĆ in March of this year thanks to a prompt from Rennie Resmini in his most recent entry at starkweather’s SubStack. It concerned a single song named “Uchodząc” (“Fading Away”) from a then-forthcoming album and read as follows:

“I’ll be damned if the intro to the new track from Poland’s Ukć ‘Uchodz​ą​c‘ isn’t distinctly Bathory – Hammerheart meets Swans – “Will We Survive”. Great track that melds this melodic edge and fierce black metal. Looking forward to how this new album shapes up. This is monumental, epic stuff quickly following on the heels of last year’s Przemijanie.”

I probably didn’t need to say anything more about “Uchodząc“, but of course I did. I wrote then: “In its remarkably varied sounds, you’ll find bone-rattling drumwork and spine-jolting riffage, as well as sensations of harrowing and scintillating grandeur complemented by horn-like and chime-like tones, plus striking vocal intensity (along with gloomy spoken words and some singing) — and a lilting acoustic melody that’s sublime.”

Having listened, I wanted to know about the lyrics.  Because they were in Polish, I resorted to Google Translate, which told me that the song was about a child’s yearning to live, to learn, to love, within a twisted reality that’s “blind, deaf, stupid, indifferent”, and brutally kicks hope in the face. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries