Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WEALD AND WOE — “FOR THE GOOD OF THE REALM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Aug 292023
 

Weald and Woe, once a solo project but now a complete quartet, are based in Boise, Idaho, but in their music they have more than one foot planted in Britain and Europe as they existed 1000 years ago, give or take. Their current label, Fiadh Productions, puts it well in describing the band’s new album For the Good of the Realm:

“Weald and Woe combines the majesty of the medieval era with the ferocity of classic black metal inspired by Obsequiae, Véhémence, Darkenhöld, Immortal, Ensiferum and many others….

“The new full-length is both dreamy and intense, capturing bygone eras of courtly love and epic battles. The band’s music walks a fine line between triumphant and sophisticated choruses balanced with frigid, breakneck riffing that paints an often elegant but bleak soundscape as the listener is transported to a different time. Swords not optional!” Continue reading »

WORM SHEPHERD: “THE SLEEPING SUN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 292023
 

(What we have here is DGRs review of a new EP by Worm Shepherd, which was released about 10 days ago by Unique Leader Records.)

We’ve covered the east-coast deathcore crew Worm Shepherd before but we would be remiss not to check in with them again now. The band, who have remained something of a fascination over here, are now two albums deep into a career that has seen them ensconced firmly within the rafters of the Unique Leader core-cathedral and their latest addition, The Sleeping Sun, adds an EP to the mix.

Partially due to having undergone some lineup changes between releases but also in search of a broader artistic vision, the Worm Shepherd that appears here is a different beast than it had been previously – now down to to two members handing near-everything in their writing. However, one of the other reasons we check in with the band is that Worm Shepherd are something of a bellweather when it comes to the deathcore scene as it exists at any particular moment. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HEADS FOR THE DEAD — “IN THE ABSENCE OF FAITH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 282023
 

We are very happy once again to premiere music by Heads for the Dead. It’s the kind of happiness people feel when they wake up from supernatural nightmares and realize the monsters weren’t really eating your guts after all, or those who get thrills from the chills of horror movies in which the undead bare their rotten teeth and demons pierce the veil between worlds.

Horror in many forms is the bread and butter of this multinational death metal band, whose discography has swollen since 2018 to encompass an EP and three albums, and now there’s another EP shambling toward us, with a due date of September 1st via the venerable Pulverised Records.

As signified by its title — In the Absence of Faith — all the lyrics in these five tracks were inspired by horror-related movies “that deal with the concept of losing belief or getting challenged in extreme situations”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SERAPHIC ENTOMBMENT — “ANGEL’S ENTRAIL”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 282023
 

What we have for you now is the first single from the first album by the Alabama death metal band Seraphic Entombment, which will be released on October 13th through Everlasting Spew Records.

The record’s name is Sickness Particles Gleam. As described by the label, it’s a “50+ minutes haunting and crushing ode to the foreboding; a long and unsettling journey into mankind’s darkest and most fetid hallucinations, fears, and primal impulses”. They also describe it as “bizarre and miasmic”.

This quartet (which began as a side project of Ectovoid and Hegemony members) obviously don’t think much of angels. Their band name envisions entombment of the celestial host. And the name of the song you’re about to hear spills their guts. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MAIRU — “WILD DARKENED EYES”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 282023
 

In late July of this year Trepanation Recordings released the debut album Sol Cultus by the British post-metal/sludge band Mairu. In our review (by Mr. Synn) we praised its sheer sonic weight, and its engaging nuances:

“For all the album’s devastating density and immense intensity (or should that be ‘intense immensity’?), however, it’s clear that Mairu possess a keen understanding of the importance of employing a variety of tones and shades as well, with every punishing passage of gargantuan grooves and hammering heaviness being carefully balanced by moments of mood-altering ambience and/or gorgeous, gloom-shrouded melody that serve to add an extra dash of musical colour to the group’s creative palette.”

What we have now, one month after the album’s release, is a reminder to those who might not yet have discovered it, and that reminder takes the shape of an official video for the song “Wild Darkened Eyes“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LIGHTLORN, DEATH SHROUD, GLYPH, GRIFT

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Aug 272023
 

I have a vague memory that when “blogging” began in the late ’90s most of them were personal diaries, presumptuously based on the notion that other people cared what you ate for breakfast or what you read while falling asleep or the great laxative you just discovered. Or what you thought about some music you’d listened to.

It’s obvious that on the weekends I regress to those early days, because no one can stop me. Like yesterday, when I complained about how early I woke up, or today, when I’m revealing that I made up for that by sleeping really late. I’m still writing thoughts about music I just listened to, just not as much today because… I slept really late.

LIGHTLORN (Sweden)

I’m happy to have been an “early adopter” of the “cosmic black metal” of Lightlorn, which is another way of saying that I raved repeatedly about the songs on their independently released 2022 debut EP These Nameless Worlds, which was then picked up for a physical release earlier this year by Black Lion Records.

I’m also very happy to see that Lightlorn will now be releasing a debut album, especially because the first two advance tracks from it are so damned good. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: OCTOBER TIDE, BARING TEETH, IMHA TARIKAT, ELS FOCS NEGRES, ASH PRISON, ZVYLPWKUA, NOCTOMB

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 262023
 

I woke up at 2:30 a.m. this morning. No fucking idea why. I was wiped out last night and fell asleep by 8 p.m., but that still doesn’t explain it. I was thinking 4 a.m. would be the likely waking hour, a solid 8 hours later. Maybe it’s Mariners fever (baseball fans may understand.)

I hope my loss is your gain. The ridiculous waking hour gave me lots of time to catch up on music, and to compile a bigger than average roundup for this Saturday. In organizing this I decided to lead with the most prominent name in the collection, and then move in a more obscure and musically challenging direction before embarking on a pair of anthems and then concluding with nastier notions.

OCTOBER TIDE (Sweden)

When my compatriot DGR reviewed October Tide‘s last album, 2019’s In Splendor Below, he found it “a very different album from its predecessors,” “one of the fastest-moving albums they’ve created” and with a new emphasis on “death metal atmospherics and groove” — though he noted that the band had not completely abandoned “the beautiful and cold atmospheres” that had become a major part of their hallmark.

The new October Tide album, The Cancer Pledge, is likely to be in a similar vein as that last one. Indeed, guitarist Fredrik Norrman calls it “a direct continuation of the previous album — less doom and more death metal, yet melodic and with more layers”. That’s born out by the album’s first single, “Tapestry of Our End“, which arrived with an engrossing animated lyric video. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DARK HALL — “CHANGING WEATHER”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 252023
 

Most visitors here know that we often delight in musical horrors of different kinds — roaring and shrieking voices; percussion that resembles the discharge of devastating weaponry; guitars that sound like whirring bone saws  or sledgehammers pounding concrete; and moods of menace, mayhem, and abysmal agony.

But today we share a delight of a very different kind — four very talented individuals embarked on a head-spinning musical adventure, reveling in their instrumental mastery but with no more apparent effort than what’s required to breathe in and breathe out. The chance to watch them all do what they do makes the smiles even broader. (There’s still no clean singing, nor singing of any kind.)

There’s also a tale behind this song and video. The tale itself is also a delight, and we’ll begin there. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEVIL’S HOUR — “BEERLETHICS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 252023
 

Back in January we helped slap the ass of newborn 2023 and get the baby screaming through our premiere of the title song from Black n´Punk Marauders, a debut EP by the German band Devil’s Hour.

As the record’s name signaled, the EP’s music was a cauldron of sound mainly influenced by Punk, Rock, and First Wave Black Metal bands from the ’80s and ’90s, but Devil’s Hour also masterfully pulled from wellsprings of old-school speed metal and classic heavy metal. And as feral and ferocious as the music was, the EP quickly proved that Devil’s Hour know how to write songs that are also highly infectious.

Since the release of that EP the band’s vocalist Wild Rogan deoarted, but they decided to forge ahead as a four-piece, with guitarist Burt Cocaine stepping into the vocal role, as he had done before in the band’s live shows.

Before they were Devil’s Hour the band had a different name — Sexrex. Under that older name they put out a 2020 EP named Beerlethics. And now with the revised lineup mentioned above they decided to re-record that EP’s title song. It’s being digitally released today by the German label Crawling Chaos, and we’re bringing it to you now, to help viciously kick 2023 careening toward the end of the year. Continue reading »

BEFORE THE DAWN: “STORMBRINGERS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 252023
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the comeback album by Finland’s Before the Dawn, which Napalm Records released at the end of June.)

When you follow music for a long time there are bands that after a while you figure are well and truly done — even though this is proving to be less of the case year by year — their logical conclusion reached or the fuel behind that particular project redirected into other forms.

When it came to Before The Dawn, it seemed like all of the energy driving the band had been redirected well into other directions when the group finally hung up its hat. Tuomas Saukkonen had multiple projects going at that point, and after Rise Of The Phoenix — which honestly is starting to feel more and more like invoking a curse, since naming your album something after a phoenix following a drastic lineup shift almost seems to doom future endeavors — closed up shop on nearly everything he had going and folded it into what would become Wolfheart.

However, after returning with Dawn Of Solace — another project that would’ve figured to be wrapped — in January of 2022, it seemed like the embers for all of those earlier projects hadn’t quite burned out like we thought. Continue reading »

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