Islander

TERRANOCT: “ICON OF RUIN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 252023
 

(Terranoct is a death metal metal band based out of Akron, Ohio, and what you’ll find below is DGR‘s review of their debut album, which is out now.)

Traveling with Ohio’s Terranoct through their first full length release Icon Of Ruin is an interesting journey, as it comprises not only new material that the band have written for the album but also collects the singles that the group have put out since becoming their current form in 2016.

The songs – mostly released in 2021 ’til now, save for one in 2017 and minus one Decapitated cover – add to an incredibly dense album that weighs out to about an hour and three minutes. Terranoct’s Icon Of Ruin has a lot of ideas swirling within it and seemingly leaves nothing behind, and with that, not only tells the tale of the band as a whole but also feels like a series of snapshots throughout an entire death metal scene, as influences grow and wane, ideas enter and leave, and a band themselves mature and mutate into the form they are now. Continue reading »

PRONOSTIC: “CHAOTIC UPHEAVAL”

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May 252023
 

(Professor D. Grover the XIIIth returns to our site with the following enthusiastic review of the second album by Montreal-based Pronostic, which was released in mid-May.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. The fretless bass holds an impressive position in the history of death metal, especially as it pertains to death metal’s more technical sub-branch. Present at the subgenre’s inception thanks to legends like Steve DiGiorgio and Sean Malone, the fretless bass has become especially popular with the current popularity of tech death, thanks to modern practitioners like Dominic “Forest” LaPointe, JP Thesseling, Linus Klausenitzer, and Hugo Doyon-Karout. LaPointe probably set the high water mark for absolute fretless mastery on the most recent First Fragment album, a performance that may never be surpassed.

If this seems like an odd way to start off a review, I say all of this because Pronostic‘s new bassist, Xavier Sperdouklis (also of the excellent Killitorous) has definitely added himself to the conversation on this new Pronostic record Chaotic Upheaval. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NIBIRU — “ANAMORPHOSIS”

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May 242023
 

The last time we premiered music by the Italian band Nibiru we began by observing that their music “is nearly unclassifiable”, a conclusion bolstered by the fact that their albums had elicited genre descriptions along the lines of “Ritual Psychedelic Sludge” or “Blackened Sludge & Drone”. Their list of musical influences was even more difficult to imagine being integrated into anything that made sense, and their literary and other extra-musical influences were equally varied.

On that previous occasion we premiered only an excerpt from a very long song that was one of four on their sixth album, Panspermia, though we also attempted to preview what else happened in the song as a whole. Today we’re premiering a long song in its entirety, but this time the song is also the album — a single composition, nearly an hour long, named Anamorphosis. It will be released on May 26th by Argonauta Records. It’s no easier to sum up, especially in genre terms, than anything else Nibiru have done Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: KRIGSGRAV — “AN EVERFLOWING VESSEL”

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May 242023
 

(In the article below Todd Manning introduces our premiere of a song from a new album by the band Krigsgrav, which will be released next month through Wise Blood Records.)

We may be entering the summer here in the States, but there’s a bitter chill in the air thanks to the latest from Texas-based black metal outfit Krigsgrav. Fires in the Fall, available June 23rd courtesy of the excellent Wise Blood Records, picks up where 2021’s The Sundering left off as Krigsgrav continue to perfect their particular brand of melodic black metal.

“An Everflowing Vessel” kicks off with a masterful melody, possessing an epic grandeur, but it is also unquestionably heavy when paired with the drums. The main vocal line, once introduced, is scathing, but soon clean vocals arrive in the background to reinforce the song’s scale. At first glance, the sound sits somewhere between Dissection and Wolfheart, but ultimately it is difficult to pigeonhole Krigsgrav. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: FALL OF THE IDOLS

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May 242023
 

(In this interview Comrade Aleks communicated with two original members of the Finnish doom band Fall of the Idols, which returned from a long hiatus with a new album in 2022, and appear to have one more album in them before bringing the band to a final end.)

Finnish doom metal band Fall of the Idols was born in 2000. They progressed slowly towards the point when their first full-length albums The Womb of the Earth (2006) and The Seance (2008) were complete. Their tragic and pretty traditional worship to the Doom Cult reached its catharsis with the third album Solemn Verses (2012), but it was released a year after the suicide of the band’s drummer Hannu Weckman, who was a huge creative force alongside the other members.

Ten years ago Fall of the Idols said that they had enough material for one more album and that it would be the last one in their discography. Years passed but nothing happened until November 2022 when I Hate Records released it – the band’s fourth full-length, Contradictory Notes.

We tried to do this interview back in 2022 but it took some time, so forgive us for this welter, there was no better choice. These songs were recorded by the band’s original members Vesa Karppinen (bass), Jyrki Hakomäki (drums, vocals), Rami Moilanen (guitars), and Jouni Sihvonen (guitars) (also you can hear Hannu Weckman‘s drums in the first track “Vicissitudes”), and we have two of them tonight. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ORCHID’S CURSE — “DEAD IDOLS”

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May 232023
 

Everyone above a certain age is well aware of the scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent viciously stabs a spike loaded with adrenaline right into Mia’s heart to bring her back from a heroin overdose. Immediately, the adrenaline makes her explode back to life.

That scene popped to mind in listening to the Orchid’s Curse song “Dead Idols” that we’re about to premiere — specifically, the way the song begins. There’s no warning, no introductory pause, just a sudden furious injection of scorching screams, hammering drums, and maniacally pulsating riffage.

And then the song becomes even more explosively unhinged, thanks to a turbocharged percussive eruption and a blizzard of tremolo’d chords. If you’re not bolt-upright and pop-eyed awake after that, it’s probably too late to call emergency services. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: REAPING FLESH — “ELEMENTS OF LIFE”

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May 232023
 

Old School Death Metal continues to age, but enough time has passed for anyone who’s been paying attention to predict confidently that its appeal is ageless. It’s not merely that a lot of the old death metal records from the late ’80s and early ’90s still light a fire under listeners, it’s that the influence of the music continues to fuel vibrant new bands around the globe.

A prime case in point is the Milanese trio Reaping Flesh. They’re unabashed in proclaiming both their inspiration by bands like Autopsy, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Death, and Massacre, and the object of their mission: to play no-frills, straight-forward Death Metal in line with the heritage of those groups.

Reaping Flesh have already been delivering their music on stage, and now they’ll be able to share it everywhere because their debut EP Abyss of Existence is now set for release by Redefining Darkness Records on June 16th. One gruesome and grisly episode of sonic slaughtering from the EP (“Self Incarnation“) is already out in the world, and today we’re helping launch the second one — “Elements of Life” — presented through a music video Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NEXORUM

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May 232023
 

(Late last week Non Serviam Records released a new album by the Norwegian blackened death machine Nexorum, which our writer DGR reviewed here today, and now we also present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of the band.)

The essence of pure primordial evil shines from Trondheim’s underground. Nexorum is a tight extreme unit formed in 2019 by Vidar Lehmann (drums), Wizziac (bass), Roger Isaksen (guitars), Frank Løberg (guitars), and Terje Olsen (vocals). The four of Nexorum had honed their blasphemous skills for years in local bands, including a few pretty famous names. They were absolutely focused, and naturally the first full-length album Death Unchained appeared in 2020 on Non Serviam Records.

The bond and understanding between the band and the label were tight and the sophomore album Tongue of Thorns was set for release by Non Serviam Records on the 19th of May. “Cult of the Monolith”, “Eldritch Abominations”, “Mother of Ghouls”! Why wouldn’t we support the band like this? And here we go. Continue reading »

NEXORUM: “TONGUE OF THORNS”

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May 232023
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the second album by Norway’s Nexorum, just released late last week by Non Serviam Records.)

If you’d asked how long ago it had been since the last time we dove into Nexorum‘s black metal world with their first album Death Unchained, the knee-jerk response would’ve been not that long ago. It couldn’t have been right? Yet a gentle tap on the shoulder and much belly-aching later we’re reminded that the time compression of the past few years has struck once again. It has in fact been three years since we stumbled into the world of Nexorum (alongside Centinex‘s 2020 release at the time as well) for their debut album, Hell.

Any band that has put a out a release through the past few years has been put through the fucking wringer. Every release since then has felt like a soft restart for those groups whether they want it to be or not. Any group would be forgiven for choosing to hang it up after dealing with the shape of the world and its touring situation since then, so its a glorious thing to see Nexorum returning with a follow-up album, one that maintains the hellfire and ferocity of that first full-length while stretching their wings just a little bit further in Tongue Of Thorns.

Tongue Of Thorns was released on May 19th of this year – an eternity ago, we know – and further refines upon its older sibling while adding about five more minutes of run time to the overall length, whilst also managing to trim the actual song numbers down by one. Bigger songs, angrier guitars, and the same throat-scarring vocal work that made the debut an impressive listen, why would you not want to leap in head-first again? Continue reading »

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

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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 »

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