Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NADIR — “EXTINCTION RITUALS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
May 022023
 

All things rise and fall, both the animate and the inanimate. Mountains heave up from the Earth’s crust, and erode over time. Flora and fauna flourish much more briefly, but all of it is always doomed to perish. Human life in particular strives, grasping for meaning and some measure of “success”, but humanity’s most vaunted achievements are in fact evanescent, and self-destruction seems deeply rooted. In the arc of all things, there are zeniths, and at the bottom of the trajectory is where you’ll find Nadir.

Nadir is the name chosen by a Norwegian blackened hardcore band whose extravagant debut album we’re presenting today in advance of its May 5 release. Its conception is summed up in the title — Extinction Rituals — and becomes even more clear through the band’s elaboration of what that means:

Extinction Rituals is an exercise in the duality of futility and hope. It is a comment upon the ignorance of man and the inventive way we manage to prey upon each other. Musically, Extinction Rituals sets out to match the lyrical content through blending eclectic sources of inspiration and striving for a harsh and aggressive sound.”

Nadir succeeded in their striving. Paradoxically, they’ve made their dark descent into a zenith of their own. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HAIL CONJURER — “GOLDEN SPINE / THE HEAT GOES ON”

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May 022023
 

Today marks the first appearance at our humble site of the Finnish black metal band Hail Conjurer, but a glance at the band’s discography reveals that we are very, very late in paying attention.

Beginning in 2017 Hail Conjurer has released numerous demos, splits, and EPs, as well as six full-length albums. The word “prolific” is well-earned here, and the volume of creative output is even more impressive considering that during those years the person behind the project has also been a participant in Hooded Menace, Horse Latitudes, and Ride for Revenge (among others).

As large as it is, the discography of Hail Conjurer is about to swell again, because on May 18th (Ascension Day in the christian church) the band will release a new full-length named Ouroboros Lust on the Bestial Burst label, and that album is the source of the hellish music we’re premiering today through an official video. Continue reading »

THY CATAFALQUE: “ALFÖLD”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 022023
 

(Thy Catafalque‘s latest opus Alföld will be released by Season of Mist on June 16th, and today we present a review by our old friend and ardent Thy Catafalque student Professor D. Grover the XIIIth.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. It is once again my favorite time of year (well, my favorite time of every two or three years): Thy Catafalque season. That’s right, my favorite Hungarian multi-instrumentalist and musical genius, Tamás Kátai, has maintained his reliable release schedule and graces us once more with a new Thy Catafalque album. While the core principles of the musical project remain the same (Kátai is the sole member, supported by a sizable rotation of guest musicians lending their talents in various capacities), the Thy Catafalque sound continues to evolve, aided by a significant musical development.

If you’re a fan of the band, or happened to read my top album list from last year, then you’re likely aware that Kátai took a huge step on the past year or so by taking Thy Catafalque into a live setting for the first time. The band’s first live performance was recorded and released as a live album, and there have been a handful of other live performances since, with a shifting lineup appropriate to the band’s history. While Kátai‘s involvement in the first live show was surprisingly limited (only playing bass on a handful of songs), he has in subsequent shows taken up full bass duties, and it feels as though performing live has affected the tracks on this new Thy Catafalque album Alföld. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEXAKOSIOIHEXEKONTAHEXAPHILIA — “DEMO DCLXVI”

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May 012023
 

“Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia” is an actual word. It refers to fear of the number 666 (just as the slightly better known triskaidekaphobia refers to fear of the number 13). We’re not sure that anyone is actually afflicted with that fear as a clinically recognized phobia, but we have many examples of fearful superstitious avoidance of the number.

For example, did you know that there used to be a U.S. Highway 666, so named because it was was the sixth branch off U.S. Highway 66? Did you know that in 1986 researchers found that 23% of all crashes involving injury that occurred in the Shiprock District of New Mexico occurred on a 0.9-mile stretch of Highway 666, and that it eventually became known (of course) as the Devil’s Highway? Perhaps needless to say, the government did away with that name in 2003; it’s now the much duller U.S. 491.

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphilia, on the other hand, isn’t a word we’ve been able to find in our googling — other than as the name of a new solo metal project out of the Netherlands. But it’s about damned time someone coined that word, which must mean “fondness of the number 666”. Even if it would take a lot of practice to be able to enunciate it correctly (and we’ll be doing a lot of copy/pasting today), we should hail the conception because it represents basically all of metaldom.

But we’re here to hail the name for another reason, because the debut demo of Hexakosioihexekontahexaphilia that we’re about to premiere is dazzling. Its name is Demo DCLXVI. Can you guess which Arabic numeral is represented by that Roman numeral? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHODAN — “NONE SHALL PREVAIL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
May 012023
 

On May 5th Time To Kill Records will release None Shall Prevail, the third LP by the Polish death metal band Shodan. In two words, it’s absolutely stunning.

Of course we have a lot my words to spill about it, but we’ll leap ahead through them to emphasize these: The album is a genuine rarity, in the sense that it has the potential to appeal to fans from across many genres of extreme metal, from brutal death metal to technical death metal, from prog metal to melodic death metal (and more).

Moreover, the band don’t reveal these different influences in separate songs, but beautifully integrate all of them in every track through songwriting that’s elaborate, dynamic, and executed with eye-popping skill. In addition, the record is exceptionally well-produced to emphasize these signal qualities, delivering both power and clarity.

Of course, it’s still way too early to be throwing around references to year-end lists, but None Shall Prevail is so spectacular that it seems like a very safe bet we’ll see it on many of those in the waning months of 2023. Continue reading »

ENCOUNTER TRUTH: “PANSPERMIA”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 012023
 

(Encounter Truth hail from Bogotá, Colombia, and what follows is DGR‘s enthusiastic review of their debut EP Panspermia.)

Truth be told: Colombia’s Encounter Truth and their new EP Panspermia – released at the tail end of March – are kind of at a perfect cross-section of where yours truly has been positioned musically at the moment. At a little over twenty-six minutes in length, five songs, full of tech-death noodling that could challenge a ramen shop in terms of production and plenty of blue/purple colorization about science fiction topics, Encounter Truth have laid their entire formula out on the table before you even hit play.

Across those five songs Encounter Truth are showing that they’re likely never going to let off the accelerator once, and the constant hammering is going to come from all ends – whether it be a surprisingly prominent bass guitar or a never-ending drum section wherein the double-bass rolling is the foundation upon which many of the songs are built.

If this is the “proof-of-concept” release for the current incarnation of Encounter Truth, then perhaps this is a band to keep an eye on in the future, because Panspermia makes it clear that they have the fundamental nature of the genre locked down by the time they’re rocketing well into the EPs second song “La Alianza”. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: IFRYT, PA VESH EN, THE END OF SIX THOUSAND YEARS, WILCZYCA, DÉMONOS

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 302023
 

Even on Sunday mornings my paying work can rear its ugly head and steal away my time (world leaders looking for advice on how to clean up the shit they’ve made tend to be impatient). This happened to me today. The result is a more abbreviated roundup of blackened tonalities than I had hoped for, but I’m still enamored of all of it. You’ll see that it’s all pretty adventurous as well.

IFRYT (Poland)

Doom metal bands don’t have a monopoly on 10-minute tracks. Sometimes black metal bands make them too, especially when the bands are inspired by a bushel-full of music from well beyond the traditional boundaries of black metal, as Ifryt clearly is.

After releasing an 11-minute demo on Christmas Eve, 2017, this Polish solo project (the creator is Bartosz “Kuna” Mokr) now has a record named Płuca (“Lungs”) set for release on May 12th via Godz Ov War Productions. The first song to be revealed is the 10-minute “Straszne Rzeczy” (“Terrible Things”). It’s so utterly wild that if I had any sense (which I don’t), I wouldn’t even attempt to describe it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: KRYATJURR OF DESERT AHD, OXBOW, BALMOG, SARVEKAS, HOST, ÚZKOST

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 292023
 


Balmog

Happy Saturn’s Day (and good wishes to the dead Romans who named it.). For me, paying work was all-consuming during the first part of this past week, but it was sheer laziness that kept me from compiling a roundup of new music in the closing days. Those two phenomena were connected of course. After some NCS editorial work and some premieres during the days when the paying work relented, I felt like I’d earned the right to stop scurrying and attempt a mind-meld with sloths.

With no head-start behind me, here I am with a giant slag-pile of new music and videos to go through, and great risk of cutting myself followed by infection as I try to paw through it. But paw I did (thankful for band-aids), and the results are presented below. It doesn’t include everything that grabbed me, but to include everything would have left me still writing come sundown. I don’t want that. I want time to go outside and enjoy the warmest day of the year so far here in the Pacific Northwest, or more likely just take a nap.

As if I didn’t have enough picks already, this morning brought a new installment of Renni Resmini’s starkweather substack, and as usual I hadn’t heard the majority of those selections, and as usual his writing compelled me to check out some of those, which has made this roundup even longer. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LUX NIGRUM — “OMNIA AB UNO, OMNIA AD UNUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 282023
 

Lux Nigrum‘s 2019 debut EP Burning the Eternal Return (which we reviewed and premiered here) made a striking impression. The music channeled chaos, but not in the sense of some flailing, disorganized cacophony. There was a palpable sense of fierce wildness and burning devotion in the music, but an equal devotion to the crafting of excellent riffs, which had both emotional power and magnetic musical appeal.

And so it was very welcome news to learn that this Chilean band would be returning this year with a debut album named Omnia Ab Uno, Omnia Ad Unum. The band describe it as “a conceptual album based on the Acausal Spirituality and the mysterious duality of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death, dealing with the unification of everything as One, and its own dissolution towards Ain.”

In February we had the pleasure of premiering a lyric video for the song “Adamas Voluntatem“, and today we’re equally pleased to bring you the sounds of the entire record on the day of its release. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NON SERVIAM — “APOCALYPTIC LUST”

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Apr 282023
 

Many musical extremists add new layers of brick and mortar to old walls surrounding well-established genre structures, and some of them are such good crafts-people that they still deserve applause for their renewal of the fortifications. On the other hand, the anonymous Parisian collective Non Serviam take a wrecking ball to genre walls.

No doubt, what they do with their noise scandalizes some listeners, but as their name suggests, they’re dedicated to being confrontational — conventions be damned — and their confrontational nature extends to the anarchist and antifascist convictions that inspire their music. We have a prime example of all this in the video we’re presenting today for the furious Non Serviam tirade called “Apocalyptic Lust”. Continue reading »

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