Islander

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MMXX

 Interviews  No Responses »
Apr 282023
 

(During the uncertain and unnerving depths of the pandemic lockdown three experienced musicians from different sides of the Atlantic joined forces to create MMXX, and during the last 18 months Candlelight Records has released their debut album and a follow-on EP. These prompted Comrade Aleks to reach out for the following extensive interview, which included all three of the band’s members.)

One of the key US melodic death-doom bands, Daylight Dies, has been silent for nearly ten years. And to my surprise I’ve found the band’s rhythm section, Egan O’Rourke (bass) and Jesse Haff (drums), in the company of Andrea Chiodetti, the former guitarist of the Italian gothic doom band The Foreshadowing. Actually, it was the interview with Mick Moss of Antimatter where I learned about MMXX, as Mick recorded vocals for two songs on MMXX’s album as the guest vocalist.

Andrea, Egan, and Jesse formed this studio project during the Covid quarantine and it resulted in the full-length album Sacred Cargo released in November 2022, where guys were accompanied by ten guest musicians, including violin and cello players. The other eight guests are vocalists, and among them you’ll find not only Mick but also such names as Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride), Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun), and more. Together they recorded the inspiring album Sacred Cargo and the following EP The Next Wave came out on the 14th of April.

Andrea, Egan, and Jesse tell the MMXX story tonight. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PUNEBRE — “HELE HELE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 272023
 

As you can see, we’re about to bring you another premiere. As you can see, it’s from a record with an out-of-the-ordinary piece of cover art, especially for a slab of monstrous death metal. So let’s start with that artwork.

Obviously, it looks like a comic book cover — a strange one, to be sure, with an attractive young woman swaddling a Lovecraftian nightmare spawn, and some other inhuman figures in the corner presiding over the torching of a church. There’s a tiny logo in the other corner with “HM-2” in the center. And then there’s the comic’s date: April 02 1973. What is the significance of that?

Well, it turns out to be a tribute to the late Leif Cuzner, who was born on that day. A bassist and guitarist for the enormously influential Swedish band Nihilist, he is widely credited as the inventor of the legendary “buzzsaw” guitar sound, created by turning up all the knobs on his Boss HM-2 distortion pedal to the maximum.

Paying attention to all the clues in the unusual cover art tells you many useful things about the record itself, which is the debut album of the Filipino death metal band Punebre. Entitled Ang Nasa Dako Paroon, it will be released on May 15th by the Mexican label Death in Pieces Records. But through our premiere of the album track “Hele Hele” we have an even better clue. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ELITIUM — “TASTELESS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 272023
 

After quickly turning out a pair of EPs in 2012 and 2014 (Transcendence and Ataxia), the Portuguese band Elitium fell silent… for a long time. We don’t know all the details about how the last 9 years were spent, but no doubt there were trials and tribulations of various kinds — as well as a lot of work on new music.

That work has borne extravagant fruit, because at last Elitium are returning with an explosive debut album named Wrong that will be released by Gruesome Records, and today we’re presenting an electrifying album track named “Tasteless” accompanied by an excellent music video. Continue reading »

METASPHAERA: “METASPHAERA”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 272023
 

(DGR unexpectedly fell into the self-titled debut album by the “insanely talented” German technical death metal band Metasphæra, released near the end of March, and as you’ll see from the following review, he’s damned glad he did.)

There are a few patterns that have developed throughout my years writing for this site. One of the main ones occurs during the bit of a lull that leads up to May’s sort of panicked backfilling of the site as we launch fully into festival season, a lull wherein we have the ability to fall down a whole lot of rabbit holes.

Much as we as a site will shovel song after song in front of you as we discover music that we think might perk a few ears, so too do we enjoy having that done to us – somewhat – and one of those main methods comes from entering the whirling vortex of metal across social media and seeing what it kicks back at us.

YouTube is often one such source, and such was the case with German tech-death group Metasphaera (typeset Metasphæra) and their self-titled album. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DJINN-GHÜL — “OPULENCE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 262023
 

The last time we heard from this Denver/Bolíver axis was through their 2021 EP Mechalith, a record our own Andy Synn put on his year-end list of top 10 EPs, even though it had just come out the day before he finished the list. Why did it make such an impact (like a meteor crater)? Andy explained:

“[I]f you’re looking for something that exists purely to pulverise your ear-drums – blasting and bludgeoning and breaking-the-fuck-down without mercy or restraint – but also has a few clever cyber-synth tricks up its heavily armed and armoured sleeve (also drawing comparison, in places, to the extremophile excess of our old friends The Monolith Deathcult), then you should definitely give Mechalith a shot.”

About 2 1/2 years later, here we are, confronting another imminent meteor strike. Which is to say that Djinn-Ghül are back, this time with a full-length named Opulence. You’ve still got a little while to prepare — there might be time to build an underground bunker before the July 14 release date scheduled by Vicious Instinct Records — but you better not waste time. Dig deep and harden that shelter as if your life depends on it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SUFFERING QUOTA — “GROW”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 262023
 

Adjectives like “terrorizing” and “explosive” have tended to surround the music of the Dutch grindcore band Suffering Quota like swarms of angry hornets. Of course, sensations of fury and violence are endemic to a lot of grindcore, but adjectives like those don’t always come to mind as frequently as they do with this band.

Yet those aspects of their music, while integral and vital to what they do, really aren’t all that sets them apart from a lot of their peers. What really sets them apart is the feeling that they’d get bored just blowing off the doors in listeners’ heads and wrecking the hell out of whatever’s inside. It’s got to be more interesting than that.

The stew of genre ingredients they incorporate — which include death metal, crust, and hardcore — can’t always follow the same recipe, song after song, or what’s the point of continuing to write and record? Better to make them fight for survival in different ways and see what happens. Better to keep the listener off-balance, because for sure, there’s no balance in the world either.

Well, that’s just armchair psychology from our little underground hovel, because we’re not telepaths. But when you listen to some of the music of Suffering Quota‘s new album Collide, maybe you’ll understand the point we’re trying to make. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GRAVES FOR GODS

 Interviews  No Responses »
Apr 262023
 

(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of the Australian death-doom band Graves for Gods, whose debut album was released in 2022 by Sleeping Church Records.)

The new releases appear one after another and sometimes we have to skip something or just don’t see it. I believe that I saw Graves for Gods’ name in 2022 but the year was a mess and I didn’t listen to their album The Oldest Gods, yet the title naturally stuck in my memory.

I took my time and listened to this album. It’s amazing – absolutely grim, monumental yet material. These four huge tracks bring the feeling of comfort as you hear in them something familiar yet still exciting, classic death-doom vibes,”Celebratory Funeral Doom” as they say.

And they are Jak Shadows (guitars, vocals), Matt Spencer (guitars, bass), and Ryan Quarrington (drums). Each of them has a proper background, as all of them played different kinds of heavy stuff in other Australian bands, and each of them is focused now on creating “music for meditation or violence”. Jak and Matt will explain it better than me. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FORMALIST — “MONUMENT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 252023
 

Five years after our last premiere of a song by the Italian band Formalist we have been granted the opportunity to make another one.

Five years ago the occasion was the impending release of their debut album, No One Will Shine Anymore, which contained three massive tracks that were relentlessly multi-faceted and engrossing, yet also ruthlessly created waking nightmares.

Today the occasion is another impending album release, this one named We Inherit a World at the Seams, which will be out on May 25th via Brucia Records. It too consists of three epic-length tracks, collectively totaling 44 minutes of harrowing sound, and today we’re premiering the one that’s fittingly called “Monument“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SISYPHEAN — “THROUGH CORROSION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 252023
 

Shakespeare is the author of the famous statement, uttered by a character (Antonio) in The Tempest, that “what’s past is prologue”. What he and his character meant is that history provides the context for what is about to happen in the present (in The Tempest, it was the opportunity for Antonio and his co-conspirator Sebastian to commit murder). Some might go so far as to assert that what happens in the present is fated to happen because of what has happened in the past.

In the case of the Lithuanian black metal band Sisyphean (themselves named for a legendary character), the past that is most powerfully prologue is their 2020 album Colours of Faith. That’s not to suggest that people should ignore their 2017 debut full-length, but it was Colours of Faith that really opened eyes and established high expectations. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DEMONICAL — “INTO VICTORY”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 242023
 

(Here we have DGR‘s review of a new EP released by the Swedish band Demonical, which has been out since the end of March on Agonia Records.)

There have been a string of singles and EP releases in the past couple of months and the grouping of them has been all over the place — many consisting of bonus tracks that were on international editions or ultra-exclusive songs, others being odd experiments, and some being the more traditional “yes, we are working hard on new stuff, here’s what we’ve been up to recently”.

Demonical‘s newest EP release is along the lines of the third one, although part of the reason we’re checking in with them is due to Demonical changing vocalists, so its partly that the band are still going (which is good news, given that 2022’s Mass Destroyer was pretty strong) and partly “here’s what we’re going to sound like now” with new vocalist Charlie Fryksell at the helm.

Not to shock anyone, but the two songs present on Into Victory – the title track and a cover of The Ramones‘ “Somebody Put Something In My Drink” that plays it remarkably straight – continue Demonical‘s pattern of being particularly strong and very capable of bringing the earth-rumbling gallop that you come to this style of death metal for. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries