Islander

DEATHGRAVE: “IT’S ONLY MIDNIGHT”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 052023
 

(West Coast extremists Deathgrave will release a new album on April 14th via the Tankcrimes label, and today we present Todd Manning‘s review.)

To be a dedicated fan of old school death metal often means not seeking out surprises, but rather looking for a vibe. So when one comes across a new band which includes Greg Wilkinson, who has done time with Autopsy along with sludge masters Brainoil and Graves at Sea, one can assume that those vibes will be there in spades. Deathgrave’s latest full-length, It’s Only Midnight, certainly captures that old-school death metal atmosphere, but actually does provide some surprises along the way. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LARVAE — “ENTITLED TO DEATH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 042023
 

“Oakland, California has summoned the rituals of many metal legions over the decades. Its stench is filled with dark art, morbid riffs, death and doom. There’s a scorched place in the corner of the crumbling landscape evoking evil and witchy magic where Larvae feast on the remains of those who perished.”

In the press materials, those evocative words precede the release of Larvae‘s long-awaited second album Entitled to Death, which (to quote again from the same materials) “pursues a human experience, traversing the middle realm seen thru the eyes of a defected warrior,” who is bound to a grim and hostile reality “until the final collapse in a land filled with ruin and loss… crossing over into a cosmic abyss.”

In the musical telling of this uncomfortable tale Larvae draw inspiration from such divergent  ’90s legends as Runemagick, Paradise Lost, Immolation, Bolt Thrower, Neurosis, and Dismember. How they interweave those influences might be difficult to guess, but today no guessing game is needed because we have the complete album stream for you. Continue reading »

UGLY: “AUTOGRAPH”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 042023
 

(Arizona doom/sludge quartet UGLY will release their new album Autograph via Satanik Royalty Records on May 5th, and below you’ll find Wil Cifer‘s review.)

Since the ’90s sludge has branched out from crust punk to meld the apocalyptic rumblings passed down from bands like Swans and Killing Joke. This band from Arizona carries all the foreboding of the genre’s forefathers in their sound. They know the value of atmosphere as a tool to empower the aggression of their riffs. The guitars chug with crushing vitriol. One of this album’s strengths is the use of samples to set the mood, in a manner we have not heard since the glory days of Neurosis.

The vocals of the first song are an exercise in raw larynx-scraping  They are recorded in a very dry fashion with scant use of effects. Just a crazed man screaming into a mic.

This crazed man is not alone. He is joined by Krysta Curry from Landmine Marathon, who not only shares vocal duties but also helps out with synths, samples, and additional percussion, though her vocal presence is not really felt ’til the second song, which finds an odd syncopation embracing a weird, more grandiose arrangement. Continue reading »

ROTTEN SOUND: “APOCALYPSE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 042023
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by Finland’s Rotten Sound, which is out now on Season of Mist.)

The thing to keep in mind with Rotten Sound‘s newest album Apocalypse – arriving almost five years after the group’s last recorded material in the 2018 EP Suffer To Abuse and almost seven years if you want to stick strictly to full lengths in 2016’s Abuse To Suffer – is that it is the sort of grind album that starts and stops. That makes no sense, you say, every album has a beginning and end, what sort of difference does an album starting and stopping have to do with the descriptor of an album?

To refine it a bit, let’s treat Apocalypse this way: There is no build up to Apocalypse and there is no wind-down in Apocalypse, at any point, at all. You hit ‘play’ on the album’s first song and Rotten Sound are already screaming at a thousand miles an hour and every song after that does the same. The start/stop mechanism is the most perfunctory in existence. It’s a quick blast of feedback and the song is over with not a single song getting close to the two-minute mark. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, MARCH 2023

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 032023
 

(We’ve just barely breached the walls of April, and so our friend Gonzo makes a timely reappearance with a selection of five albums released in March that made a big impact in his listening.)

Before I get to writing this month’s helping of my choice cuts from last month, I gotta get something out of the way first:

I am still absolutely buzzing from last night’s Death to All show here in Denver.

To see the likes of Steve DiGiorgio and Gene Hoglan play music of any kind on stage, in person, is a treat enough by itself, but having them rip through selections from the inimitable Death for almost two hours was an experience that I plan to re-live in perpetuity. Possibly forever. Who knows?

It was an insane spectacle for the eyes as well as the ears, and I’ll get to writing up the entire thing soon enough. If you missed this tour, you have my condolences.

Let’s get to the good stuff from March.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BONJOUR TRISTESSE — “ODE TO EMPTINESS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 032023
 

On April 7th Supreme Chaos Records will release Against Leviathan, the third album by the Bavarian black metal band Bonjour Tristesse. It’s the first part of a two- part cycle, which has a conceptual thread running through it. As the band and label describe: It “paints an extremely bleak picture of the dystopian reality of our time from an unusual perspective. It can be seen as an angry and passionate critique of the industrialized world we are living in. At the centre is the conflict between modern humanity and nature”.

The album consists of four long songs, and today we present the one that closes the record — “Ode to Emptiness“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GABESTOK, REVA, THY CATAFALQUE, DAUGHTERS OF SOPHIA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Apr 022023
 


Gabestok (2019) – photo by Adriana Zak

Every week we receive what mathematicians used to call a metric shit ton of black metal submissions. Maybe it’s because we tend to spend more time than many other metal sites focusing on that ever-expanding genre, and maybe because we try not to limit ourselves to well-known bands with substantial label backing or PR apparatuses.

But as some people still don’t understand, there are very few of us here, and our NCS time comes after paying work, family and friends, and every other demand and distraction that everyone else deals with on a daily basis. So, lots of worthy submissions just don’t get attention in our pages.

From amongst the worthy, there’s truly a high degree of randomness in what we choose to write about, and even more so on days like today when my own NCS time has gotten further compressed by unexpected events (including the Third World quality of internet service on the island where I live).

Yeah, I hear you — “Shut Up and Get On With It, you could have covered one more song in the time it took you to write that pathetic introduction!” I hear you, so let’s get on with it: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HASARD, BURIAL CLOUDS, NEÀNDER, DJATLOW, HIDEOUS DIVINITY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 012023
 

Still playing catch-up on all the new songs and videos that surfaced last week… and before….

I suppose I should include some kind of April Fool’s joke, but I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t be obvious. We’ve been nominated for a Pulitzer? We’re starting a clothing line? We’re merging with Rolling Stone so their year-end list will become our own? An AI wrote all the song descriptions in this article? Well, maybe that last one might be believable, if the writing were better.

Anyway, no jokes in the following music, though I have made these selections with the intent of keeping you off-balance.

HASARD (France)

I, Voidhanger Records has once again dropped a bunch of pre-orders and advance tracks for forthcoming albums in one fell swoop. I’ll probably get around to saying something about all of them, but impulsively chose just one today — a new song from Hasard‘s debut album Malivore. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: CREPITATION — “METHANATED PROPULSION OF GASEOUS LEVITATION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 012023
 

April Fool’s Day! Yes it is, and the joke’s on you!

Well, we’re not suggesting that we don’t really have a Crepitation premiere for you today, because we really really do. But look, the song was inspired by the kind of wet farts that provide a queasy recurring lift to your stride.

Hold that thought… along with whatever gaseous emissions may be trying to escape your bunghole at the moment … and let’s consider “Methanated Propulsion of Gaseous Levitation” (the nasty song from a new Crepitation album we’re premiering along with an insane “lyric video”), not the nasty bodily phenomenon for which it was named). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THE INFERNAL SEA, NERVOSA, WORM SHEPHERD, PAVOR NOKTURNUS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 312023
 

x

The Infernal Sea – Photography by Jay Russell

Well, this was another ridiculous week for the release of new music and videos designed to tease forthcoming records, not to mention the release of complete albums, EPs, and splits. Sadly, it was also another week when I couldn’t manage to catch up to them in other round-ups. At least I got a bit of a head-start today on the usual Saturday and Sunday collections, when more catching up will occur.

THE INFERNAL SEA (UK)

Oh hell, where to start? Well, how about with a new single from NCS favorites The Infernal Sea?

“Apostle of Gehenna” is a nice surprise, since about 2 1/2 years have elapsed since the band’s last release (the Negotium Crucis album, reviewed here), though there’s nothing “nice” about gaping jaws of the hellhound in the artwork (the work of Rob Gould). Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries