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OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 7): GOATWHORE, GAEREA, GLOSON

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Jan 102023
 

Not for the first time, and it won’t be the last time, I picked today’s three additions to this list by focusing on song candidates by bands whose names begin with the same letter. That made the selection process less mind-boggling for me. It’s not a recipe for overall success, because I don’t have enough days left to cover every letter in the alphabet, and because not all letters are equally deserving in this context. But it worked well for today, when these three bands jumped out at me as I gazed at the Gs. Or, we could say I managed to find the G spot.

GOATWHORE (U.S.)

Angels Hung From the Arches of Heaven was another album where we could throw a dart at the track list and come up with a song for this list wherever it landed. As DGR wrote in his extensive review, it’s another testament to a level of consistency that has made Goatwhore a “cultural touchstone within the heavy metal music community,” providing “big riffs, big sections, and room-filling music matched equally in terms of heaviness,” and with “just enough surprise to keep things exciting”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: URANIUM — “AN EXACTING PUNISHMENT”

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Jan 102023
 

Almost two years ago, still in the depths of the pandemic, I stumbled across a single named “Trinity” by a one-man weapon named Uranium. It made a startling impression, and left me both eager and frightened to discover the entire album that it was allegedly a part of, a record named An Exacting Punishment. Now I, and all of you, will get that chance, because Sentient Ruin will release the album on January 27th. The label describes the mission statement:

“As the band’s name aptly hints at, Uranium was conceived as an aural vessel to explore the outer limits and the most irreversible states of complete human disintegration, and the incineration of its most defining and triumphant achievements; namely society, progress, technology, and civilization, with nuclear power being the conduit and ultimate engine of the greatest and most horrific forms of total annihilation mankind could ever face.”

To accomplish this horrifyingly bleak and ruinous goal, Uranium have chained together and weaponized power electronics, industrial noise, and black metal, and shrouded it in a hellish atmosphere of awe, terror, and degradation. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ACT OF IMPALEMENT — “ATOMIC HECATOMB”

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Jan 102023
 

 

If you had managed to catch Act of Impalement‘s 2018 debut album Perdition Cult, you’d know that this Nashville trio could have gone in many different directions with a follow-up full-length. They pulled from a lot of different heavy and extreme genres and succeeded in keeping listeners perpetually off-balnace. As one especially vivid review put it, they proved themselves capable of “churn[ing] out vile heaps of grinding crust one minute and the next cough[ing] up a doomy, death metal cyst of drudgery,” creating an experience where “sodden waves of sludging doom marry up with guttural death metal nuances before a sudden tide of black-cum-death thrashing interrupts”.

There were so many highlights on that first album, so many hideous thrills and chills, that it wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world for this hydra-headed world-ender of a band to just do it again, giving fans another discombobulating tour through a hideous netherworld labyrinth of sound. But the second album that is now about to emerge after a five-year hiatus gives us a different plan, no less thrilling and chilling but more focused in its monstrosity. And oh hell yes, that second album Infernal Ordinance is a monster. Continue reading »

CARMA: “OSSADAS”

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Jan 102023
 

 

(Axel Stormbreaker rejoins us today with a review of a concept album by the Portuguese band Carma, and an idea for a movie to watch along with it. Inspired by the Conchada Cemetery in Coimbra, the album will be released in March by the Monumental Rex label.)

Blending a music record with a Hollywood movie ain’t an easy task to go through. Even if the eerie performance granted by Christian Bale does assist a narrative comparison to Carma‘s funeral doom aesthetics. The trick is, you gotta let your emotions blossom, without revealing any actual spoilers to the plot. Or neglect the very ground rules that bind a music review’s construct.

And you also gotta remember, the screen part involves the prestigious character of Edgar Allan Poe. Which means it needs to be precise in regards to musical highlights, yet it can’t divert from the feeling the movie generates, nor be too abstract when image and sound are aligned. And… oh, it’s not a basic task to complete. You will need to both watch The Pale Blue Eye and listen to Carma‘s Ossadas to grasp how the scenes and the sound flow together. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 6): MISERY INDEX, WAKE, DAEVA

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Jan 092023
 

One week of this list behind us, a new week ahead, and we begin it with a trio of songs from albums that made blockbuster impacts on many of us who toil away at this site.

MISERY INDEX (U.S.)

More often than not when you have an album as good as Complete Control, you’ll have more than one song that might qualify as “infectious”. That is certainly true of the latest full-length by Misery Index. No shock there, because this band has so much talent in the ranks that it would be unfair if extreme metal bands were in competition with each other (at some brutishly rudimentary economic level, you might think they’re in competition for limited consumer dollars, but if any underground bands think that way I’m pretty sure Misery Index isn’t one of them). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CADAVER SHRINE — “THE BLACK DOOR”

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Jan 092023
 

 

Gnaw Their Tongues, Cloak of Altering, De Magia Veterum, Golden Ashes, Hagetisse, The Black Mysteries, The Sombre….

Is this a music shopping list? It could be, probably should be if you’re looking for a mental carnival of wild  and disturbing rides, but instead it’s a list of projects through which Maurice de Jong (aka Mories) has exercised (and exorcized) his mind, and it’s far from a complete list. Many names of both current and past projects of Mories are missing, but still, the list grows longer – because on February 10th Chaos Records will release Benighted Desecration, the debut album of a new Mories project named Cadaver Shrine.

What interests does Mories channel through this new endeavor? You might have an inkling if you caught Cadaver Shrine‘s two-song demo last Halloween. If you missed that, you might have seen this portrayal in the metal press, lifted from the PR for Chaos Records: “Born out of the love for ancient Metal of Death as well as doom, Cadaver Shrine are indeed putrefied, reeking of the same eternal rot of classic Bolt Thrower, Autopsy, and other more underground-entrenched entities.” Or this: Continue reading »

…AND OCEANS: “AS IN GARDENS, SO IN TOMBS”

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Jan 092023
 

(On January 27th Season of Mist will release a new album by the Finnish band …And Oceans, and in advance of that we present DGR’s extensive review and streams of all four singles from the album.)

It was only a scant three years ago – closer to two and a half so you don’t have to turn to dust and blow away in the wind yet – that Finland’s …And Oceans unleashed their album Cosmic World Mother, their first with their then newly reformed lineup with an eighteen-year gap between, during which time the group had existed under the name Havoc Unit, unleashed a string of splits and one full-length, and returned to the name …And Oceans with a two-song EP released in 2019.

It’s a complicated history for a complicated and wild band, who’ve traversed a lot of ground between black metal, a more melodic and keyboard-driven form, full industrial, and cycling back around to a current sound that seems to encompass all of those. You could get comfy in one particular sound and think that …And Oceans were going to just spend a whole song belching fire at you. only to hit a massive keyboard break right in the center. It’s why we enjoyed Cosmic World Mother so much around these parts, because there was always something hovering just off the horizon to catch you off guard. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SLEGEST, MAJESTIES, HØSTSOL, DEVISER, ONTBORG, HIVERLUCIDE, VĖLIŲ NAMAI

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Jan 082023
 


Slegest

I didn’t put together the usual Saturday roundup of new songs and videos yesterday. Partly this was because I got a late start on the day, but also because I wanted to spend more time figuring out what to include in the rollout of our 2022 Most Infectious Song list. I made good progress there, with enough choices to fill segments every day during the coming week. I think they’ll provide more reminders of what a great year for metal 2022 was.

But now on to the task at hand. The collection I assembled for today explains why I chose the name “Shades of Black” for this column too many years ago for me to remember, because most of these songs hover just on the outskirts of the black metal soundscape. They wouldn’t sound the way they do without that influence, but they’re built around other significant interests too. However, I’ve balanced those with a pair of songs near the middle that dive deep back into black metal traditions of yesteryear.

This collection is also more like the kind of “Seen and Heard” roundups that I failed to do yesterday, in that all the songs are advance tracks from forthcoming albums rather than complete new releases (even though one of those advance tracks is 20 minutes long). And I think you’ll find all the songs quite infectious — until you get to the closing pair. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 5): ALLEGAEON, APPALLING, AUTONOESIS

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Jan 062023
 

Can you see what I did for this fifth Part of the list? After spending minutes scanning up and down the alphabetized collection of more than 500 song candidates I still have left, and feeling my vision begin to blur, I let my orbs drift up to the top where all the A’s are. Only 42 songs up there.

That’s right, 42 songs just by bands whose names begin with A, but it still made it a bit easier to focus. And having focused, the following three songs jumped out at me from memory. (Don’t worry, this isn’t the last time you’ll see an A-band on this list.)

By coincidence, or maybe not, all 3 of them are high-speed, high-intensity tracks that involve some blazing guitar work. In other words, if your ass happens to be dragging, these will fix you right up and propel you into the weekend ready to fight the world (doesn’t mean you’ll win, but you’ll make a good showing). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MALICE DIVINE — “EVERLASTING ASCENDANCY”

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Jan 062023
 

Slaves of shred will have another reason to bow down in 2023 because Toronto-based Malice Divine will be releasing their second album Everlasting Ascendancy on January 27th.

As lots of people already know, the man behind this project — Ric Galvez — has made a name for himself as a guitar virtuoso, and if anything, he elevates his skill to even greater heights on Everlasting Ascendancy. But as the album’s title track that we’re premiering today (through a lyric video) demonstrates quite convincingly, the songs aren’t just excuses to show off, but are instead well-crafted pieces that display dynamism, inspiring melodies, and the kind of hard-charging ferocity that creates primal reactions. Continue reading »

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