Islander

FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2022: DAY TWO

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Aug 052022
 

(Our friend Gonzo has brought us the second installment of his commentary on the 2022 edition of the Fire in the Mountains festival, which took place in Wyoming in late July. To check out the first installment, go here.)

Saturday morning came before I was ready for it. The sunrise roused me from an intoxicated slumber, and my bladder was quick to remind me of the choices I’d made the night before. “Balls,” I muttered as I put pants on, preparing to leave the warm confines of my tent and head towards the port-a-potties near the entrance to camp.

I unzipped the tent and stepped out into the frigid morning air. The temperature had dropped by almost half of what it’d been during the day. A layer of frost had accumulated on the top of the tent. I was grateful I’d kept my Amorphis hoodie on before going to sleep, even if I had no memory of doing it. So far, the running score of this weekend was FITM: 1, Gonzo: 0. Expecting anything else would’ve been ridiculous of me.

Walking along the makeshift footpath through camp, the stunning peaks of the Tetons were looming through the morning mist. This land, this festival – there was something different about it, something almost tangible. It’s not every day you find yourself immersed in nature, surrounded by wildlife, refreshingly out of range of any cell phone service, and have eight hours of amazing music to look forward to, but that was exactly what this day would hold for the lucky 1,200 of us who made the trek to this festival. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MALAURIU — “THE LOCUST”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 052022
 

The Sicilian band Malauriu have been a prolific source of black metal and dark experimental sounds for almost a decade. As detailed in an interview of mainman Schizoid published here at the beginning of 2022, Malauriu have tended to release their music mainly through EPs and splits. In March of this year they departed from the tradition by releasing their second (self-titled) full-length, but they now return to shorter works with a new EP named De Natura Obscuritatis that’s set for release in mid-September by the Italian label Black Mass Prayers.

To help spread the word about this new EP, today we premiere a song from it named “The Locust“. Continue reading »

WEREGOAT: A DUAL REVIEW (“THE DEVIL’S LUST” AND “ORGIASTIC RAPE OF RESURRECTED REMAINS”)

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 052022
 

(Hope Gould prepared the following lusty review of two forthcoming releases that feature the deviant talents of Oregon’s Weregoat, a new full-length and a split with Eggs of Gomorrh.)

There’s a lot of merit in making love: Building the anticipation, savoring the smallest sensations, relishing in the way your partner’s body responds to your touch as the mutual hunger grows. Perhaps taking the time to create some ambience for the occasion, setting the stage for a beautiful exchange of energy and intimacy.

On the other hand, there’s a helluvalot of merit in hard ‘n’ fast fuckin’. With a career centered on unbridled, animalistic depravity, Weregoat know this all too well. Their forthcoming mini-album, coming in just shy of 23 minutes, packs all the punch they need to prove size may not always matter, especially when they know exactly how to use it. The Devil’s Lust, to be released on August 12th, is a crash course in bestial passion. Like a rendezvous with an old lover, fans will find a sick familiarity in revisiting the band’s reliable tricks and a jolting pleasure in their seasoned execution. Continue reading »

A REDEFINING DARKNESS ROUND-UP: HERUVIM, ROTBORN, CONCRETE ICON, ORBICATE

 Metal News, Premieres, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Aug 042022
 

Regular visitors to our site are aware that roughly once a week we compile round-ups of new songs and videos that have seized our attention. The round-up you’re staring at now, however, is different from the usual ones.

In this instance we’re putting the spotlight on four recent or forthcoming releases from a single label — Redefining Darkness Records. And there’s another difference, because in some instances what you’ll be discovering are premiere streams of the music.

HERUVIM: SHADOWHEART EP

The first release we’re spotlighting has goals that go beyond giving you something (very good) to listen too. It’s the debut EP by a death metal band from Odesa, Ukraine, named Heruvim, and all proceeds from digital sales are dedicated to the support of the Ukrainian army in their fight against the Russian aggressors. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TOMB OF FINLAND — “COFFIN BOUND”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 042022
 

It’s not often that we premiere more than one advance track from an impending album release, much less three of them. But in the case of Tomb of Finland‘s new album Across The Barren Fields we’ve been offered the chance to do three, and have eagerly accepted the opportunity.

In the case of the first two songs we’ve presented, they were first released as stand-alone singles, and that’s true of the song we’re presenting today — “Coffin Bound“. It will be available as a digital single beginning on August 5th. But we’re also now getting much closer to the August 19th release of the album by UPRISING! Records in a variety of physical formats, and thus this latest single serves as a reminder of that. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BLEEDING THROUGH — “RAGE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 042022
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of a new EP by Orange County’s Bleeding Through, their first new music in four years and out now on Sharptone Records.)

The fact that this site’s roots grew out of an in-joke born from early-aughts metalcore is always an amusing one, especially given the many pathways into things way, way heavier that we’ve taken in the decade-plus since. Yet we – and especially yours truly – would be lying if we said we didn’t still have a soft spot for a lot of those bands. That was partially why we found ourselves so oddly interested in the resurgence of MTV2 Headbanger’s Ball-era dominating bands beginning a few years ago as a lot of them decided that would be the time within the nostalgia cycle to mark their returns.

A few of those releases were legitimately good – we’ll still go to bat for The Agony Scene’s Tormentor release – and the rest at the very least were solid returns to what you’d always expect for that style of band. Bleeding Through‘s 2018 album Love Will Kill All somewhat stradled the line between the two, wherein there were a handful of truly ferocious and jaw dropping songs but also many other that sounded like Bleeding Through getting used to being Bleeding Through again.

They played what they’ve always done, and weirdly enough it made Love Will Kill All play out like an unintentional career retrospective…run backwards. It started out with their blisteringly fast and heavily chugged-out death metal leanings that colored their later releases and slowly became the more brawny and breakdown-filled style that made them a hallmark of the early 2000s. It was a weird dynamic for sure, but also one that made it perplexing to know what Bleeding Through‘s gameplan was for the future. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETERNALLY SCARRED — “STONE COLD BLOOD”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 032022
 

For those of you, like us, who haven’t previously encountered the one-man Armenian project Eternally Scarred, we’ve got what we think will be a big and welcome surprise for you today. The surprise comes in the form of two songs from Eternally Scarred‘s new album Echoes From Beneath, one that previously surfaced and one that we’re premiering today.

The songs are surprising in a couple of respects. The first is that the band has branched out from the stylistic markers of its debut album …Of Wisdom, which led Metal-Archives to label the music Melodic Death/Doom Metal. Those labeled ingredients are still a part of Echoes From Beneath, but there’s now even more going on in the songs, and the ways in which they take new forks in the path are thrilling (and kind of head-spinning).

The other surprise, for those of us who are encountering Eternally Scarred for the first time, is just how “muscular” and hard-hitting the songs are, how well-constructed and “catchy” they are, and how frighteningly intense the vocals become. Make no mistake, these are often grim and moody beasts, and capable of harrowing your souls, but they’ll get your pulse pounding too. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DYSGNOSTIC — “BENEATH ABYSSAL PLAINS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 032022
 

The Danish band formerly known as Defilementory have made a bug “reset” — and we do mean BIG. A long eight years after the release of their debut album The Dismal Ascension, they’ve recorded a new album with a changed sound, changed their own name to mark the occasion, and will have it released by one of the most exciting metal labels now in operation (Transcending Obscurity Records), adorned by magnificently chilling cover art by Dawid Figielek.

The band’s new name is Dysgnostic, and the title of their first album under that name is Scar Echoes. As for their revised sound, we now have two indications of it. The first, presented through an official video last month, is a track called “Silvery Tongues“, and the second is the song we’re premiering today — “Beneath Abyssal Plains“. Continue reading »

TEETHGRINDER: “DYSTOPIA”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 032022
 

(The Dutch band Teethgrinder released a new album through Lifeforce Records in the latter part of July, and we follow that today with DGR‘s review of this new record.)

When it comes to the type of music Teethgrinder make there isn’t really a concept of ‘doubling down’ on anything. For three albums – including this newest release – and an introductory EP, Teethgrinder have already existed at maximum volume and intensity. There’s no doubling of anything left here. Every song is an explosion from the start. and a lot of times they sound like they’re on the edge of a frenetic internal collapse.

Both Misanthropy and Nihilism were already excellent examples of the sort of high-volume attack available to the band, and if you’ve been following NCS for a while you’ll know that we’ve been banging the drum about both for a while. This is probably why it actually came as a surprise to discover that the gap between Nihilism and the group’s newest album Dystopia is almost five and a half years; it really doesn’t seem like the band have ever stopped.

Nihilism had such a long-burning flame here that it only just now seems like it has embered out a bit, and so Dystopia arrives at a perfect time. Yet it’s in a weird position, since we now have to ask if ‘if there’s nothing for the band to keep hammering on, then what direction is Dystopia left to travel in?’ Continue reading »

WITCHERY: “NIGHTSIDE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 022022
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the latest album by one of our site’s favorite bands, Sweden’s Witchery. It was released on July 22nd by Century Media.)

Witchery albums have a habit of sneaking up on us around here, which is strange given that they do have a collective among the staff that will go to bat for them to this day.

Granted, in the span of time since the site’s founding up until now there’ve only been three Witchery albums released, but they’ve existed as a steady undercurrent for the writers around here and have evolved in the background into a ‘house band’.

July 22nd gave us the fourth addition to the collective of Witchery albums that have been released since this site’s founding, with the recent unleashing of Nightside, closing up a near five-year gap between albums. Continue reading »

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