Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRITICAL DEFIANCE — “NO LIFE FORMS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  6 Responses »
Jul 132022
 

A bit more than three years ago the Chilean thrash band Critical Defiance released their debut album Misconception through Unspeakable Axe Records. It was reviewed here by TheMadIsraeli. You won’t find many people more devoted to thrash than him, or more knowledgeable about the genre, its history, and its evolution. And so his abundant enthusiasm for Misconception carried a lot of weight among those of us who knew him.

Among other things, he wrote: “These guys are very old-school-minded, but they aren’t trying to imitate the sound — they embody it, seeking to break their way into the public consciousness by approaching from a different front of channeling the heights of thrash based on technical endurance. I’m talking bands like Dark Angel, Coroner, Watchtower, old Kreator, Forbidden. Not many bands attempt this school of thrash metal if they’re into visiting old school sounds because I think it’s difficult to write thrash like this without sounding needlessly excessive. Thankfully, Critical Defiance never fall into this trap….”

Now these prodigiously talented Chileans are returning with a sophomore album named No Life Forms, set for release by the same Unspeakable Axe Records on July 18th. Did they fall into a sophomore funk, or did they hit the heights again, or maybe even soar higher? You can guess our answer, given that we’ve agreed to premiere the full album stream today. Continue reading »

SAKIS TOLIS: “AMONG THE FIRES OF HELL”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 132022
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the first solo album by Sakis Tolis from Rotting Christ, which was released this past spring.)

Sakis Tolis is one of the more prolific music creators out there. The Rotting Christ name remains relevant in press cycles because the band always seem to have some sort of new song or project going on, and considering that the main two behind Rotting Christ are the Tolis-crew it wouldn’t be hard to say that a lot of that is because the band is a creative avenue for him. It hasn’t even been too much of a stretch for the lines to blur between the projects Sakis has been involved in, such that Rotting Christ have been known to break out a cover or two of songs by Thou Art Lord over the years.

This is the reason the March release of Sakis Tolis‘ solo album Among The Fires Of Hell so interesting, since the body of work that he’s responsible for is so vast already. Within seconds of starting up the album – if you weren’t aware already – it becomes clear who has been mostly responsible for a lot of the writing within Rotting Christ over the years. Among The Fires Of Hell is surprising even, because it creates a weird situation where the question that winds up being asked is that, for a musician with as vast a body of work as his, is there really so much left to say that it requires a full solo release? Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (WEEKDAY EDITION): PANZERFAUST, GAEREA, TOMBS, DARKREVERIE, MO’YNOQ, HETROERTZEN, SPECTRUM MORTIS, HERBSTLETHARGIE

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jul 122022
 

 

In the dozen years of this site’s existence we’ve had fewer than a dozen days (including weekends and holidays) when we posted nothing new. Yesterday was one of those. I’ll spare you the excuses, which were numerous, but I still felt guilty about it. So I’m trying to make up for that void today.

In gazing upon my long list of songs I wanted to recommend, it occurred to me that most of them were variations of black and blackened metal, so I decided to focus on those and leave other genre variants for another day.

There’s a lot here, all of them tracks from forthcoming releases, and so I’ve truncated the introductions and mostly omitted the usual artwork. I begin with bigger names and then drift into more obscure ones. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ABEST — “MOLTEN HUSK”

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Jul 122022
 

Let’s cut to the chase: What you’re about to experience is a completely unnerving combination of sights and sounds — music that will put your teeth on edge as it claws at your sanity and bludgeons your bones, and an accompanying video that’s equally nightmarish. The combined experience is harrowing and indeed uncomfortable, but so gripping that it freezes you in place, perhaps like waking to find a venomous serpent coiled on your chest, tongue flickering toward your face. You move at your peril.

Chariot Of Black Moth is a proven master at creating stark and startling visual hallucinations, never lingering for too long on any one element of the flashing imagery, so that you can’t be entirely sure what you’re seeing, but you feel its horror at a visceral level. Horror and insanity inhabit the music here as well, and we have the German band Abest to thank for it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ROTHEADS — “GORE COFFIN”

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Jul 122022
 

We liked the Romanian death metal band Rotheads before hearing a single note, thanks to Comrade Aleks‘ engaging June 2022 interview here with guitarist/vocalist Bogdan. He comes across as down-to-earth, unpretentious, and intelligent, very matter-of-fact in his discussion of the band’s history and approach to the music and the lyrics, but with an unmistakable and contagious enthusiasm. We hoped the music would be equally engaging — and thankfully, it is.

What we have in front of us now is Rotheads‘ second album, Slither In Slime, which is set for release on July 25th by the Memento Mori label. Compared to the band’s full-length debut (2018’s Sewer Fiends), it still displays the influence of the early ’90s Finnish scene, melded with other classicists from the Swedish and American old schools, but as Bogdan relates in the interview, it sounds more like a studio album and less like a demo. It’s ugly and twisted, to be sure, but with a sharper and more calculating sound, and the songwriting more powerfully creates creepy and crypt-borne atmospheres as the band crush and careen their way through these tracks. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: INEXORUM, SVAR, GRIMA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jul 102022
 

 

This edition of our usual Sunday column is long-delayed. The last one was on June 19th. I made choices to write about on June 26th but then didn’t have time to do it that day, after pulling together a gigantic “Overflowing Streams” round-up to make up for the one I didn’t do on the day before. And then the Sunday after that, July 3rd, I was helping with the immediate aftermath of Northwest Terror Fest, including some celebrating with the rest of the festival volunteers.

What to do today? I was tempted to just write about the choices I originally made for June 26th, but I felt the itch of trying to stay focused on the newest of the new, an itch that’s ever-present and immune to treatment. So I kind of split the difference, with a couple of choices from two weeks ago and one more recent pick.

INEXORUM (U.S.)

I had the pleasure of seeing Carl Sk performing with Obsequiae at the afore-mentioned Northwest Terror Fest. It was a reminder of what a great band that is, but also a reminder that I had failed to help spread the word about the new album from Carl‘s band Inexorum. That album, Equinox Vigil, was one of my picks for that June 26th installment of this column that never got off the ground, but it would be shameful of me to let any more time go by without urging you to hear it if you haven’t. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PLAGUE YEARS, BLACK ALTAR, SHROUD OF DESPONDENCY, TROG, DVVELL, INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH, HOMESKIN, DISMEMBER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jul 092022
 

 

Yesterday I went in search of musical beatings of various kinds. I’m not sure where that impulse came from, maybe the annoyance of being required to do something unpleasant for my fucking day job, or maybe just the surfacing of that constantly lurking desire among metal fans to become embroiled in intensity.

I had no theme in mind when I awoke today, facing the weekend with gummy eyes, and instead just wandered among new songs and videos, like a kid in the candy store aisles. Here’s what filled my hands:

PLAGUE YEARS (U.S.)

Yesterday this Detroit band dropped a surprise EP named All Will Suffer, along with a video for a song named “Suffer“. Lots of suffering in these words, but you won’t wallow in misery when you listen, though you may need to be hospitalized. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: REVOCATION, WOLFBRIGADE, TEETHGRINDER, HELLFUCK, CONSUMPTION, AURIFEROUS FLAME, ASTRAL HORROR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jul 082022
 

 

The theme of today’s collection of new songs and videos is: THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES!

Today is my birthday, and as a gift, my employer has decided to beat me until my morale improves. Therefore, this collection isn’t as large as I would wish, but tomorrow is another day, and I expect I’ll have another collection then.

REVOCATION (U.S.)

We may love Revocation around here (we DO love Revocation around here), but they have repaid all our affections with “Diabolical Majesty“, a merciless new song that invokes champions of hell “to crush the cursed creatures of the Christian right”. “Onward to victory! Set their commandments ablaze!” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COSCRADH — “PLAGUES OF KNOWTH”

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Jul 072022
 


photo by Piotr Jóźwiak

Even ears and minds that have been hardened by extensive exposure to the most extreme ravages of blackened death metal are still capable of being stunned by the music of the Irish band Coscradh. (Even the toughest callouses can be scraped raw and split open.) The eye-popping impact of their slaughtering talents was made evident from their first (self-titled) demo in 2016, and was renewed and reinforced through a pair of subsequent EPs (Of Death and Delirium and Mesradh Machae), all of them released by Invictus Productions. And now Coscradh‘s debut album is on the way, like a terrorizing, earth-shaking upheaval.

The name of this first full-length (41 minutes long), which the same Invictus Productions has set for release on August 5th, is Nahanagan Stadial. We are told that the title is an old Irish term for the rapid onset of a glacial period 10,000 years ago, which rendered life extinct: “A massive rise in oceans blocked out the sun, and coronal mass ejections and sunbursts hit the planet, overturning civilization, which brought a new ice age upon the island of Ireland”.

That choice of title is in keeping with the band’s entire aesthetic, both their devotion to the old language and history of Ireland and the summoning of catastrophe in their music. The band’s Irish Gaelic name itself (which we’ve learned is pronounced coss-kraa or cuss-kraa depending on the dialect) refers to slaughter or massacre, but such decimating visions would come to mind from the music alone, as you’ll discover from the album track we’re premiering today if you don’t already know. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GALLOWER — “CLAWS AND FANGS”

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Jul 062022
 

On July 29th Dying Victims Productions will release a new EP by the savage Polish sorcerers in Gallower. The band’s musical identity has already been well-established through a sequence of demos and splits and a 2020 debut album, Behold the Realm of Darkness. As Dying Victims accurately portrays, “Gallower incite a riot of violence that skillfully melds the Teutonic legendry of Destruction, Sodom, Kreator, and Violent Force with the first-wave black magick of Bathory, Hellhammer, Venom, and Japan’s Sabbat“.

The new EP is a five-song, 17-minute rampage that (to again quote the label) “emits strong vibes of early Bulldozer, Running Wild, Deathrow, and pre-Rick Rubin Slayer“. And thus it fortifies Gallower‘s reputation as black thrashing maniacs cloaked in an unearthly aura that merits the title of the new EP — Eastern Witchcraft.

One track from the EP has already surfaced, and today we’re presenting another. Continue reading »

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