Islander

AN NCS INTERVIEW: VOIMATON

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May 252022
 

(Comrade Aleks has a knack for finding people to talk with who have the right spirit and whose conversation is both humble and inspiring, and he’s done it again here with an interview of Pat O’Hara from Chicago-based Voimaton, whose debut album is set for release on June 10th by Personal Records.)

Voimaton is Finnish for “powerless”, but this band from Chicago will knock out the spirit from you with their primal death-doom metal. Well, to tell you the truth, the doom-component doesn’t play an equal role with the death-component, but if you think about Cianide then you may have an impression.

Being founded in 2018 by Dave Tibbets (bass, vocals), Pat O’Hara (drums), and Henry Fordney (guitars), they started with a nameless demo (2019) and two EPs before making the effort to record their first full-length album and here it is! The release of Profane Vestige is scheduled by Personal Records for June 10th. I was lucky to have a talk with Pat, and we discussed everything about Voimaton, so hi Pat! Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: SELFGOD – SERGE STRELTSOV

 Interviews  1 Response »
May 242022
 

 

(The world turns, people leave us, and sometimes they come back. Florida-based Dan Barkasi wrote for NCS off and on in 2014-16, and now he has returned with the following interview of Serge Streltsov, the mastermind behind Pittsburgh-based Selfgod.)

Hard-hitting, uncompromising death metal is something that most who frequent NCS are kind of privy to. Just a tad, right? Mix that up with a dash of black metal underpinnings, and you have a recipe for something awfully delicious. Enter Selfgod.

The brainchild of Serge Streltsov (guitars/bass/vocals/keyboards), who plied his trade with Necrophagia and Automb in the past, you can hear how both of those bands played a part in shaping his new project Selfgod – quite literally, as you’ll soon read!

We discuss Selfgod’s debut release Born of Death in depth, along with Serge’s own story of his Ukrainian background and how his heritage is ingrained into both his music and daily life, and how he’s doing his part to help out those affected (and how you can, too). We also discuss Selfgod’s upcoming run of dates this month, the local scene in Pittsburgh, and other interesting topics. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THRALL — “SCHISMS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 242022
 

 

A dozen years have passed since the release of Thrall‘s debut album, Away From the Haunts of Men. Two more albums and an EP followed in relatively quick succession from this Australian band, but then came a near-seven-year interval that left a gap in new recordings, a gap that’s about to be filled in eye-opening fashion. The pandemic brought doom to millions, but renewed life to Thrall, and now their new album Schisms is ready for release.

The band’s founder Tøm Vøid has been its only steadfast member, with the recording line-up in constant flux from release to release. The new album features a big array of contributors around the founder, including current or former members of Gatecreeper, Noose Rot, Mar Mortuum, Myotragus, Cult of the Night, Ruins, and Dead River Runs Dry.

What has this collective accomplished on Schisms? There have been a couple of early clues via the release of the songs “Tyrant” and “Hollow”, but now’s the day when all will be revealed in full. Continue reading »

ORIGIN: “CHAOSMOS”

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May 242022
 

(Death metal icons Origin have a new album set for release on June 3rd by Nuclear Blast and Agonia Records, and today we bring you DGR‘s review of it.)

Despite being one of the genre-forebears, Origin have always been in such a weird spot in the world of technical death metal. They’ve never been prone to follow trends within the style and since the group have such a long and storied career – over twenty years at this point – they’ve become an oddly transitory act, with one foot planted in the world of tech-death and another that has always hovered above the world of ’90s-era death metal.

Even with the breakthrough of Antithesis in 2008, Origin have remained so recognizably Origin that you can even pick out when members of the crew appear in other projects. In spite of how much of the genre has embraced technology and studio production over the years, they have also always sounded like a four-piece band. They’re one of the more straightforward tech-death groups out there, which is what makes their newest release Chaosmos such an interesting one in their discography. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MALIGNANT AURA — “ABYSMAL MISFORTUNE IS DRAPED UPON ME”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 232022
 

Sometimes an album title alone deserves a round of applause. So often they’re ho-hum hum-drum variations on well-worn tropes, other times they’re so unintelligible as to be word salad without the dressing, and perhaps worst of all they might provide understandable clues — which turn out to be all wrong after you listen to the music. When a title nails the music and does so with flair, that’s when the clapping ought to begin…

…which leads us to the title of Malignant Aura‘s debut album: Abysmal Misfortune Is Draped Upon Me.

When you listen to this jaw-dropping new album of death/doom in its entirety — and you’ll have a chance to do that right now — you’ll understand just how fitting and evocative the title is. Continue reading »

SADIST: “FIRESCORCHED”

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May 232022
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the latest album by the long-running progressive death metal band Sadist, just released last Friday by Agonia Records.)

If nothing else over the course of Sadist‘s career, you could say that every one of their album releases have always been interesting events. What other groups out there have not only been through multiple waves of the tech-death craze but also themselves have jumped genres so many times that even to this day they’re a difficult group to pin down?

Exceedingly proud of their jazz influences and keyboard usage over the years, Sadist have always been more than a pack of incredibly talented musicians, and who else can say that their previous four releases have dealt in realms of spirituality, African mythology, horror movie soundtracks, and as close to a haunted Christmas album as you’re going to get until Make Them Die Slowly expand upon their Silent Night, Murder Night influences?

Firescorched is the newest release from the Italian prog-death crew and one that is also interesting for the massive lineup shift that took place between this album and 2018’s Spellbound, wherein the entire rhythm section wound up bowing out of the spotlight. Longtime drummer Alessio Spallarossa stepped down and prolific drummer Romain Goulon took over, but even more interesting was who the band would grab on bass — Jeroen Paul Thesseling, whom many will recognize from his time in Obscura. Continue reading »

LAMENT CITYSCAPE: “A DARKER DISCHARGE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
May 232022
 

(This is DGR‘s review of the new album by Lament Cityscape, which was released in late April by Lifeforce Records.)

Sometimes you lack the words to truly describe what is happening within an album and sometimes the stars even align enough that it seems the band themselves have a hard time pinning down what they’re doing. It’s the genre-nerd’s true nightmare, but on top of that the issue also leads to difficulties describing why something fascinates you so much as a listener, because the usual book of terms has long since been torched.

Wyoming’s Lament Cityscape is one such group. While we’ve written about advance songs from their most recent release A Darker Discharge a handful of times, we’ve never fully delved into it. There’s reason to suspect that part of the reason is that the vocabulary may be lacking, and we might wind up just issuing forth four paragraphs of word salad.

That doesn’t mean we won’t try, but when the band themselves have seven or eight hybrid labels attached to their heavily industrial-imbued avante-garde form, you can understand that when it comes to A Darker Discharge, it may just be easier to say that this is the sort of album that is best listened to in one go – because no amount of description is going to provide a full picture of what takes place in the half-hour or so of music here. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AERIAL RUIN, SKOGNATT, WEHMUT

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
May 222022
 

Among the many little tortures that afflict those of us who write for NCS (and no doubt other metal writers, or at least those who don’t work by assignment) is the failure to cover all the releases we really enjoy. Despite our most ardent intentions, we just don’t always follow through. Time is scarce and time is fleeting, and sometimes the impulse to keep moving forward to the next new thing means that we leave something else behind.

You’ll notice that some of us find ways to play catch-up, at least briefly turning our gaze away from the future horizons to recommend records that have been out in the world for a while. Sometimes those are records we overlooked, but sometimes they’re records we meant to write about and for whatever reason failed to do so.

And so I decided to play a bit of catch-up today, focusing on two DIY records released in March (one an album and the other a split) that I meant to write about much earlier. At least in the case of the first record, I took some significant liberties with the usual focus of this Shades of Black column, though I think our usual Sunday visitors will still leave feeling satisfied.

AERIAL RUIN: “LOSS SEEKING FLAME”

The name of Aerial Ruin‘s latest album forecasts the moods of the music. It moves in the shadows of sorrow, in search of fires or rays of sun that will light the way. It seems to provide encouragement in that quest, but also seems to acknowledge that desire is fragile and that fires will burn as well as provide illumination. Arrows and wings may arc upward, but their arc inevitably will descend. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AZTLAN, CELTEFOG, TRUNK, NON SERVIAM, EXTERMINAS, NIGHT ATTACK, SWAMPWORM, ASHENSPIRE, DIOPTASE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 212022
 

 

In yesterday’s roundup of new music and videos I explained that I had pushed forward by one day a lot of choices I originally intended to spread around yesterday. I did that to make room for some even more-late-breaking stuff, But now, as promised, I’m circling back to those original picks — and of course I added a couple.

What lies ahead of you is in some instances off the usual beaten paths, especially in the first two tracks and the last two. The very last track represents the biggest divergence of them all, but might just be the most brilliant offering of everything here. And now that I’ve (hopefully) teased you into staying with me to the end, let’s begin….

AZTLAN (Mexico)

I begin with two songs that I suppose could crudely be summed up as “folk metal”, but I don’t mean folk metal in the vein of this new song by Schandmaul. Both are much more interesting (though that Schandmaul song definitely is a toe-tapper). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, WITCHERY, LUNA’S CALL, AWAKENING SUN, REEKING AURA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 202022
 

When I woke up this morning I had planned to do a big round-up of 8 new songs and videos that I’d picked during a listening/viewing session yesterday afternoon. Bleary-eyed, I found messages from Mr. Synn telling me about four other new songs and videos that had popped up overnight from bands we all favor. What to do?

What I decided to do was go with those four newer ones today, plus one of the 8 I picked yesterday, and push the others I found yesterday into another round-up tomorrow. Trust me, even with the slight delay those others will be well worth your time on Saturday.

IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT (U.S.)

“Atmospheres awash with mysterious origins. Sacred rites of passage and formidable knowledge lead to marvels of engineering. Funnelling the mass into a finite horizon all roads travel in duality. Blurred is the line between real and illusion as the last scream of truth is destroyed by evil so grotesque. It transforms into a lone rider traveling into the forbidden darkness…”

Those are the words proffered by Imperial Triumphant for “Maximalist Scream“, the first advance track from their new album Spirit of Ecstasy, which comes with this intriguing cover art: Continue reading »

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