Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: DISSOLVE PATTERNS

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 292022
 

 

In their introduction to the self-titled debut album by the Belgian avant-garde black metal band Dissolve Patterns the Italian label Brucia Records recommends it for fans of Oranssi Pazuzu, Ved Buens Ende, and Fyrnask. For many of us, they really needed to say no more. Anyone who might make music that inspires such references would be worth checking out.

It turns out, thankfully, that those wonderful references are accurate, though other compass points also come to mind in following the album’s fascinating maneuvers (at the end of this article we’ll share an excerpt from another reviewer who drops names like Primeval Well, Feral Season, and The Silver).

The songwriting inventively mixes together ingredients of black metal, progressive music, and dark jazz, while also adding experimental accents. It does this in intricate and unpredictable ways, creating a musical amalgam that’s both elegant and assaulting, hypnotic and desperate, often steeped in melancholy and just as often calamitous. Continue reading »

SUNDOWNING: “IN THE LIGHT OF DEFEAT, I CEASE TO EXIST”

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Mar 292022
 

 

(Wil Cifer reviews the first new album in a decade by the German post-metal band Sundowning, which is out now via Isolation Records.)

In today’s bleak world I have taken to leaning into that feeling of impending doom. Whatever you resist persists, so in seeking to cocoon myself in sonic darkness as the soundtrack for the road the world is going down I found this German band. Their hymns of hopelessness are a perfect fit.

They meet at the crossroads of doom, sludge and sometimes death metal. Less of the crust-punk recklessness sludge evolved from and a darker, more mournful sound. This sentiment leads them in more of a doom direction most of the time. Guitars weep against the pounding the rest of the band bring, while the vocals stay in more of a hypnotic chant. Though when the instrumentation ebbs back, growled vocals shift the narrative tone. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRIDFAILURE featuring MAC GOLLEHON — “PIECES”

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Mar 282022
 

Late last year we had the honor of premiering a video for a song off an EP named The End Is The Beginning by the renowned NYC brass musician Mac Gollehon. It was a diversion from our usual musical interests at this site, but so fascinating that we couldn’t resist. And truth be told, in its spirit and atmosphere it really wasn’t all that far away from some of those interests after all. Both seductive and seditious, the EP created a surreal experience drawn from a midnight other-world.

In its conception and its recording, that EP was the result of a collaboration between Gollehon and David Brenner, who has a variety of accomplishments to his name, including his work in the unpredictable and confrontational audio-visual project called Gridfailure.

What we knew then, but hadn’t yet fully explored, was that Gollehon and Brenner had already engaged in an even deeper and more disorienting collaboration, creating an album named Dismemberment Cabaret that Nefarious Industries released in May 2021. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: REAPER — “THE REAPER”

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Mar 282022
 

 

Metal-Archives lists 8 active bands from around the world who call themselves Reaper (plus a couple more Reapers that have split up and one that changed its name). The one we’re focusing on here is from Melbourne, Australia (not to be confused with the other Australian Reaper from New South Wales).

This Reaper released a blistering six-track self-titled demo in 2017 and have rocketed from that to a debut album named Viridian Inferno that’s now set for release on April 22nd by Dying Victims Productions. Doubling down on all things reaping, the band named the song we’re premiering today “The Reaper” (emphasis added). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CHTHONIC CULT — “BECOME SEEKERS FOR DEATH”

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Mar 252022
 

Seven years ago the Polish duo Chthonic Cult seemed to appear out of nowhere, as if charging forth from a hideous nether-dimension through an invisible door suddenly flung open. It was then that their debut album I Am the Scourge of Eternity scourged the metal underground without previous warning. But almost as suddenly, they seemed to vanish back through that terrible portal, falling silent for a long span of time.

And yet here they are again at last, with a ravenous and mind-ruining new album named Become Seekers For Death that reveals different strategies and is all the better for that. While their full-length debut consisted of four monstrous and monstrously long songs, the new one assaults the senses with 8 more compact tracks of head-spinning blackened death metal. These are almost relentlessly explosive and, to a degree not achieved on the debut, they’re rapidly addictive. Continue reading »

SUPPRESSION: “THE SORROW OF SOUL THROUGH FLESH”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 252022
 

 

(Next month Suppression will release their debut album via Unspeakable Axe Records (with vinyl coming later from Dark Descent), mixed and mastered by Colin Marston and adorned with artwork by Paolo Girardi, and today we present Todd Manning‘s enthusiastic review.)

It’s hard to say what’s going on down in Chile, but there’s some killer metal emerging from there. Ripper seems to have been spearheading the movement in recent years with their brand of technical death-thrash, and now some of those members appear in Suppression, whose debut full-length, The Sorrow of Soul through Flesh, drops on April 25th courtesy of Unspeakable Axe Records.

While Ripper marries old school Kreator vibes with technical brutality in the vein of Atheist and Sadus, Suppression feels like a love letter to old school Floridian death metal. However, they sidestep many of the obvious choices of influence in favor of other no-less-deserving bands. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: AMBROTOS — “AERAS, THE INFINITE”

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Mar 242022
 

After releasing two well-received EPs — αμβροτος in 2018 and Cosmic Annulus in 2019 — the Greek black metal band Ambrotos are now poised to released their striking debut album Transcendental Mastery.

Lyrically inspired by pre-Socratic philosophy and ancient cosmology (represented by Khaos Diktator Design‘s stunning cover art, depicting Empedocles’ idea of the Origin of Cosmos), the band have fashioned melodically memorable music of fiery and forlorn intensity that’s capable of reaching towering heights of extravagant and mythic power.

As proof, we present a gripping video for the new album’s second single, a breathtaking onslaught named “Aeras, The Infinite“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOISE AHOLIC — “NARCISSISTVÄRLD”

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Mar 242022
 

Man, have we got a wild and explosive experience lined up for you! And for that we give thanks to the veteran gang of Finnish crust-punk marauders who’ve joined forces behind the name Noise Aholic.

This project is the brain-child of Pedersöre crust-punk Owe Inborr, known for his work with Wolfthrone Studios, Dispyt, and Ondfödt. To help realize his savage visions on the new EP Narcissistvärld which we’re now premiering, he brought together a formidable group of guests who seem to have fully united behind those visions. They include:

Mathias Lillmåns (Finntroll, Dispyt, …and Oceans), KjellHell (Bob Malmström, Jarruketju), Dario Kåll and La55e Dog (Dogshit Boys, Trashcan Dance) on guest vocals; Jacob Björnfot (Kvaen), Otto Kaalikoski (Bob Malmström, S.A.A.B.) and Marco Lindholm (Marco Luponero and The Loud Ones) on lead guitars; Matias Löfman (Bob Malmström, Varoshan, S.A.A.B.) on bass, and the whole The Dogshit Boys and Bob Malmström on gang vocals. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KANONENFIEBER, NOVICHOKE , SERPENTENT, LUMINOUS VAULT, NECRONIUM, BLOODHUNTER, THE VISION ABLAZE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 242022
 

 

High intensity is the hallmark of all the new songs and videos I’ve collected in this round-up, even in the one song I’ve included that’s not like any of the others.

KANONENFIEBER (Germany)

The real-world footage compiled in the video for Kanonenfieber‘s new song “Stop the War” is so powerful that it could be accompanied by a child singing a nursery rhyme and it would still be moving. But the song is every bit as powerful as the imagery. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MORTUUS INFRADAEMONI — “INMORTUOS SUM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 232022
 

 

“Sumptuous” might not be the first word that springs to mind in considering a new album by a band who proudly embrace baleful black metal traditions from the mid-’90s, but it actually suits the forthcoming third full-length by Germany’s Mortuus Infradaemoni.

For one thing, the band have loaded the new album Inmortuos Sum with more than an hour’s worth of music, which perhaps should be expected given that a long 13 years separated this new one from the band’s last full-length, Imis Avernis. But it is lavish in other ways, beyond its significant length, as you’ll discover through our complete premiere of the record today. Continue reading »

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