Islander

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SISYPHEAN — “SOVEREIGNS OF LIVID HOPE”

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Feb 072022
 

Over the course of a debut EP, a first album, and a split, the Lithuanian band Sisyphean have moved from strength to greater strength, and their forthcoming second full-length sees them reaching a new summit of shattering power. This new album, Colours of Faith, will be released later this year by Transcending Obscurity Records, and today we have a gripping preview of what it holds in store through our premiere of an unsettling video for a strikingly intense song named “Sovereigns of Livid Hope“.

Presenting an amalgam of black and death metal (with elements reminiscent of post-metal in the mix), the music of Sisyphean here is almost unrelenting in its capacity to harrow the senses, and becomes towering in the scale of its sonic and emotional upheaval. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: THE COMPLETE LIST

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  No Responses »
Feb 072022
 

 

In compiling my list of 2021’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal songs I had a big rebound from the year before. The 2020 list died a sad death, withering away from neglect. I made it from Part 1 through Part 17, which collectively included 47 songs, and then I just never got back to it, thanks to my day job crushing me. This year the day job pretty much left me alone and I made it through 25 Parts and 99 (!) songs before voluntarily choosing to end the list.

99 songs is a ton of music, but it’s not the only time I’ve gone that far. My 2018 list also included 99 songs — compared to the 47 songs on the 2020 list, the 60 songs on the 2019 list, the 78 from 2017, and the 71 from the year before that. There’s no consistency in the numbers because I pretty much make up these lists as I go and am not always able to post new installments every day (as I was able to do  this year) . Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BLACK HILL COVE — “ANGELS FALL”

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Feb 072022
 

 

Formed in 2020, right at the rise of a global pandemic, Black Hill Cove is a new Portuguese band composed of seasoned musicians from well-known acts in the Portuguese metal and hardcore scenes like Painstruck, Grankapo, and We Are The Damned. Drawing upon their varied influences, they recorded a debut album named Broken that was released last November by Raging Planet Records, which braided together in differing ways elements of hardcore, thrash, and sludge.

From that album the band have chosen a song called “Angels Fall” as the subject of a video that we’re premiering today. Created by Nuno Aguiar de Loureiro, the video presents a fast-moving collage of images that rivet attention and also mesh with the darkness and desperation of the music. Continue reading »

A DOOMED TRIO: INFIRMUM, EVADNE, EIRÐ

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 072022
 

 

(We present a trio of album or EP reviews by DGR, delving into music of the doomed variety.)

One of the more reliable things about heavy metal outside of a yearly re-issue of Death‘s catalogue is that the end of year turnover/beginning of another is where a lot of doom releases like to insert themselves into the fray. It’s not surprising, given that it’s the cold season for sections of the world. With everything being painted as if it were covered in snow anyway, it makes sense that one of metal’s more melancholy genres steals a bit of the limelight.

Also not surprising, then, that the early part of my year was weirdly doom-dominated and not just by the three present in this write up but also with Author & Punishers Kruller hovering just outside the ring as well. I’m not the doom guy at the site – more often comfortable in my realms of death and grind – but that doesn’t mean I’ll make the genre draw the short straw all the time when it comes to focus. I just think there are people here that are way better at covering this style than I am.

You’ll note though that with these three, not all of them are from 2022 proper. Even though we’re making a valiant attempt to keep looking forward we still find ourselves ocassionally dragging ourselves back to the previous year with some of our discoveries. In this case it’s because one album came out on December 24th, 2021, and another is an EP containing three songs, two of which were singles released throughout the previous year. The third comes as a random stumbling while on break at work and may be one of the deeper journeys I’ve made into the ambient funeral-doom worlds that I’ve done in some time, especially since the last two that come to mind for me are Texas’ The Howling Void and Italy’s Void Of Silence. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): WĘDRUJĄCY WIATR, KLANEN, THE HOWLING WIND, SAPIENTIA DIABOLI, DREAD MAW

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Feb 062022
 

 

If you tuned in to Part 1 of this column earlier today you know that I had compiled an absurd amount of music to write about. In Part 1 I cut down the number of advance tracks I wanted to highlight from 9 to 6. That left 4 new albums, 3 new EPs, and 1 new split still on the proverbial table, and a vanishing amount of time to write about any of them today. I made some difficult choices, and am only able to provide short sketches of the ones I picked, but at the end of this post I’ll give you links to the ones I painfully omitted.

WĘDRUJĄCY WIATR (Poland)

Wędrujący Wiatr don’t move in a hurry. Six years have passed since their last album, O turniach, jeziorach i nocnych szlakach, and there was a three-year interval between that one and their debut full-length, Tam, gdzie miesiąc opłakuje świt. Their past music was so strikingly good that we don’t really need constant reminders of the band’s existence, but still, six years is a long time — which made the appearance of a new album last week even more thrilling. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): KRALLICE, TÓMARÚM, MORTE FRANCE, NIGHT BEHEADED, SACRILEGA, TOME OF THE UNREPLENISHED

 SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Feb 062022
 

 

This morning I gazed with bleary eyes at the choices I’d made for this column: 1 new video; 8 individual advance tracks; 4 new albums; 3 new EPs; and 1 new split. I had discovered and listened to all of them just since this time last week. The idea of actually writing about all of them was of course absurd, and even more absurd because I slept much later than usual this morning. What to do?

Well, I cut the group of individual songs (and one video) down to 6, which is what you’re now about to experience. As for the albums and EPs, I’ll have to cut those down into something more manageable for Part 2 of today’s column, though at the moment I haven’t yet figured out how to do that. Stay tuned….

KRALLICE (U.S.)

I’ve already said my piece about the tremendous new Krallice album Crystalline Exhaustion. Don’t let another day go by without listening to it if you haven’t already. Be sure to watch this next video too. It shows this uber-talented quartet live-recording the instrumental performances for the song “Archlights“. I found it astonishing. It’s as if we are witnessing a hive mind at work. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WATAIN, KREATOR, NIHILO, SLUGDGE, CEREMONIAL DECAY, SIDEREAN, BESTIA ATER, OTTONE PESANTE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 052022
 


Photo Credit: Evelina Szczesik

 

I heard a couple of the following tracks last Saturday and saved them for what I hoped would be one of these collections during the last week, but I never had enough time to put one together. The rest of them I checked out this morning (they’re even more recent), along with others I took a pass on, and more that I’ve saved for tomorrow’s Shades of Black column.

In assembling this collection I followed one of our fairly standard strategies: I decided to include some big names at the outset, in the hope that would lure people into the more obscure names that follow, and I included a curveball at the end.

WATAIN (Sweden)

When you know the band is Watain and you see they’ve released a song named “The Howling“, you already have a good idea what’s coming. But Eric Danielsson spelled it out: “‘The Howling‘ refers to the wordless voice of the wild, wailing eerily through the ages, urging us to leave our safe spaces and explore the dark recesses of the great Abyss both within and without. To see it, to learn from it, to know it.” Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 25): ATRA HAERESIS, BEYOND GRACE, CALLUS, CRYSTAL COFFIN, CULT OF LUNA, FUNERAL CHANT, MAN MUST DIE, MARIANAS REST, NORNA, STORMKEEP, THE LION’S DAUGHTER, WITCHDEN

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  4 Responses »
Feb 042022
 

 

Today I must bring this list to an end. It’s not because I’m really finished — I have dozens more songs I’d like to add and write about. It’s because we’re now a week into February and I really ought to spend more time focusing on the songs of this year instead of yesteryear.

So, please do me a favor and hold your fire. I know I didn’t include some of the songs you’ve been waiting to see, and please don’t question how the hell I chose the ones I did include, at the cost of your own favorites, because it was anything but an organized, scientific, and well-thought-out process. I’m happy with what I chose, but easily could have chosen others.

That statement is as true of today’s final songs as all the ones that came before. I picked a few — okay, more than a few (though accompanied by fewer words and no artwork) — but in coming down to the wire I yielded even more to random impulse than probably ever before.

On Monday I’ll add a “wrap up” post that compiles everything on the list from eager beginning to anguished end, all in one place. And with that, here are the final choices, this time arranged alphabetically. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AS THE WORLD DIES — “THE TEMPEST”

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Feb 042022
 

 

A glance at the line-up of As the World Dies, which includes members of Memoriam, Massacre, and Pemphigoid, creates high expectations very quickly, as do comparative references in the promotional press to the likes of Bolt Thrower and Grave, as well as other legendary bands in the pantheon of UK death metal. But their debut album Agonist, which will be released by Transcending Obscurity on March 25th, makes clear that they have their own distinctive approach despite the presence of these well-known influences.

Yes, the music is crushing, like a bulldozer or a battering ram, and compellingly ferocious, but while As the World Dies are formidably capable of inflicting brute-force physical trauma, they’re equally skilled at effectively evoking dire and distressing moods, and simultaneously casting unearthly spells. The song we’re premiering today — “The Tempest” — is a prime example of these talents. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VÉHÉMENCE — “AU BLASON BRÛLÉ”

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Feb 042022
 

The second album by the French medieval black metal band Véhémence, 2019’s Par le Sang Versé, was a stunner. It was one of the most thoroughly entrancing and gloriously vibrant metal albums this writer had heard in years, regardless of sub-genre. It embraced ancient folk traditions and hurled them forward into the modern age, but without letting go of the intense devotion to the centuries-old well-springs of inspiration that gave birth to the record. I thought it would be impossible not to be moved in some significant degree by the fervency of its music, and likely that most listeners would simply be swept aloft and carried away, as I was.

How would Véhémence even equal, much less exceed, such a rare and marvelously multi-faceted achievement? In about one month everyone will find out whether they have done so, because on March 8th Antiq Records will release a new Véhémence album named Ordalies. Continue reading »

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