Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEEPER GRAVES — “THE COLOSSAL SLEEP”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 252022
 

 

We’re about to venture off our usual beaten tracks, lured away from the usual ferocity by music that beckons like ghost lights on the other side of our midnight walls of thorns and vipers. It conjures spells and splendid visions, and it often irresistibly quickens the pulse, but the lights are ephemeral and hopes are dashed where these alluring wraiths reside.

The allure of the new album by Deeper Graves that we’re about to premiere in full is powerful. The Colossal Sleep combines visceral rhythms and mesmerizing soundscapes that shine like moon-lit mists and reach heights of even greater splendor, but it harbors harsher aspects as well, and it doesn’t go too far to say that there is a deep and haunting darkness at its core. It often makes you want to bounce, but the gloom of sorrow persists. Continue reading »

AGE OF APOCALYPSE: “GRIM WISDOM”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 252022
 

 

(Wil Cifer made an unexpected discovery when coming across a new album by the New York hardcore band Age of Apocalypse, which was just released by Closed Casket Activities, and he provides an enthusiastic review below.)

This album was on my top 10 most anticipated albums of the year list. Where most albums on the list I had not heard, the stream of this was sitting in my in-box. However I tell record labels this all the time, that I will only listen to a stream a few times. I either review it as I listen or just move on to the next album waiting in the in-box. I need to have an album on my iPod, to provide the soundtrack for my day in order to fully absorb and unlock the creative puzzle of what it is about. Otherwise I am mainly going off my first impressions, which might not be wrong, but are not fully explored or researched if you will.

My first impression of this album was that it could have come out in the ’90s. This is a compliment, for the ’90s were a very awkward decade for metal. While death metal really came into its own, other genres found themselves trying to shed the arena sparkle of the ’80s as they were caught between grunge and a hard place.

Some great albums emerged in that period that were not affected by the collision of the decades, one of them being Life of Agony’s 1993 album The River Runs Red. An album this band would have drawn inspiration from as they share a great deal of common ground with it. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MALAURIU

 Interviews  No Responses »
Jan 252022
 

 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks had a conversation with Schizoid, the mastermind of the Italian black metal band Malauriu, whose latest release was a 2021 split with Malvento and Abigail.)

I have a very vague impression regarding the Italian black metal scene, and this interview with Schizoid (a.k.a. Asmodeus) helped me to learn a bit more about the Sicilian non-doom underground.

Schizoid started in the thrash / black duet Urlo Nero in 2011, then after its disbanding in 2013 he founded Malauriu (black metal) and its far less productive twin Sintenza (black metal). A year ago he returned to his thrash / black roots with the Ossario band, but after all Malauriu remains his main creature.

So how do the dark powers work through this band? Schizoid knows. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 14): PORTRAYAL OF GUILT, MERGER REMNANT, ARX ATRATA

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  3 Responses »
Jan 242022
 


Portrayal of Guilt

 

Today I begin the final full week for the rollout of this list (plus Monday of next week, and maybe including next weekend too). I did promise myself I would stop at the end of January, even though I know I’ll feel the list will be incomplete.

I have a hard time explaining why I grouped the following three songs together. I think there are a few stylistic similarities in the records that included the first two, but only a few. The third one really isn’t connected to the others at all. I guess I just wanted to make sure I added them to the list before running out of gas by February 1st. To see the preceding songs on the list, GO HERE.

PORTRAYAL OF GUILT (U.S.)

Let me tell you, this first pick was a damned difficult one — because this Texas band released a bunch of songs in 2021 that made it onto my list of candidates (with a lot of them suggested by our readers). Those candidates were spread across two albums the band released last year (We Are Always Alone and Christfucker), and a split with Chat Pile. To make the choice even more difficult, these dudes are such creative sonic alchemists that the songs go in very different directions, making the decision something of an apples-oranges comparison. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INSINERATEHYMN — “INTRANSITIVE SANCTION”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 242022
 

All is fire in the premiere we’re now presenting, from the very name of the band — Insineratehymn — to the conflagration consuming the demonic figures in the album’s fantastic cover art, and the blood-boiling heat of the song we’re premiering.

That song, “Intransitive Sanction“, comes from this Los Angeles band’s second full-length, Disembodied, which has been readied for a February 25 release by Blood Harvest Records, in conspiracy with Rotted Life. As the accompanying PR materials correctly observe, the new album presents “a masterclass in ’90s death metal, from the spiraling vortexes of early Tampa to the sewage to come from New York, on to eerie emanations from Europe and the dissonance at the dawn of the new millennium”.

And thus the new album truly does represent a step up from Insineratehymn‘s promising debut in 2018, an elevation that becomes quickly apparent when you hear the lethally contagious “Intransitive Sanction“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART II): PURE WRATH, IN APHELION, HELL MILITIA, SEPULCHRAL, OLDE THRONE, HELTEKVAD, FUNESTUS

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jan 242022
 

 

I hope you saw Part I of this column yesterday, because in my humble opinion it includes a lot of great charred music. The same is true of this second Part, even though it doesn’t involve quite as many musical twists and turns as the first one.

PURE WRATH (Indonesia)

This Indonesian black metal project has been a favorite of mine since discovering the first advance track from its debut album Ascetic Eventide back in 2016. Since then the band has moved from a local label (Hitam Kelam Records) to Pest Productions (for the second album) and then to Debemur Morti Productions, which released the 2020 EP The Forlorn Soldier and will soon release the band’s third album Hymn to the Woeful Hearts (which includes drumming by ex-White Ward drummer Yurii Kononov).

The second single from the new album, “Presages From A Restless Soul“, came out last week. I’d like to share the inspiration for the song as described by the band’s mastermind Januaryo Hardy: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART I): KVAEN, CHAOS PERVERSION, BAALZAGOTH, CAILLEACH CALLING, TONGUES, YSYRY MOLLVÜN

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jan 232022
 

 

After exhausting myself yesterday preparing a 12-song round-up of new music and videos I thought I’d take it easy with NCS today, not completely abandoning the SHADES OF BLACK column but limiting it to about three songs. But after I started working my way through a list of possible choices I succumbed to compulsion. How could I leave this one off, or that one, or that one over there?

At the end of that agony I had 13 pieces of music I wanted to convey, most of them advance tracks from forthcoming records but with two EPs and an album in the mix. I arranged them as best I could and then chopped them into two parts. Here’s Part I (please apologize to your wallet for me).

KVAEN (Sweden)

In December I premiered a play-through video for the title track to Kvaen‘s fine new album, The Great Below. A few days ago a second song emerged, along with a lyric video. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: IMMOLATION, MIDNIGHT, THE HALO EFFECT, FETAL BLOOD EAGLE, MORMÂNT DE SNAGOV, NEBULA ORIONIS, FACELESS ENTITY, KONTUSION, DEATHBELL, SPIRITUAL DECEPTION, OLD IRON, GHOST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jan 222022
 

 

I hope you’re having a good weekend. I hope to make it better by sharing a dozen new songs and videos I picked after sliding down the interhole for hours early this morning. I made an effort to provide a broad span of genres, and to arrange everything so as to take advantage of the contrasts. I’ve also put every damned one of these tracks on my list of candidates for 2022’s Most Infectious Songs.

Also, when a round-up swells to these proportions I usually don’t take time to download/upload the artwork, but I made an exception today because there’s a lot of good cover art in this group, beginning with Eliran Kantor‘s stupendous painting for the new Immolation. Speaking of which….

IMMOLATION (U.S.)

Does anyone need any more reason to get stoked over a new Immolation album? I don’t see any hands up. I guess I could have skipped this first song and video. I guess you could skip over it too. But I’m getting more and more near-sighted, so I could have missed a hand, so here goes. Continue reading »

DEVIL’S LOOKING GLASS: “TREACHEROUS AUTUMNAL WISDOM”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jan 212022
 

 

The Devil’s Looking Glass is an old name for a jagged, vertical rock face that stands about 800 feet above a bend in the Nolichucky River in Unicoi County, northeastern Tennessee. The Nolichucky River is itself called The Devil’s Run or The River of Death because of the number of lives lost in its turbulent waters. The rock face is steeped in frightening and haunting lore. According to one source:

The rock formation locally known as The Devil’s Looking Glass claims its name from Cherokee Indians who could make out a terrible face when the moonlight shined on the rock face from a certain angle. Even in daylight, when the shadows fall just right, an evil face can be discerned. Some say more than one face can be seen. The Cherokee believed the rock face was a window into the netherworld, the abode of the devil, and they could see him looking out, as though he were looking at himself in a mirror…. Some travelers and sportsmen claim to see ghostly apparitions around the rock face or along the river below at night.

Another source reports: “Local folklore tells of cries of agony heard coming from the rocks and tales of an Indian woman who leaped from the top of the cliff upon learning her love had died in battle; she is said to now haunt the base of the cliff…. It’s not a place for the faint at heart”.

Devil’s Looking Glass is also the name taken by a Tennessee band whose album Treacherous Autumnal Wisdom was released by Moonlight Cypress Archetypes last November. I don’t know for a fact that the band took their name for the haunted rock formation discussed above, but in listening to the music it would make sense if they did. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 13): PRIMEVAL WELL, THY CATAFALQUE, VUKARI

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  2 Responses »
Jan 212022
 


Primeval Well

 

No, we’re not like an elevator in a hotel. We don’t skip 13. In my way of thinking, 13 is a lucky number — a prime one. And I’ve chosen three prime cuts to include in this installment of the list. The first two have important folk ingredients, from traditions separated by about 5,000 miles. The third one is more extreme than the first two, but is also intensely memorable.

To check out the songs on the list that have preceded these three, and to understand what the list is all about, use THIS LINK. Continue reading »

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