Islander

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JULY 2021

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Jul 302021
 


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(Gonzo presents another end-of-month roundup spotlighting releases that have attracted his enthusiastic attention.)

I have, and always will be, a voracious consumer of new music. Though nothing may take the place of how much fun it was to trade tapes with other weirdos in dark corners behind every sweaty beer-stained venue in creation, it’s sure as hell convenient to now find the same variety of under-the-radar bands on Bandcamp and Spotify.

With this installment of my monthly Heavy Roundup, I managed to find a list of bands that span the metal spectrum. I think that’s a testament to how insanely diverse and varied extreme music has become. And, seriously, few things bring me more joy in life than making playlists and sharing new music with people.

Hence, this column was born. Here are the albums and EPs I’ve highlighted from the month of July (and technically, one from June that passed me by until now.) Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PORTA MAGNA — “SWALLOWED BY THE OCEAN”

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Jul 302021
 

 

Porta Magna is an Angolan death metal band formed by Frink Sanda, Manel Kav, Edson Ferraz, Ariel Ricardo, and Claudio Henriques. As Manel Kev tells it, they chose their band name for this reason:

“According to the first part (inferno) of Dante Aligierti’s Divine Comedy is the inscription that is at the entrance to hell. Porta Magna means big gate. An entrance to a mix of emotions. angers, and frustrations of society, and deprivation of liberty. It’s like hell we’re living.”

And surely we have all lived through our own distinctive kinds of hell over the last year and a half, a pandemic time in which Porta Magna was born during a covid outbreak in Angola. Deprived of rehearsals and concert opportunities, they collaborated online. Once restrictions lifted to the point when they could go to a studio, they recorded their first single at Estudio 2 in Luanda, and today we’re premiering a video for it on the day of its release by Mongrel Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMERE: KNOWLEDGE THROUGH SUFFERING — “GOD ALONE WAS EXALTED ON THAT DAY”

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Jul 302021
 

 

In its debut album Concealment, the Italian band Knowledge Through Suffering (K.T.S.) addresses a vast, esoteric, and traumatic subject, one that could be conceived as the ultimate tragedy, and does so in unearthly and apocalyptic music that is equal to the task.

As the sole creator of K.T.S. explains, “Concealment is a thirty-minute long sermon about God’s own expectations and disappointment for his work of creation”. It is thus “heavy but sacred music”, speaking “holy Words through unholy Sounds; Gloom is the language.” As K.T.S. further elaborates, Concealment consists of “three long songs assembled from the sonic arsenals of bands like Diocletian, Antaeus and Thergothon that will lead in a journey to Godhead’s divine tragedy: Desolation will be the final goal in a mix of Black, Death and Doom Metal.”

This new album is being announced today by Brucia Records, which will release it on September 17, 2021. As a preview of the Desolation that it accomplishes, we’re presenting one of those three long tracks, the one that opens the album. Its name is “God Alone Was Exalted On That Day“. Continue reading »

ROUND FOUR: NCS RETURNS TO GIMME METAL AGAIN ON JULY 30

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Jul 292021
 

 

Way back on the 17th of August, 2020, three of your NCS slaves — (Andy Synn, DGR, and Islander) — appeared as guest DJs at GIMME METAL, curating a two-hour on-line radio show in which we spun tracks of our own demented choosing, interspersed with our own pre-recorded banter, and also engaged in live on-line chats with listeners. And since then we’ve done it two more times — in October 2020 and March 2021 — and as you can tell we’re about to appear for a fourth time this coming Friday, July 30th.

The three of us still feel incredibly fortunate to be invited to do this, and to find ourselves again in the midst of the coterie of stellar musicians who normally handle the guest spots. We feel so lucky because we have SO DAMNED MUCH FUN putting our playlists together and recording our own interstitial banter.

It’s such a joy to do it, especially because we try hard to make underground selections that won’t otherwise get a lot of attention, that we usually start working on new playlists even before our latest session has aired — even though we never know how many people will tune in, and therefore whether we’ll be invited back.

So, we’re begging you, TUNE IN! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THIRTEEN BLED PROMISES — “A HUMANLESS WAR”

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Jul 292021
 

 

After a nearly six-year hiatus the Spanish extreme metal band Thirteen Bled Promises are returning to the field of battle with a new label and a new EP of hybridized head-spinning hostility. The name of the EP is Foundation, and it’s not only the cover art by Martin de Diego Sábada that’s alien, as you’ll discover through our premiere of an EP track named “A Humanless War” in advance of the record’s release by Lacerated Enemy on October 22nd.

As the new song vividly demonstrates, the music on the EP is like a double helix of sounds whose genetic material is made up of nucleotides from technical death metal, black metal, brutal death metal, and deathcore, and features an unnerving amount of dissonance and discord in addition to a merciless degree of rhythmic and vocal punishment. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: OCCULSED — “UNCTION OF MULIEBROUS BROTH”

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Jul 292021
 

 

What is an “unction“? Well, it is the anointing of someone with oil or ointment as a religious rite, or perhaps as a symbol of the investiture as a monarch. In somewhat more archaic terms, it is a treatment with a medicinal oil or ointment.

But here’s a harder question, which sent us scurrying into research: What does “muliebrous” mean? Our investigation tells us that it’s an adjective which refers to something that has the qualities or characteristics of a woman, e.g., something feminine.

As for what a “muliebrous broth” might be, we’ll leave that to your own imagination.

Now that we’ve satisfied your curiosity and improved your vocabulary, let’s turn to the business at hand, and the business at hand is a filthy discharge of clobbering and eviscerating madness as rendered by the Atlanta-area death metal band Occulsed, whose debut album Crepitation of Phlegethon (you’ll have to look up those words yourself) will be vomited forth by Everlasting Spew Records on September 17th. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SOL SISTERE — “NOTHOFAGUS”

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Jul 292021
 

 

Today we’re sharing the premiere of a lyric video for “Nothofagus“, a new song from the eagerly awaited third album by the Chilean atmospheric black metal band Sol Sistere. The album, which shares the band’s name, will be released on October 15th by the Cult of Parthenope label.

As you will discover, the music is stunning, though this should come as no surprise to those who have already experienced the band’s past works. It was inspired, the group tell us, by “the unique connection with nature that is generated in the ancestral forests of austral Patagonia”. The song describes, as they say, “the constant exploration of consciousness in the context of life among these primeval forests. It is also an ode to the millenary trees of the southernmost part of the planet that preceded us and will most likely outlive us”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WINDFAERER — “ASTRAL TEARS”

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Jul 282021
 

 

We’ve been following the momentous progress of the New Jersey black/folk metal band Windfaerer since early days, sprinkling our coverage (which began almost exactly nine years ago) with music premieres and increasingly elaborate and enthusiastic reviews of their accomplishments. It was thus a tremendous thrill to discover that Avantgarde Music would be releasing their new album, Breaths of Endless Dawns, and a no-brainer for us to accept the opportunity to premiere the new album’s first single — “Astral Tears“.

The band’s last album, 2018’s Alma, was (as we wrote) “a work of grand ambition and true passion, the band persistently driving themselves to unabashedly tug at the listener’s heartstrings and also to send the heart soaring and the mind spinning toward mythic heights.” The music was multifaceted, richly patterned, emotionally intense, and thoroughly immersive, creating moods that were dark and depressive, wrenchingly anguished, and vibrantly defiant. The songs become almost heart-stopping in their grandeur and explosive power, though every sensation of triumph was still edged with melancholy, as if modulated by the remembrance of loss.

Many of those same qualities are again on display in this new record, but the experience is, if anything, even more rich in its textures and moods, even more enthralling (and wrenching), and perhaps even more immense in its sheer unbridled power. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HEADSHRINKER — “SUFFOCATING TOMB”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 282021
 

 

(Nathan Ferreira provides this introduction to our premiere of another track off the debut album by Headshrinker, with additional insights into the album as a whole.)

I had been sleeping on the promo materials for Callous Indifference waiting for me in my mailbox, not fully compelled to listen. The album art is subtle and understated, the band logo a plain font, and the “OSDM meets Death/Doom with mathy dissonance” descriptor used in the email title was kinda intriguing but also not unheard of either.

That they feature Havok’s drummer doesn’t move the needle for me (I’m not too familiar with them, and as such don’t know Pete Webber’s style), and I wasn’t acquainted with Polyptych, the more progressive black metal styled group the other three members previously played in. Because of the volume of promotional materials I sift through to find the golden riff nuggets, my brain can become fried by similar descriptors across emails, and Callous Indifference just happened to have surface aesthetics that got lost in the shuffle.

But then, head honcho Islander gave a premiere of “The Burn of Indifference”, first Headshrinker song released to the public. That article was just the push I needed to dive into this band further, and I am very thankful I did. (I was a fan and reader of this site well before I contributed to it, after all). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BONEHUNTER — “PARASITE EVE”

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Jul 282021
 

 

Finland’s Bonehunter just keep getting better and better, continually evolving in astute ways and zeroing in on an identity that’s now unmistakable and completely self-assured. Especially through their new album Dark Blood Reincarnation System, they’ve positioned themselves as preeminent purveyors of blackened-speed-metal-punk, indisputably maniacal and savagely lustful but also skilled in crafting songs that are immediately addictive.

As is so often true, even for music of such fire-storming extremity and riotous depravity, the quality of the music is rooted in the songwriting, and not just in the presence of riffs galore but in the dynamism of the music across the album and the head-hooking and blood-pumping nature of all the ingredients. We’ve got a prime example of this in “Parasite Eve“, the song were premiering today in advance of the album release by Hells Headbangers on August 20. Continue reading »

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