Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: OMINOUS RUIN – “ATTUNED TO THE CHASM”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 142021
 

 

Even if you’;re not suffering from covid you might want to have some supplemental oxygen on hand before you dive into this track we’re about to premiere, because it’s a breath-taker. And a spine-smasher. And a brain-scrambler.

The song is “Attuned to the Chasm“, and it’s the second single from Amidst Voices That Echo In Stone, which is the second album by the northern California technical death metal band Ominous Ruin. The record is set for release on February 26th by Willowtip Records. Continue reading »

GRAVEHUFFER: “NECROECLOSION”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jan 142021
 

 

(We welcome Nathan Ferreira, who has been reviewing metal for close to a decade at various locations, including MetalBite, and whose first NCS review focuses on the new album by the Missouri band Gravehuffer, which is set for release by Black Doomba Records on January 15th.)

Remember when shows were a thing? Particularly the dim-lit, greasy dive-bar shows that you and maybe thirty other people attended, including the band members? Sure, some of the bands needed tightening up, or their songs were just unmemorable and all over the place, but there’s a certain personality that unknown locals have that resonates with you for some time. There’s something so endearing about local nobodies spending years together crafting their inaccessible, odd visions, creating something purely for their own love of all things loud and strange. That alone makes you want to like the music more, but I think it also serves as a better incubator to make something unique, free from the demands of the public or the need to satisfy anyone’s desires besides their own.

Gravehuffer is the apex of such scrappy local acts. They look like four dads who’ve been working the same soul-sucking jobs for 20 years, their band the only refuge from a bleak and monotonous reality. They slam genres together with reckless abandon and have a loose, jam-session feel to a lot of their songs, tying moments together with big, meaty riffs and stripping down the structures with crusty, d-beat heavy drums. Their building blocks are simple and you’d never call these guys virtuosos at their respective instruments, but the magic is in how they tie it all together. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SUPPRESSIVE FIRE – “SIEGE”

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Jan 142021
 

 

North Carolina’s Suppressive Fire made their full-length debut four years ago with Bedlam, an album that loosely explored the terrible nature of World War I. Wasting no time, they followed that with a second full-length the next year entitled Nature of War, which again organized the band’s hell-raising brand of black thrash around the subject of warfare, culminating in the closing track “Nuclear Dismemberment”.

Now Suppressive Fire are returning to the field of battle with a new EP entitled Invasion that’s set for release on the Ides of March. The band’s line-up has undergone significant changes, with guitarist Joseph Bursey as the only remaining original member, now joined by vocalist Devin Kelley (also of Cemetery Filth and Dire Hatred), drummer Scott Schopler (owner of Blasphemous Mockery Productions), bassist Andrew Nye (also from Leachate and Eyn), and second guitarist Nate Stokes (also of Witchtit and Noctomb). But the band’s thematic focus has remained consistent, with this new EP heavily focused on the events of World War II, and as you’re about to discover through our premiere of a track named “Siege“, their music is even more explosive. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MOLTEN — “DYSTOPIAN SYNDROME”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 122021
 

 

Among almost all die-hard metalheads the phrase “Bay Area thrash” immediately brings to mind a very well-defined and much-loved sound, but one that for many listeners has been done to death, to the point that for many fans clutching their old favorites the chance of finding something new seems hardly worth the time. But while Molten are a Bay Area band and thrash is a vital part of their DNA, their new album Dystopian Syndrome is very much worth all the time you can give it.

As you will discover through our premiere of the entire album stream today in advance of its January 15th release, thrash is the foundation but not the entire edifice of what they’ve constructed. As a function of the band’s varied musical interests, their music is a richly embellished experience that channels changing moods and energies and reveals a taste for instrumentation not usually found in the genre, while also delivering monstrous vocals and the kind of technical performance skill that drops jaws and pops eyes. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DIPYGUS — “MYIASIS IN HUMAN MOUTH”

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Jan 122021
 

 

This is one of those premieres that spurred us to engage in arcane research, and to learn some macabre facts which you can now learn too, in addition to digesting the most obvious thing, i.e., a new song by Dipygus — unless it digests you first.

We will of course eventually turn to the music off this California death metal band’s forthcoming second album, Bushmeat, but first let’s share the results of our curiosity, beginning with the band’s name. What does it mean? Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2020: JOSEPH SCHAFER’S TOP ALBUMS OF 2020

 LISTMANIA 2020  4 Responses »
Jan 122021
 

 

Editor’s Note: Once upon a time, and for many years in the earlier life of NCS, Seattle-based Joseph Schafer wrote with us under the pseudonym BadWolf. From NCS he went on to become the editor of Invisible Oranges, and since then has written about music and culture for the likes of Decibel, Noisey, Consequence of Sound, Bandcamp, and more, in addition to collaborating on the production of Northwest Terror Fest. But this time of year he sometimes returns to NCS with a year-end list, and has surprised us this year by doing it again. This time his list includes a Top 10 of not-metal selections, a Top 10 of metal selections, and a list of honorable mentions.

 

My New Year’s resolution has been to drink almond milk instead of half-and-half and as a result the first lesson I’ve learned in 2021 has been: you can’t microwave that particular nut-based creamer. As such, my fingertips are burnt, so let’s keep this brief – and by brief I mean under two thousand words.

First things first: 2020 fucking sucked. Is there any other way to put it? Fuck the last year. Many of my closest comrades lost their jobs and endured quiet personal hells in isolation while white nationalists tried to overturn the country and a literal plague killed our loved ones. Not to mention, no live shows. Yuck. It’s probably not over but at least the worst of it seems behind us – that is, so long as you wash your hands wear a mask and take the damn vaccine. Continue reading »

AZTLAN: “LEGIÓN MEXICA”

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Jan 122021
 

 

(Here is Andy Synn‘s review of the second album by the Mexican metal band Aztlan, which was released on January 1, 2021.)

As I was saying to my buddy Islander recently, the start of the new year generally feels a lot more relaxed and laid back than the months which follow. The regular release torrent has been reduced to a trickle, and there’s a lot less pressure to stay on top of all the “big” new releases… mostly because there aren’t that many of them.

The benefit of this, obviously, is that we’re free to browse and sample new bands and new albums more at our own pace, and able to give new discoveries the time they really deserve without feeling that we’re otherwise missing out or falling behind in the process.

Mexican septet Aztlan are the latest band to reap the rewards of this annual fallow period, as any other time of the year there’s a chance that Legión mexica, the group’s second album, might have gotten lost in the rush.

And that would have been a real shame, as it’s a brilliantly unorthodox blend of thrashy energy and folksy melody which combines both choppy metallic riffs and unusual, pre-Hispanic instrumentation into one impressively hypnotic whole. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PESTIS CULTUS — “BLACK TONGUE HYMN”

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Jan 112021
 

 

With a previous incarnation under the name Snorri and contributions to underground black metal across various other projects, three lifetime friends from Perth are now cutting their way forward under the name Pestis Cultus. Their self-titled debut album will be released on February 12th, and from that album we are today premiering a track named “Black Tongue Hymn“, which follows a previous single, “To the Old Ruins“.

The album begins and ends with an intro and outro fashioned by Mortiis, and in between Pestis Cultus have fashioned a truly chilling yet electrifying experience, one that’s hideous and vampiric, violent and chaotic, sepulchral and sinister — and yet with a turn-on-a-dime dynamism that makes each song more twisting and turning than a simple exercise in raw black metal orthodoxy. These two tracks you can now hear are solid proof of that. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2020’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 6): BLACK ROYAL, BLACK FLUX, BLACK CURSE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2020  2 Responses »
Jan 112021
 

 

For obvious reasons, I couldn’t resist putting these three songs together for Part 6 of this list. They were all going to be on the list at some point, but the band names just cried out for combining them.

And the combination is especially delicious because the sounds are so distinct from each other despite the commonality of that one word.

I’ll also mention, for those who might be encountering this series for the first time, that you can find the songs that have preceded these on the list by clicking this link.

Continue reading »

VIDEO GAMES AND METAL: A STRANGE COMBINATION

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jan 112021
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli wrote the following essay, which connects two of his favorite pasttimes.)

Besides being a devoutly obsessive-compulsive audio consumer of the style of metal and all of its extremities I’m also an obsessive-compulsive consumer of interactive video games.  I have been all my life, and in a lot of the same ways as metal, video games are just as responsible for saving me from struggles with mental health issues and helping me cope with life.  I find this funny, because if one really breaks down and examines video games, especially modern ones, at their cores…

They are essentially just interactive metal. Continue reading »

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