Islander

LISTMANIA 2020: NEILL JAMESON’S YEAR END EGO FEEDING BULLSHIT PT. V: BEST OF THE BEST

 LISTMANIA 2020  4 Responses »
Dec 212020
 

 

(We have reached the end of the 2020 lists prepared by Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood), and he closes with the cream of the crop, a lucky 13. We’re again very grateful to have had the chance to share these lists with you.)

And now, friends, we’ve come to the end of an unusually (for me) long list of “best of’s”. In any given year I tend to challenge people who post top 40 to see if they actually listen to any of the dreck they swear made their year a few weeks after list season is over, so I guess in twelve months I’ll report back. I stand by my initial assertion that industry types are mostly full of shit and don’t actually pay attention to what they put on these lists, save that they want to promote some (usually awful) record or try to appear important on some esoteric scale.

Which one am I? Probably the latter except I don’t have anything to hock this year. I still think people that do top 50 or more lists each year are fucking liars, though.

Here’s the best of the year: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SRD, BASALTE, FUNERAL WINDS, AETHYRICK, SEIDE, ANTUCO

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Dec 202020
 

 

Yesterday I bitched about the compression of my NCS time over the last week, so no more bitching today. Besides, I did have a lot of time to myself yesterday and this morning, enough to finish listening to some things I’d begun earlier, and to make some exciting new discoveries. What you’ll find below is a diverse mix of recently released albums and one new EP, along with a couple of advance tracks from forthcoming records and one twist at the end.

SRD (Slovenia)

Not too long ago my Norwegian friend eitororm e-mailed me with some suggestions for this column, one of which was Ogjna prerok, the sophomore album by the Slovenian black metal band Srd. He wrote: “The album is all over the place, with songs and passages with varying quality. In the middle of the album there’s even an accordion tune, which really doesn’t fit. And despite all this, I find myself returning to listen to the album over again. It has certain elements that really stick to my mind. If you listen to this whole album in its entirety, a part of it may just end up on your list of infections”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY, THRON

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Dec 192020
 

 

The past week was hellish in so many ways for so many people, but I know you’re particularly interested in why it was hellish for moi. Hell came for me in the guise of my day job, which doesn’t acknowledge the holiday season nor my NCS responsibilities (which, to be fair, I keep a secret from my employer). I barely had time to do the premieres I’d committed to do and the things I do to pretty-up what other people write before posting them.

No time for listening to other music, no time to sort through the tidal waves of effluvium that hit the NCS in-box, no time to prowl around the interhole looking for things that wouldn’t be the subject of press releases. And so when I awoke this morning I had no plans for what I might post, though I did feel the need to post something. Fortunately, a couple of my NCS comrades shared some links in our top-secret FB group, and even more fortunately what they shared turned out to be songs that fit together extremely well, as you’re about to discover. And they all come with videos!

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

The new Fleshgod Apocalypse single, “No“, includes all of the band’s signature bombastic ingredients — machine-gun drumming (punctuated by bunker-busting detonations), blizzard-like riffing, soaring operatic vocals mixed with hair-raising roars, extravagant keyboard flurries, glorious melodic guitar soloing, and an atmosphere that’s breathtakingly theatrical. It may or may not include a Britney Spears sample (DGR says it does, but may have been joking, and I can’t hear it). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GOLIATHAN — “ABERRATION” (LIVE)

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 182020
 

 

Regular visitors to our site know that I spend a tremendous amount of time focusing on music premieres, at least one premiere of some kind every day. It’s time that could easily be spent in other ways, but one big reason I’m so devoted to doing them is because of how often they’ve introduced me to appealing bands who had flown under my radar. Of course, maybe this in turn leads to you discovering music you weren’t aware of either. Which leads me to the L.A. band Goliathan.

Until being invited to host the premiere of the live performance video you’re about to see and hear, that’s a name I hadn’t heard before, other than as the title to a Weedeater album from five years ago. After being completely captivated by this video from my first exposure to it, I learned that Goliathan launched their recording career with two EPs — their 2017 debut, Awakens, and a 2018 follow-up, Albion. The song featured in the video, “Aberration“, is off that Albion EP.

More recently the band also released Artifact, a collection of recordings that date back to 2006, documenting the band’s earliest incarnation, with the music remixed by Toshi Kasai (Melvins, Red Sparowes, Helmet) and mastered by Gene Grimaldi (Failure, Fantômas).

I mention all this because “Aberration” is pulling me toward all of those releases like a strong magnetic force, and maybe the same will be true for you if you’re also a newcomer to Goliathan’s brand of instrumental doom-metal-meets-post-rock. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2020: NEILL JAMESON’S YEAR END EGO FEEDING BULLSHIT PT. IV: ALBUMS

 LISTMANIA 2020  4 Responses »
Dec 182020
 

 

(We’ve reached the penultimate Part in the 2020 year-end lists by Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) that we’ve been fortunate to share with you. The focus of this one is Albums (10 of them). The preceding installments can be found behind these links: Part I, Part II, Part III.)

It hasn’t just been because 2020 turned into whatever you want to call it that we’ve seen a massive surge in quality, captivating music, but rather we’re at one of those rare points in time where there’s  an overflowing of talented and creative people who’ve all somehow climaxed at once. I’m sure there’s some kind of joke there but I’m sure most of you were sick of my shit two paragraphs in on Part I (if not earlier) so I’ll just get into the meat of this piece.

Probably a joke there, too. Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2020:  ECCLESIA / LETHIAN DREAMS / SHORES OF NULL

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  1 Response »
Dec 182020
 


Ecclesia

 

(Andy Synn follows yesterday’s installment of “Unsung Heroes” with another one, this time presenting reviews and streams of new albums by two French bands and one Italian group, all of which provide well-deserved exceptions to our “Rule” about singing.)

As I’ve tried to stress several times – not just this year, but every year – it is literally impossible for any “Best of…” list to be totally comprehensive and/or definitive.

There’s only so much listening time available, and so many, many albums released each year, that the most you can ever really hope for is a representative sample of the year’s “best” releases.

It’s in acknowledgement of this unfortunate, but incontrovertible, fact of life that I first started writing these “Unsung Heroes” articles in the hope of providing some well-deserved, albeit retroactive, coverage for a bunch of artists and albums which I/we didn’t get chance to cover in proper detail before now, and which you, our readers, may well have missed out on too.

Today’s article has a particularly doomy focus although, as you’re about to find out, each of the three bands featured here has a distinctly different take on the genre.

Of the three artists I’m about to (possibly) introduce you too, one of them is a very recent discovery that I didn’t stumble across until my week-long list-a-thon was almost finished, while the other two I was hoping to be able to write a paragraph or two (or five) about prior to “List Season” commencing, but just never found the time. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DODENKROCHT

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 182020
 

 

(Comrade Aleks has brought us another very good interview, but this time it’s a rare discussion for him — with the leader of a black metal band, Dodenkrocht, albeit a band who meld elements of doom and black metal. Their latest album The Dying All was released near the end of November by Auric Records and is well worth your time and careful attention.)

Black metal never was my cup of tea. Too fast for me; my metabolism is quite slow to digest it properly. But there are always some exceptions like Dodenkrocht from Netherlands. It was started as a solo project of T. in 2004, but then it turned into a trio on Malebolge Opens (2011) and it has worked as a five-piece act since the Misery Chords (2012) album.

Now, Auric Records has released Dodenkrocht’s fourth full-length work The Dying All, an album partly based on Cormac McCarthy’s devastating novel The Road. We had a nice chat with the band’s founder T. Black metal, covid, apocalypse, black metal…. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2020: A TOP 10 LIST BY TODD MANNING

 LISTMANIA 2020  5 Responses »
Dec 172020
 

 

(We present a Top 10 year-end list for 2020 by NCS contributor Todd Manning, along with some runners-up and non-metal suggestions.)

Somewhere in a review or two in previous years, I referred to the state of the world as a slow-motion apocalypse, but in 2020, things don’t feel so slow anymore. Nevertheless, we fanatical Metal fans are constantly bombarded with the perfect soundtrack to the world outside our door, even if we don’t get to actually open that door and go outside very much.

My list last year was my weirdest one to date, but I think this year’s is even stranger. And while I said last year that 2019 wasn’t as strong as previous years, 2020’s list is full of absolute rippers. So here is my peculiar taste laid out for the world to see… Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2020: ILSA / IRON FLESH / PLAGUE

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Dec 172020
 


Ilsa

 

(Andy Synn wrote the three album reviews collected in this post.)

As you may know, List Season is now officially over (for me anyway, though not for the site)… which means Post-List Season is officially open!

Now I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that over the past few years (and beyond) we’ve been experiencing another one of those periodic Old School Death Metal “revivals”, where it seems like everyone has been competing to find the most effusive and hyperbolic way to praise the latest batch of Floridian-meets-Finnish Death Metal disciples (especially, or so it seems, if they’re American).

One reason for this, I’d imagine, is that we’ve now reached a point where a certain generation of bands, fans, and writers who weren’t old enough to take part in the original rise of the genre, or the early waves of Old School nostalgia, have risen to positions of prominence/notoriety, and by praising, supporting (and sometimes over-hyping) the current crop of retro riff-mongers they’re now able to relive – if only vicariously – the “classic” days of the genre which they missed out on.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been some absolute gems to have come out of all this (several of which we’ve written about here before now), and so I’ve decided to dedicate today’s edition of “The Unsung Heroes of 2020” to three more of them, one of which was a firm favourite on my “Good” list, another of which took a prominent position on my “Great” list… and the third of which might, if I’d discovered it sooner, have forced a major rewrite of my “Critical Top Ten” this year! Continue reading »

SUFISM: “REPUBLIK RAKYAT JELATA”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 172020
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the debut album by the Indonesian brutal death metal band Sufism, which was released on December 13th by the Brutal Mind label.)

As some of you might know, one of my favorite BDM scenes is from Indonesia, due to the everlasting passion and commitment to the music from fans, labels, and bands in that area.  Someday I would love to visit the country and meet some of the musicians/projects I enjoy (one can dream).

Today I have the opportunity to review the debut album of the Indonesian band Sufism, entitled Republik Rakyat Jelata, which was just released via Brutal Mind on December 13th. The band were formed in 2014 and the following year released their first EP, Reptilia Buas, which consisted of five songs that were well-crafted and showcased impressive musicianship.  I will say that it was not groundbreaking nor made waves, but overall it was a good EP that I enjoyed quite a bit. Continue reading »

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