Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: CEREMONIAL BLOODBATH — “PRIMITIVE”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 252020
 

 

Gluttons of the most malignant and mutilating strains of death metal, open your maws wide and prepare to become engorged in your feeding. Everyone else, get ready to cower in the corner. Because on October 23rd Sentient Ruin Laboratories will release the debut album of Vancouver’s Ceremonial Bloodbath, aptly named The Tides of Blood.

The album is startling in the degree to which it plumbs the toxic depths of death metal darkness and dementia, and in its ability to discharge sonic sickness and chaos with such fiendishly ingenious calculation and such cleverly sadistic flourishes. That a new band have been able to achieve such heights of well-constructed slaughtering and drag the listener into such abysmal descents is not surprising when you learn that their line-up consists of members of such established bands as Scum Division Cult, Nightfucker, Encoffinate, Radioactive Vomit, Grave Infestation, Mass Grave, Temple of Abandonment, and Deathwinds.

As they say in the trade, the music’s not for the faint of heart. But for connoisseurs of top-shelf bestiality and supernatural dread, it’s a gem. And the album track we’re presenting today, “Primitive“, is proof positive of that. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANCIENT THRONES: “THE SIGHT OF OBLIVION”

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Sep 252020
 

 

After beginning their career under the name Abysseral Throne in 2011, and thereafter releasing an album and an EP, Ancient Thrones both chose a new name and shifted ground among the Canadian Maritime Provinces from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia. In the process their line-up changed and they shifted ground in their sound as well. Now with a new name, in a new place, and having embraced some different influences than before, Ancient Thrones are poised to discharge a new concept album named The Veil, which will be released on November 6th.

You’ll see “Blackened Epic Heavy Metal” as Metal Archives‘ summing up of Abysseral Throne‘s music, and while that might not be entirely accurate, Abyssal Thrones recommend The Veil for fans of Revocation, Skeletonwitch, and The Red Chord — and their current name was inspired in part by a lyric from a Wolves In the Throne Room song.

It’s evident from the first single off The Veil (“The Soul to Flesh“), as well as from the song we’re premiering today (“The Sight of Oblivion“) why those afore-mentioned band references make sense. Both are high-voltage thrashers that show off impressive technical chops, with elements of black and death metal in the mix. But both also include evocative melodic accents that create contrasts with the songs’ hard-charging savagery and head-spinning instrumental flair. Continue reading »

WASTEWALKER: “LOWBORN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 242020
 

 

(DGR finally got around to writing about the second album from fellow Sacramento denizens Wastewalker.)

There is a part of me that worried for a while that I was holding Wastewalker to a much higher standard than I would have for most groups, which may be why this review took so long to hammer out.

Wastewalker are something of a local Sacramento tech-death “supergroup” as far as the term could be stretched, comprising members who have been involved in some of the more interesting projects to come out of that region in the past few years. Born from of the ashes of the “too death metal for the core kids, too core for the death metal kids” Conducting From The Grave, guitarist John Abernathy found himself accompanied by a stellar roster of musicians.

Their drummer Justin has been in a small collective of projects – the highlight of which is the angular madness that is Journal – while bassist Joel Barrera has been holding down the rhythmic fort for a handful of promising death metal groups, the most recent of which (actually written about here) is the newly launched Katholik. Vocalist Cam Rogers comes shrieking in from an impressive first volley on Alterbeast’s first album, and guitarist Nate Graham was involved in a later lineup of that same group, while also recently joining the promising The Odious Construct.

It’s such a promising lineup that you couldn’t help but be excited for them, which is why it was so frustrating that even though it found a foothold here, only half of the group’s debut album Funeral Winds seemed to stick with me. The group’s sophomore disc Lowborn, released in May after a sizeable delay, is proving to be a far different story. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: BOSPHORUS / SCORDATURA / SVALBARD

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 232020
 


Svalbard

 

(Here’s another edition of Andy Synn‘s continuing series focused on the review of records recently released by bands from his native land.)

Isn’t it great when things just kind of… line up on their own?

Case in point, just last week I was thinking that it was about time to put together another edition of “The Best of British”, especially with new albums from both Scordatura and Svalbard on the horizon.

But, here’s the rub, I didn’t have a third band lined up to round out the article. That is until a passing comment clued me into the fact that Scottish Post-Sludge trio Bosphorus were also set to release their long-gestating debut album this Friday, making for a killer triumvirate of new records all scheduled to come out on the same day.

Like I said at the start – isn’t it great when stuff just falls into place? Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MONTAÑA SAGRADA — “THE LIVING GREEN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Sep 232020
 

 

Not all metal bands, and in fact very few of them, unite behind a concept that’s as harrowing and as intriguing as the music they make. This isn’t intended as a criticism of bands who are content to make music that isn’t rooted in a conceptual vision or narrative. Good music is good music, regardless of its inspiration. And by the same token, a thought-provoking concept doesn’t make mediocre music any better. Yet when the two come together, the experience is even more special.

The Chilean trio Montaña Sagrada (“the Sacred Mountain”) have based their debut EP The Living Green, which we’re premiering in full today in advance of its September 25 release, on an especially intriguing (and mysterious) conception. Set during the 15th and 16th centuries, it focuses on a powerful group of people located on what would become known as Chiloé Island, a large island off the southern coast of Chile. “Shrouded in myth and protected by irrational fear”, these people had a firm hold on the population, with plans for domination that rivaled those of the European colonial powers. The band explain: Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NETHER — “TO THE SHORES”

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Sep 232020
 

 

On October 30th Art Gates Records will release Between Shades and Shadows, the debut album of the Belgian black metal band nether, whose music relies on both raw, visceral intensity and dark, evocative melodies. What we have for you today is the premiere of a song named “To the Shores“, accompanied by a video that draws out further dimensions of the music (perhaps metaphorical ones).

The video features dramatic images of natural power, from the violent assault of waves on rocky shores to building thunderheads, as well as scenes of lonesome wandering and of forests both barren and lush, and shrouded in mist. While the song itself, like the sea, packs plenty of assaulting power, it also has very human emotional connections — all of them fraught with tension and turmoil.

A listener might understand the music as a reflection of life’s misfortunes crashing against us, or of us crashing against life’s obstacles, but perhaps with other meditations in mind as well. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PUTERAEON, FURNACE, SEPULCHRE BY THE SEA, LOUD NIGHT, AVLIVAD, PARI’SYA, CRYPTAE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 222020
 

 

Like almost all the posts I wrote this past weekend, I put this one together in my head during a long listening session on Saturday. Since then more new songs have popped up, but I decided to stick with my original mental plan rather than have this thing turn into something even more intimidating to people who are already drowning in music.

I’ve already put the first four songs in this collection onto the list of candidates for my year-end series on Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. In different ways they rock, and they’re all very catchy. And then I decided to turn in other more ugly and unhinged directions.

PUTERAEON (Sweden)

I use the word “majestic” way too much in describing music, because I don’t spend enough time with a thesaurus. Usually it comes to mind when a band use soaring and sweeping melodies (other over-used words in my vocabulary) or create sensations of towering obsidian immensity, as often found in funeral death-doom. Neither of those qualities is present in Puteraeon’s new song (and video) “The Curse“, but the word “majestic” still came to mind. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MANES

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Sep 222020
 

 

(We present Karina Noctum‘s interview with Torstein Parelius of the Norwegian band Manes.)

Manes is a Norwegian band that started in the early ’90s as a Black Metal act, but developed a pretty distinct sound and found their niche in the avant-garde scene. In this interview we talk with Torstein Parelius about the band’s beginnings, their latest album Slow Motion Death Sequence, their latest single “Young Skeleton“, and future plans.

******

What were you aiming at in the very beginning when you started?

When the band started in 1992 or so, I wasn’t a part of the formation. Before that, Tor-Helge Cern was in the band Atrox which he co-founded back in 1988. I do believe he had an urge to create something darker and grimmer than the death/doom that Atrox played at the time – without compromise. Continue reading »

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES — PLAYING CATCH-UP

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 222020
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli wrote and packaged together this series of mini-reviews of 2020 albums he wants to recommend.)

So many albums I’m trying to catch up on and reviews I’m still trying to pump out, but I figured in the meantime I’d offer this collection of mini-reviews of albums I recommend.

STATIC-X

Static-X I think are a pretty niche band, but I personally loved their brand of dance groove industrial metal.  I thought Wayne Static was a great vocalist, and except for a couple of questionable albums, their discography was always reliably good, assuming you liked the premise of their sound.  Project: Regeneration Vol.1 is the first in a series of two albums that Wayne Static had started demo-ing prior to his death in 2014.  Helmed by the band’s OG lineup of bassist Tony Campos, guitarist Koichi Fukuda, and drummer Ken Jay, the band decided they’d try to pay tribute to their departed friend and bandmate while doing something for the fans, and finish what he started. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ARALLU — “MORBID SHADOW”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Sep 222020
 

 

This makes the third time we’ve done a premiere for the Israeli black metal band Arallu. The first time was about six weeks before the release of their 2017 album Six. The next time, roughly two years later, it was a song from their most recent full-length, En Olam. And today it’s a video for a song that’s… more than 20 years old!

It was 1999 when Arallu released their debut album, The War on the Wailing Wall, following an initial 1997 demo with the same title. In the decades that have followed that release, the band’s music evolved in dramatic ways. As we wrote about their most recent record, “the songs capture archetypes of violence and bloodshed, defiance of orthodoxy and devilish supremacy, but they also become spells,” and, as they had done before, the band augmented the metal “with the tones of ancient instruments, among them Saz, Oud, Kanoon, and Drabukka”, which were used to enhance the strong influence of Middle Eastern melodies.

Turning back the clock to the 1999 debut album, you can perceive the seeds that would grow into what the band has become today. But apart from the historical significance of the record, it turns out to have withstood the test of time very well. And so it’s not surprising that, at last, the album is being reissued on vinyl for the first time, complete with new vinyl mastering by Patrick W. Engel at “Temple of Disharmony”. And it’s one of those 1999 tracks that we’re bringing you today, accompanied by video of Arallu, as they are today, performing the song. Continue reading »

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