Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VERMISST — “ZMIERZCH STALOWEJ CIEMNOŚCI”

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Sep 022020
 

 

Of the eight tracks on Vermisst‘s new album Zmierzch Stalowej Ciemności (which Signal Rex will release on September 4th, on vinyl and digitally), five of them first appeared as an EP bearing the same title as this album, released in a CD edition in January 2020. The other three are bonuses — new original tracks recorded last December which expand the EP to 40 minutes.

For those readers who may have overlooked the EP over the last eight months, it’s quite an arresting and often elaborate experience, one that featured not only the performances of Vermisst‘s core members Belath (guitar), Vorghast (vocals), and Kvalvaag (keys) but also impressive session work by Vlambré (bass), Bloodwhip (guitar), and Vulgrim (drums). The bonus tracks, created solely by Belath (guitars) and Vorghast (vocals, drums), are very different in important respects, but arresting in their own harrowing way. Continue reading »

ALARUM: “CIRCLE’S END”

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Sep 022020
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli prepared this review of the latest album by the long-running Australian band Alarum, which was released in June by Dinner For Wolves.)

The very idea of progressive metal in modern metal is trapped in a weird state of limbo.  We have a problem lately with labeling things progressive that are, frankly, not at all.  They meet none of the requirements for the style, but the songs are over seven minutes long so we think surely that’s the qualifier.  As someone who appreciates the eccentricity in progressive metal of any sort enthralling, it’s a bit insulting to me that “our” standard has dropped so low that we consider bands like Black Crown Initiate to be progressive.  They are, no doubt, an excellent band, one of modern extreme metal’s best current acts, and fantastic musicians, but their music is not progressive.

When I think of metal that is progressive, I think envelope-pushing, I think weird fusion ideas or the ability to write a comprehensively diverse album that hits an insanely wide array of peaks and valleys while maintaining a cohesive core sound.  A group could do this based on a “gimmick”, of course, and could have an objective, perhaps oriented around jazz for example, and that’s fair as long as the music you’re writing actually tries to push and incorporate jazz into your metal in such a way that the spirit of jazz is in no way diluted. Continue reading »

HYMN: “BREACH US”

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Sep 012020
 

 

(On August 28th Fysisk Format released the second album by the Norwegian duo Hymn, and Andy Synn gives it an enthsusiastic review below.)

Being human is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, a strange experience. One which, ultimately, we all experience differently.

Even though we have so much in common, and encounter the world through the same five senses, the same underlying mental architecture, if I were to try to convey to you exactly what I experience when I feel pain, or pleasure, or any number of other sensations, I wouldn’t be able to do so.

Oh sure, we have language to describe what pain “is”, what pleasure “is”, but the truth is that human language just isn’t equipped to describe the subjective qualia of reality.

Quite simply, you can’t feel what I feel.

This is one reason why we often fall back on comparisons and shared points of reference when describing things to one another, especially (to the chagrin of many) when talking about music.

So, like it or not, please be aware that when I say that Norwegian duo Hymn sound like the bastard offspring of Cult of Luna, Crowbar, and Celtic Frost I do so with good reason, as you’re about to find out. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: JUPITERIAN — “CAPRICORN”

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Sep 012020
 

 

It makes perfect sense that the grim hooded eminences within Jupiterian chose the name they did. Their music is so stupendously heavy that evoking the solar system’s most massive planet — twice as massive as all other planets combined — can’t really be considered an act of hubris. They’ve earned the right to align themselves in that way.

Apart from its immensity, and the glacial slowness of its spin, Jupiter is also home to a giant red storm that is itself larger than Earth and has raged for hundreds of years. And perhaps the most striking evolution in Jupiterian’s new album Protosapien is how much their new music rages, and how powerfully it creates an atmosphere of fear, without sacrificing the quality of titanic heaviness that first brought them global attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: HARK FROM THE TOMB — “FEEDING HIS HUNGERING FLAMES”

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Sep 012020
 

 

The Swedish duo who have joined forces under the name Hark From the Tomb prefer to remain anonymous, though we’re told that they’ve been participants in the Swedish black metal scene extending back to the early ’90s, and members of much better-known bands. Why then did they choose to create a new vehicle for their musical creativity?

One inspiration was to channel a deep disgust with the current state of the human species — “the inability of humanity to evolve intellectually, the revolting character of mankind as a whole, and the unforgivable error of letting religion exist as anything more than an artefact of Bronze Age mythology”. As they have further explained:

“The combination of easily led idiots, the charlatans that exploit the weak, and the ultimately cataclysmic symbiosis of the dumb and the evil that collectively holds back humanity as a species is the worst and most poisonous trait that both threatens the survival of humanity as a whole, and the source of the revulsion that led to the creation of Let Them Die.”

The band’s musical inspirations — the contours of sound through which they’ve expressed such utter contempt on this debut album Let Them Die — derive from the old-school, primitive parts of their Nordic black metal antecedents. But the music is more than an experience in unbridled ferocity, as you’ll discover through our premiere of the album track “Feeding His Hungering Flames“. Continue reading »

TON: “ASHES WHERE THEY STOOD”

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Sep 012020
 

 

(Vonlughlio prepared this review of the new third album by the Ohio death metal band TON, which was released in August by Ungodly Ruins Productions.)

The Ohio death metal project called TON have been around since 1993. They released a handful of demos leading up to their full-length debut Plague in 1999. After that they went on a hiatus of sorts until 2015 when they released their sophomore album, Bow Down to Extinction, and that is when I learned of their existence (late to the party, I suppose).

I enjoyed their second release quite a bit, including the kind of natural production that allowed each of the instruments be heard as a collaborative force, instead of some being buried in the mix. The riffs were quite entertaining, providing the driving force leading the way in each of the eight songs which proved to be an engaging 32-minute experience. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 124): HAVUKRUUNU

 Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT  3 Responses »
Aug 312020
 

 

(For the August 2020 edition of The Synn Report, Andy Synn has decided to compile reviews of all the releases by the tremendously talented Finnish band Havukruunu, including their newest album released earlier this month by Naturmacht Productions.)

Recommended for fans of: Moonsorrow, Immortal, Vintersorg

Black Metal, as we all know, comes in many different forms.

Punky and primal, proggy and polished, feral and fierce, mighty and majestic… and all shades and shapes in between.

And for this month’s Synn Report it’s the latter style I’ve chosen to focus on, with this deep dive into the discography of formidable Finnish foursome Havukruunu.

Three albums into their career (the most recent of which was released earlier this month) the band have, effectively, become masters of a scintillating brand of Black Metal which fuses the epic extravagance of their countrymen in Moonsorrow with the swaggering, riff-centric approach of Immortal and the fearless melodic mettle of Bathory… although, as accurate (maybe even a little too obvious) as those references are, I’d say that Havukruunu have more than made this sound their own at this point.

So fill your cups, sharpen your blades, and ready yourselves to ride the blazing Northern skies as we take a journey through the band’s bountiful back catalogue. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MEGALITH LEVITATION

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 312020
 

 

(In this new interview Comrade Aleks spoke with a member of the Russian acid doom band Megalith Levitation, who just released a split album with Dekonstruktor earlier this month through Aesthetic Death, and are now finishing their second album.)

Megalith Levitation from the heavy industrialized Russian city of Chelyabinsk didn’t waste their time during the Covid quarantine. They’re low and they’re acid, as their doom is hallucinogenic and hypnotizing. Almost accidentally the trio found themselves having enough material for an EP and an LP, and the decision was made to unite in unholy collaboration with their Moscow-based colleagues Dekonstruktor. And so two bands united to commit new acid doom rites and to make close to total entropy by eating the universe alive. No way back, fuck life, they go further.

Megalith Levitation‘s SAA (vocals, guitars) was summoned, we ask, he answers. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GORATORY — “EVOLUTIONARY WART”

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Aug 312020
 

 

Sixteen years is  long time between albums. Over the course of that extravagant span of time, which marks the distance between Goratory’s third record and the fourth one that’s going to be evacuated upon the world by Everlasting Spew Records in October, the members of Goratory went on to perform with such bands as Arsis, Deeds of Flesh, Job for A Cowboy, The Black Dahlia Murder, Despised Icon, Sexcrement, and Abnormality. Surely, they still have other things to do with their wicked time. So why now have Adam Mason (Vocals), Al Glassman (Guitars), Zach Pappas (Bass) and Darren Cesca (Drums) decided to resurrect Goratory’s brand of degenerating, grinding and schizoid technical Brutal Death?

Well, take a look around you. What better time than in the midst of the humongous shitshow that is 2020 for these deviants to bare their giant balls again? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INTERCEPTING PATTERN — “THE ENCOUNTER”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 312020
 

 

As a listener, there is more than one way you might envision in your mind’s eye the wondrous musical excursion of Intercepting Pattern‘s debut album The Encounter. Perhaps you’ll think of being aboard a spacecraft traversing the solar system, or tunneling through a wormhole to locations vastly beyond our home system. Or maybe you’ll conclude that the trip isn’t bounded by any dimension of “reality”, extraterrestrial or not. There is, after all, a track named for the prince of demons. Or perhaps you’ll think of being suspended in the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, experiencing lucid dreams or bizarre hallucinations (there’s another track named for that state of threshold consciousness).

I thought of all those things, but also remembered two other things. One of those memories was Rod Serling‘s repeated introduction to his famous TV series (I’ll come to the other memory at the end of this introduction to our premiere of the album):

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call… the Twilight Zone.” Continue reading »

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