Islander

AN NCS DOOM SESSIONS INTERVIEW: CONAN, DEADSMOKE, AND HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS RECORDS

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 272020
 

 

(Earlier this year the Heavy Psych Sounds label announced a series of splits called Doom Sessions, and Volume I (released in mid-July) featured songs by the UK’s Conan and Italy’s Deadsmoke. This prompted Comrade Aleks to reach out to the label and the bands with a few questions, and we present the results today, along with music from the split.)

It’s important to keep some unity during this shitty time. Paradise Lost says “Faith divides us, Death unites us”, but indeed there’s a damn lot of things which divide us – politics, Covid, politics again, etc. Split albums always offer this sense of unity inside the heavy scene, and here we have one.

As Heavy Psych Sounds Records have launched a series of splits entitled Doom Sessions, I made the decision to support it with such short interviews as you’ll find below. Doom Sessions‘ first edition includes songs from the almighty crushing Conan (UK) and their younger sludgy brothers Deadsmoke (Italy). A few words from the label’s founder Gabriel Fiori (Black Rainbows band) clarify a few details about this series as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): UPCDOWNC — “SCORE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 262020
 

 

Although we believe that our site covers a pretty broad range of music, most visitors know when we’re stepping outside that range, climbing over the fences to take a look at something that lies on the other side. What’s usually inside the fences is a landscape of extreme metal, most of it with vocals that aren’t meant for tender ears, and most of it not meant for tender souls either. And to be honest, what lies on the other side is a universe of sounds far more vast than what’s inside.

It’s fair to say that we’ve climbed over those fences today — though maybe keeping one hand on the fence. Or maybe we’ve just pushed the fence a bit further out. The new album by Upcdownc that we’re premiering today definitely has connections to metal — the music does get plenty heavy, and picks its moments to make abrasive assaults on the senses. And as you’ll discover, some of the moods it channels (and there are a wide range of them) become very dark indeed.

But the album undeniably goes places we usually don’t, and for that it has become a refreshing discovery, one that’s persistently tantalizing and transportive. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SPECTRUM OF DELUSION — “AWAIT THE TRANSITION”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 252020
 

 

We’ve already seen, at least twice over, that the Dutch technical death metal band Spectrum of Delusion (and their film-making allies) are extremely clever when it comes to preparing videos for their forthcoming second album Neoconception.

The video they made for “Into Another Formation” is still one of my favorites of the year. The fact that it was filmed in a single take is astonishing. The fact that they were able to pull it off while having a good time is all the more impressive. And their full-band playthrough video for “Through Mankind’s True Ambition“, in which they fly like crazy across their instruments (and roar in rage) in various placid locales is an enormous kick to watch.

And now we add one more piece of audio-visual entertainment to those, as we premiere “Await the Transition“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EVAPORATED SORES — “ROTE RESURRECTION”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 252020
 

 

Beginning in April and continuing over a period of weeks Evaporated Sores began teasing the music of their debut album Ulcerous Dimensions by posting disturbing lines of black poetry on their Facebook page, accompanied by unsettling imagery that gave further definition to the words. The lines alone were these, in the order they appeared:

Collapse is rebirth, is death, is nothing.

Cosmic indifference
Inconsequential toil

Birth, decay, death
A feedback loop

A poisoned sea swallows the land.

Existence regurgitated into the void

Marching heedlessly, pitilessly, blindly.

Crushed by the weight of a billion suns.

The last of the Facebook installments, with its accompanying photo, was this one: Continue reading »

ULVER: “FLOWERS OF EVIL”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 242020
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Norway’s Ulver, which will be released on August 28th (along with Wolves Evolve: The Ulver Story, a 336-page book that reflects on over 25 years of Ulver history) by House of Mythology.)

It’s fitting that, for all their celebrated critical and commercial success, Ulver today are still perennial outsiders – lone wolves, if you will – who don’t really “fit in” anywhere.

No matter what happens – from shimmering cyber synthscapes to improvised orchestral experiments to pulsing prog-pop exhibitionism – you never really know what to expect.

Even at their most instantly, insistently infectious (and here I must pause to point out that this record is very much a continuation of its predecessor’s decadently danceable, 80s synth-pop approach… although that’s not all it is…) there’s always more to what you’re hearing.

More layers to uncover. More threads to be pulled. A bigger picture waiting to be revealed.

Case in point, if The Assassination… was about what it means to keep on dancing, even as Rome is burning, then Flowers of Evil is about what grows from the ashes. A garden filled with both (un)earthly delights and unwanted weeds. A heaven and a hell, one or the other, sometimes both, of our own creation.

And if we’re all still dancing, it’s to a more sombre tune. Because the cracks are beginning to show, and the bloom is off the rose. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VITAL SPIRIT — “IN THE FAITH THAT LOOKS THROUGH DEATH”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Aug 242020
 

 

Before delving deeper into the sounds of Vital Spirit‘s debut EP, In the Faith That Looks Through Death, let’s begin with the band’s own stated list of musical influences: Ennio Morricone, Taake, Earth, Ulver, Marty Robbins, Dissection, Drudkh, Inquisition, and Wovenhand.

And then let’s add to that this list of their lyrical inspirations: Wovoka, Patti Smith, Chilam Balam, Townes Van Zandt, and the corridos of the Mexican Revolution (with subjects that range from Mayan cosmology and history, to Pancho Villa’s role in the Mexican Revolution, and Wovoka’s Ghost Dance movement).

Got that? Well, you probably don’t, because even though you can read all those names, comprehending how such disparate sources of inspiration could all work together in harness under the coaxing (and the whiphand) of this Vancouver duo is probably a challenge. But when you listen to the music, you’ll discover that it all integrates wonderfully well. And the fact that In the Faith That Looks Through Death doesn’t sound quite like anything else becomes a big part of its attraction. Continue reading »

AN NCS DOUBLE PREMIERE: ONIRIK (“MELODIES OF REFLECTION AND PRAISE”) AND NOITE (“A COR DO FOGO”)

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 242020
 

 

We have a rare double premiere for you today. We have combined them because the songs come from two albums that will be released on the same day (September 25th) by the same label (I, Voidhanger Records), and because the artist behind the two bands is the same man — the Portuguese multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Gonius Rex.

One of these projects is Onirik, and the track we’re presenting today comes from Onirik’s fifth full-length, The Fire Cult Beyond Eternity. The other project is Noite (the Portuguese word for “night”), and the song we now present is the title track from Noite’s debut album A Cor do Fogo (“the color of fire”).

Both songs are fascinating, and together they are even more fascinating because they are so different from each other in their style — though they are kindred spirits in their inspirations. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: VONLAUS, AUÐN, HENOSIS, AL-NAMROOD, ESKAPISM, DYSTOPIA

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Aug 232020
 

 

We’ve made it to another Sunday, and I had enough time over the last 36 hours to find new blackened music to recommend. I found more than you’ll discover in this post, but I’m staring down the barrel of a fully loaded gun (every chamber loaded with day-job work I need to tackle today), so the odds are against working up a Part 2. Let’s get to it:

VONLAUS

Even after the warm reception given to their 2018 self-titled demo (reviewed here), Iceland’s Vonlaus still prefer to remain anonymous, though I see that Metal-Archives has identified two of them as members of Above Aurora (whose new album we premiered and reviewed at great length here). They now have a debut album headed our way next month, and its first single is the song I’ve chosen to lead off today’s collection. Continue reading »

DEATH RITUALS: JUST BEFORE DAWN, GRISVELOS, PRECAMBRIAN, INNUMERABLE FORMS, DEIQUISITOR, AFFLICTION VECTOR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 222020
 

 

Sigh. Yet another week when I didn’t have enough time, or didn’t set aside enough, to do even one round-up of new music. I did do a lot of listening last night and this morning, and found enough promising new black metal to fill a two-part SHADES OF BLACK post tomorrow, and then narrowed down other things I found into this post. As the title suggests, it leans mainly into death metal or blackened death of various kinds.

There are four complete releases in the following collection, which I book-ended with singles from forthcoming records.

JUST BEFORE DAWN

One of my favorite practitioners of Swedish death metal, Just Before Dawn, will be returning on September 25th with a new 45-minute soundtrack from the warzones of the last global conflict. The title is An Army At Dawn, and Raw Skull Recordz will handle the release. Once again, JBD riff-meister Anders Biazzi has enlisted a platoon of guests — 10 guest vocalists and three guest guitar soloists, if my count is correct — along with his steadfast JBD allies Gustav Myrin (guitar/bass) and Jon Rudin (drums). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FALSE GODS — “STAY FROSTY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 212020
 

 

‘After releasing three EPs since 2015, New York heavy-hitters False Gods are anxious to release their debut full-length, No Symmetry… Only Disillusion, to the world. The result is a brash, bulldozing juggernaut, shifting between between melancholy and rage with the stroke of a riff.”

So says Seeing Red Records, which will release this crusher of an album on October 16th. But none of us need take the label’s word for it, nor Seeing Red‘s references to such compelling influences as Eyehategod, Crowbar, Godflesh, and Killing Joke, because the song we’re premiering today bears out these claims.

The song is “Stay Frosty“, and it does turn out to be as multi-faceted as you might now be expecting. And it really is a crusher that hits hard on multiple levels. Continue reading »

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