Islander

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 21): MIRE AND OMNIUM GATHERUM

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  No Responses »
Feb 052019
 

 

Another day, another pair of songs for my list of highly infectious tracks from 2018 releases. Without further ado, here they are (you can check out the preceding installments of this series here):

MIRE

The first track I’m adding today is “Lightless“, from the 2018 album Shed by Denver-based Mire. A choice of something from this album might have seem fore-ordained, since it made Andy Synn‘s “Personal Top 10” year-end list, as well as No. 33 on DGR’s year-end list. But not so. I don’t always agree with my colleagues’ views about albums, and even when I do (as in fact I do here), that doesn’t mean the album will necessarily be home to one or more genuinely infectious songs. But I do think this one is. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HORNDAL, ZERBIRST, INTRCPTR, FOUL BODY AUTOPSY, CEREMONY OF SILENCE, AVHATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 052019
 

 

As you can see, this is the second Part of today’s round-up of new music I decided to recommend, based on an orgy of listening I engaged in yesterday while snowbound. Half the bands here are ones I knew (favorably) through previous releases, and half were newcomers to my ears. As in Part 1, there’s a diverse array of heavy sounds represented here, though hardcore plays a role in many of them.

HORNDAL

Sweden’s Horndal are one of the new bands whose music I discovered yesterday. With a backbone of heavy hardcore and an anthemic dramatic quality, their debut album Remains was inspired as a way of memorializing and protesting the implosion of their hometown of Horndal, a small industrial center that was gutted during the 1970s by the closure of a steel mill that had been the community’s lifeblood. Though I knew nothing of the band before yesterday, the official video for a song off the new album named “Wasteland” produced an immediately powerful reaction. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): GODS FORSAKEN, KĀLA, SAMHARA, TARGET, SIELUNVIHOLLINEN, ULTRA SILVAM

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Feb 052019
 

 

Yesterday I learned of the postponement of an album premiere I had expected to write for today. If I had a less obsessive personality, I would have used that unexpected free time to go for a walk through the uncommon snow that turned the forested area where I live into a wonderland (because most workplaces, including mine, were closed down yesterday — because a little snow works like a paralytic agent on the City of Seattle). Instead, I spun my way through a couple dozen new songs… while occasionally staring out the window at the brilliance of that uncommon snow.

As you can already tell, since this is Part 1 of something I worked up, I liked quite a lot of what I heard, and thought you might too. I’m confident there will be a second Part… but not sure about a third… it depends on whether the snow melts and the paralysis loosens.

GODS FORSAKEN

What a very nice coincidence. Almost exactly one year ago we were anointing a song from this Swedish band’s debut album (In A Pitch Black Grave) as one of 2017’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, and a year and a day after that event they released the first single from their second album. And damned if it isn’t already a contender for the 2019 edition of that list. Continue reading »

DESCRAVITY: “ANATHEMA”

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Feb 052019
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the new album by the Japanese band Desecravity, recently released by Willowtip Records.)

It’s been quite a bit since my last small review here at NCS. Nonetheless, I now have the opportunity to write about one of my favorite acts from Japan. That band is Desecravity, and they released their third album entitled Anathema via Willowtip Records this past 25th of January.

This band was formed back in 2007 but it was not until 2012 that they released their debut effort, Implicit Obedience. I was fortunate to discover that release the same year thanks to a review that popped up in my newsfeed (my apologies, I don’t recall from where), and the cover art and name caught my attention. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 20): WOLFHEART AND SARASVATI

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  2 Responses »
Feb 042019
 

 

This is another instance in which I consciously paired songs for this list because I thought they sounded good together. In fact, the second one helped me decide on the track I chose from the first band’s album (a choice that had become an intractable mental struggle).

To check out the previous installments of this still-expanding list, you’ll find them behind this link, and to learn what this series is all about, go here.

WOLFHEART

This really was a tough call for me. After listening to Wolfheart’s latest album, Constellation of the Black Light, I had no doubt that something from it would be on this list, I just didn’t know which track it would be.  The album came hot on the heels of 2017’s Tyhjyys, but as DGR noted in his review, it nevertheless continued the band’s impressive level of consistent quality, delivering a blend of fast-paced, explosive hammering and brooding, wintry melody with an often epic atmosphere. Continue reading »

DOWNFALL OF GAIA: “ETHIC OF RADICAL FINITUDE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 042019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the new fifth album by Germany’s Downfall of Gaia, which will be released on February 8th by Metal Blade.)

One of the best, and most memorable, gigs/tours of the last several years for me was the absolutely mind-blowing co-headliner of Downfall of Gaia and Der Weg Einer Freiheit in 2015, which saw both bands putting on an absolute masterclass (not a word I use lightly) in power, precision, and raw emotion that still, even now, shines incredibly brightly in my memory.

It certainly helped, of course, that both bands were touring behind albums that were (and still are) widely considered to be the best of their career, with Aeon Unveils the Throne of Decay actually earning itself a much-coveted spot on my Critical Top Ten of 2014 (and Stellar only just missing out on the following year’s list).

But while neither band’s immediate follow-up was able to fully replicate the impact and intensity of their predecessor(s), I think you’ll be pleased to hear that Ethic of Radical Finitude comes pretty darn close to recapturing the pure magic of Aeon Unveils… even if that album still remains the band’s magnum opus. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE BLACK SORCERY — “WOLVEN DEGRADE”

 Premieres  10 Responses »
Feb 042019
 

 

These dudes (The Black Sorcery) look like they mean business. And what kind of mean business do they mean? Take a clue from some of the song titles on their new album: “War Fangs”, Putrescent Infected”, “Angry Spit of the Witches Piss”, and the album title-track we’re premiering: “Wolven Degrade“.

Here’s another clue: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TELÜMEHTÅR — “THE WELL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Feb 042019
 

 

Ten years ago the French one-man black metal project Telümehtår made its debut with a self-recorded and self-released demo named Blåck. Now, a decade later, Telümehtår has re-surfaced with a new album entitled The Well, which is set for release on February 16th. Today we present a full stream of its nine tracks, preceded by the following impressions.

Drawing inspiration from the spirit of such early black metal bands as Emperor, Darkthrone, and Ulver, but without slavishly aping them, Lord Telümehtår has created an extravagant, blazing tumult of moodiness and despair, creating the sounds of terrible madness born of pain, yet glorious in their devastation. In one sense, the songs are minimalist in their composition, yet they are wholly engulfing both in their sound and in their emotional impact, creating an air of scarring pageantry, like the surround-sound scores to mythic sagas of impassioned striving and inevitable, calamitous tragedy. Continue reading »

RIPARIAN: “RIPARIAN”

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Feb 042019
 

 

(Todd Manning wrote the following review ofthe impending self-titled debut EP by Pittsburgh’s Riparian, which will be released by Grimoire Records on March 1st.)

Not to split hairs, but in the sweet spot between Grindcore and Death Metal there seems to be a small niche of what one might consider Death-Grind, a movement that may have reached its apex in the early aughts and was best exemplified by such acts as The Red Chord, Misery Index, and Cephalic Carnage. Pittsburgh’s Riparian are mining this same vein of brutal goodness on their self-titled debut EP, due out on March 1st courtesy of Grimoire Records.

To be clear, the alchemy that Riparian utilize is a sound that might eschew the most technical corners of the Death Metal world, but also isn’t nearly as primitive as most Grindcore acts nor their OSDM counterparts. What we are left with instead is a pulverizing blend of grind beats and mid-tempo muscular riffing. Occasional solos and Doomier passages that also pepper the proceedings give the EP an unpredictable quality as well. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ELLENDE, MESZAROTH, OMINATION, ULTIO, SULDUSK, MALHKEBRE

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Feb 032019
 


Ellende

There’s quite a lot of new music I’m recommending in this Sunday’s column — three full EP streams (one of which is an EP-length single composition), plus advance tracks from three forthcoming albums. Coincidentally, four of the featured bands are essentially solo projects.

As usual, I picked these selections in part to provide some listening variety, though there’s certainly more than a fair share of melancholy and grandeur to be found herein, along with a fair share of ripping and tearing. I also positioned one selection to provide a bit of a diversionary interlude through its interweaving of Neo-Folk elements (and clean singing) among heavier sounds.

ELLENDE

I discovered this Austrian atmospheric/post-black metal band through a 2016 video of the title track from their 2014 EP, Weltennacht. I couldn’t get the song out of my head, and the video was hard to forget, too, since it included film of the 1987 public suicide of a Pennsylvania politician (Budd Dwyer) at a press conference he conducted the day before he was to be sentenced to prison following a conviction for bribery. Continue reading »

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