Islander

GOURD: “MOULDERING ABERRATIONS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 102019
 

 

With this review I’m making amends as well as a recommendation. Every year I encounter dozens of new records I wish I had time to write about, and often even intend to write about, but nevertheless fail to mention. In 2016 one of those was a self-titled EP by the Irish duo Gourd, a mountainously heavy and monumentally disturbing creation whose substantial run-time not only called into question Gourd’s classification of the release as an EP but also threatened the long-term well-being of anyone who listened to it.

I intended to write about Gourd, and should have, but Cursed Monk Records‘ impending release of a new Gourd EP, Moldering Aberrations, affords a chance for personal redemption. In one fell swoop I get to insist that you listen to that 2016 record AND that you check out this new one at the earliest opportunity, especially if there’s just too damned much happiness in your life. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH 2019: ARCHIVIST / EMPLOYED TO SERVE / OSIAH

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 102019
 

 

(Andy Synn delivers his third compilation of reviews this week which focus on new records by UK bands, and again presents three of them in this latest installment.)

The third (and final) of this week’s series of “Best of British” posts deals with three bands who are collectively becoming (or have already become) a fair bit more well-known and more famous (or infamous) than those artists from the previous two editions. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): UNGOLIANTHA — “THE HOWL IN THE WASTE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 102019
 

 

Much could be written (and has been written) about Ungoliant, the dark spider queen “from before the world” who played a role in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Silmarillion and was mentioned in The Lord of the Rings. Also known as Gloomweaver (because she was capable of generating impenetrable darkness), she gave birth to a race of giant spiders, and her own unremitting hunger was so great that she consumed herself.

With that bit of background, it becomes apparent from the music of the Ukrainian symphonic black metal band Ungoliantha why they based their name on that giant dark spider. One might find other clues to the music from the spooky cover art of their new EP, The Howl in the Waste — a collage of black cats, skulls, and Gothic spires. There is indeed an atmosphere of supernatural horror and terrible grandeur that pervades the EP, manifested in different ways across its five tracks — all of which we’re streaming today in this exclusive premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ETERNAL REST — “THE WILL OF DEATH”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 092019
 

 

Ten years after the release of their first EP, Seize of Anubis, the Australian death metal band Eternal Rest will be releasing their third album on June 7th through Gore House Productions. The title is Picture of Hatred. Dan Swanö mixed and mastered it. Remy Cooper created the cover art. Good names to have on your side, especially when you’ve created music as powerful as this.

The album title is no exaggeration. Most extreme metal is aggressive, but Picture of Hatred genuinely comes for your throat… and your bones and internal organs. It’s fierce and punishing in a way that knocks you back on your heels, with enough electricity to power a decent-sized city.

It’s also clear that the band didn’t spend the ten years since their first record treading water — they’ve become quite skilled in writing songs that mercilessly dig their hooks into a listener’s head at the same time as they’re cracking it open like an egg. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH 2019: BLIND MONARCH / EVEREST QUEEN / LATITUDES

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
May 082019
 

 

(Sooner than anticipated, Andy Synn brings us yet another installment of this series, which focuses on reviews of new records by UK bands — and you’ll find three of those here.)

Remember how I said I had enough collected material for three separate “Best of British” columns (including the one I/we published on Monday)?

Well, I wasn’t lying, and today’s edition features three bands who, in all likelihood, should drum up a lot of interest from our readers.

In fact I’m hopeful that, if you like one of these bands, you’ll like the other two as well! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: NECROSEXUAL — “THE LAIR WHERE NO LIGHT ENTERS”

 Premieres  1 Response »
May 082019
 

 

Wild guess: Especially among the more grim and cold-eyed consumers of metal extremity, the music of Philadelphia’s Necrosexual might be received with a certain degree of… skepticism. The PR comparison of “Gwar meets Venom“; the combination of corpse paint, sneering countenance, and tight, striped leggings; a record title like The Gory Hole Overture In F#; and of course the band’s name — all that might provoke a bit of mental push-back in certain quarters. One answer might be to just say, “lighten the fuck up”, and a better answer might be, “listen to ‘The Lair Where No Light Enters‘, which is the song we’re presenting today — because it’s hellishly good..

Actually, a still-better answer would be, “listen to all three songs from this new EP that have debuted so far”, and then make your mind up — and we’ll give you a chance to do that, too. But first, let’s focus on “The Lair Where No Light Enters“. Continue reading »

BELZEBUBS: “PANTHEON OF THE NIGHTSIDE GODS”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 082019
 

 

(We welcome guest contributor Evan Clark, who has written at a couple of other metal sites in the past, and whose first thoughts at NCS concern the debut album of Belzebubs, which was released on April 25th.)

Belzebubs is an interesting beast that owes some similarities to acts such as Metalocalypse or Ghost. The band is the real-world manifestation of a fictional band within a popular webcomic, all three sharing the same name. The webcomic plays out like a family-oriented newspaper strip, but with the added benefit of the central characters all being doused in a heavy dose of black metal chic. Belzebubs in our world maintains the face and act of the fictitious band, and has been deployed upon our world with its members anonymous.

The creator J.P. Ahonen seems to have hired well-known or at least competent metal musicians to write and coordinate material that could feasibly stem from the fictitious band. The mystery of who is actually performing on the record is quite intriguing, with many people suspecting members of Insomnium — the vocalists for the two bands sound eerily similar — yet the true wonder can be found from the fact that the album, in its current state, exists at all. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SONGS FROM A SPLIT BY ALBANACH AR DHEIS AND NIHTWINTRE

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 072019
 

 

On May 14th a pair of black metal bands whose music seems to be the emanations of kindred spirits — Calgary’s Albanach ar Dheis and Seattle’s Nihtwintre — will release a new split EP. It includes two tracks by the former and three by the latter, and todays it’s our pleasure to premiere a song by each band.

When you hear these songs, you may have the feeling (as this writer did) that they’re not completely of our world, that they have more in common with ancient times than with modernity, or perhaps channel expressions from spirit realms rather than the habitations of flesh and bone. They’re also both intense and immersive, capable of taking you out of yourself for as long as they last. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: NEIGE MORTE — “NIQUEZ BIEN TOUS VOS MÈRES”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 072019
 

 

Seventeen months ago, when DECIBEL premiered a full stream of the latest record by Neige Morte, they wrote that the band “play black metal, but they do it with death metal sensibilities, hammering the listener with a torrent of noisy, cacophonous riffs and blast beats, almost painful in its intensity at times on their new album, TRINNT…. [I]t seems that over the course of three records, they’ve turned dense, punishing black metal into an art form they’ve mastered”.

As a reminder of the truth of those words, today we’re premiering a video of these part-French, part-Swedish nihilists performing a track from TRINNT, the name of which is “Niquez Bien Tous Vos Mères”, filmed by Sergey Ulyanov at the band’s release show in Lausanne a bit more than one year ago. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: MORK

 Interviews  4 Responses »
May 072019
 

 

(Our Norway-based contributor Karina Noctum has brought us this interview of Thomas Eriksen, the man behind the Norwegian black metal band Mork, whose new album Det Svarte Juv was released by Peaceville Records on April 19th. The interview was conducted close to Mork’s performance at this year’s Inferno Festival, and is accompanied by photos of the performance by Silje Storm Drabitius, to whom we are grateful for his permission to use them.)

 

How did you get to sign on Peaceville Records, which has in its roster some pretty legendary acts such as Darkthrone and so on…?

The first time I approached Peaceville Records I was told that they did not sign new bands. They said that they stick to the old bands, and then some time passed and I was contacted by other big labels that wanted Mork, but I didn’t really like the deals that they were offering me, so I declined some of them. Then I told Peaceville that it was now or never. If you want us now, you can have us, but if not we can go to another label. Then they started to think, and my good friend Nocturno Culto, from Darkthrone, he actually gave them a nudge. He made them realize that Mork was something worth investing in, something worth checking out, so that was the way it worked out.

Peaceville signed me for my third album which came out in 2017, Eremittens Dal is the title, “Valley of the Hermit” in English. Last year they re-released my first two albums Isebakke and Den Vandrende Skygge. Meanwhile the fourth and my latest one called Det Svarte Juv was released on Friday, April 19th. Continue reading »

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