Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GRAVES — “LITURGIA DA BLASFEMIA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 302019
 

 

There’s a coiled serpent on the cover of Graves‘ new album Liturgia da Blasfemia, but these Portuguese black metallers have harnessed a lot of powerful demon horses in their hard-charging sounds, as well as demonstrating fanged striking power and loosing currents of reptilian venom. But this is an album that’s also more nuanced than you might expect. It conveys moods of wrenching misery as well as extravagant ferocity, and as pitch-black as the music usually is, it also includes moments that channel heart-breaking loss and heart-swelling incandescence.

To put it differently, death and desolation loom over the album like the great heartless reaper of souls we have imagined for millennia, but notwithstanding that ever-present shadow, the album is very much a dynamic experience. All the changing moods, and the expert way in which the band ring those changes through memorable riffs, are a big reason why the album is well worth listening to from beginning to end — which is exactly what we’re making it possible for you to do today, just a few days before its February 1 release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DIM AURA — “BLACK HERETIC HATE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 302019
 

 

The thorned nightshade gardens of black metal have extravagantly expanded from their poisonous underground root stocks and become hybridized to the point where some of the offshoots have even taken on the kind of prettier hues that appeal to non-vampiric surface-dwellers. But of course there are still many black-hearted horticulturalists out there, devotedly caring for the genre’s barbed and deadly old-growth vines, greedily inhaling their aromas like pestilential perfume and exhaling hate.

The Israeli black metal band Dim Aura don’t completely reject the idea of hybridization, but they’re unquestionably devoted to the perpetuation of cold malice and tyrannical fury. Their newest display of sonic torment and cruelty is The Triumphant Age of Death, an album that will be released by Saturnal Records on March 22nd. It adds to a discography that includes a pair of EPs and a debut full-length from 2013, The Negation of Existence. From that album, we present its first single, an onslaught on organized religion named “Black Heretic Hate“. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: INTEGRAL RIGOR, ANABASIS, AKANTHA

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 302019
 

 

One consequence of agreeing to present so many premieres (four of them yesterday alone!) and persisting with my Infectious Song list (even though it’s already 40 tracks long) is that I have much less time to round up new songs and videos. As a consequence, my list of new things to listen to and write about has become so vast that it resembles a paper version of this scene from a beloved movie.

With more premieres to write for today and another installment of “Most Infectious” as well, I don’t really have time to catch up today, but I did want to quickly mention the music below before turning back to those other labors.

INTEGRAL RIGOR

Because of the conditions described above, I’ve barely scratched the surface of Alast, the just-released new album by the Iranian band Integral Rigor, but have had a very warm reaction to what’s gotten under my fingernails so far. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FUNEREAL PRESENCE — “WHEREIN SEVEN CELESTIAL BEASTS ARE REVEALED TO HIM”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Jan 292019
 

 

The four long tracks that made up the 2014 debut album of New York-based Funereal Presence left this writer full of wonder, and mentally and emotionally discombobulated. The Archer Takes Aim was both a savage visitation to the black metal of the genre’s halycon days and an almost experimental reimagining, never remaining in one space for very long, yet displaying such exuberant creativity that it became a beacon which pulled me back over and again.

It is thus a genuine thrill to share the news that Funereal Presence is returning with a new album that will be released by The Ajna Offensive in North America and by Sepulchral Voice in Europe. Entitled Achatius, it again consists of four long-form compositions, and if anything, the music is even more fantastical, more bewilderingly idiosyncratic and ingenious, and even more likely to leave listeners in a state of shock and awe.

The first astonishing revelation from the album is the song we’re presenting today, “Wherein Seven Celestial Beasts Are Revealed to Him“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RIPARIAN — “THE NUCLEAR UNCLEAR”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Jan 292019
 

 

With their impending self-titled debut EP, Pittsburgh’s Riparian channel a ferocious zeal for musical carnage while displaying impressive technicality, integrating elements of death metal and grindcore, and dosing their rapidly veering rampages with moments of doom and gloom.

“Grimy, weird, and filth-soaked,” is one way that Grimoire Records describes the sound, and it is Grimoire that will release the EP on March 1st. Today we present an outstandingly unhinged track from the EP named “The Nuclear Unclear” through a music video with a beer-lover’s back-story. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VIMUR — “CONSUMED BY THE SOURCE”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Jan 292019
 

 

Welcome, brothers and sisters, to another thrilling excursion into musical lands of fire and ice, with guides from Atlanta, where the people are no strangers to heat and may soon also find themselves enveloped in ice, thanks to the impending assault of a new polar vortex.

“Consumed By The Source” is the name of the song you’re about to hear, and it’s one of seven tracks of ravaging black metal on Triumphant Master of Fates, the new second album by Atlanta’s Vimur, who curse the wretched earth and seek salvation beyond the stars, in death. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VÉHÉMENCE — “PASSAGE DANS LES DOUVES”

 Premieres  10 Responses »
Jan 292019
 

 

Par le Sang Versé is one of the most thoroughly entrancing and gloriously vibrant metal albums I’ve heard in years, regardless of sub-genre. It seizes ancient folk traditions and hurls them forward into the modern age, but without letting go of the intense devotion to the centuries-old well-springs of inspiration that gave birth to this record. I do think it’s impossible not to be moved in some significant degree by this fervent music, and likely that most listeners will simply be swept aloft and carried away, as I’ve been.

Granted, this writer tends to get swept away by a wider range of extreme music, and perhaps more often, than many of you, yet the conviction is strong that the eight songs on this new second album by the French medieval black metal band Véhémence are so powerful in their capacity to ignite passion and fire the imagination that the band’s own unmistakable passions become highly communicable, if not irresistible.

Have I fallen whole-heartedly within the embrace of a seduction that you could shrug off? That’s a question you can answer for yourselves, because you’ll have the chance to listen to a new song from the album following a lot more introductory verbiage, plus three more tracks that were previously released in advance of the record’s release on February 10th by the distinctive French label, Antiq. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 16): SARGEIST, DEITUS, HEGEMONE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  5 Responses »
Jan 292019
 

 

Unlike some people I know, I have zero problem with current bands slavishly devoting themselves to the sounds of black metal from the early-mid ’90s, as long as they’ve got the talent to express their devotion in credibly cold and grippingly hostile fashion.

But it so happens that the black metal songs I’ve added to the list today (which are among my favorites of the last year) aren’t of the slavishly old-school variety, yet no one would accuse any of the bands of being new-school posers either, with merely a trim-picked riff or two as the basis for claims of “blackened” sound. The albums in which these tracks appeared were also uniformly excellent.

SARGEIST

Unbound was the creation of an (almost) entirely new incarnation of Sargeist, with only mainman Shatraug remaining from the line-up which gave us such gems as Disciples of the Heinous Path and Let The Devil In, but it too turned out to be brilliant. Given that the new line-up included a guitarist from Nightbringer, a bassist who dwells within the Saturnian Mist, and two members who provide bass and vocals for Desolate Shrine, all of whom (along with Shatraug) stand out in the sharpened production of this record, that should have come as no surprise. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 15): IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT AND KRIEGSMASCHINE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018  No Responses »
Jan 282019
 

 

The two tracks I’ve added to this list today are diabolically inventive, and in different ways they awaken primal fears and desires. They also happen to include lyrics of rare eloquence and evocative power.

IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT

“Built around a core of discordant, dissonant Black Metal, but embellished and expanded by a freakish array of jazzy elements and avant-garde ingredients, Vile Luxury is an album which revels in its own chaotic contradictions as a way of challenging and exploiting the expectations of its audience.”

Those were among the impressions my friend Andy provided in his review of the 2018 album by New York’s Imperial Triumphant. “By turns unsettling and off-kilter, moody and malevolent”, he wrote, “its warped blend of jarring juxtapositions and stark contrasts sees the group… making purposeful use of both harsh shifts in tone and smooth segues between styles to keep the listener on the edge of their seat and to maintain an aura of potent unpredictability”. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: BACKSTABBER — “GEO ENGINEERING”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 282019
 

 

We live in an age when conspiracy theories of all stripes seem to have reached a zenith, and the Canadian death/thrash band Backstabber (from northern Quebec) seem to have embraced the ethos (or at least fervently portrayed it) in their debut album Conspiracy Theorist. Consisting of 10 tracks that explore themes of scandal, critiques of mainstream media, and of course conspiracies, the album will be released on February 15th.

Today we present a lyric video for one of their murderous aural attacks. Entitled “Geo Engineering“, it was inspired by a speech delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2016 by then-CIA chief Paul Brennan. In the speech, Brennan spoke of a program that had attracted his personal interest called “Stratospheric Aerosol Injection”, through which seeding the stratosphere with reflective particles could reduce global temperatures at an estimated annual cost of $10 billion.

Though Brennan touted the idea as a means of combatting global warming, Backstabber foresee a different and more devastating outcome. Continue reading »

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