Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: SINS OF THE DAMNED — “VICTIMS OF HATE”

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Apr 032019
 

 

Sins of the Damned began in Santiago, Chile, in November 2013 with the aim of creating speed metal with South American authenticity, and devoid of lyrics that might embrace fantasy. From 2014 through 2017 they released a series of demos and splits, and a 2017 compilation collected much of that work. Now they are about to release their first album, Striking the Bell of Death, with a due date of May 3rd through Shadow Kingdom Records.

On this new album, Sins of the Damned have created something iconic, something that summons so much of what has made fierce and fiery heavy metal so cathartic and so addictive for so many decades — and in the case of this band’s own style, so dazzling and grand. The song we present today, “Victims of Hate“, is a prime example of those qualities. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRYLLE — “GOTHIQUE ANJEVIN”

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Apr 032019
 

 

I remember being left in a state of gleeful astonishment when I first heard the music of The Pogues. There they were, playing raucous punk music with old acoustic instruments, with tin whistle and accordion, with mandolin and hurdy-gurdy, with banjo and bodhrán. They caught the spirit of punk and made it seem like a natural outgrowth of Celtic drinking songs and folk dances.

The music of Grylle leaves me in a similar state of gleeful wonder, translating the spirit (and some of the sounds) of black metal through ancient instrumentation and the enthralling accents of antique melody. The music and the inspirations may have been born within that most “outsider” of extreme metal genres, but Grylle has then stepped outside of even that, while keeping one foot in the black circle. Continue reading »

HISS FROM THE MOAT: “THE HARRIER”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 032019
 

 

(Here’s DGR’s review of the new album by the Italian extreme metal band Hiss From the Moat, which was released by Salem Rose Music and M-Theory Audio on February 22nd, and features cover artwork by Stefano Bonora.)

The family tree of the hyper-blasting death metal groups from Italy is a densely populated series of branches that seem to spiral every outwards with a tremendous number of offshoots and tied-together snarls that could make fractal patterns jealous.

This specific region and genre have found more musicians crossing paths than might even be initially obvious. Hiss From The Moat‘s branch of the tree has always been a strange outlier, taking their genre’s penchant for near-relentless and precise brutal death metal and combining it with the heavy atmospherics and low-tuned guitar batterings of blackened death metal — like a latter day Hour Of Penance crashing headlong into Apostasy/Evangelion-era Behemoth. Continue reading »

PUTREFYING CADAVERMENT: “INDISCRIMINATE BUTCHERY”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 032019
 

 

(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the debut album by the North Carolina death metal band Putrefying Cadaverment, which will be released on April 14th by Sevared Records.)

It’s been a few weeks since my last write-up, and what a great way to break the silence — by reviewing the debut album of North Carolina’s Putrefying Cadaverment, entitled Indiscriminate Butchery, to be released via Sevared Records.

Before this, the band only released two demos and one EP named Necrosadistic Defilement before going on a lengthy hiatus. They were more slam/BDM oriented and had good riffs, but although the overall idea was interesting I had mixed feelings about the earlier music. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GOREGÄNG — “CATHEDRAL OF CHEMICALS”

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Apr 022019
 

 

Juanjo Castellano strikes again, with a wonderful piece of artwork (augmented by a Mark Riddick logo) for the debut album by Goregӓng, a piece that’s both reminiscent of the great Kristian “Necrolord” Wåhlin and also captures the feeling of the album title itself: Neon Graves. And in turn, that album title is an entirely fitting preview of the music that Goregӓng have created, which is preternaturally vibrant and morbidly gruesome (among other things).

That the album is so sure-handed and so murderously exuberant should come as no surprise, given that Goregӓng is the work of two men — Jeramie Kling and Taylor Nordberg — who between them have resumes that include such names as Ribspreader, Wombbath, Venom Inc., and The Absence. After an introductory EP in 2017, they’ve now delivered a compelling full-length amalgam of death metal, crust, and grind. A couple of songs from Neon Graves have already surfaced, and now we’ve got one more for you. This one is “Cathedral of Chemicals“. Continue reading »

CONJURER: A REVIEW OF “SIGILS” AND THE PREMIERE OF “ACROSS THE VOID”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 022019
 

 

(In this post Todd Manning reviews the new album by Indiana’s Conjurer, which will be released on April 5th, and introduces our premiere of a song from the album.)

There is a tendency in the world of Metal to try to overload every available inch of sonic space with brutality. It’s an understandable and often effective approach, but at times, bands who utilize a more stripped-down strategy are equally capable of blowing the listener’s mind and ears. It is this kind of sense of refinement that is evident in spades on the new album Sigils by Indianapolis-based Sludge/Doom quintet Conjurer.

For anyone familiar with their debut, Old World Ritual, their latest is not a radical departure from the sound they established there, but is a logical and powerful step forward. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: HYPOCRISY AND FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE — LIVE IN ATLANTA, MARCH 27, 2019

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 022019
 

 

(On March 27th our Atlanta-based contributor Tør made his way to The Masquerade venue to take in performances by Aenimus, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Hypocrisy as part of their ongoing national tour. He sent us this report, along with a large batch of his own excellent photos from the show. For a full list of remaining dates on the tour, go here.)

I walk in late and it’s already happening. Openers Aenimus have just taken the stage and are blazing through their set. The crowd is into it: with every riff, the front-row crowd inches closer to the stage monitors. I stand on the side and enjoy the gig -— I like what I’m hearing. The metalcore-tinged proggy riffs take me to a place I’ve been to before but can’t quite recall. I’ve liked what I’ve heard of the new album, Dreamcatcher (Nuclear Blast) so far, and the band doesn’t disappoint live. Despite the solid start to the night, nothing prepares me for what is to come soon. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ACRITARCH, CEDITH, FRONTIERER, THE HOWLING VOID, MESSA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 022019
 

 

I never learn. I have music from 10 bands that got me very excited this past weekend (on top of the 7 I wrote about in SHADES OF BLACK on Sunday). Ten is too many for a single post, which means I’m splitting this up, and the thing I never learn is that my best-laid plans always get dashed on the rocks by other life pressures. In my head, I feel that if I put my back into it, like a shackled oarsman on a Roman galley, I can get the second part done. In my head, I also think the odds are that the vessel will ram some Macedonian pirate vessel and sink like a stone.

The music of these 10 bands is all over the place. I usually have inspirations about how to organize the music in these round-ups so there’s some kind of flow. This time, I came up short. It’s all just so different. So I arranged everything in alphabetical order by band name, for want of a better idea. We have A-M here; maybe we’ll have the rest of the alphabet later. Ramming speed!

ACRITARCH

I got quickly addicted to this new release by Acritarch, before the archaeological ministry of my memory could excavate the recognition of who was behind it. Fortunately, Rennie of starkweather, whose mind is so much more agile than my own, knew who it was immediately, and told me. No wonder the album is so damned good. Continue reading »

AXIS OF DESPAIR: “AND THE MACHINE ROLLS ON”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 022019
 

 

(Here’s DGR’s review of the new EP by Sweden’s Axis of Despair, which was released in February.)

While a lot of reviews so far this year have been the result of my waiting to see how an album sits with me post-release, or the more common reason of playing desperate catch-up with all the stuff I want to write about, the release of Axis Of Despair‘s latest EP And The Machine Rolls On — with Selfmadegod handling black and pink vinyls of the release — is one that legitimately just flew under our radar.

Released in early February, And The Machine Rolls On contains another six songs of the musical spasm that Axis Of Despair call their branch of grind. The group recorded it during the sessions for last year’s Contempt For Man release, and it runs about nine minutes in length. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEIPHAGO — “I, THE DEVIL”

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Apr 012019
 

 

“Avant-garde” might not be the first adjective that springs to most people’s minds in thinking about Deiphago. “Bestial”, “violent”, and “Satanic” might come first. But this band’s music completely fits the definition of “avant-garde”, which applies to works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox, characterized by nontraditional aesthetic innovation and a dedication to pushing the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm.

All of those qualities apply to Deiphago’s music, but never more so than in the case of their new album I, The Devil. Of course, the music is also bestial, violent, and Satanic. And of all the songs on this remarkable new album, perhaps none of them captures all these sensations as powerfully as the title track, which we present today in advance of the record’s April 30 release by Hells Headbangers. Continue reading »

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