Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: COLOSSUS FALL — “DARKNESS SWIRLED AROUND US”

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Dec 212018
 

 

The Swiss band Colossus Fall are making their first appearance at our site today, but they’re hardly new to the scene, having previously released a 2012 EP (Sempervirens), a 2013 split-vinyl with Gacys Threads, and a 2015 debut album (Hidden Into Details), and having performed more than 100 shows in Europe, supporting such high-profile bands as Agnostic Front, Walls of Jericho, Terror, Neurosis, Clutch, and Nostromo. Now, they have a second album named Earthbeat on the horizon, which is set for release by Tenacity Music on January 25th, and that furnishes the occasion for our premiere of a new song: “Darkness Swirled Around Us“.

With a backbone of hard-hitting metallic hardcore, Colossus Fall bring other ingredients into play, including thrash and sludge. This explosive new track bounces and races, bruises and yet is buoyant. It’s a ticket straight to headbang city, it’s brazenly passionate, and it proves to be highly infectious. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: VONLUGHLIO’S TOP BDM ALBUMS OF 2018

 LISTMANIA 2018  3 Responses »
Dec 212018
 

 

(Here’s Vonlughlio’s year-end list of the best brutal death metal albums of 2018.)

So it’s that time of year, and I’m so thankful that Islander lets me post at NCS about BDM, and this list, for about six years or so. With that being said, reader, as you know the genre is one of my favorites and every time I can get the opportunity to share the music and write about the bands in this genre, I take it.

I sure do like other genres as well, but the staff writers and guests here at NCS  do a fantastic job of covering just about everything. So that’s why I focus more on BDM, and I also have Blast Family (FB and Instagram) to share the love. There, my year-end list will expand to 50, and I will include my favorite EPs and Non-BDM albums of the year.

So with no further ado, here are my Top 20 BDM albums of 2018. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VEILBURNER: “AGONY ON REPEAT”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Dec 202018
 

 

Transcending Obscurity Records has been spreading around premieres from the new album by Veilburner in the run-up to its December 28 release, having already deployed three tracks through Toilet Ov Hell, Invisible Oranges, and Heavy Blog Is Heavy. We have yet another one for you today, and even though we come at the end of the line, there’s still a chance that some of you haven’t yet been exposed to the mind-altering effects of this Pennsylvania duo’s latest display of sonic alchemy. If so, now’s your chance.

And by the way, those aren’t empty words — this new album, A Sire To The Ghouls Of Lunacy, really is a thoroughly bewildering yet completely enthralling experience, an experimental rendering of black/death metal that’s not quite like anything else you’ve probably come across this year, and not one you’ll soon forget. It sends shivers down the spine, sets off fireworks behind the eyes, and spins the mind like a flaming top on the verge of careening into smithereens or taking flight like a rocket. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE SCARS IN PNEUMA — “SOULS ARE BURNING”

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Dec 202018
 

 

On February 8th of next year, Promethean Fire (a side-label of Kolony Records focused on black metal) will release The Path of Seven Sorrows, the debut album of the Italian band The Scars In Pneuma. Originally started in early 2017 as the solo project of vocalist/guitarist/bassist Lorenzo Marchello, the line-up was expanded with the addition of guitarist Francesco Lupi and drummer Daniele Valseriati later that same year.

While black metal forms the backbone for Marchello’s compositions, the music morphs into different sonic shapes through the incorporation of ingredients drawn from death metal and doom, and a favoritism for evocative melodies. In other words, strict genre conventions don’t hold much influence here, as you’ll soon discover through our premiere of a song from the new album named “Souls Are Burning“. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: A TOP 10 LIST BY TODD MANNING

 LISTMANIA 2018  6 Responses »
Dec 202018
 

 

(Here’s a Top 10 list for the year by NCS contributor Todd Manning.)

2018, a year of escalating violence, the collapse of logic, and the furthering fall of because. Can we even remember what happened from one week to the next? Narratives battle for your attention like two bikers stabbing each other with rusty screwdrivers. Is this the era Extreme Metal has always sought to narrate? I don’t know, but to paraphrase the Chinese proverb, we are cursed to live in interesting times. Here are the albums that made up my personal soundtrack. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ULVDALIR — “MUSIC OF COLD SPHERES”

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Dec 202018
 

 

With only 11 days left in the old year we’re now being hit by an onslaught of advance tracks from albums destined for release early in the new one. There’s always a risk that excellent records released at the end of the year will be overlooked, and perhaps an equal risk that albums released in the early days of 2019 may be forgotten when year-end lists are assembled next December. However, I’m betting that the new one by the Russian black metal band Ulvdalir, which is set for release by Iron Bonehead Productions on January 25th, won’t be forgotten — it’s just too damned magnificent!

This new full-length, …of Death Eternal, is Ulvdalir‘s fourth album, and their first in eight years. The first sign of its startling extravagance was a song named “Swords of Belial” that surfaced last month, and now we present a second sign, in the form of “Music of Cold Spheres“. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: PITCHFORK’S LIST OF “THE BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2018”

 LISTMANIA 2018  9 Responses »
Dec 202018
 

 

The last time our year-end LISTMANIA series included a “Best Metal” list by Pitchfork was in 2015. I can’t remember why I didn’t include their list in the following two years, but most likely because I just didn’t notice it. This year, my comrade DGR alerted me to the publication of their list of “The Best Metal Albums of 2018“, and so here we are.

Pitchfork obviously qualifies for the part of our series devoted to re-publishing lists by “big platform” cross-genre music sites. Founded in 1995 by recent high school graduate Ryan Schreiber in Minneapolis, it has been based in Chicago since 1999 and has been owned by the Conde Nast conglomerate since 2015. From its humble beginnings, it now boasts an audience of more than 7 million monthly unique visitors.

It’s fair to say that most of those visitors aren’t metalheads. The site’s reputation historically was closely associated with independent underground music, and in the last 10 years their Album of the Year award has gone to Kendrick Lamar three times, as well as other hip-hop artists. This year it went to Japanese-American artist Mitski. But, as you see, Pitchfork also publishes a list of the year’s best metal. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2018: A YEAR-END LIST BY THEMADISRAELI

 LISTMANIA 2018  5 Responses »
Dec 192018
 

 

(NCS writer TheMadIsraeli turns in the following year-end list, consisting of 20 recommended albums.)

I made it a goal to get back to my old writing output on this site in 2018 and it just… didn’t happen.  For good reason mind you, but I do feel somewhat guilty that I wasn’t more active on NCS this year, especially with the way Islander, Andy, and DGR ground the fuck out of their writing this year. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been involved in the back door of the site in ways, and I’ve definitely kept up with music this year pretty competently.

And so, I’m gonna share my top 20 of the year, and the just kind of ramble about my reflections on the music this year. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEFORMATORY — “MYIASIS”

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Dec 192018
 

 

Today — December 19th — CDN Records will release Bilateral Carnage, a new 7″ vinyl split release by a pair of Canadian death metal bands, Ottawa-based Deformatory and Toronto’s Blood of Christ. Deformatory‘s brutal contribution to the split is a track called “Myiasis“, and today we present an unusual music video for the track to accompany the sonic assault.

The song is described as one that “unravels the psychosis of retribution” — dissecting “a victim’s penalty for betrayal in a sickening tale of prolonged suffering”, and it provides a preview of Deformatory‘s direction on their next album, which we’re expecting at some point in 2019. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VETALA — “RETARDED NECRO DEMENTIAL HOLE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  6 Responses »
Dec 192018
 

 

“This album REALLY isn’t for you!” So states the PR material for the new album on the Harvest of Death label by the duo of unrepentant Portuguese extremists in Vetala. The wordsmith in question wasn’t referring to me in particular (at least I don’t think so), but to some broad swath of “critics” who might take offense at an album named Retarded Necro Demential Hole and whose utter depravity could be perceived as a way of taking a shit on good taste and “any and all conceptions of ‘black metal'”.

Of course, I took that as a dare. I mean, most of you know the range of extreme metal that typically forms my own bread and rancid butter. How could it possibly be too transgressive or disgusting for me to swallow? Continue reading »

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