Islander

LAHMIA: “RESILIENCE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 132019
 

 

(Here’s TheMadIsraeli‘s enthusiastic review of the new album by the Italian melodic death metal band Lahmia, which was released on January 18 of this year by.)

 

I’ve been intensely busy and my attention diverted elsewhere, which sunk my original review plans.  Expect multi-reviews in the future for catch-up purposes.  However, I want to highlight today’s subject in particular.

I think it’s pretty hard for any sane metalhead to hate Amon Amarth. They are one of metal’s most consistent darlings; their brand of Viking-themed melodic death metal has been a staple of the genre for quite some time. Although, with that said, I think most people who like Amon Amarth aren’t Amon Amarth FANS who like the band’s whole discography from beginning to end.

When most people think of the band, there are probably many who first remember their run of albums from 2002 to 2008 — that being Versus The World, Fate Of Norns, With Oden On Our Side, and Twilight Of The Thunder God.  A lot of the band’s live-set staples, the majority, come from these four albums, and it’s the sound we most often associate with them.

There’s definitely a collective sense that Amon Amarth have been running out of gas since then.  Surtur Rising, Deceiver Of The Gods, and Jomsviking, while all good, didn’t hit the inspired, firing-on-all cylinders feeling that the previously mentioned albums did.  I’m not putting too much blame on the band for this — Amon Amarth is TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, and fatigue of their own sound and diminishing returns are bound to set in. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TOTALITARIAN — “LIBERATORS”

 Premieres  11 Responses »
Mar 122019
 

 

Between about 1930 and 1945, in an area of Europe that included eastern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic republics, approximately 14 million innocent people were shot, gassed, or intentionally starved to death. As if in the most grotesque competition imaginable, Stalin and Hitler shared responsibility for the mass slaughter, and more than half of it occurred outside the Nazi gas chambers and death camps, often in more obscure circumstances, in villages and the countryside. Both Jews and non-Jews were shot to death by the millions, simply penned like animals and deprived of food, or otherwise forced into famine. The scale is unimaginable; in Belarus alone, one quarter of its population were killed as a result of the convergence of these two brutal, totalitarian regimes.

The details of these mass  exterminations were gathered together by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in a well-reviewed and award-winning 2010 book named Bloodlands – Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. To write it, he assembled an enormous mass of fresh research on Soviet and Nazi murder, much of it emerging from archives once sealed behind the Iron Curtain, and some of it his own, in order to produce, as one reviewer put it, “something like a final and definitive account” of these terrors. Continue reading »

AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PUTREVORE AND GRIM FATE

 Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 122019
 

 

The corroded iron gates of a cavernous stinking crypt have been wrenched open, releasing into our world a hideous spectacle of shambling ghouls and hungering horrors, revealing visions of suppurating decay and blood-lusting mayhem. Ancient avatars of death metal darkness have been given new life again, and this time we have Putrevore and Grim Fate to thank for a renewal of our odious pleasures.

The first of those names has been reverberating in the dank caverns of the underground for more than a decade, combining the talents of people whose fame is older still, while the second name is new but destined to spread quickly by word of mouth. They have joined forces in a new 7″ split release that Dawnbreed Records and Seed of Doom Records will discharge on March 15th, and it would be hard to think of a better gift on the Ides of March for addicts of monstrous death metal. You’ll discover that for yourselves right now, because we have a stream of both tracks below. Continue reading »

CEREMONY OF SILENCE: “OÚTIS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 122019
 

 

(Vonlughlio prepared this review of the new album by the Slovakian blackened death metal band Ceremony of Silence.)

It’s been quite a bit since my last small write-up and I was planning on something else, but I needed to write about Ceremony of Silence‘s debut album Oútis, to be released via Willowtip Records on April 5th.

The project is guitarist Vilozof and drummer Svjatogor – both already deeply-rooted in the Slovakian underground metal scene – who formed Ceremony of Silence in 2015. The duo spent countless hours immersed in freeflowing, improvised jams and writing sessions. As they continued, they developed the 7 chapters of this effort, which can be described as death metal with a dissonant/atmospheric feel that is evident, with blast beats that emerge rapidly out of nowhere and riffs that are in constant motion and very addictive. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GRYLLE, KALA, DREAMS OF THE DROWNED, DISPYT, THREE DEAD FINGERS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Mar 112019
 

 

There might be one or two people out there who landed on the second part of yesterday’s SHADES OF BLACK column within the first 60 seconds after I posted it, before I realized I’d forgotten to delete links to the music of two more bands I had intended to include in that segment. I ran out of time yesterday before I could write about those other two releases, but I’ve decided to go ahead and do that now, on this Monday morning.

And, because most of you probably don’t live by black metal alone, or at all, I’ve added a couple of other things I’ve been meaning to recommend from other genres. But before we get to all that, I couldn’t resist beginning this round-up with something I discovered at the last minute. Perhaps you’ll understand my impulsiveness once you’ve heard it.

GRYLLE

Fans of medieval black metal (of which I’m one) have a lot to be thankful for this year, though we haven’t even reached springtime yet. February brought us Par le Sang Versé by the French band Véhémence, which I described in my review and premiere as “one of the most thoroughly entrancing and gloriously vibrant metal albums I’ve heard in years”, and in May Debemur Morti Productions will release an exceptional new album by Sühnopfer (if you pay attention to us this week, you might get to hear something from it). And in April the same label that released Par le Sang Versé (Antiq Records) will bring us a new album by Grylle. Continue reading »

DEVIN TOWNSEND: “EMPATH”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Mar 112019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of Devin Townsend‘s new album, which will be released on March 29th by InsideOut Music.)

As much as we like to think of ourselves as being a cut above the average consumer of “popular” music, the truth is that the Metal scene is just as vulnerable to the same trends and biases, the same prejudices and predispositions, as any other style of music.

One of the most obvious (and most egregious) is our collective tendency to buy into the pervasive “cult of personality” surrounding certain artists, and become unwilling/unable to offer or accept even the slightest criticism of their work, sometimes to the extent of responding to even the mildest suggestion of fault with the sort of overblown outrage that serves mainly to remind people that the term “fan” is derived from the word “fanatic”.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that there’s no requirement that if you like a band/artist that you have to like everything they do.

But, as long as it’s done well, with honesty and integrity, you should at least be able to respect it.

Which, coincidentally (or not), is exactly the position I find myself in with Empath. Continue reading »

GET TO THE POINT: VAN GIMOT (AGOS, VIRUS OF KOCH)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Mar 112019
 

 

(More than two years have passed since Floridian NCS contributor KevinP last delivered to us an episode of his series of brief interviews, which he calls “Get To the Point“. But today he revives the series in a conversation with Greek musician/vocalist Van Gimot, the creative force behind both Virus of Koch and Agos, two entities whose music blends black and death metal, and other ingredients, in different ways.)

 

K:  So people might know you from Virus of Koch.  But the last few years you’ve worked on Agos almost exclusively.  Why?

V:  Regarding my music, I tend to go with the flow. I don’t force anything. I focused on Agos simply because it inspired me and let me channel my creativity and thoughts at this particular time. Agos and V. O. K. are two distinctive entities in my mind serving different needs of expression. Currently, I am working on V. O. K. material as I feel the time is right. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): HORCRUX, AT DUSK

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Mar 102019
 

 

The first Part of today’s column focused on individual advance tracks from forthcoming albums. This second Part includes brief reviews of two complete albums. There’s a full stream of the first one included below, and half of the songs from the second one. Both records display the more depressive colors of the black metal spectrum, though they’re more similar in mood than in sound — and both are gripping achievements.

HORCRUX

Released on March 8th, Loss and Grief is the second album by the Dutch black metal band Horcrux, but my own first exposure to their music. Actually, I should say “his music”, because it appears to be a one-person project.

As the album’s title suggests, the music is suffused with shades of gloom, which range from throes of painful turmoil to a kind of dismal, glowering hopelessness, from the tension of despair to the moaning exhalations of bereavement. as well as moments that betray a soulful yearning. Horcrux creates those moods through music that cross-breeds a range of styles — black metal of course, but also doom, sludge, and atmospheric post-metal. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): DEIPHAGO, SXUPERION, CALYX, VOËMMR

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Mar 102019
 

 

I didn’t lose an hour of sleep last night. I just feel less moronic because I woke up at 4:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning instead of 3:30 a.m. Thank you Daylight Savings Time.

Of course, I’ll still feel like shit when it hits me around mid-afternoon that I only got 5 1/2 hours of sleep on one of the few nights of the week when I could have gotten 8 or 9. On the other hand, being awake so early does mean that I have extra time for this Sunday column, enough extra time that I can write a two-parter before having to deal with the rest of my life. Hopefully, my moronic misery becomes your savage pleasure.

DEIPHAGO

Deiphago describe their music as “Experimental Hyper-speed Satanic Bestial Metal” — and every word of that is true. As I’ve written before, their music doesn’t sound like anything else you’re likely to find in the realms of black metal or black/death. It viciously shoves us out of our musical comfort zones; it’s likely to leave most listeners bewildered and bedazzled (or at least severely unbalanced). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, MARTYRDOD, GOMORRAH, CIRITH GORGOR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 092019
 

 

I had a weird 24 hours that began Thursday night and ended last night. Not weird enough to be entertaining if described in detail (though it did involve me never making it home until Friday morning), but weird enough that it left me frantically scrambling just to write the two premieres I’d committed to do yesterday, and no time for anything else NCS-related.

Saturday morning arrived with no ideas about what I might do for a Saturday post (and no Waxing Lyrical from Mr. Synn), but it turned out that my NCS comrades had left various exclamatory pieces of news at our on-line meeting ground, and another friend had enthusiastically fired off a link in my direction, and all of that proved quite sufficient for this round-up.

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

It would go too far to say that we are primed to reflexively shower every Fleshgod Apocalypse release with praise. We have pointed out a few mis-steps by the band here and there. But it’s also true that we get pretty excited whenever something new surfaces (years and years ago there was a running joke at the site that as soon as I finally received the great mountains of gold that Nigerian princes were offering me via e-mail, I would bribe FA to become the NCS house band and play at my home whenever I wanted, which might prove to be every other day). Continue reading »

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