Islander

SHADES OF BLACK: CHAPEL OF DISEASE, MISOTHEIST, HAUSTIÐ, CNTMPT, VANANIDR

 SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Nov 252018
 

 

For reasons that I’ll explain in a subsequent post today — reasons that will also probably diminish the volume of content at our site over the next two weeks — I’ve written this week’s edition of SHADES OF BLACK hurriedly. As is always true, I picked this week’s selections because I really like them and believe most of you will too, but today I don’t have as much time to explain why. The bands, however, convincingly speak for themselves through their music.

CHAPEL OF DISEASE

This German death metal band established themselves as a force to be reckoned with through their first two albums, Summoning Black Gods (2012) and The Mysterious Ways of Repetitive Art (2015). Their new album, …And As We Have Seen The Storm, We Have Embraced The Eye, will only elevate their already-respected status. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: DEATH KARMA, ULVDALIR, HANORMALE, PROLIFERHATE, BATTALIONS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Nov 242018
 

 

I didn’t really listen to these songs for the first time today. It was actually last night, though I did listen to them again on this Saturday morning, just to make sure that the vodka in my system on the previous evening hadn’t warped my judgment. I concluded it hadn’t, even if it might have super-heated an already warm reaction.

I like the way this playlist of new music and videos flows, even without the vodka lubricant, though it won’t put you in a single headspace and let you linger there for very long. It starts in ravaging and ravishing fashion, shifts into much more bewildering and cerebral gears, and then just rocks out.

DEATH KARMA

Thanks to a tip from my Norwegian fiend friend eitororm, I learned that the Czech band Death Karma, who share a couple of members (Vladimír Pavelka and Tom Coroner) with Cult of Fire, will be releasing a new album, The History of Death & Burial Rituals Part 2, TODAY on CD (and digitally on November 26th). Continue reading »

BEYOND CREATION / GOROD / ENTHEOS – LIVE IN BIRMINGHAM 23/11/18

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 242018
 


Gorod (in Prague, not Birmingham)

 

(Andy Synn spent last night at the Asylum in Birmingham, England, enjoying performances by Beyond Creation, Gorod, and Entheos, and has quickly provided the following report and videos.)

Despite how stultifyingly stressful this week has been for the most part, yesterday turned out to be a pretty good day all in all, as things at work took a major turn towards the positive, while the evening found me taking a trip over to Birmingham to catch three (out of four) great bands of the “technical” persuasion. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DETH CRUX — “CHROME LIPS”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 232018
 

 

Three years on from their Pears of Anguish demo tape, the L.A.-based deathrock shape-shifters Deth Crux are returning with their debut album, Mutant Flesh, set for imminent release on December 7th through the collaboration of Sentient Ruin Laboratories (U.S.) and the Italian labels Legion of the Dead and Aural Music. “Chrome Lips” is the name of the ravishing new album track that we’re bringing you today.

While we normally resist parroting what labels and PR agents write about the releases they’re promoting, sometimes the verbiage hits the nail on the head so squarely that it’s difficult to resist, and that’s the case here. There is indeed a “chameleon-like approach to post-punk” and gothic rock in the music of Deth Crux, “where beauty and ugliness, seduction and perversion, dream and nightmare interchange constantly and construct the foundation of their sound”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEITUS — “VIA DOLOROSA”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 232018
 

 

Deitus proclaim that “it is through suffering that the fruits of salvation shall be found”, and they have named their new album Via Dolorosa — Latin for “the Way of Suffering” or “the Way of Sorrow”. The words may be best known (at least in certain communities) as the name of the road in the Old City of Jerusalem that Jesus walked in agony toward the place of his crucifixion, but it could equally be considered the path of human life in general. As envisioned in the music of Deitus, pain is inevitable, and yet it can lead to illumination.

The song we present today, which is the new album’s title track, is, in a word, stunning. True to this UK band’s statement of principle, it is a powerful expression of suffering, heart-ache, and transcendence. Continue reading »

BLOODBATH: “THE ARROW OF SATAN IS DRAWN”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 232018
 

 

(Here are DGR’s thoughts about the new album by Bloodbath, which was released on October 26th by Peaceville Records.)

There’s always going to be a certain amount of charm in being self-aware about how “dumb” your music can get sometimes, and glorying in it. There’s an attractive confidence in that when it seems like many bands have to play up how serious they are about how brutal their branch of death metal is, how heavy and violent their noise-unleashing can be. However, when you’re Bloodbath and are a long-established throwback act you can find joy in just how “ridiculous” all of this can be at face value. Continue reading »

A GOD OR AN OTHER: “CHAOTIC SYMBIOSIS”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Nov 222018
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the new second album by A God or an Other, released on November 15th and available now through Bandcamp.)

Continuing along the dark road that this week has driven me down we come to the second album by Olympia, Washington’s own Black Metal mystics A God or an Other, which offers up six tracks of riveting atmosphere and ravenous aggression under the pitiless banner of Chaotic Symbiosis. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NAG — “NAGGED TO DEATH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 222018
 

 

NAG don’t forgive and forget. They hold grudges. They bundle up their misery and rage, and then let it all out in eruptions of sound that are both enlivening and life-threatening. Their new album, Nagged To Death, is a raw musical catharsis that’s bleak, black-eyed, bruising, and bombastic — and a hell of an electrifying thrill-ride from start to finish.

This trio, who’ve taken the names Arnfinn Nag, Espen Nag, and Ørjan Nag, hail and howl from the west coast of Norway, and we’re told that “to find inspiration for the riffs and lyrics of their new album, NAG formed a pact with none other than the Sea Goblin, known for its furious hatred towards all things human”. It seems that the Sea Goblin can take various forms, and it’s one of those guises that’s represented in the illustration by Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914) that appears on the cover of this new album. Like that imagining of the creature, the music is both vile and full of fangs. Continue reading »

A THANKSGIVING BLOOD-LETTING: BLOOD RED THRONE, ALTARAGE, MASTIFF, GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY, DEAD TONGUE, ECHOES OF DEATH, ROTTEN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 222018
 

A few other countries besides the United States have a Thanksgiving holiday, but not many, and none of them except the U.S. celebrates it today. So I guess in the vast majority of the world it’s just another day — and so it is at NCS. We do take a certain amount of pride in refusing to take time off for holidays. I mean, we mention them, and some of us partake of them in our non-blog lives, but at NCS they’re all just days, like all the other days, that give us a chance to give thanks for metal.

The following seven new songs flowed together very well in my head last night. Together they make one head-wrecking playlist of slaughtering sound. And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

BLOOD RED THRONE

The Norwegian wrecking crew Blood Red Throne, whose latest album (Union of Flesh and Machine) our Andy Synn called “yet another top-tier terminator of crushing, grooving, blasting belligerence and cold, calculated aggression”, recently discharged a lyric video for a new song from their next album, Fit To Kill, and that’s how we’ll begin today’s blood-letting. Continue reading »

FEEDING THE DARKNESS (ÆVANGELIST)

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 212018
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn provides reviews of the two albums released this year by the duo known as Ævangelist.)

For various reasons, some personal, some professional, this week has so far been one headache-inducing shitshow that’s left my mood blacker, and bleaker, than a witches’ frozen teat.

And while some people might respond to this by trying to put on a happy face or jamming their most uplifting musical anthems… sometimes that simply doesn’t work.

Sometimes you just have to feed the beast, fuel the fire, and embrace the darkness… which is why, for the last couple of days I’ve been immersing myself in the dissonant, abstract horrorscapes of Ascaris and Matron Thorn, aka Ævangelist. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries