Islander

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEADLY CARNAGE — “THROUGH THE VOID, ABOVE THE STARS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 262018
 

 

Space is still the final frontier. We gaze with our own eyes into the sparkled black vault of the night sky or peer more closely through telescopes, and there we see the undiscovered immensity of our past and the harbingers of our future looking back at us, producing a sense of wonder, awe, and perhaps fear.

Metal bands across a wide range of genres have taken the cosmos as their subject matter, and tried to express in different ways through their music the different perspectives and emotions spawned by consideration of the universe and our own tiny, fleeting place within it. Within that spectrum of sounds, Italy’s Deadly Carnage have take their own place with Through the Void, Above the Stars, a new album that will be released through A Sad Sadness Song on March 30. We present a full stream today, preceded by these thoughts about what they’ve created: Continue reading »

MOURNFUL CONGREGATION: “THE INCUBUS OF KARMA”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Mar 262018
 

 

(Our friend Vonlughlio from the Dominican Republic wrote the following review of the new album by Australia’s Mournful Congregation, which was released last Friday by 20 Buck Spin.)

 

Today as I write this, the 23rd of March, is the release date of Mournful Congregation’s The Incubus of Karma. I discovered them via their 2005 sophomore release, The Monad of Creation (which is my favorite release of theirs), and the seven-year wait for a new full-length has proved to be worth it. They did a fantastic work with this release.

For this small write-up I wanted to take some needed time to listen to all their catalogue (from the first album up to the new one). I like to do this after listening to the current release. I find it interesting to discover how a band’s sound has evolved (or not). I want to be able to make an overall assestment of the band’s work and to put a stamp on my favorite albums, and also to read the lyrics and the stories behind them, or to reflect on what I come up with in my head to make sense of them. Continue reading »

SLAVES BC: “LO, AND I AM BURNING”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 262018
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Slaves BC from Pittsburgh, which was released digitally and on vinyl on March 16th.)

Those of you who have been following the site for a while may be aware that Death Mask, the third (and, ultimately, final) album by blackened metallic filthmongers Lord Mantis was one of my favourite releases of 2014, and remains one of my most listened to albums to this day.

But the acrimonious collapse of the line-up which gave birth to that record, followed a few years later by the sad passing of drummer Bill Bumgardner (and the subsequent final dissolution of the band) meant that any hopes of ever receiving a similarly scathing and spite-fuelled follow-up were dashed forever.

In the intervening years between then and now I’ve kept my eyes and ears open for a band/album capable of hitting that same sick spot (with Phantom Winter coming closest), but had never found anyone capable of sending that same sadistic shiver down my spine… until now. Continue reading »

A REPORT ON NETHERLANDS DEATHFEST 2018

 Concert Reviews  7 Responses »
Mar 262018
 

 

(Norway-based metal writer Karina Noctum went to Netherlands Deathfest on March 2-4, 2018. She wrote to us about her experiences. She probably had no thought that this would turn us a radioactive shade of green with envy, but all things have unintended consequences. She also arranged to have her words accompanied by a sequence of brilliant photos by Niels Vinck, also probably without any desire to stoke the putrid fires of jealousy in those of us who weren’t there, but strengthening the conviction that we damned well better go next year.) 

DAY 1

My journey from the frostbitten lands of Norway started pretty early. 4 am on friday. I arrived in Amsterdam after some hours and a trouble-free flight, this being the usual for Scandinavian airlines that boast of being the most punctual in Europe.

The cool thing about The Netherlands is that every trip to another city from Amsterdam seems to be within a range of no more than one-two hours. After wandering a bit in Amsterdam, I took the train to Tilburg through the somewhat boring landscape (the landscape of every other country in Europe seems boring on the surface if you live in Norway).

I planned everything for the fest a bit too late and found no accommodation other than a private house on Air B&B. I was both lucky to have found a place at all and kinda unlucky that the owners, in addition to being circus artists, were also nudists. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): NIGHTGRAVE, GYRE OF INCANDESCENTS, TRAUTONIST, ELÄNDE, NORNAHETTA

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Mar 252018
 

 

The second part of this Sunday’s SHADES OF BLACK post, which I began here, includes a lot of music — four complete releases. The last of them isn’t as “hot off the presses” as most of what I choose for these columns. But you’ll understand why I picked it when you get there.

NIGHTGRAVE

If the name Nightgrave is familiar, it might be because I’ve written some very positive impressions in this column about both Nightgrave’s last album Echo (2017) and the one before that, Futures, (also 2017). Not one to let much grass grow under his feet, Nightgrave’s creator (Sushant Rawat, aka Nium, from New Delhi, India) has already released another album. This one, entitled Nascent, appeared on February 14. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ALTAR OF PERVERSION, NIGREDO, HÄXENZIJRKELL, MORTUUS UMBRA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Mar 252018
 

 

One benefit of Andy Synn’s new Waxing Lyrical series as a regular Saturday post at NCS is that it has freed me to do other things, since I no longer feel compelled to concoct something of my own on Saturdays. Most “normal” people might take advantage of the opportunity to indulge in slothfulness. It seems that my own “abnormality” instead leads to two-part SHADES OF BLACK posts on Sunday.

ALTAR OF PERVERSION

The most recent interview posted at the on-line edition of Bardo Methodology was an especially thought-provoking one, a discussion by proprietor Niklas Göransson with Calus, one of the two men behind the Italian black metal band Altar of Perversion. The on-line version of the interview is only an excerpt from a much longer and even more in-depth conversation in the print edition of Bardo Methodology #3, which I will be anxious to read when my copy arrives in the mail.

What I read on-line revived some of my own lines of thought about the intellectual and emotional inspirations and underpinnings of black metal, which I might finally decide to write about in the near future. But it also contains a fascinating segment on the audio frequency of 432 Hertz (referred to as “Pythagorean tuning” when applied to the tuning of musical instruments) and its connections to nature, as well as its numerical synchronicities with a host of ancient writings and esoteric teachings. Continue reading »

WAXING LYRICAL: WITHERED

 Interviews, WAXING LYRICAL  No Responses »
Mar 242018
 


Withered 2018 – photo by David Parham

 

(In this week’s edition of Waxing Lyrical, Andy Synn elicits thoughts about lyrics from Withered guitarist/vocalist Mike Thompson.)

 

If you don’t know the name Withered by now, stop what you’re doing and go listen to their latest oppressive opus Grief Relic (which I hailed as one of the best albums of 2016) right now.

Then, if you want to delve further back into the band’s discography, go check out Memento Mori, Folie Circulaire, and Dualitas, which I have fortuitously collected together for you here.

Now, despite being busy prepping for the band’s upcoming tour with Canadian grindmeisters Wake (which, by this point, will actually have begun), I was lucky enough to grab some time with the band’s long-serving guitarist/vocalist Mike Thompson and bully him into answering some questions for the latest edition of Waxing Lyrical. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CAVUS — “DIVINE POWER”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 232018
 

 

A long eight years have passed since the Finnish black metal band Cavus released their debut album Fester and Putrefy though the French label Listenable Records. Various difficulties delayed the completion of a second album, but the work is now done… and time has clearly not diminished Cavus‘ hunger for blood, fire, disease, and death.

The new album is named The New Era, and delivers 10 tracks and more than 40 minutes of mauling savagery. We have one of those tracks for you to hear today in advance of the album’s release on April 11 by Satanath Records (Russia) and Final Gate Records (Germany). “Divine Power” is its name Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ULTAR — “SWARM”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 232018
 

 

In the late summer of 2016 we had the good fortune to premiere a song and accompanying video for a track from the debut album by the band Ultar from Siberian Russia. That song — “Azathoth” — left such a lasting impression that we also named it to our list of 2016’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. And it wasn’t the only song on that very promising debut album (Kadath) that left positive lasting impressions.

Today we’re happy to report that Ultar are returning with a second album later this year. The working title is Pantheon MMXVIII, and it will be released by the Swedish label Temple of Torturous in both vinyl and digital formats. In addition to that news, we’re presenting a stream of one of the new album tracks, the name of which is “Swarm“. Continue reading »

THE ABSENCE: “A GIFT FOR THE OBSESSED”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 232018
 

 

(Today M-Theory Audio releases the first new album by The Absence since 2010’s Enemy Unbound, and here we present Andy Synn’s review along with a full stream of the album.)

 

Let’s get one thing clear right away – while Riders of the Plague, the second album by Floridian firebrands The Absence, is a bona fide underground classic, the band’s erratic follow-up, Enemy Unbound, singularly failed to capitalise on the critical acclaim and momentum generated by its predecessor, and the subsequent array of label woes and line-up changes certainly didn’t help matters either.

Thankfully, the general consensus appears to be that the group’s long-awaited fourth album, A Gift for the Obsessed, is a more than worthy sequel to Riders…, even if I’ve have seen more than a few writers/reviewers bemoaning the fact that the band haven’t massively changed or updated their style and still sound like “an American version of Arch Enemy.”

But while this comparison isn’t necessarily invalid – their penchant for thrashy, high-octane riffs, adrenaline-pumping drums, and shamelessly infectious hooks certainly shares more than a few similarities with the works of Amott and co. from before they became a toothless parody of themselves – it’s also not necessarily a bad thing.

After all, the overall decline of the Melodeath/Melodic Death Metal scene worldwide has left behind something of a void, which The Absence seem more than happy to fill with their vintage-yet-visceral brand of melody-infused metallic mayhem. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries