Islander

WARDRUNA: “BIRNA”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Jan 292025
 

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile prepared the following extensive discussion of Wardruna‘s just-released new album Birna.)

Bears have been a constant presence in our minds, stories, and myths from the times undreamed of. It was those first encounters between our ancestors and the majestic dwellers of the forest that shaped our very understanding of nature. For the bears, so perfectly aligned with the changes of the seasons, were like a beacon that shone its light on our wandering hearts and thus setting us on a path of revelation, a path from which we have strayed away in our complacency. Time has come again to take the road less traveled and return to the shade of the trees and the rustling of the leaves.

If there is one band in existence today that we would call upon to take us back into nature’s realm, there is no other better candidate than Wardruna. This Norwegian force of (and for) nature needs no particular introduction, as they have forged their own blazing trail from the noctilucent North into the hearts of the world. Their Runaljod trilogy is a towering achievement in modern music and serves both as an inspiration to many and as a reminder that we belong to the Earth and not the other way around.

Released on January 24th by Sony Music and By Norse Music, the sixth studio album by the band is called Birna and sees their mastermind Einar Selvik reaching for inspiration deep into the dens and the burrows of the earth where the hibernating bears dream on their moss-covered beds. The concept behind the album is best described by the band itself: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 19): SPIDER GOD, SUMMONING SATURN VOIDS, THE BLEAK PICTURE

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Jan 282025
 

(written by Islander)

Welcome to Part 19 of this nearly-finished infectious song list. Although I’ve had some “organizing principles” for the most recent installments, I can’t say I had one for the grouping of today’s three songs, apart from the fact that all three of these got stuck in my head the first time I heard them and they have remain rooted there ever since.

To check out the 53 songs preceding these 3 on the list, use this link. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CARTILAGE — “FROTHED VOMIT SLOSH”

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Jan 282025
 

(written by Islander)

If you see people like these, your first impulse (a sensible one) would be to run first, ask questions later. And you absolutely should run, as fast as you can, but toward their music, not away from it.

Take it from me, a first-hand observer of the unhinged Cartilage performance in Seattle at the 2022 edition of Northwest Terror Fest, their live shows are about as much hell-raising fun as you could want. Their recorded music is kickass too. When we premiered their second album The Deader the Better (also in 2022), I spewed a lot of words, including these:

Cartilage discharge songs that slash like serial killers, convulse in seizures, sear like an acetylene torch, maul like bulldozers, and lurch like zombies (the slow ones, not the fast ones), and as crazed and kaleidoscopic as the songs usually are, they’re cleverly embedded with hook-y melodies and head-moving grooves.

On top of all that, Cartilage manage to make the tracks feel feral even though it quickly becomes evident that all the instrumentalists have got lots of top-shelf technical chops (enough to make prog and tech-death bands jealous) and a sense of twisted adventurousness in the way they write songs.

But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the dependably tasteful Everlasting Spew Records, who signed Cartilage for the release of their new EP, Tales From The Entrails: A Necrology. Here’s how the label introduces this new feast of frenzy: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 18): THY CATAFALQUE, HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, SEAR BLISS

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 272025
 

(written by Islander)

If you were with us when I started rolling out this list 26 days ago, then you know I’m going to call a halt to it on January 31st. That makes this the last week, with five installments left to go — though there are rumors that Andy Synn and DGR may prepare addendums that include favorites of theirs which I didn’t get to.

This week will be a disappointment to me and to many of you, not because the songs will be disappointments but because my self-imposed deadline will force me to leave out a lot of songs that deserve this kind of recognition.

Today’s group of three leans into black metal (among many other things), though the songs differ significantly from each other — and they are all out of the ordinary. To see the other songs on the list so far, this link will take you to all of them. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PRAETORIAN — “PYLON CULT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jan 272025
 

(written by Islander)

At the end of this month APF Records will release Pylon Cult, the debut album by Praetorian from Hertfordshire in the UK. The label describes the album this way:

A new lesson in vile, disgusting and gruesome blackened sludge metal, mixed in a volatile cocktail of death metal, thrash and hardcore. Praetorian are here to take you on a wild ride with an album that fluctuates between hi-octane energy, colossal doomy riffs, a savage dual-vocal attack and insane tempo changes, all culminating in a violent, nightmarish thrill ride.

That provides a faithful description of the brutalizing but mind-bending sonic nihilism provided by Pylon Cult — a title that comes from contemporary British author David Southwell’s imagined county Hookland, in which a so-called cult begin to worship pylons in order to harness their energy.

But we have our own thoughts to share about this ruthless but consistently fascinating album — in addition to the main attraction, which is our premiere of a full album stream today. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JANUARY 2025

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 272025
 

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo helps us kick off the New Year with reviews and recommendations of four albums released this month.)

Beyond being miserably cold and generally lacking in the “stuff to do” department, January is customarily the month of pure crap. Big-screen movie releases are usually garbage. Music releases tend to be few and far between, and bands tend to (wisely) avoid touring due to the weather. Nobody wants a broken-down trailer in rural Nebraska at 4 a.m. in subzero temperatures with all your gear stuck in it.

So given all that, I was fully prepared to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for this month’s column. Evidently, this January is built differently.

Not only do I already have almost 60 songs on my best-of-year Spotify playlist, but I had to narrow this column down to just a few bands I wanted to include. Separate reviews of other unexpectedly awesome shit may follow – granted, if my fellow NCS scribes don’t beat me to it. (Which is likely.)

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CONAN, GREY AURA, SEPULCHRAL CURSE, NITE, DEATH OBVIOUS, ABRAXAS HORN (AND MORE)

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 252025
 

(written by Islander)

In the early part of this month, as the old year moved into the new, the volume of new album announcements and new songs subsided. For people like those of us at NCS, things got kind of slow and comfortable.

Well, of course that turned out to be comparable to a “negative storm surge,” a phenomenon in which waves recede before a typhoon strikes, the water being pulled away from the coast by the storm’s low pressure system before the ocean comes rushing back when the typhoon strikes in full force.

Which is what is now happening in the music we pay attention to. Everything is in full force, and I’m drowning in new music. I know it gets repetitive and possibly mind-numbing when I share the count, but I’ve got more than 60 open tabs on my computer, each one linked to a song that came out just this past week which I was curious to check out in planning today’s column, on top of a lot more from last week.

Obviously, I didn’t listen to all of them. Obviously, I wouldn’t have liked all of them if I had. I liked the ones below that I did get to. How did I get to them within that great mass of tabs? I admit I gravitated to bands I’ve liked in the past — though I did take a few shots in the dark that also paid off. And I decided to add some music at the end without commentary (due to vanishing time).

P.S. In the early evening I’m going to an annual party in Seattle across the water from my home. I’m sure that if I make it back home, it won’t be until close to 2 am. I’m also sure I won’t make any effort to wake up before noon on Sunday, and will be woozy when I do. So, don’t expect a SHADES OF BLACK column this weekend (I won’t have enough time to pull it together before leaving home this afternoon). Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 17): DISENTOMB, WESTON SUPER MAIM, HYPERDONTIA

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2024  No Responses »
Jan 242025
 

(written by Islander)

Welcome to Part 17 of this still-expanding list, which ends this week’s rollout and paves the way toward one final sequence next week. I again had an idea of why I thought these three songs would fit together. It’s not that they’re all the same (far from it), but I still detected some kinship among them: an amalgamation of brute-force brutishness and other manifestations of head-scrambling extravagance.

In case you haven’t explored the songs in the preceding 16 Parts, you can find all of them via this link.

DISENTOMB

We didn’t get a new Disentomb album last year, but we did get a very arresting EP named Nothing Above. It was the subject of an Andy Synn review, and another review by DGR in the context of him putting the EP on his year-end list. I’ll excerpt from both: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: INSANITY CULT — “WHISPERING DEPTHS”

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Jan 242025
 

(written by Islander)

After a long six years or so, we at last have a chance for a reunion with the aptly named Green black metal band Insanity Cult. That’s roughly the extent of time that has elapsed since their last album, All Shall Return to Chaos, and their subsequent split (Contemplation in Discordance) with Void Omnia.

The occasion for the reunion is a new Insanity Cult album named Κάθοδος, which will be released on February 28th by the Chilean label Tragedy Productions, in collaboration with Order of Antinomianism, the circle of which Insanity Cult is a member along with such bands as Isolert, Sørgelig and Sores.

What we have for you today is the premiere of a song from the album named “Whispering Depths.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SHAGOR — “HERSIELINGH”

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Jan 242025
 

(written by Islander)

In 2020 the Dutch black metal band Shagor made their recording debut with an album named Sotteklugt. I was bowled over by it. As I wrote in my review: “This is one of my true favorites among all the black metal albums I’ve heard this year, and I don’t think my affection for it will fade, even a little, as time passes.”

Roughly five years later Shagor are returning with a second album named Lyksalver, which will be co-released by Vendetta Records and Swarte Yssel on February 8th. They have floored me again, and I think will floor many of you too – though the better metaphor would be more like getting hurled into the Sun. Continue reading »

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