Islander

AN NCS PREMIERE: GAEREA — “ENDLESS LAPSE”

 Premieres  6 Responses »
Aug 042017
 

 

Last November Everlasting Spew Records released one of 2016’s best EPs, the self-titled debut release by a Portuguese black metal band named Gaerea. We featured music from that EP repeatedly at our site, both before and after its release (including a post in which we named “Void of Numbness” to our list of the year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“).

As promised last fall, Everlasting Spew is now releasing Gaerea in a vinyl edition — and the vinyl includes a bonus track that doesn’t appear on the earlier CD and digital versions. That track is “Endless Lapse“, and it’s our privilege to premiere not only the song but also a riveting video through which the music is presented. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: EXOCYTOSIS — “A LABORIOUS DIGESTION (MORSEL 1)”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 042017
 

 

If you don’t know (and I certainly didn’t), exocytosis is a process by which cells expel certain molecular substances outside the cell membrane and into the extracellular environment. Exocytosis is also the name chosen by a band of miscreants from Höör, Sweden, as the vehicle by which they expel their own twisted conceptions into the auditory canals of unsuspecting and ill-prepared listeners.

The band’s new EP is named Endogenous Organism. It will be excreted into the world on August 25, and we are aiding in the transmission of the disease through a premiere of the EP’s opening track, a mad piece called “A Laborious Digestion (Morsel 1)“. Continue reading »

DVNE: “ASHERAN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  7 Responses »
Aug 042017
 

 

(We present Andy Synn’s review of the new album by the Scottish band DVNE, released on July 28 by Wasted State Records.)

You know what really grinds my gears?

Seeing/hearing people bleat on about how “there’s just no good new music out there anymore”, when, in truth, it’s never been simpler or easier to find something that caters to your specific tastes.

It’s a particularly frustrating attitude when you consider that the discovery of new music, whether on purpose or by accident, can be one of life’s great joys, and seeing people make such sweeping, and ill-informed statements – blithely dismissing, through their own ignorance/arrogance the absolute wealth of impressive, imaginative, and downright inspiring artists and albums out there – just pisses me off no end.

Of course I can kind of understand it if you’re used to simply passively consuming whatever you’re spoonfed by tv or radio – there’s only so much of the same shit that you can swallow after all, and only so many times you can regurgitate the same pre-chewed “opinions” before you actually make yourself sick – but the fact remains that it only takes about five minutes these days to find something new and exciting online.

Heck, sometimes it’s not even that hard. Sometimes you just stumble upon something that blows you away entirely by accident. Like I did a few months ago when I came across DVNE. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLINDFOLDED AND LED TO THE WOODS — “LICKING A LANDMINE”

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Aug 032017
 

 

There’s a particular alignment of talents on display in the song you’re about to hear, and the successful execution of a strategy that usually attracts fans of metal extremity like iron filings to a magnet, but seems to repel (or at least mystify) more tender listeners: “Licking A Landmine” combines a staggering level of brute-force destructiveness with a brain-twisting brand of freakishness, and yet it manages to be catchy. At least to people like us, even after this landmine goes off and converts the listener’s head to smoking rubble, you want to lick it again.

“Licking A Landmine” is a track from Modern Adoxography, the second album by New Zealand’s Blindfolded And Led To The Woods. It’s set for release on Friday the 13th of October, timed to closely precede the band’s performances in Wellington on October 24th and Auckland on October 25th in support of the final New Zealand tour by The Dillinger Escape Plan. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ARALLU — “ADONAY”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 032017
 

 

It’s not uncommon to hear wisps of traditional Middle Eastern music in extreme metal — or at least what most of us in the West would identify as Middle Eastern music based on some kind of passing experience (putting to one side that Middle Eastern music spans an enormous breadth of territory and cultures, from Morocco to Iran).

In many instances, the incorporation of such melodies by Western bands seems intended to create an exotic atmosphere (or at least exotic to Western ears), or in some cases a sense of ancient demonic forces looming in the shadows, or a feeling that the listener is in the presence of pagan rituals or arcane forms of mysticism that pre-date today’s dominant forms of monotheism by millennia.

But very few metal bands go as far as Arallu in making Middle Eastern musical traditions the beating heart of their compositions. You will hear the extent of their dedication in the song we’re premiering today, the third track from their new album, Six, a song called “Adonay“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: COLOSSO — “IN MEMORIAM”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 022017
 

 

Last September the Portuguese death metal band Colosso released their second album under the title Obnoxious, which refers not to the sound of the music but to the lyrical focus of the songs — “the extreme void of society, a black hole created by egos, profit and chaos.” In advance of that release we premiered a lyric video for the album’s second track, “The Unrepentant“, and today it’s our pleasure to premiere yet another Colosso video. This one is for the album’s opening song, “In Memoriam“.

When we debuted “The Unrepentent”, I asked you to imagine the combined, coordinated sounds of a giant threshing machine applying its ministrations to a packed mass of fleeing bodies, a titanic rock crusher operating at tumultuous speed in a smoking quarry, and swarms of mechanical xenomorphs at war in an uncomfortably near-Earth orbit — because those were the visions that the song spawned in my own head. I have some different mental pictures this time. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: REBEL WIZARD, THE KING IS BLIND, OWLCRUSHER, VOIDSCAPE, PROJECT OMEGA, NESSERIA, THE INVICT, VOREAN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 022017
 

 

Well, as you can see, I’ve gotten carried away again.

Here’s a selection of new music by 8 bands, chosen in part to display once again the diversity and promise of extreme music in the current day.

REBEL WIZARD

The sound of Rebel Wizard has now become branded in my head; I would have known this first song was a Rebel Wizard creation even if the music’s source had been concealed. And in an age in which new metal arrives every day in a flood, with so many bands rushing through ravines already carved by their influences, creating a distinctive style and sound is a rare achievement, and even more rare when it’s distinctive despite being difficult to categorize in conventional genre terms. Continue reading »

CENOTAPH: “PERVERSE DEHUMANIZED DYSFUNCTIONS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 022017
 

 

(Vonlughlio returns! With a guest review of the first new album in 7 years by the brutal death metal band from Turkey, Cenotaph.)

Brutal death has been great so far this 2017 (at least for me), with great releases such as those from Animals Killing People, Bacteremia, Dissociative Healing, Seminal Embalmment, Abuse, Coprobaptized Cunthunter, Exsanguinate, Intoxicated Blood, and Interminable Corruptions, to name a few.

What makes it even more special is the release of Cenotaph’s Perverse Dehumanized Dysfunctions after 7 years of silence. This is one of my all-time favorite BDM bands, ever. When they first announced the plan to release new music, I literally shed tears of happiness (yes, I’m not afraid to say it). You have to understand that at that moment in time I thought the band was done and that a new album would never see the light of day. Continue reading »

THE BEST OF BRITISH, 2017 (PART 7): ABHORRENT DECIMATION / DYSCARNATE / SUBSERVIENCE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 022017
 

 

(Here’s the latest installment in Andy Synn’s 2017 series focusing on outstanding releases from Albion.)

For this latest edition of “The Best of British” I’ve picked out three fantastic examples of UK Death Metal at its absolute finest – one a cleverly composed concept album which may well prove to be the band’s “big break”, another a long-awaited and highly-anticipated return from one of the most underappreciated and unfuckwithable acts on the scene, and the third a shockingly good debut that should open a lot of doors and (hopefully) put the band on all the right radars. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RESURGENCE — “BESIEGED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Aug 012017
 

 

When I listened to Besieged for the first time I was left wide-eyed and slack-jawed by the end of just the first track, with a spike in my pulse rate that would have made my doctor anxious, and already wondering how to describe what I was hearing — and already thinking about fireworks displays. By the album’s end I was shaking my head, fairly astonished at this tour de force — and still thinking about fireworks, but also about large-scale demolition jobs and rousing anthems.

Besieged is the remarkable debut album by a group of evil geniuses who dwell in the vicinity of Vancouver, BC. They call themselves Resurgence. The album has been released today — August 1 — and you can listen to it below, preceded by more than a few words of wonderment and genuine appreciation for what these dudes have done. Feel free to skip ahead and press play, I can handle it. Continue reading »

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