(written by Islander)
We’re about to venture off our usual beaten tracks (the ones we use to beat you with), but not too far off: there still seem to be devils roaming these dark woods where we’re going.
What we have for you now is a lyric video for a song from a debut album named Victory by the Armenian band ARTE-X. It will be released on December 12th by a new Armenian label, Holy Mountains Music. Continue reading »
As you can see, this week’s SOB is very short. I had a late night out with my spouse and friends and a really long hibernation afterward. Also, not long from now, I’ll be heading out again to watch the broadcast of an inconsistent Seattle football team trying to beat a pretty bad New York football team. They’re playing in the East so it’s an early start here in the West.
The upshot is, I don’t have much time to write about music this morning. I thought about not trying to do anything with this column, but man, for 15 years and counting I’ve really hated to leave a void on any day at NCS.
With time short and too many things to choose from, I made the arguably bizarre decision to focus on the three black (or “blackened”) metal bands who e-mailed us most recently about their music – none of whom I knew anything about before listening. Purely by coincidence, all their names begin with “A“. Purely by coincidence, they all turned out to be good, in very different ways. Continue reading »
I have to remind myself that less than half of our visitors had a Thanksgiving Day holiday last Thursday. I checked, and only the U.S. and Brazil celebrated the holiday that day. Here in the U.S. it launched a 4-day holiday, because most people who are relieved from working on Thanksgiving get Friday off too, so it’s a time when lots of people check out of their routines.
It’s not an entirely lazy holiday for a lot of people because the Thanksgiving Day tradition usually involves getting together with family and friends and cooking, and the day after is the ridiculous shopping splurge of Black Friday. But for me, the holiday does make me feel lazy.
I didn’t completely check out of all my routines. We still had lots of NCS posts on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, because I’ve never believed in honoring holidays at our site, and for our writers outside the U.S. those were just two more nothing-special days.
But I admit I did succumb to long bouts of laziness and therefore didn’t listen to much new music the last couple of days. I thought seriously about taking today off from NCS, but as you can see, the old compulsion wouldn’t surrender. Continue reading »
Mantar photo by Sonja Schuringa/Chantik Photography
I have my second miserable cold in two months, and how are you doing? I’ve been focusing on music that I thought would help blast the snot out of my head. I’ve included a lot of that below. I can’t tell that I’ve really come un-clogged, but it has made me feel better in other ways, including providing catharsis for being so pissed off that the virus has hit me again so quickly.
As you can see, I had time enough to do lots of listening and watching yesterday and this morning. As usual, the music from the 10 bands featured below isn’t all I heard and liked, but I had to draw the line somewhere. I moved some of my choices to tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column, and others I hope I’ll get too somewhere down the road. Continue reading »
Unreqvited
(written by Islander)
In Part I of this Saturday’s roundup of new songs and videos I likened the flow of them, as I’ve arranged them, to a river that twists and turns through passages of greater and lesser turbulence and gloom. Now you’ll have a better idea why I wrote that.
In this Part, as compared to Part I, our musical river begins to make a bend into increasingly less turbulent and more haunted environs, though it will prove to be a long curve and not a sudden one — and the river also leaves the earth at first. Continue reading »
Lömsk
There’s again a lot to see and hear today, so much so that I again divided the collection into two Parts, with Part II coming in an hour or two from now. But rather than default to alphabetizing the picks, I organized things based on what I was hearing, to create a little flow, a river of greater and lesser turbulence and gloom.
P.S. Happy Día de los Muertos.
P.P.S. If you live in the U.S., don’t forget to roll your clocks back an hour before you go to sleep tonight. Also, fucking plan to vote if you haven’t already voted early! Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
Moving on from yesterday’s Part I of the usual weekend roundup, I’m starting with the next letter of the band-name alphabet and continuing through W (no X, Y, or Z bands in this collection).
I mentioned yesterday that I had a few complete releases in this collection, in addition to all the singles, but I realized that one I thought had come out on Friday isn’t actually out yet, so I’ll push that one to a subsequent weekend.
But the first band today does have a complete release to their name, and it’s an interesting one. Continue reading »
(Here we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Ivan Bloodhunter, founder and vocalist of the Mexican Epic Doom band For Centuries.)
Epic doom metal from Mexico is a really rare thing, and it’s good to have such an opportunity and to talk with For Centuries from Guadalajara about their first full-length album Before the Eyes of Doom (Per Sæcula Sæculorum). This band was founded in 2017, so their underground career is relatively short, yet the material which fills Before the Eyes of Doom is absolutely worthy of listening for fans of traditional and, yes, quite epic doom metal.
For Centuries rely on the classical sound of good old doom metal with lyrics based on medieval prejudices and stories of the deviltry. As you see, the vibe is already very old school, so you know what to expect from them. However, I’ve always preferred interviews over reviews, because this way it is easier to discover what the authors put into their music, much better than trying to interpret it yourself.
Today I invite you to make a trip to the Mexican underground with Ivan Bloodhunter, the band’s vocalist and founder. Continue reading »
(This is DGR‘s review of the debut album of “Death Pop” by High Parasite, fronted by Aaron Stainthorpe of My Dying Bride, produced by Gregor Mackintosh of Paradise Lost, and released by Candlelight on September 27th.)
There’s an acceptance that comes with the idea that people aren’t required to listen to music the same way you do. You can bang the drum forever about how to experience something but in reality sometimes people just want to be able to throw something on and let it whip past them without a second thought.
The reality of which is perfectly fine. Not everyone needs to be able to fantasy-draft a death metal band together like Nader Sadek does with his releases. Not everyone needs to be able to fold an album over again, and again, and again, such that it eventually resembles a musical and intellectual rolled omelette. This of course being the long walk toward a simple question:
That being, have you ever listened to a release that has caused you to think about it way more than you could possibly justify any reason for? Thinking about it far more than the album might reasonably deserve? Because that may be what’s happening here with High Parasite’s debut album Forever We Burn. An album that has somehow caused the gears to turn here far more than one could intellectually justify. Continue reading »
Mitochondrion
(written by Islander)
With my wife out of town visiting one of her sisters and me having gotten a head-start on the premieres I’d committed to write for today, I found myself with a rare chunk of time to go musically exploring yesterday, and to prepare this rare mid-week roundup.
Entirely by coincidence, most of what I listened to was head-spinning in different ways (as you can tell by the post title). I think it’s fair to call all of the following songs unconventional, and maybe even experimental in some respects, including the ones that feature singing (and yes, some of these are “exceptions to the rule” around here).
But lest you think I’m about to load you up with many melodious things, let’s incinerate that assumption immediately. Continue reading »