Mar 182023
 


Shakma – photo by Kristian Eikeland

Anyone who visits here on a regular basis knows I like to host premieres of new songs and complete releases. Other people seem to like that too, since our daily calendar of premieres is full from now through April 21st, which is about as fully stocked and as far out-front as I can remember we’ve ever been with our premiere schedule.

The downside of this for me is that it cuts deep into the time I have for something else I enjoy — roundups of new music like this one. Lately, I’ve been lucky if I can get one done on the weekend. Doing them on the weekdays has become a rarity, especially since the job that pays the freight around here has been pressing me more than usual too.

I know I sound like a broken record, constantly expressing disappointment and frustration that I can’t highlight more bands and their music in this way. But none of these records is broken…. Continue reading »

Mar 112023
 

 

Really?!?,” I can hear you say, “Is that all you saw or heard this Saturday? Or yesterday? Or the day before?

Well, not exactly. I did check out a couple of other things, but I knew I wouldn’t have time to do more than what you’re looking at right now. It’s just been one of those weeks, when my effing day job hammered me into submission. On top of that, we had four visitors at the house yesterday, beginning at noon and extending pretty deep into the night. I slept away most of the morning, and my head has been fuzzier than usual. So this is what I have. Hoping for more tomorrow in the SHADES OF BLACK column….

HEAD OF THE BAPTIST (Belgium)

If you’re looking for a way to un-clog your head of whatever gunked it up overnight, I can testify from personal experience that this first song and video will do that, and right quick. It’s called “Succumb“, and that’s what you will do. Continue reading »

Feb 252023
 


Thecodontion

I used to type lists of new songs and videos I wanted to check out, pasting the links below the band names. Now I use a Firefox thingy called Pocket. When I’m on a web page for a song or video, I tap the Pocket icon on the Firefox browser and it automatically saves the link in Pocket.

Much faster than what I used to do, but the downside is that when I go to Pocket I see endless rows of thumbnail images for all the links I’ve saved. I fear my fingers will cramp from the scrolling, down and down and down… and my mind starts to cramp up on me too.

The result is that I tend to focus on stuff at the top (the links I saved most recently), especially when I’m hurrying. That phenomenon explains most of the choices in today’s round-up. Continue reading »

Feb 232023
 

 

Since I’m snow-bound this morning and can’t make it to a job-related commitment at mid-day I had time to pull together one more short round-up, to go along with the other one from earlier today.

UNPURE (Sweden)

This seems to be a day for returns from the grave, following my selections from Dååth and 7 H.Target in the earlier round-up. After a silence spanning nearly 20 years, Unpure come back with a new album named Prophecies Ablaze, which will be released at the end of March by Invictus Productions and The Ajna Offensive, and that record is the source of my first pick in this installment. Continue reading »

Feb 232023
 

I don’t know why I bother counting, but I have 23 new songs and videos on my listening list from what surfaced over the last 7 days, not to mention all the ones that were on there before. But I need to keep this round-up short, because there’s a premiere coming up, but maybe I’ll get a second one finished today after that.

DÅÅTH (U.S.)

No chance I would have missed the new Dååth single digitally released yesterday by Metal Blade, because I got timely enthusiastic messages about it from both DGR and TheMadIsraeli. But I would have paid attention anyway, since seeing their name again revived a ton of fond memories from the first decade of the new millennium, back when they were taking the metal world by storm. Continue reading »

Feb 182023
 

Today I woke up late and moved lazily. For most of my life, and probably yours, that’s the way Saturday mornings always were. Except in my case I had the lunatic idea when I started this blog in the fall of 2009 that I’d post something about music I liked even on Saturday and Sunday, and every holiday.

I thought of that as a way of underscoring that NCS would never be a business, and would consider none of us here as “workers”, because people working “jobs” almost always get weekends off. I think I also believed we might get more visitors due to the lack of competition on the weekends from the somewhat more-established metal sites that were beginning to dot the internet landscape.

And I probably thought the lifespan of NCS would be about a year, so how tough would it be to listen and write on the weekends for a year? Who knew it would go on like it has? I sure as shit didn’t.

In the last 13+ years I’ve failed to make some weekend posts, after a long stretch of never failing, though the number of failure days is still small. So now when I wake up late and move lazily it doesn’t take long before I start to feel like I’d better get my shit in gear, even if the lateness of the morning hour means I’m not able to make the Saturday roundup as extensive as I’d like (which is true today). But… no failure today at least…. Continue reading »

Feb 172023
 

Yet another big week for new metal. I have many things I want to recommend, but not enough time today to throw them all your way. So I’ll make a start now, with a sandwich made of some big names at top and bottom and stunning Theophonos in the middle, and continue on Saturday.

CATTLE DECAPITATION (U.S.)

It’s kind of amazing that Cattle Decap have now been around long enough to release a tenth studio album, which is what will happen on May 12th when Metal Blade ushers Terrasite into a waiting world.

We have a linguistic preview of what’s coming, thanks to this statement by guitarist Josh Elmore: Continue reading »

Feb 152023
 

I’m very happy about all the music in this mid-week roundup. I’m also very happy about the way it all lines up.

A big part of the fun of doing these collections is not just finding new songs and videos that I think are worth recommending, but also choosing the ones that either flow together well or instead ricochet off each other in unexpected ways. There’s a little bit of both strategies in what I chose for today, but mainly this roundup is designed to quickly elevate your adrenaline and then keep it surging. Lots of good cover art today as well.

THULCANDRA (Germany)

I searched out the first time we wrote about Thuldandra at this site. It was in June 2010, when NCS was barely seven months old. The occasion was an extensive review of the band’s 2010 debut album Fallen Angel’s Dominion, in which I included an extensive discussion of the band’s back-story, with notes about the C.S. Lewis space trilogy that was the source of their name. It was evident even then that they held the potential of becoming the truest heirs of Dissection. Continue reading »

Feb 112023
 

I had a fairly quiet Friday night, with just enough spirits over dinner to get loose but not enough to feel wrecked and disjointed this morning. Kept making my way through the first season of “Poker Face“, which is enormously entertaining through episode 4, and then another chunk of pages in the latest Murderbot novel, which I’m forcing myself to ration since I’ll be so morose when I have to wait for the next one.

Anyway, thanks for asking about my Friday night. Pretty sure that’s what those whispers were in my head. But now to drown out all whispers with a few more things I got into this morning. Yesterday’s roundup was heavy on the death metal, so I decided to branch out a bit today, while saving most (but not all) of the black stuff ’til tomorrow.

YSKELGROTH (Spain)

Well, as I said, I didn’t save all the black stuff for tomorrow. This first song was just too good a way to wake people the fuck up. It’s a head-spinning amalgam of symphonic grandiosity, bizarro-world guitar convulsions (with a few bracing gallops and insectile quiverings in the mix), full-throttle madhouse drumwork, bunker-busting grooves, and macabre vocals that stretch far to find so many ways to be ugly. Continue reading »

Feb 102023
 

This has been a rare week when we didn’t have at least one premiere on the calendar every day. That gave me the time to do not one, not two, but three round-ups of new songs and videos, including this one. And I ought to have time for a fourth one tomorrow.

The timing has been fortuitous, because the past week or two has been jammed with new singles and advance tracks from forthcoming records that have piqued my interest (and should pique yours), including the following four, with news of a new reissue at the end.

NIGHTMARER (U.S./Germany)

This tremendously impressive band moved from strength to greater strength over the course of their Chasm EP (2016), their debut album Cacophony of Terror (2018), and their Monolith of Corrosion EP (2021), and now they’re returning with a second album named Deformity Adrift that’s set for release on May 5th via their label Total Dissonance Worship in the US and Vendetta Records in Europe. Continue reading »