Oct 062015
 

Misantrof ANTIChristmas flyer

 

Christmas has been celebrated as a holy day for more than 1650 years. ANTIChristmas has been celebrated by Misantrof Records for seven years, and plans are now afoot for an eighth commemoration. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or at least eight of them.

Don’t get me wrong — although Christmas holds no spiritual significance to me, there are many things about the holiday season that bring back fond memories. There are more things that make me want to puke — such as the advancement of Christmas music and advertising so that they now begin before Thanksgiving (at least here in the U.S.).

On the other hand, ANTIChristmas must begin now, because planning is necessary, even though there is no money to be made on this venture. Continue reading »

Sep 302015
 

Vastum-Hole Below

 

Once again I find myself awash in new songs that I’ve discovered since the end of last week, but without enough time to write about all of them. To avoid a paralyzing indecisiveness about which ones to select for this round-up, I taped a list of them to the wall, threw my head against the edge of a table to cause a bleeding scalp wound, spun around in circles like a dervish, and then checked the list to see which names had been hit with blood spray. I’m probably going to work on a different selection method in the future.

VASTUM

Two days ago we got a preview of the new album by Vastum courtesy of a premiere at DECIBEL. This is the band’s third album, bearing the title Hole Below, and I’m very, very eager to hear all of it — especially after listening to “Sodomitic Malevolence”.

Holy mother of calamities, is this song creepy and crushing — it sounds like a torture chamber engulfed in an earthquake. During a hurricane. While an eclipse is blotting out the sun. And when the song eventually begins to really roll, the riffs will snap your neck — and there’s a guitar solo that will sear the skin off your face. Continue reading »

Sep 292015
 

The Wicked Library cover

(We bring you a message from Grant Skelton….)

After our recent Litany Of Literary Lunacy roundup, Dan Foytik of The Wicked Library podcast reached out to us. Foytik is looking to work with musicians who want to create original compositions for inclusion in future episodes of The Wicked Library.

In his own words, Fotyik said:

Wicked Library exists primarily as a promotion tool and community for writers, artists (and hopefully) musicians to find new fans and get their work heard.We currently have just over 22,000 monthly listeners worldwide, so if you know any musicians that might be interested in some pretty easy scoring work (which they retain the rights to by the way), I’d be happy to talk to them.

Continue reading »

Sep 282015
 

Wombbath-Downfall Rising

 

Well, some days around here (like last Friday), it’s a drought. But when it rains, it pours. Already today we’ve posted a two-part round-up of new music and videos by DGR (here and here), along with KevinP’s list of top albums released this month, including still more music streams (here). And I’ve found time this morning before leaving town again for my fucking day job to compile this additional collection of new streams (along with one doomy news item contributed by Grant Skelton).

I do worry that on days like this we’re subjecting readers to absolute sensory overload. But I obviously don’t worry too much about it… so here we go:

WOMBBATH

I’ve been singing the praises of the Wombbath’s new album Downfall Rising since hearing the first teaser from it, and now the entire album is out and available for streaming — so I’m posting the album stream as the first item in this round-up. Continue reading »

Sep 282015
 

Shining-International Blackjazz Society

 

(DGR steps up for round-up duty, and he prepared a really big round-up, so big that your humble editor decided to divide it into two parts. Part One is here.)

In case you missed it, Friday was a kind of slow date for the site. We’ve had times like this before, where various outside influences conspire to make sure that we post with the speed at which animals are able to escape the La Brea Tar Pits. That doesn’t mean we weren’t up here in space, lookin’ down on you and keeping track of various rumblings going throughout the web.

I’ve gathered together eight fairly recent developments in the heavy metal world for you all to enjoy. As usual, I’ve tried to catch stuff that has flown under the radar and mix it in with a few things that have likely made a big splash across the web already. This collection of stories covers a pretty good swath of the globe in terms of distance but has a foot heavily planted in the death metal and doom metal realms, making a few labored grasps to the outside genre world.

SHINING

We turn next to Norway’s blackjazz entourage Shining. The group have been building up to the release of their new disc International Blackjazz Society, and recently the song “Last Day” found its way to the web. Continue reading »

Sep 282015
 

Enshine-Singularity

 

(DGR steps up for round-up duty, and he prepared a really big round-up, so big that your humble editor decided to divide it into two parts.)

In case you missed it, Friday was a kind of slow date for the site. We’ve had times like this before, where various outside influences conspire to make sure that we post with the speed at which animals are able to escape the La Brea Tar Pits. That doesn’t mean we weren’t up here in space, lookin’ down on you and keeping track of various rumblings going throughout the web.

I’ve gathered together eight fairly recent developments in the heavy metal world for you all to enjoy. As usual, I’ve tried to catch stuff that has flown under the radar and mix it in with a few things that have likely made a big splash across the web already. This collection of stories covers a pretty good swath of the globe in terms of distance but has a foot heavily planted in the death metal and doom metal realms, making a few labored grasps to the outside genre world.

ENSHINE

In case you missed it, we here at NCS have a bit of a soft spot for the melo-doom band Enshine and all their related shenanigans. The group recently allowed us to premiere their song “Adrift”, and that song was an awesome teaser of things to come for the group’s upcoming album Singularity. Recently, Enshine uploaded another song to the web in the form of “Resurgence” and boy, in NCS parlance, is it a doozy. Continue reading »

Sep 142015
 

Attan-From Nothing

 

I’ve accumulated quite a large number of interesting news items and new songs from my excursions through the interhole and the NCS in-box this weekend. In order to present more of them than I’m usually able to do, I’m going to do something that causes me great personal pain and undoubtedly will bring tears to the eyes of our faithful readers: I’m going to hold my own beautiful prose to a minimum and allow the music to speak for itself, largely without benefit of me as its interpretive intermediary.

Presented in alphabetical order:

ATTAN

Attan are a Norwegian band whose debut EP From Nothing will be released through Shelsmusic in limited-edition vinyl and digitally on November 30. The opening track, “Nocebo (I Shall Harm)” is now available for streaming on Soundcloud.

An avalanche of unhinged destructiveness; skull-fracturing drumbeats; spleen-rupturing riffs; aorta-rupturing vocals. Discordant and demented. Continue reading »

Sep 122015
 

Vastum-Hole Below

 

Hey there, happy Saturday. I’m feeling a little woozy. For some reason Friday nights usually seem to have that effect on me. I had some ambitious plans for today’s posts, but unless I can figure out how to vacuum all the woozy out of my head, what you’re reading now may be all I can manage. These are just a few of the things I spotted over the last two days that didn’t make it into that big slug of round-up posts yesterday.

VASTUM

San Francisco’s Vastum have completed work on a new album, featuring cover art by the Vastum vocalist Daniel Butler. I can already feel the ground beginning to tremble in anticipation of the detonation to come. The album’s name is Hole Below, and 20 Buck Spin plans to nuke the planet from space with it on November 6, because that’s the only way to be sure. Continue reading »

Sep 082015
 

Dragged Into Sunlight-Gnaw Their Tongues-NV

 

I’ve been quite eager for the new collaboration by Dragged Into Sunlight (UK) and Gnaw Their Tongues (The Netherlands) ever since catching word long ago that it would be happening. Just moments ago, some additional info popped up in our in-box, along with a link to a trailer for the new album. For now, I’m just going to excerpt some of what appeared in the press release and embed the trailer after that. Hell yes.

First, the name of the album is N.V. and it will be released by Prosthetic Records on November 13.

Second, as you can see, the artwork by Seldon Hunt (Khanate, etc.) has now been revealed.

Third, from the press release we have the following insights into the approach to the album, which will be a re-imagined rendering of Streetcleaner by Godflesh:, produced by Justin Broadrick himself along with Tom Dring: Continue reading »

Sep 082015
 

Perhihelion-Zeng

 

I’m confused. Yesterday was an official U.S. holiday that almost all of my friends seemed to ignore. It was LABOR DAY, and so I spent the day laboring, as commanded, while most people I know were fucking off. I don’t understand this kind of rampant ignorance of U.S. legal commands. Perhaps there is some explanation, but in the meantime here are three new songs I found in my blog labors yesterday that I believe are worth your time — plus one reminder about a band who blew me away with a live performance I witnessed two nights ago.

PERIHELION

Perihelion are a Hungarian band who signed with Apathia Records in June for the release of their second album, Zeng. The album features cover art by the talented Costin Chioreanu (Twilight13 Media). Yesterday, Apathia and the band released a music video for a track from Zeng named “Égrengető”. The lyrics of the song are in Hungarian, as is true for the whole album. It’s an exception to our “rule”, because the singing is all clean — but the vocals are quite good, and both the song and the video that presents it are entrancing. Continue reading »