SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GOJIRA, MALAMORTE, GLACIAL TOMB, MORCAINT

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Jul 272024
 


photo by Weiyi Cai/The New York Times

Yesterday was a day of firsts. Among other things, it was the first time a heavy metal band performed in the opening ceremony of the Olympic games. And the first time memes took off about a U.S. vice-president candidate fucking a couch. Less exciting, I’m also pretty sure it was the first day since I started this blog 14 1/2 years ago that we failed to post anything on a weekday.

I made a whirlwind driving trip with a friend to Vancouver, heading north on Thursday and coming back to Seattle yesterday. In between, we attended a blowout celebration related to our day jobs that left me not enough clear-headed time yesterday morning to do anything before beginning the trip home, even though I had a couple of interviews ready to publish.

I’m getting a late start today, and that whirlwind trip didn’t give me any time for listening to the kind of music we focus on here (my road-trip companion isn’t into that kind of music, and anyway, I didn’t bring with me my list of new stuff I wanted to check out). So I did some whirlwind catching up today, and here’s what I hurriedly picked to share with you. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, THE SHIVA HYPOTHESIS, FÖHN

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Jul 202024
 


Photo Credit: Francesco Esposito

For those of you who don’t treat our posts as among your daily essentials of life, or at least like a free oxygen mask in the vicinity of a chemical train derailment, I’ll mention again that I won’t have much time for metal this weekend.

Today is the start of an annual two-day outdoor gathering of toilers at my day job and their families. For some of us it began last night, something akin to an alcohol-fueled pre-fest for concert-goers. It was jolly, and left me somewhat jumbled this morning.

That relatively mild mental affliction, coupled with the fact that the real festivities will begin soon, have left me constrained in what I can do in this Saturday roundup. If you don’t see a Shades of Black collection tomorrow, you’ll know that my Sunday-morning affliction was more severe and my sleeping-in more prolonged. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GAEREA, HAR, HAMMERFILOSOFI, LAGO, CAGED BASTARD, THE SPIRIT, ARA SUBVERSOR

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Jul 182024
 


Photo Credit: Chantik Photography

I’m so far behind in pulling together roundups of new songs and videos for NCS that I can’t even think of an appropriate metaphor. Maybe like a marathon runner who takes an arrow to the knee just as the starting gun goes off and is still writhing on the ground when the last runner crosses the finish line — but I’m even more behind than that.

Another metaphor comes to mind, the one about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step. This is a journey I won’t finish, if finishing means catching up, but here’s a single step (actually 7 steps, to be less metaphorical and  more precise).

P.S. I decided to lean pretty hard into black, death, and blackened death metal on the especially incinerating and obliterating end of the spectrum, with something dark and hallucinatory more or less in the middle. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GROZA, SPECTRAL WOUND, INCESSANT, CONCRETE WINDS, OPPRESS., VANQUISHMENT, XHELAT, GREAT LAKES DUNGEON SIEGE

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Jun 302024
 


Groza

As I mentioned yesterday I’m flying to Iceland tomorrow to be present at Ascension Fest. I need to figure out what to pack, decisions like whether I should bring one change of underwear and socks for the week or 7. I’ve noticed from past Ascensions that people there don’t smell as bad as at U.S. festivals, so maybe more than one change, eh?

I’ve also got a couple of premieres to write for posting tomorrow before I leave, and some clothes to wash, and I might should spend some time with my spouse, to increase the iffy odds she’ll still be here when I get back.

So, even though it’s been two weeks since the last time I did this Sunday column and therefore I have an especially mountainous pile of new music to choose from, this will have to be short — at least in terms of my own words. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GOD DETHRONED, TRIBULATION, AGRYPNIE, WORMED, VAFURLOGI, RÖTUAL

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 292024
 

Last weekend I didn’t pull together new music for a Saturday SEEN AND HEARD or a Sunday SHADES OF BLACK. I was away from home at a Pacific Northwest beachfront on a short vacation with family and friends. That led to late nights and late mornings and a desire to pay attention to physically-present human beings instead of communing with headphones and computers.

The consequence is now staring me in the face: Two weeks’ worth of new songs and videos to choose from for today and tomorrow, instead of one, when even one week’s worth is usually overwhelming. I made lists of links but of course could only listen to a small fraction of them. I was first drawn to some familiar justified names and then just threw mental darts, though the aim was not completely random. Here’s the result:

GOD DETHRONED (Netherlands)

No matter how deafening the racket or how urgent the whispers around the mouldering halls of the NCS HQ, we’ll always make time for new God Dethroned, and count ourselves lucky that Henri Sattler & co. are still alive and kicking. Continue reading »

ASCENSION FESTIVAL ICELAND: AN INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN LOCKHART

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Jun 202024
 

(Our editor-in-chief Islander is responsible for conducting the following interview, and the introduction that precedes it.)

The fourth edition of the Ascension metal festival will take place in Iceland on July 3rd – 6th, 2024, with a four-day lineup consisting of 30 bands. As the festival accurately says, it “prides itself on offering an eclectic, esoteric and wholly unique experience,” placing “a strong emphasis on Icelandic and international Black metal, along with alternative and experimental acts.”

The festival is produced by Studio Emissary, an Icelandic recording, mixing, and mastering studio that has played a pivotal role in the birth and expansion of Icelandic black metal (but has also worked with the likes of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Björk’s Biophilia), and by Studio Emissary‘s sister company, the Oration record label.

Ascension is the spiritual successor to the Oration festival, which ran for three years in Iceland. I attended the last of the Oration festivals in Reykjavík, and I’ve made it to two of the three Ascension festivals that have happened so far, including the 2019 edition that was hosted in the charming Reykjavík suburb of Mosfellbær, which will be the site of Ascension again this year — and I’m very excited to say that I’ll be at this year’s Ascension too.

The man behind Ascension, Studio Emissary, and Oration is Stephen Lockhart (he’s also the person behind Rebirth of Nefast, and a past participant in other Icelandic music groups). In an effort to help support Ascension, which in my festival-going experience really is unique, and to satisfy my own curiosity about a few things, I reached out to Stephen for an interview, and he graciously agreed to answer some questions. Continue reading »

FESTIVAL PREVIEW: TOLMINATOR 2024

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Jun 172024
 

(Our Slovenian compatriot Didrik Mešiček has prepared the following preview of the second edition of the Tolminator festival in his home country, which is coming up fast and looks well worth attending.)

After a successful first edition, Tolminator is back for its second year! For those of you unaware, since Metaldays has had its various debacles, Tolminator has now taken over the stunning festival location by the Soča river. The festival is limited to 5000 visitors and will take place between the 24th and the 28th of July so this is a good time to get your tickets for one of the most idyllic festivals in Europe.

Last year’s edition had a lovely and chill atmosphere and definitely felt very well organised – from what I could tell everything went rather smoothly. While the visitors weren’t that numerous last year (due to the festival being new and only announced in the autumn of 2022), it’s expected this year the festival could be close to selling out, which means there’ll be an even better atmosphere under the stage and more fellow metalheads to have fun with.

Of course, the most important thing is the lineup up and Tolminator will have four main headliners: Behemoth, Exodus, Electric Wizard, and Testament. The festival leans quite heavily into extreme metal, generally favouring thrash, black, and death metal although there’s the occasional stoner/doom band, as you can see, as well as some -core bands if you’re into that sort of thing. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, BURIAL OATH, WHITE STONES

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Jun 152024
 

For this currently foggy-headed writer yesterday was a hell of a day and last night was a hell of a night. There was food grilled near hot coals, copious drinking, fire, and conversation far into the night among people who could barely understand each other. Deep underground with the oxygen cut off, a bigger bed of hot coals started cooking some things; today we will reconvene to discover the results.

Depending on those results we may eat grass and go our separate ways early, or it may be another late night. But yeah, it’ll probably be a late night regardless; there’s still plenty of beer, wine, and dry wood on hand.

And that’s an explanation for why this usual Saturday roundup is appearing so late and is so short, and a preview that Sunday’s black metal roundup may befall the same fate.

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HAIL SPIRIT NOIR, WOLFHEART, EXECUTIONER’S MASK, LIGHTLORN, HELLSODOMY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 082024
 

Welcome to another Saturday roundup of new music and videos. Confronted again with the daunting task of choosing from among a vast array of new releases to check out, I defaulted this time to bands I already like, and that decision didn’t steer me wrong.

The music mainly consists of variants of death and black metal, but with some interesting twists along the way.

HAIL SPIRIT NOIR (Greece)

Whenever I think of Hail Spirit Noir I usually think of their 2012 debut album Pneuma, not because it’s their best one but because it was so different from everything else I was listening to at that time, and because so many of those songs got so quickly and firmly stuck in my head (I listened to it a lot).

Since then, they’ve followed their wandering muse in different and usually unpredictable directions. They now have a new album on the way, four years after Eden In Reverse and almost three years after Mannequins, and of course the upper-most question is: What have they gotten up to this time? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ORANSSI PAZUZU, DEFACEMENT, KANONENFIEBER, CONSUMPTION, GASKET

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Jun 012024
 


Oranssi Pazuzu – photo by Rainer Paananen

Look at this, a true rarity: two NCS posts on a Saturday. If you haven’t yet read the first one, Andy‘s Synn Report for the merry month of May, you should do that (here) and then come back for what follows below.

If you had only listened to three new songs this past week it would be easy to choose what to recommend and to explain why. You’d pick three, two, or one of them. Or maybe you’d just keep quiet if they left you lifeless.

But what if you had listened to 20 new songs? How would you choose among then? Maybe you would listen to all 20 several times and then start ranking them. By the time you’d narrowed it down, the day would be gone. Which is why I didn’t do any of that with the 20 new songs I wanted to hear for purposes of this roundup.

What I did instead was to focus on singles from a few bands who have already proved themselves dependable (there were other such bands on that list of 20, so mood and impulse played a role too), and then took one chance on a newcomer to these ears. Continue reading »

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