Mar 312023
 

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The Infernal Sea – Photography by Jay Russell

Well, this was another ridiculous week for the release of new music and videos designed to tease forthcoming records, not to mention the release of complete albums, EPs, and splits. Sadly, it was also another week when I couldn’t manage to catch up to them in other round-ups. At least I got a bit of a head-start today on the usual Saturday and Sunday collections, when more catching up will occur.

THE INFERNAL SEA (UK)

Oh hell, where to start? Well, how about with a new single from NCS favorites The Infernal Sea?

Apostle of Gehenna” is a nice surprise, since about 2 1/2 years have elapsed since the band’s last release (the Negotium Crucis album, reviewed here), though there’s nothing “nice” about gaping jaws of the hellhound in the artwork (the work of Rob Gould). Continue reading »

Mar 252023
 


Demonaz – Photo by Leander Djønne

How long did I sleep last night? Hey, thanks for asking, it was 10 1/2 hours. You’d think I’d dug a mile-long ditch by myself before collapsing in exhaustion, but I did little more than sit on my ass and peck at a keyboard all day. It’s probably just a sign of how long I’d sleep every night if I didn’t have some binding commitment to keep early every morning (looking at you, NCS). I like sleeping.

Anyway, late start today, and therefore not as many picks in this roundup as I thought I’d have. I decided to pull in some bigger names, whose songs surfaced fairly early in the week, and then round things out with some hard-scrabble fighters from deeper underground.

IMMORTAL (Norway)

Dark northern armies go to battle across the ice under blood-red skies in Immortal‘s blazing and bombastic new song “War Against All“. It’s a hot-blooded scorcher, packed with both brazen and febrile fretwork, berserker screaming, and rumbling thunder in the low end. If you’ve just hibernated for 10 1/2 hours it’s as welcome and as effective as a jolt of pitch-black caffeine. Continue reading »

Mar 242023
 


Ascended Dead – photo by Scott Kinkade

This is the second brief round-up of new songs and videos I’ve managed to assemble today, having unexpectedly found myself with time I didn’t think I’d have. Once again, as in the first installment, I’ve focused on three things that just surfaced overnight or this morning. With a bit of luck I’ll have a third installment finished before I have to pay attention to paying work. If that fails, there will be another roundup tomorrow.

ASCENDED DEAD (U.S.)

To lead off this segment I have “Ungodly Death” (is there any other kind?), the maniacal first preview track from this California band’s new album Evenfall of the Apocalypse. Continue reading »

Mar 242023
 


Spirit Adrift, photo by Wombat Fire

No NCS premieres today. I had blocked out this day to fly to Texas for the day job, but that got canceled at the 11th hour, so here I am with unexpected time to entertain myself, and hopefully you too.

But wow, what a flood of new songs and videos there have been this week! And I’ve barely scratched the surface in checking them out. Under the circumstances, I’m going to try something new, since I have nothing else in the queue ready to publish today: roll out short round-ups one after the other until I run out of time. This is the first one, which focuses on things that just surfaced today. I’ll also have another roundup to share with you on Saturday, as usual.

SPIRIT ADRIFT (U.S.)

I know, I know, what the hell am I am I doing leading off with a new Spirit Adrift song? We typically pay as much attention to trad heavy metal at this site as we do to quantum physics. But I’m not immune to the appeal of a band like this one, witness the fact that I even named a song from Curse of Conception to our list of 2017’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs, and gave a shout-out to their Forge Your Future EP in 2021 too. Continue reading »

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 »