NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2023 – POSTSCRIPT

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May 292023
 

I made a post here on Saturday to remind NCS visitors that we had shut down for the weekend due to three of us working on the fifth edition of Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle. In that post I included photos from some of the bands whose sets I was able to catch, at least partially, on the fest’s first two days. I thought, to round things off, I would include photos I took on the third and final day in this fest (because of running around and occasionally getting of my feet, I wasn’t able to see the whole lineup).

But before getting to that, I’ll share something I wrote on my personal FB page yesterday, after all of us volunteers had finished loading our backlines and other supplies out of the festival venues and returning them to storage until the next time, and after many of us had then converged again for some weary celebration and melancholy good-byes: Continue reading »

WEEKEND UPDATE: NORTHWEST TERROR FEST

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May 272023
 

Northwest Terror Fest is about to begin its third and final day/night in Seattle today. As I mentioned last Monday, No Clean Singing is a principal sponsor of the fest, and DGR, Andy Synn, and myself (islander) have all been working the event on-site since the final preparations began at the venues on Wednesday.

So, no roundup of new songs and videos at NCS today, and no Shades of Black tomorrow.

I should mention that the first two days of the festival were fantastic. I can’t claim to be objective, but I caught bits and pieces of most of the bands who played, and they all kicked ass. So did the festival and venue staffs and crew. Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST WEEK

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May 222023
 

The fifth edition of Northwest Terror Fest will take place in Seattle on Thursday through Saturday of this week (May 25-27), preceded by a pre-fest show on Wednesday night. No Clean Singing is the principal sponsor, and three of us here (Andy Synn, DGR, and myself) will be on-site working the fest. Rumor has it that another one of us (Gonzo) will be in the audience.

This means there will be a few adjustments in our usual weekly NCS routine. Since I write almost all of our premieres, there will be none of those on the festival days this week, and it’s extremely unlikely there will be a Saturday roundup or a Shades of Black post next weekend, or any other roundups of new songs and videos this week.

However, this doesn’t mean we’re going to be short on content. In anticipation of the festival work ahead, Andy has already completed two reviews and might get a third one done before he boards his flight from the UK tomorrow. Not to be outdone, DGR has already sent in 25 reviews (I’m joking, he only sent in 11 reviews), and I’ve got one in the queue from our friend Grover too. On top of that we have four interviews available from Comrade Aleks, and Todd Manning has already written a premiere feature.

As for the festival itself, I doubt we’ll be writing any coverage during the event. Based on our past experience working the first four editions, it’s a whirlwind of craziness, with a lot of very late nights and bleary-eyed mornings, and grabbing every fleeting second available to catch parts of the sets. Speaking of which, here’s the lineup, day by day: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: KHANATE, KATAKLYSM, TEMPLE OF DREAD, BLACKBRAID, HALFLIGHTED, ANIMA HERETICAE

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May 202023
 


Khanate

I began this morning like I’ve begun every morning since the start of the pandemic: sitting on the deck of my home in the forest drinking a triple-espresso, smoking cigarettes, and reading the local, national, and international news on my phone.

It’s not something I can recommend in good conscience. Smoking is bad for you and the news is almost invariably depressing. But today the birds around me were in full song and the news included a story about a woman who had a “loud and full body orgasm” during the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony as performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The article where I learned about this included a link to a list of “The 10 Best Orgasm Symphonies”, compiled by British music journalist Norman Lebrecht in celebration of the woman’s scream. The article also quoted opera soprano Renée Fleming: “Let’s not forget that the word ‘climax’ is a common musical term. It has to do with musical tension and its release.”

With this in mind, I started making my way through my gigantic list of new songs and videos from the past week or two, listening for climaxes. If you get one while listening to what follows, just keep that to yourself. (Joking of course — I want to hear all about it!) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: HALIPHRON, WAR LULLABY, CATTLE DECAPITATION, GOSFORTH, IN MOURNING, PERILAXE OCCLUSION, DRONES FOR QUEENS, KOLLAPS\E

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May 132023
 


Haliphron

Happy Saturday the 13th. The alternative title for today’s collection is Mental Scatter.

I think I mentioned in the recent past that I’ve been indulging sleep on the weekends to an unusual extent. This seems to work better on Friday nights than Saturday nights, possibly because I tend to drink more on Friday nights to put the work week behind me. Friday-night drinking is also a little reward to me for mostly staying away from alcohol during the work week for the last two months, trying to correct for what happened during the depths of the pandemic when booze became one of my best friends.

Something else has enhanced the bear-in-a-coma nature of the sleep-ins: I’ve started weight-training again, which used to be a best friend but got rudely shoved out the door by seclusion, alcohol, and general malaise during the pandemic. The downside is that now I hurt all over when I wake up. It’s easier to stay in bed when you know that you’ll feel crippled if you start trying to move in an upright position. Man, do I hurt this morning.

Now you know something about my state of mind in trying to decide what songs and videos to recommend this morning — fuzzy-headed, distracted by aches and pains, very tempted to crawl back under the covers even after 9 hours of hibernation. Which is one reason why I think of this collection as the product of Mental Scatter. The other reason is that it will probably scatter your own mind if you make your way through all of it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ERDVE, ADVERSVM, COFFIN MULCH, KORPVS, KILL DIVISION, THE NEANDERVERBS, MNAJDRA

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May 062023
 

Less than a week into May and it’s already damned hot in many places around the world, even in some far northern latitudes. A news report yesterday said that at least 78 wildfires are burning across the Canadian province of Alberta, 19 of which are burning out of control, and that more than 13,000 people have already been evacuated from where they live.

Where I live, near the 47th meridian in the Pacific Northwest (and about 800 miles southwest of the Alberta fire zone), it’s now 47° F and the gray sky is drizzling rain, as it did all day yesterday. I love it. It might have influenced some of the picks in this large roundup of new songs and videos, though some sonic firestorms and a few vigorous beatings found their way into it too.

Actually, I’m very proud of how varied this collection turned out to be. Which means you probably won’t like all of it.

ERDVE (Lithuania)

Despite my opening commentary about the weather, the new single from Erdve sounds like a different natural phenomenon — like a mid-paced avalanche of stone, with giant boulders rumbling down. Along with all the jarring jolts, the sizzling riffage is also frightful, creating tension and fear, while the raw yells channel rage. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BANDCAMP FRIDAY: BLACKBRAID, AN AXIS OF PERDITION, THE INFERNAL SEA, CLAUSTRUM, RANNOCH

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May 052023
 

Lots of people keep wish-lists in anticipation of making purchases on Bandcamp Fridays, when more of the money will go to the labels and bands. I have friends whose lists include releases from three or more years ago, or from even older albums that have only recently become available on Bandcamp. So it’s not as if people are just now looking for things to buy, much less cloely examining releases that have launched on Bandcamp just barely in time for today.

Still, on days like this I feel a compulsion to make new recommendations, even if they might drive a lot of you (or at least your bank accounts) crazy. I should add that I noticed most of what’s below before today. I just couldn’t bring myself to do more than quickly skim the 300+ Bandcamp alerts and other e-mails that landed in our in-box since midnight last night. I picked a couple of things out of that ridiculous flood, but I have no idea what else might be frothing in there.

Obviously, I could have done much more today if I’d had enough time. So I’ll have to continue tomorrow, when maybe you’ll be tempted to add to your lists for the next Bandcamp Friday.

BLACKBRAID (U.S.)

It’s fair to say that the rise of this indigenous black metal project into the consciousness of metalheads (or at least those with a taste for blackened arts) has been meteoric. The subject-matter themes of the music probably account for some of the attention, but the strength of the music would carry it far even if the themes were less important. It was thus a nice surprise to discover the debut of a lyric video for a new Blackbraid song a couple days ago. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: KRYATJURR OF DESERT AHD, OXBOW, BALMOG, SARVEKAS, HOST, ÚZKOST

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Apr 292023
 


Balmog

Happy Saturn’s Day (and good wishes to the dead Romans who named it.). For me, paying work was all-consuming during the first part of this past week, but it was sheer laziness that kept me from compiling a roundup of new music in the closing days. Those two phenomena were connected of course. After some NCS editorial work and some premieres during the days when the paying work relented, I felt like I’d earned the right to stop scurrying and attempt a mind-meld with sloths.

With no head-start behind me, here I am with a giant slag-pile of new music and videos to go through, and great risk of cutting myself followed by infection as I try to paw through it. But paw I did (thankful for band-aids), and the results are presented below. It doesn’t include everything that grabbed me, but to include everything would have left me still writing come sundown. I don’t want that. I want time to go outside and enjoy the warmest day of the year so far here in the Pacific Northwest, or more likely just take a nap.

As if I didn’t have enough picks already, this morning brought a new installment of Renni Resmini’s starkweather substack, and as usual I hadn’t heard the majority of those selections, and as usual his writing compelled me to check out some of those, which has made this roundup even longer. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: AETHERIAN, APHONIC THRENODY, ARKONA, ASCENDED DEAD, ASHBRINGER, DÅÅTH, DEATH OF GIANTS, HOLY DEATH, IMMORTAL, NOCTURNAL TYRANT

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Apr 222023
 

Saturdays are usually days when I pick a handful of new songs and videos to recommend, accompanied by some of my own peerless prose (HA!). But as I waded through possibilities this morning it quickly dawned on me that there was just way too fucking much stuff for me to pare down to a handful without experiencing some mental agony in making the choices.

So, I’ve thrown up my hands and resorted to this “Overflowing Streams” format, where you will find a lot more music than in the usual “Seen and Heard” columns, a lot fewer of my own words (dry your eyes), and very little cover art — other than Yoann Lossel’s stunning artwork “Les Fleurs du Mal”, which is on the cover of the new album by the first band in this roundup.

Today the musical arrangement is alphabetical by band name (heavily weighted by the A’s). I’m deferring most of the black metal discoveries until tomorrow.

AETHERIAN (Greece)

Wonderful news to see that this Greek melodic death metal band are returning with a new album, six years after their fantastic full-length debut, The Untamed Wilderness. They say this marks “the start of a new era for Aetherian“, and it appears that they’ve added a couple of new guitarists to an already formidable lineup. The first sign of what the new album brings is a lyric video for the song “Army of Gaia“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ETERNAL STORM, HESPER PAYNE, THUNRAZ, BEFORE THE DAWN

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Apr 212023
 

Oh hell what a week it’s been. One of those weeks when I’ve barely had time to write up the premieres I agreed to do, much less focus on other new music and videos. So now I’m staring at all the links to the stuff I wanted to check out, featuring big names known to all and names I’ve never seen before. Time is still short, but I’d better make a start and then hope to fill in more tomorrow and Sunday.

ETERNAL STORM (Spain)

In 2019 we gave a lot of attention to this Spanish band’s debut album Come the Tide. It popped up on a lot of the year-end lists we posted, and a lot of year-end lists at other sites acclaimed it as well.

To quote only from our own staff, Andy Synn (who included Come the Tide on his list of 2019’s Great Albums) wrote that “if there’s one band who might just be able to kickstart a brand new Melodic Death revolution, it’s Eternal Storm“, and DGR (who put the album at No. 14 on his year-end list) summed it up as “a master class of progressive death and melodeath hybridization that makes an hour just fly by”. And for my part, I hosted a song premiere and then put a different song on our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Continue reading »

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