LOOKING AHEAD

 LISTMANIA 2022, Metal News  No Responses »
Nov 072022
 

Every year when we approach the middle of November I always seem to have the same thought: “Man, this year really flew by!” Of course at other times of the year I think, “Man time is really crawling like an old crippled man who lost his crutches, can’t this fresh hell go away faster?”

Well, the blurred-time feeling always comes this time of year because I’m staring at the calendar and realizing how much is about to happen this month at our putrid site. We have lots to do, and people seem to look forward to it. But this month we also ask readers to do a lot, to help us out. It’s the beginning of probably the most “interactive” time of year at NCS.

And so I thought now might be a good time to provide reminders for those of you who inexplicably don’t organize your own calendars around happenings at NCS. Here are some key dates coming up: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THY CATAFALQUE, HERON, OTUS, VARMIA, ILLUMINE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 052022
 

 

As you know if you’ve been here routinely, I make lists, lots of lists, of new music I want to check out. Last night when I began making my way through the latest one (an extremely long one), it happened that the first five selections were so good and fit together so beautifully that I decided to go no further, for fear of breaking a powerful pattern that had serendipitously taken shape. When I listened to them again this morning, it still made sense.

I’ve set out these songs in the order I heard them. I said they created a pattern, but they were also a journey, and one that ended in stunning fashion.

THY CATAFALQUE (Hungary)

Well of course I started with a new video from Thy Catafalque, especially because the video is for a performance of my favorite song from one of my favorite albums of 2011. Yes, more than a decade ago! But until senility encroaches I’ll never forget “Fekete mezők”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: INSOMNIUM, AMORPHIS, OMINOUS SCRIPTURES, TERRÖRHAMMER, MALLEUS

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Nov 042022
 

It’s another Bandcamp Friday, and thus a good day to spend money. If you’re going broke, it’s also just a good day to listen to new music, because a lot of new stuff has come out today and in the recent days leading up to it.

I’ve picked a few things to recommend, leading off with some big Finnish names — even though their albums aren’t on Bandcamp! — and then getting more obscure and a lot more extreme.

INSOMNIUM (Finland)

Insomnium decided to make another concept album, which will be their ninth full-length overall. Entitled Anno 1696, and based on a short story by Niilo Sevänen (bass/vocals), it focuses on a time of famine in northern Europe and a period when witch hunts were in full swing all across the continent. The press release says, “Anno 1696 is a tornado of tormented souls, set to a tragedy of Greek proportions”. Sevänen comments: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: …AND OCEANS, STRYCHNOS, IN THE WOODS…, AYYUR, FREEDOM OF FEAR, PARASITARIO, PEGZILLA

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 292022
 


…And Oceans

I mentioned last Sunday (and again on Monday) that I wasn’t feeling well, as an explanation for why I didn’t get very much done for NCS last weekend. I also mentioned that I spent that weekend in southern California at a gathering of co-workers from different cities. Within days of everyone getting back home, a half-dozen people reported testing positive for covid, all of whom were fully vaccinated.

I had tested before going on that trip, took another test while I was there, and tested again five days after my last close contact with those people — all the tests were negative. But I’m still feeling sub-par, still congested, sniffling, and lethargic, for the second week in a row.

I don’t know what the hell I have, but there’s obviously a lot of respiratory virus blooming in the country besides covid, with different strains of cold and flu making a triumphant comeback after a couple of years of masking and quarantine restrictions left them lonely. You can take your own lessons from this, but I’d advise you to be careful.

It might be my hopeful imagination, but I think I’m marginally better today than before, or at least feeling well enough to go exploring new music and videos again. Here’s some of what I found (I ticked off a lot of genre boxes with this compilation, plus a couple of elliptical band names): Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LIGHTLORN, HELIANTHUS

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Oct 282022
 

Because it’s getting late in the day I’ll spare you the usual intro comments. Because it’s late in the day, I’ve also made fewer musical selections than usual. Tomorrow I’ll do better.

LIGHTLORN (Sweden)

Today this Swedish duo have released their debut EP These Nameless Worlds. I’ve already raved about the EP’s first two songs when they were released, “Unmapped Constellations” (here) and “Through the Cold Black Yonder“ (here). Now we have the other two. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PSIONIC MADNESS, IDLE RUIN, AIRE COMO PLOMO

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 242022
 

Here’s some breaking news: Nuclear Blast has announced that it will release a new Demonaz-led Immortal album named War Against All sometime next year, with Ice Dale (Enslaved) on bass and Kevin Kvåle (Gaahls Wyrd, Horizon Ablaze) on drums. I also got a Bandcamp alert about a new release here today by Teitanblood called Purging Tongues – 2022, though it seems to be a repress of the band’s 2011 single-song EP (Purging Tongues) combined with some kind of variation on that track named “Purging Tongues – Demon 1990“.

In other news, I still feel like shit — though slightly less shitty than over the past weekend. This has hung on long enough that I no longer think it’s the after-effects of dangerous levels of wildfire smoke that plagued my area over the preceding week, and more likely a nasty cold I picked up somewhere. First one of those I’ve had since the outbreak of covid. I’m vaxxed to the max and have pretty much given up masking, and I guess that was a dumb move. Those masks protected against more than covid.

In still other news, I feel like writing about new music anyway (in fact I already did that today), though like yesterday’s Shades of Black column this one will be shorter than usual (on top of everything else, my fucking day job is demanding a chunk of my time). I think of the songs in this collection as musical red meat for metal carnivores. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FELL RUIN, VÆGTLØS, UDÅNDE, VUARA, WYRMWOODS, BURLA22

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 152022
 


“Metatron’s Cube” by Talon Abraxas

It’s been another very busy week for the release of new songs and videos, and leaves me with a typically daunting task of trying to pick some to recommend, made even more daunting by the fact that the old fucking day job didn’t allow me to compile a round-up earlier this week. To make the task a bit easier, I decided not to write about new songs and videos from the following bands, because they’re all fairly well-known, but I do really like all of what you’ll find via the links below.

DEFLESHED (Sweden)

DJEVEL (Norway)

EXHUMED (U.S.)

GOATWHORE (U.S.)

WOODS OF DESOLATION (Australia)

As for what I did choose to write about today… Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SKAPHOS, AKRAIA, SACRILEGION, AARA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 082022
 

Last weekend I was able to compile and write about a typhoon of new songs and videos, but this weekend will be different. The Seattle Mariners baseball club made the major league playoffs for the first time in 21 years, and won the first game of their first playoff series yesterday in Toronto. The second game is this afternoon, and I’ll be glued to the TV watching that with friends.

Afterward will be a dinner party in Seattle that will likely go late, and that won’t bode well for Sunday morning work on Shades of Black whenever I get back to my island home. Also ominous is the fact that I’ve got to do shit for my fucking day job tomorrow, which makes tomorrow’s usual column even more unlikely. So don’t be surprised if I have to skip it this week.

I’ve got to make my way to Seattle pretty soon for that ballgame, so I’ll have to make the following collection short, but hopefully sweet. I wish I could have done more, and really wish I could have done it yesterday when there was an extra incentive for fans to spend money on Bandcamp, but my job hammered me then too. So it goes. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: IMHA TARIKAT, KAMPFAR, MULCIBER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 012022
 


Imha Tarikat

Last night the Seattle Mariners beat the Texas Rangers with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning, clinching a place in the Major League Baseball playoffs and ending what most of us long-suffering Mariners fans simply referred to as The Drought, i.e., the longest span of years (21 of them) that any team in any U.S. professional sport has had to endure in between playoff appearances.

Along with a few million other Mariners fans in this part of the country, I celebrated the historic event. I might have par-tayed a bit too much. That’s a conclusion one might draw from the fact that I slept for 11 hours, as if in a coma. Well, I had a rough week at my fucking day job too, which produced steam that needed to be blown off last night. But even after dragging my ass out of bed late in the morning I still spent a lot of time continuing to wallow in the glory of that Mariners win, taking in videos, photos, and lots of articles.

But the NCS Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (a specific syndrome now recognized by the American Psychiatric Association) is still a thing, and so I couldn’t bear to leave a complete blank spot on the site this Saturday. Had to daub that spot with at least a few splatters of musical paint. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FELL RUIN, LYKOTONON, UNGFELL, NYTT LAND, PUTRID, HEXORCIST, IMPLORE, ASBEST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 242022
 


Fell Ruin

Yesterday, September 23rd, was the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere, as defined by the September equinox. And so we begin the inexorable march toward the Winter Solstice (with the autumnal equinox in between, when all the spooks come out).

I thought about focusing today on music with a cloudy and wintry cast, but it still seems too early to be that blinkered in the choices. I also thought about focusing solely on music released on the first day of fall, especially since I did a shit job keeping up with press releases and other sources of new music this past week. It would have been easier just to make selections from the top of the pile. But this morning I did manage to do a lot of catching up, and made some selections from earlier days too.

FELL RUIN (U.S.)

We’ve been waiting with bated breath for something more from this Detroit band over the five long years since the release of their debut album, To the Concrete Drifts. At last that “something more” is here, in the shape of a new album intriguingly named Cast in Oil The Dressed Wrought. Last week brought the first song from the album, “Stain the Field“, along with a video that makes a frighteningly intense and extravagantly twisted song even more nightmarish. Continue reading »

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