SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ARMED FOR APOCALYPSE, BRUXAX, COLDWORLD, CREDIC, CRUZ, ELLENDE, FIRTAN, HADAL MAW, THE HIRSCH EFFEKT, LOUDNESS

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Jul 302022
 

 

A couple of updates for you weekend visitors: First, I’ve had to rush today’s roundup, thanks to a late start on the day and way too many new songs and videos to go through in order to make these choices. Due to the rushing, I had to leave lots of good stuff on “the cutting room floor”, despite how many choices I made.

Except in the context of deadly sins and circles of Hell (the violent and bestial one), 7 is a lucky number, so I initially decided to stop there. But I couldn’t help myself, and so pushed it to 10 instead, presented alphabetically by band name.

Second, I’m going to a big party in Seattle tonight. It was originally scheduled to happen in January, but last winter’s covid surge fucked those plans. It will be very late before I get back to the NCS island headquarters, and there’s at least a 50/50 chance I’ll wake up on Sunday with a hangover, and a 100% chance that most of the morning will be gone by the time I open my red eyes. Which means we may not have a Shades of Black column tomorrow. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: DEATH BREATH, VORLUST, CONSUMPTION, ILUNA PERPETUA

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Jul 232022
 

 

Would one four-song roundup yesterday have been satisfactory? Were two of them too many? Is it overkill to add music from four more bands today, for an even dozen of them? I hear your answers to those questions, all those deafening howls of “NO!!! WE WANT MORE!!!””

So, on we go….

DEATH BREATH (Sweden/U.S.)

It took me almost a week to catch up to Death Breath‘s two-track EP, The Old Hag, but once I did I haven’t been able to get enough of it. It does its dirty work in just a bit more than 7 minutes, which makes it really fucking easy to keep going back to it whenever I need a musical riot to rocket me out of the doldrums and make me feel like fighting the bastard world. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): NOCTEM, CULT BURIAL, INNUMERABLE FORMS, CRIPPLED BLACK PHEONIX

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Jul 222022
 

Welcome to Part 2 of this Friday round-up of new songs and videos. It includes perhaps even more musical scatter than what I collected in Part 1 (be forewarned, there’s singing in the last of these tracks!), which may increase the odds that you’ll find something to like. And if you don’t, try your chances tomorrow when I’ll have one more collection to throw at your head.

NOCTEM (Spain)

We’ve been following the twisting and turning path of this Spanish band for a lot of damned years. It has been something of an adventure to witness their musical evolution, but a generally exiting one, and now we get to discover their next steps through an album named Credo Certe Ne Cras that’s coming out in late October via MNRK Heavy. Just today they released a video for the album’s first single, “We Are Omega“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): STRIGOI, THE LOVECRAFT SEXTET, KRISIUN, UZUMAKI

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Jul 222022
 

 

This was a humongous week for new music, and my head is overflowing with round-up selections, so many that I decided to present them in two Parts today. Beyond those, I also have aspirations to compile another collection for publication on Saturday. Without further ado, here are the first four choices.

STRIGOI (UK)

In case you might have forgotten, Strigoi is the band formed by Greg Mackintosh (Paradise Lost) after he interred his previous project Vallenfyre. Joined by Vallenfyre bassist Chris Casket, he released a debut Strigoi album named Abandon All Faith in 2019, and we devoted significant attention to it, including a lavish review here by DGR.

It was thus exciting to learn that Strigoi are returning with a follow-up full-length named Viscera, which is set for release by Season of Mist on September 30th. The first advance track from it — “Hollow” — is how we begin today’s round-up. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ÓSSERP, ACEPHALIX, WITCHDEN, I AM, THRONEUM

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Jul 202022
 

 

Everyone reading this, if they live long enough and care about living even longer, will one day do what I’m doing early today — undergoing a medical procedure that involves a doctor shining light in the snaky tunnel where the light don’t shine, and the snip, snip, snip of tiny scissors. It won’t be so bad — I’ll be in The Land of Nod when that happens. It’s yesterday that was bad, an ugly process intended to turn my intestines into a barren wasteland. But at least I had a fitting soundtrack to the ordeal:

Actually, truth is I was in the midst of yesterday’s ordeal when I wrote most of this. But don’t worry, that didn’t affect my musical judgment, which is as brilliant or as damaged as ever, depending on your perspective. I was just forced to take running breaks to the bathroom in between blocks of tracks I was interested in exploring for this roundup. The ones I picked, unlike my current mood, are definitely NOT shitty. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLOODBATH, MORBUS GRAVE, HERIDA PROFUNDA, GRANDIOSA MUERTE, IRON DEATH, MONOVOTH

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Jul 162022
 

“Pocket” is a Mozilla app that you can easily install in Mozilla’s Firefox browser. When you do that, a small Pocket icon shows up in the toolbar of Firefox. Wherever you happen to be on the web, if you click that icon it saves the page to your Pocket list. When you then navigate to your Pocket list, you see all the links you’ve saved, along with thumbnail images of the linked pages. Even better, you can access that list from any device that includes the Firefox browser.

This is not an ad for Firefox or Pocket. I mention it because it has made my work for NCS on these Seen and Heard roundups much, much easier.

I used to make endless lists of band names with links to their new songs and videos that I was interested in checking out. Even just typing band names into an online document and copy/pasting the links was time-consuming, since I was usually adding more than a dozen per day, or much more if I fell behind. Not to mention that I kept dozens of tabs open in my browser until I had time to write those lists. Now I use Pocket, and don’t have to type a word or copy any links or keep any tabs open. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CONAN, EGO DEPTHS, CLOUD RAT, ESCUELA GRIND, NECRODEITY, BRAHMASTRIKA, ATMAHATYA, BLACK KNIFE, GRAVERIPPER

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Jul 152022
 

Today’s compilation presents a deluge of new songs and videos, so grab a life-preserver while there’s still time. You should probably continue wearing it, because I have plans for channeling another deluge tomorrow.

To get this done in the time available to me this morning, I’ve again dispensed with most of the cover art and have tried to be brief in my intros. But I did try to organize what’s coming in blocks of sound that companionably fit together, even though the blocks themselves collide with each other.

CONAN (U.K.)

I must begin with the new song and video from Conan (really, as an addict of this band I had no choice). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PLAGUE YEARS, BLACK ALTAR, SHROUD OF DESPONDENCY, TROG, DVVELL, INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH, HOMESKIN, DISMEMBER

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Jul 092022
 

 

Yesterday I went in search of musical beatings of various kinds. I’m not sure where that impulse came from, maybe the annoyance of being required to do something unpleasant for my fucking day job, or maybe just the surfacing of that constantly lurking desire among metal fans to become embroiled in intensity.

I had no theme in mind when I awoke today, facing the weekend with gummy eyes, and instead just wandered among new songs and videos, like a kid in the candy store aisles. Here’s what filled my hands:

PLAGUE YEARS (U.S.)

Yesterday this Detroit band dropped a surprise EP named All Will Suffer, along with a video for a song named “Suffer“. Lots of suffering in these words, but you won’t wallow in misery when you listen, though you may need to be hospitalized. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: REVOCATION, WOLFBRIGADE, TEETHGRINDER, HELLFUCK, CONSUMPTION, AURIFEROUS FLAME, ASTRAL HORROR

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Jul 082022
 

 

The theme of today’s collection of new songs and videos is: THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES!

Today is my birthday, and as a gift, my employer has decided to beat me until my morale improves. Therefore, this collection isn’t as large as I would wish, but tomorrow is another day, and I expect I’ll have another collection then.

REVOCATION (U.S.)

We may love Revocation around here (we DO love Revocation around here), but they have repaid all our affections with “Diabolical Majesty“, a merciless new song that invokes champions of hell “to crush the cursed creatures of the Christian right”. “Onward to victory! Set their commandments ablaze!” Continue reading »

GEARING UP AGAIN (WITH PUTRESCINE AND KOSMOGYR)

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Jul 042022
 


Ludicra at NWTF – photo by Islander-NCS

This past Saturday night the fourth edition of Northwest Terror Fest came to a glorious close. NCS has sponsored the fest since the beginning, and some of our staff have worked the fest from the beginning as well. This most recent one was, in a word, fantastic. At least from our perspective, it ran like a well-oiled machine, and it seemed like everyone there, from the bands to the audience to the venues’ staffs, enjoyed the hell out of themselves.

There were dozens of highlights. The best of all was the spectacular reunion performance by Ludicra, who headlined the first night, but all the bands fired on all cylinders, and the biggest crowd we’ve ever had at NWTF had great energy.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but the big crew of festival volunteers who worked the event were left both elated and exhausted, including those of us from NCS. We basically had to shut down this site for the last few days, and it will take a little while for us to get back in motoring gear again. Continue reading »

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