VIDEOGRAPHY: ISKANDR, GRAFSTROEM, EXISTENCE:VOID, OLYMPUS, THRAXAS

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Aug 022021
 

 

As you may have gathered from my two weekend posts, I spent a lot of time listening to new metal over the last 48 hours. I watched videos for new songs too, and have collected five of those here, which I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did.

ISKANDR (Netherlands)

This first video is a fascinating collage of images, with credit for the film going to Teresa Elizabeth Lobos. The music by Iskandr is equally fascinating. It’s the sound of a sinister dream, an embroidery of acoustic chords and ringing guitars, of gritty gargoyle snarls and flesh-flensing screams, of shimmering synths and eerie, mercurial arpeggios. It includes a slower and spellbinding break near the end that features choral vocals and a feeling of rising, ominous grandeur. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SUCCUMB, ELDER DEVIL, MAZE OF TERROR, IMPERIAL SLAUGHTER, VELO MISERE

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Jul 312021
 

 

I know I often sound like a broken record, but this is yet another Saturday following a week in which I fell way behind in listening to new music, other than what we premiered and bits and pieces of albums that other NCS scribblers wrote about. I spent hours this morning adding to my listening list and then only scant time darting around that list with the headphones on. Here’s what I landed on that I wanted to share… with a lot more listening lined up for this afternoon.

SUCCUMB (U.S.)

This first song, “Okeanos“, is such an intense squall of sound in all ways, from the brazen and mutating discordance of the riffing to the relentlessly riotous drumming, the bone-smashing impact of the grooves, and the stunning voracity of the vocals. Not so much like crouching indoors during a hurricane and more like charging outside in the midst of it. Continue reading »

ROUND FOUR: NCS RETURNS TO GIMME METAL AGAIN ON JULY 30

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Jul 292021
 

 

Way back on the 17th of August, 2020, three of your NCS slaves — (Andy Synn, DGR, and Islander) — appeared as guest DJs at GIMME METAL, curating a two-hour on-line radio show in which we spun tracks of our own demented choosing, interspersed with our own pre-recorded banter, and also engaged in live on-line chats with listeners. And since then we’ve done it two more times — in October 2020 and March 2021 — and as you can tell we’re about to appear for a fourth time this coming Friday, July 30th.

The three of us still feel incredibly fortunate to be invited to do this, and to find ourselves again in the midst of the coterie of stellar musicians who normally handle the guest spots. We feel so lucky because we have SO DAMNED MUCH FUN putting our playlists together and recording our own interstitial banter.

It’s such a joy to do it, especially because we try hard to make underground selections that won’t otherwise get a lot of attention, that we usually start working on new playlists even before our latest session has aired — even though we never know how many people will tune in, and therefore whether we’ll be invited back.

So, we’re begging you, TUNE IN! Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: ABORTED, BLEEDING MALICE, BORIS, CARNIFEX, EX DEO, EYES OF PERDITION, FERAL LORD, INFERI, LOTUS THRONES, SARS, SCHIZOGOAT, SOMNURI, WORM SHEPHERD

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Jul 242021
 

 

Those of us in the metal trade know that Friday’s have become a dumping ground, or a deluge from above, or a flood tide… pick your metaphor for a day when a ton of new songs and videos drop. Yesterday was in that vein. With help from some other NCS slaves I made a giant list, and did a freestyle kick through it. Found a lot to like, and decided to grab a baker’s dozen of tracks for your entertainment, all of which happened to arrive with videos.

In terms of verbiage, I’m just going to ejaculate my immediate visceral reactions without fully formed sentences or consistent punctuation. Unless I just keep quiet I don’t know how else to manage commentary on so many songs and films, and of course keeping quiet would be sheer torture for moi.

ABORTED (Belgium)

A creepy, horror-drenched intro opens the book on a jolting and blazing calamity that soon goes berserk… despite its title, the song doesn’t really drag you to hell, it fires you into hell with a howitzer… and all the devils are there, ready to rip and ruin… but also to reveal the sweeping, bombastic glory of their awful domain…. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BASTARÐUR, CARONTE, NECRONAUTICAL, LOW FLYING HAWKS, DAGOBA, ZAKULA, ANNIHILUS

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Jul 212021
 

 

This is one of those days when we risk overwhelming even the most voracious listeners who visit our site. I’ve already posted a round-up of blackened metal and a full album stream, but can’t resist using some unexpected free time to pull together another collection. This one is rife with videos, most of them accompanying advance tracks from forthcoming releases, but there’s another full album stream in the mix as well. There’s a lot of stylistic variety in the mix too.

BASTARÐUR (Iceland)

This first track came as a big surprise (at least to me). It turns out that Bastarður is the crust punk project of Sólstafir singer/guitarist Aðalbjörn Tryggvason, drawing upon the influence of such bands as Entombed, Napalm Death, Terrorizer, Motörhead, and Disfear.

He made Bastarður’s debut album, Satan’s Loss of Son, with drummer Birgir Jónsson (Dimma), and the album also includes guest vocals by Marc Grewe (Morgoth, Insidious Disease) and Prmordial’s Alan Averill, as well as guest guitar leads and soloing by Ragnar Zolberg (who has performed live bass for Sólstafir) and Þráinn Árni Baldvinsson from Skálmöld, among others. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY (PART 2): INSOMNIUM, FIRST FRAGMENT, COGNITIVE, WORMWOOD, DROTT, DESALMADO, KEHLVIN, AETHEREVM, HAMMERHEDD

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Jul 172021
 

 

This may be the only NCS post of the weekend, and even this one is hurried. I have a work meeting this morning. There’s also a celebration planned for tonight that I have to prepare for. What the hell kind of party requires hours of preparation? One that involves speech-making. But it’s still a party, and has all the earmarks of one that’s going to keep me up past midnight, which means a very late awakening on Sunday and some unpredictable degree of mental incapacitation, which is why there may not be a SHADES OF BLACK column tomorrow.

As for today’s metal roundup: I posted a big one yesterday exclusively devoted to new songs with videos, but big as it was it still didn’t exhaust all the good new tracks that surfaced over the last week. And of course it didn’t include the usual Friday flood of new song reveals. A few of my NCS comrades made sure I didn’t overlook what that Friday flood flung up on the beach, and I’ve included a few of their suggestions as well as a few of my own picks that I left out of that video-only roundup yesterday. Coincidentally all the songs included here also came with videos, hence the title of this post.

What’s missing today, for the most part, is my own commentary. I’ll give you a minute to dab the tears from your eyes… and then on we go…. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: BENIGHTED, BEYOND GRACE, THE BREATHING PROCESS, BURN IN HELL, CHOKE, DDENT, DEVIANT PROCESS, GHOROT, PREY FOR NOTHING

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Jul 162021
 

 

As you can see, I had time enough yesterday to make my way through a lot of music that surfaced over the last week or so, and found a lot to like — even more than you’ll see here, because I decided to devote this round-up exclusively to songs with videos and leave the others for another time. The visual approaches are quite wide-ranging and so is the music. I decided to set them out in alphabetical order by band name, and that coincidentally turned out to make for an interesting sonic sequence.

Get popcorn, or whatever else you like to chew on while glued to a screen, and perhaps a preferred intoxicant, then sit back and get ruined or rapt or both.

BENIGHTED (France)

Benighted teamed up with Metal Injection for the premiere of a lyric video for a new digital single, “A Personified Evil,” which includes guest vocals by Francesco Paoli from Fleshgod Apocalypse. As if the song weren’t slaughtering enough without him. Continue reading »

SHADES OF SPEED: DUNGEON STEEL, WRAITH, BONEHUNTER, PHANTOM FIRE, SCHIZOPHRENIA

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Jul 132021
 


Bonehunter

 

(Our Norwegian friend and long-standing NCS supporter eiterorm steps up today with a round-up of new music, and we’ll let him give his own explanation of it. [And yes, we were trying to trick him, and yes, it worked.])

“Shades of… wait, what? That’s not a thing! And why is this black metal dude sending speed metal all of a sudden?”

That is how I started my latest e-mail to Islander, which contained a few recommendations about new music. I send him such e-mails from time to time, but I haven’t done so in a little while, because lately I’ve had a bit of a music backlog. So by the time I’ve gotten to the news, they have already been posted on the blog, or they’re no longer “news”. And this blog seems to cover most of what I’d recommend even if I don’t send tips as quickly as usual. It’s almost as if I’m not the only person following great labels like World Terror Committee, Iron Bonehead, Ván, etc…

This time, however, Islander wanted to post my message as a guest post on the blog, for some reason. (I think he’s trying to trick me into writing more posts for the blog.) The e-mail I sent him didn’t quite suffice as a blog post, though, so I decided to add a few more words to what was mostly a list of links to recommended music.

Now, to answer that opening question: I’ve been listening to a lot of speed metal lately, which is why this post is all about the speedy stuff. It’s not at all unlike me to listen to that kind of music, but not so much that it outweighs everything else. And coincidentally, some bits of speed metal news surfaced lately, so I thought I’d round them up here. Well, not all of it is news at this point, but none of it has been featured on the blog, so you’re getting it anyway. Let’s go through them in order of newsiness: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GROZA, APATHY NOIR, EYES OF PERDITION, THUMOS, KAAMOS WARRIORS, KASCK

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Jul 102021
 


Groza

It was one of those weeks when my day job jackhammered me into submission. I fell far behind even in saving links to new songs and videos I might want to check out, and the hundreds of emails we receive every day went mostly un-read. And man, what a week to fall behind in. As people used to say 5 or 10 years ago, there was a metric shit-ton of new releases and song or video premieres.

I did obsessively spend a chunk of time this morning just making lists of links, and felt overwhelmed at the end of that exercise. If I had total control over my life I’d spend most of the rest of the day plowing through all those links and compiling round-ups, or at least one gigantic one. But my day-job project isn’t finished, and I’ve got to turn back to it, even on a fucking weekend. So I’ve just dipped my toe in the ocean, and this is what dripped off of it.

GROZA (Germany)

To begin, I chose a video for “Elegance of Irony“, a song off a new album named The Redemptive End by these Bavarian black metallers. Continue reading »

SUMMONER’S CIRCLE: AN ALBUM ANNOUNCEMENT AND TRACK PREMIERE (“CHAOS VECTOR”)

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Jul 072021
 

 

Today it’s our devilish pleasure to help spread the word that on August 27th the Tennessee sextet Summoner’s Circle will release their third album, Chaos Vector. And to draw further attention to that welcome news, we’re also premiering an extravagant music video for the album’s equally extravagant title track.

The song itself is sonic alchemy, not merely because it creates a frightening atmosphere of dark magic being practiced and dangerous forces being unchained, but also because it blends together different sensations and stylistic ingredients from the realms of black, death, and gothic metal to create an experience that’s greater than the mere sum of its parts. Continue reading »

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