OVERFLOWING STREAMS: AT THE GATES, BEFORE THE DAWN, WOMBBATH, FRACTAL UNIVERSE, SEEMING EMPTINESS, IMPURE WILHELMINA, HESPER PAYNE, CULTES DES GHOULES, GRAVE MIASMA, VILDHJARTA, PERTURBATOR, MAGGOT CROWN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
May 012021
 

 

It’s been a long time since I resorted to this Overflowing Streams format for spreading the word about new music I’ve enjoyed, but last week seemed more even more insane than usual — just a ton of new tracks were revealed by old gods, new gods, and assorted minor demons. As bloated as the following collection may seem, it’s still far from complete — I’ll include a few more in tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column.

Without further ado, here we go with lots of sights sounds and not many words, though I do encourage you to add your own in the Comments.

AT THE GATES

Speaking of old gods, I might have included the news about Darkthrone album No. 19 (Eternal Hails), but there’s no music yet, so I’ll wait. You can peep the cover art here. But among the old gods, At the Gates did give us a new song, and I had to lead with it. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DÖDSRIT, ANGSTSKRÍG, YOUR FAULT, GHOSTBOUND, UNENDLICH, HAGEL, GOATBLOOD

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Apr 222021
 

 

If extreme metal were a big map pinned to a wall and you got a running start and hurled the contents of a bucket of paint at it, the scattered blots would give you something like the following collection of songs and videos — though one of the splashes lands off the map altogether (I put that one dead center in this playlist, surrounded by everything else).

DÖDSRIT (Netherlands/Sweden)

I’m leading off with “Shallow Graves“, because it so thoroughly swept me off my feet right from the start, thanks to the thrill of its opening riff, the pulse-pounding impact of the racing drums, and the grandeur of the panoramic cascades. The song changes, moving through a variety of rhythms and tempos as well as variations in the riffing that alters the moods, though the vocals are blisteringly intense at all times. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AN AUTUMN FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN, THY CATAFALQUE, AKIAVEL, SIDEREAN, VIOLATED GRAVE, [4672], WINTER ETERNAL

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Apr 172021
 

 

Roadburn Redux is going on right now. It should be a “must watch, must listen” event for me (and for you), but I’ve had too many distractions the last few days to glue myself to my computer and take it all in. Sadly, I can’t do that this weekend either. All I’ve done so far is to check out a few songs and videos, and I’ve included two of those (which were premieres) at the front of today’s round-up — along with a bunch of other good stuff I discovered over the last 24 hours.

To see the full line-up of events at Roadburn Redux go HERE. You’ll see that it includes both live and pre-recorded music, some of it full sets and some of it individual songs and videos, including premieres. You’ll also see that if you have missed something, the streams and videos will remain on-line at the Redux site until the evening of April 20th.

AN AUTUMN FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN (Netherlands)

Next month this excellent Dutch band will release their ninth album, As The Morning Dawns We Close Our Eyes. At Roadburn Redux they premiered one of its songs along with a video for it. That song, “Melancholia“, is true to its name in some of its moods (which have a wistful quality) — but the rambunctiousness of the rhythm section, the vibrancy of the gleaming guitar harmonies, and the soaring brilliance in the high end are bursting with life (and the strangled harshness of the vocals are vicious). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER, ΛΔΛΜ, ANHARAT, GO AHEAD AND DIE, CHADHEL, TOOTH AND CLAW

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 162021
 

 

Since we’ve only had two posts today, and because I found myself with a little extra time this morning, I decided to get a head-start on the usual Saturday round-up of new songs and videos. As is sometimes the case, there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to why I chose the following items, and there’s a risk of whiplash as you make your way from one to the next. There’s also a greater-than-usual percentage of videos included here — I think they’re all very good in different ways.

I will come back later when I have a bit more time and add the rest of the usual artwork and links.

DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER (Germany)

Savage, crazed, blazing, and viscerally propulsive in its tribal rhythms — those are the immediate impressions of this first song, though I must admit that the wild and transfixing video that accompanies the song is a big reason why I picked it. It suits the music supremely well. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): SPECTRAL LORE, DEMERSUS AD NIHILUM, KAFIRUN, OMEGA

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Apr 142021
 

 

Although there wasn’t much rhyme or reason to the musical parameters of Part 1 of today’s roundup, Part 2 is a little more coherent since it uniformly leans into black metal. However, to suggest that these four songs follow a consistent pattern would be wrong — each one sounds very different from the rest.

SPECTRAL LORE (Greece)

My first choice is “Φονικό Φως (Murderous Light)“, which surfaced as a digital single on Bandcamp yesterday. It was originally written for and released as part of Art Against Censorship, a compilation of 36 songs from Greek musicians to protest a law that was intended to target and silence radical political artists.

That comp was released in February of this year as a free download (here), and I managed to overlook it. It obviously includes a ton of music, and most of it is from bands whose names I don’t recognize, so one benefit of Spectral Lore‘s single will be to help draw attention to it. (I’m not surprised to see a Yovel song at the close of the comp.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT, DANNY ELFMAN, HIRAES, GABESTOK

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Apr 142021
 

 

I found time last night to rumble through a lot of new or newly discovered music, and enough time today to stitch together a two-part round-up. There’s not much rhyme or reason as to why I put these first four in Part 1, because the music is kind of all over the map. It would have been even more hard-to-classify if I’d included Mick Jagger‘s new jam with Dave Grohl, which I do like despite the silliness of the lyrics.

THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT (Netherlands)

Having finally listened to “Gone Sour, Doomed” and watched the video that accompanied it when it debuted in February, I’m even more befuddled about why it took me so long to do that. I can’t pretend to hold all the songs of The Monolith Deathcult in my head, despite how memorable many of them are, but I will still say that this new one is among the most exhilarating they’ve ever concocted. And the video is HIGHLY entertaining, and proof that the band’s renowned sense of humor is still alive and well. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: INFERNO, WITHERED, CIRCLE OF SIGHS, SEPUTUS, KOSMODEMONIC, HUNDRED HEADLESS HORSEMEN, GADGET, CVLT OV THE SVN

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Apr 102021
 

 

I made the choices for this large round-up after a long listening session on Wednesday, with the idea of writing it up and posting it the next day. But we had so many other things to post that day and Friday that I deferred. Of course, in the meantime a lot of other worthy new songs and videos surfaced, but I decided to just stick with these selections rather than go back to the drawing board, which would have taxed my already over-taxed brain.

I couldn’t really figure out a good way to organize these songs, though I think I picked most of them because they have a through-line of being unsettling and mind-bending, albeit in different ways. I did include a bit of a curveball at the end.

INFERNO (Czechia)

As I wrote here only a week ago, I was blown away by the first advance track from Inferno’s new album, Paradeigma (Phosphenes of Aphotic Eternity), which will be released by Debemur Morti Productions on May 7th. Given the prodigious power of this band’s previous output (which now encompasses a quarter-century of releases), I can’t say I was surprised, but I was still bowled over. And now it has happened again. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: EREB ALTOR, PERILAXE OCCLUSION, ODAL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 032021
 

 

I’m on a short vacation. First time away from the small community where I live in nine months. Along with a group of family and friends, we made the trip yesterday to an AirBnB on the water in a place called Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, Washington, in the Puget Sound. The photo above was one of the sunset views last night from the deck of this rental.

I had originally decided not to do any blogging this weekend, but I was awake this morning so much earlier than anyone else in the house that I started listening to a few new songs, and here I am blogging again. It’s just three new songs, so that’s a compromise of sorts.

I’m not sure if I’ll write a SHADES OF BLACK column for tomorrow. We’ll be headed home on Monday morning. Continue reading »

HELSINKI DEATH FEST — LIVE NOW!

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Apr 022021
 

 

No Clean Singing is helping to spread the word about Helsinki Death Fest, which is scheduled to kick off on-line today at 7:00 am PDT, 10:00 am EDT, 3:00 pm in the UK, and 4:00 pm CET. We will have a live stream right here on our site (see below) as soon as the show begins, and you can also find it streaming on Vimeo via this link.

Should you choose to partake (and you certainly should!), what you’ll see will be a combination of live and pre-recorded performances by a strong line-up of Finnish extreme metal bands (and two from other countries). The bands performing live (at Tiivistämö in Helsinki) are as follows:

Galvanizer
https://galvanizer.bandcamp.com/

God Disease
https://goddiseasofficial.bandcamp.com/

Cryptic Hatred
https://cryptichatred.bandcamp.com/releases

Azatoth
https://azatoth.bandcamp.com/releases

And here’s a list of the bands whose pre-recorded shows will be featured at the Fest: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DORDEDUH, JUODVARNIS, ANTRISCH, ACAUSAL INTRUSION, RALE, SLITHERING DECAY, PAN KUBUŚ

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Apr 012021
 

 

This round-up includes seven bands, which is a lot. But except for two, there’s just a single track per band (in the remaining cases there are EPs). I included a curveball at the end.

DORDEDUH (Romania)

Two days ago Dordeduh premiered a beautiful English-subtitled lyric video for “Descânt” (“Disenchantment”), the second single from their new second album Har, which will be released by Prophecy Productions on May 14th. The previously released single is “Desferecat“, which translates to “unchained”. It was accompanied by a fascinating music video of its own. Both songs have a visceral “physicality” but also quicken the imagination as you listen. Here’s what former NCS contributor KevinP wrote me about them: Continue reading »

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