NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: SOILWORK, RED MOON ARCHITECT, SUMMONING THE LICH, SOEN, RAGING SPEEDHORN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 232020
 

 

(Another work-week is ending, and Gonzo again helps usher it out with a selection of new songs and videos from forthcoming or just-released records.)

It only dawned on me this morning that we’re a week away from November, and given that most of this year has felt like floating in some nebulous void in an endlessly dystopian universe, that was a weird thought.

Even as snow falls just south of my Colorado home as I type this, wildfires continue to burn just north and west of me. It’s a confounding juxtaposition of fire and ice that’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Just another day in 2020, I suppose. With any luck, the plummeting temperatures and prevailing snowfall will help extinguish the flames that have been turning the sky into an unsettling shade of apocalyptic as of late.

All that being said, here’s a few bangers this Friday to make you forget how fucked up the world is right now. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: YATRA, FURNACE, REPUKED, HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY, OLD MOTHER HELL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 092020
 

 

(NCS contributor Gonzo returns with another Friday round-up of new music, this time featuring recent tracks and videos by five bands from albums that are being released today, or will be forthcoming.)

I took a road trip down to Fayetteville, Arkansas, last week. Driving to the Deep South from my Colorado home is a study in culture shock, and not in a positive or constructive way. The entire length of Kansas is a desolate hellscape full of Trump flags and locals casting a weary gaze towards anyone wearing a mask in public. Missouri isn’t much better.

Fortunately, so much time in the car allowed for plenty of time to listen to all the new metal I’ve been meaning to get around to. It was also nice to roll down the windows and blast some of this shit at offensively high volumes in conservative rural towns. (It’s the little things.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: NECROPHOBIC, DEMONICAL, PROFANITY, GAEREA, APPARITION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 092020
 

 

This is pretty much a DGR round-up, since it was he who urged the first three new songs and videos in this collection. They’re all from bands who’ve been around for a long time, from 14 years to more than 30 years (but are still kicking ass). To justify my own existence, I picked two more, one from a more obscure band than those first three but whose name is rising fast, and a second from an even more obscure name that I suspect will soon become better-known.

I have approximately 53 other new songs I’d also like to share with you. Maybe later. There’s a fly that’s making the rounds on the morning news interviews, so I need to check that out.

NECROPHOBIC

“Devil’s Spawn Attack” is the closing track on Necrophobic’s new album, Dawn of the Damned. I smell a review simmering in the NCS mess hall that questions the wisdom of that choice — not a question about the quality of the song (which is damned good), but about its position in the running order. But I’ll let that writer speak for himself in due course; maybe he’ll change his mind. Meanwhile, I’ll speak my own mind. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: UNDERGANG, NEXUL, KAAL AKUMA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 052020
 

 

For the second weekend in a row I made no NCS posts, and this time I didn’t even explain why. The reason was that I took a short vacation with my spouse and friends and spent the weekend in the beautiful wine country around Walla Walla, Washington. There was copious drinking, eating, and sleeping. The covid-related opportunity to average 80 mph (129 kph) driving the 260 miles there and back again was kind of thrilling all by itself. Everything we did was socially distanced (and with only one exception our eating and drinking was done outside), everyone there was masked up, and it felt safe. It was all great, but the weekend left no time for listening to music or writing.

I got back home in one piece late Sunday afternoon, and to extend the holiday my wife and I went out to dinner at a restaurant near where we live that had just re-opened for in-door service. We were the only customers in the entire restaurant, so that felt safe too, though I was sad for them.

With all that behind me, I felt compelled to start this new week at NCS with a selection of new music. Having spent no time this weekend digging deep into what has surfaced over the last week, I made some truly random choices based on some very scattered listening early this morning. But of course I really like what I found, especially because all the songs serendipitously fit together so well. Continue reading »

ANDY SYNN’S BIG GAME HUNT (WITH DEFTONES, ENSLAVED, AND THE OCEAN)

 Album Reviews, Metal News  No Responses »
Sep 252020
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews three albums being released today or in the near future — by Deftones, Enslaved, and The Ocean.)

As anyone who’s been following this site for, ooh, more than five minutes, will know, we tend to aim our collective focus at the more underground and/or underappreciated albums and artists out there.

Not because we have to. Not because we think it makes us “cool” (trust me, we’re not cool). Not even because we’re trying to make some sort of point or big statement. It’s just because we want to, and because it’s generally more fun to write about these sorts of bands than it is to regurgitate the same generic platitudes you can see/read everywhere else about bands who already have more than enough exposure.

That being said, sometimes we like to turn our attention to some bigger game, and bigger names, because… well… because we feel like it, basically. Which is why you’re about to read my short, but sharp, take on three artists/albums who’ve already received a fair bit of praise elsewhere but whom I think deserve a slightly more critical (dare I even say, objective?) assessment.

Think of it as my attempt to restore some balance to the force, as it were. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PUTERAEON, FURNACE, SEPULCHRE BY THE SEA, LOUD NIGHT, AVLIVAD, PARI’SYA, CRYPTAE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Sep 222020
 

 

Like almost all the posts I wrote this past weekend, I put this one together in my head during a long listening session on Saturday. Since then more new songs have popped up, but I decided to stick with my original mental plan rather than have this thing turn into something even more intimidating to people who are already drowning in music.

I’ve already put the first four songs in this collection onto the list of candidates for my year-end series on Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. In different ways they rock, and they’re all very catchy. And then I decided to turn in other more ugly and unhinged directions.

PUTERAEON (Sweden)

I use the word “majestic” way too much in describing music, because I don’t spend enough time with a thesaurus. Usually it comes to mind when a band use soaring and sweeping melodies (other over-used words in my vocabulary) or create sensations of towering obsidian immensity, as often found in funeral death-doom. Neither of those qualities is present in Puteraeon’s new song (and video) “The Curse“, but the word “majestic” still came to mind. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: DØDSFERD, AUBE GRISE, ARKHERON THODOL, OVTRENOIR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Sep 192020
 

 

When I woke up this morning I thought there was no way I would be doing something as seemingly inconsequential as listening to music and writing about it. The awful confluence of events in the country this year — the rampant disease, the hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, the economic collapse, the vivid reminders that systemic racism still thrives, the burning of immense swaths of Western forest and the immersion of millions in a miasma of toxic smoke — just got worse again because of a single death, one that will give a mentally defective tyrant and his sycophantic enablers the chance to finish the job of tearing the country apart. Can we not get even one tiny fucking break from 2020?

And then I thought, we do get tiny fucking breaks every day. Every good new song is a break, maybe tiny in the grander scheme of things, but if 2020 has taught us anything it’s that hopes for bigger breaks are likely to be dashed without mercy.

So, I listened to some new songs, just a few, but enough to get a bit of a break. Maybe I picked them because they express (and perhaps reinforce) my current dark mood of rage mixed with despair, but I guess that’s often what musical catharsis is all about. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: DEPHOSPHORUS, KAUNIS KUOLEMATON, KRAKEN DUUMVIRATE, L’HOMME ABSURDE, MOS GENERATOR, ONSEGÉN ENSEMBLE, ORDINANCE, QONIAK, THANATOPSIS, THOKKIAN VORTEX, THROANE, VOX MORTIS, YOVEL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Sep 122020
 

 

Greetings, ladies and germs. As promised in yesterday’s round-up, I have MANY more selections of new music for your listening pleasure. Does this mean that I’m now caught up in showing you what I’ve discovered? Oh, hell no! I will have more in tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column (and still won’t be caught up).

To speed things along I’m just throwing you the music streams and my usual impulsive commentary, sans artwork. Later today I’ll fill in the art, a few more details about the releases, and the usual ordering and FB links. The following tracks are presented in alphabetical order by band name (with Greece coincidentally represented at the beginning and the end), and I’ll tell you that the music is all over the map stylistically.

DEPHOSPHORUS (Greece)

This first song is such a heavyweight neck-wrecker at the beginning, although filaments of ravishing melody rapidly spiral out from beneath its bone-breaking rhythm. However, the song also explodes in breathtaking fashion — a storm of battering drums, blizzard-like guitars, and truly wild, howling vocal ferocity. The track is tremendously thrilling in all of its course-changes, which include sweeping, fire-bright sonic panoramas; the sludgy heft of the low end is a thrill all its own. Continue reading »

NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: KATLA, DARK TRANQUILLITY, UNIFORM, MESSIAH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Sep 112020
 


Katla

 

(Our friend Gonzo returns with anoher Friday selection of new music, this time actually posted by our editor on Friday!)

 Doing these columns over the past few weeks has made me intensely aware of my perception of time. Some weeks feel like days, some days feel like weeks. Nothing makes sense anymore. We’re all living in a Black Mirror episode that’s been left on repeat after being force-fed enough LSD to turn ourselves into spiritual mediums for an alternate dimension where capitalist houseplants have enslaved humanity.

Fortunately, there’s new music to distract us from our inevitable fate at the hands of some power-worshipping azalea. And where would we be without it? I don’t want to imagine that dark alternate reality.

Sticking to the darkness of the current reality seems sinister enough.

The good news? If dark and sinister is your musical preference, I can’t recommend this week’s new releases enthusiastically enough. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DARK TRANQUILLITY, OMEGAVORTEX, SEPTAGE, WATASHI DAKE, VALDUR, HOLY DEATH, NOVARUPTA, DEAD SHAPE FIGURE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 112020
 

 

Earlier today one of our writers, purporting to speak for all of us, asserted that we at NCS are not perfect. I disagree. I, for one, am perfectly aware of my inability to keep up with the release of new music.

Last night I did manage to plow through the last two days of e-mails in our bulging in-box and checked a few other valued sources. From that effort I added roughly two-dozen new songs to check out, on top of a similar number I had identified the last time I went exploring just a couple of days ago.

A laughable thing to do, of course, given there’s no way I could make my way through all of that in time to write anything for today. So I threw mental darts at the list, with some hits and some misses. The following eight new songs were among the hits. I’ll pick some more for your listening pleasure on Saturday.

DARK TRANQUILLITY (Sweden)

In “Phantom Days” Dark Tranquillity launched the run-up to their new album Moment with a sure-fire crowd-pleaser — nothing terribly different, but capable of stimulating the pleasure centers of fans. I confess that I felt stimulated, though not to the point of tumescence. Will I remember it? That’s a different question. Continue reading »

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