SEEN AND HEARD: JUPITERIAN, SISYPHEAN, NERGAL

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Aug 312017
 


Jupiterian

 

I’m in the same situation I was in yesterday, with my fucking day job squeezing the life out of my NCS time, except now I’m being squeezed on the east coast of the U.S. instead of the west coast. As a result, this post, plus one forthcoming premiere, will be the only ones you’ll see at our site today.

Before entering the Land of Nod late last night I spent about an hour listening to new music selected at random, and heard one more stunner this morning over coffee. And because time is short I’ve picked only three of those to write about.

JUPITERIAN

I’ve written about this Brazilian band frequently in the past. The last time, when the subject was a new EP of cover songs, I referred to the band’s ability “to club a listener senseless” and to channel “pure evil — cask-strength and undiluted”, the “stark, desolate, and devastating” sensations of their music, and the capacity of the vocals alone “to give any normal person a shivering case of the night terrors”.

Little wonder that I nearly spilled my morning coffee when I saw a bunch of exciting news this morning about their new album Terraforming — including the revealing of a new song. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CONVOCATION, CIORAN

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Aug 302017
 

 

It’s been a long time since my fucking day job has severely impinged on my blog life, but it’s happening again. The interference began on Monday and the situation has gotten increasingly worse since then.

I’ve fallen far behind in searching out new music and barely had time to listen to anything yesterday. This morning I have to get on an airplane and fly across the country, and when I get where I’m going I’ll be buried in work until turning around and flying back on Friday. So the volume of stuff at our site will dwindle over the remaining days of this week.

My brief listening session last night did lead to the discovery of excellent music by the two bands I’m writing about now. And so, without further ado, let’s get to them.

CONVOCATION

Convocation is a relatively new Finnish project consisting of L. Laaksonen, who writes the music and performs all the instruments, and M. Neuman, who handles the lyrics and vocals. Laaksonen is also the musician behind Desolate Shrine, and Neuman is also the vocalist for Dark Buddha Rising. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (BY DGR): THE KENNEDY VEIL, BELPHEGOR, DAGON

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Aug 282017
 

 

(DGR prepared the following round-up, featuring three items of news and new music that surfaced last week.)

Last week was a densely packed week for metal, with a lot of huge names like Arch Enemy, Ghost, and Mastodon all releasing music videos, and that wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg in metal news. There was so much that seemed to land backloaded onto Friday that it seemed like metal had just decided to spin up into one of its whirling torrents of destruction modes. Thus I once again step in to write about some of the things that caught my interest within the tornado of heavy metal that thrashed about over the week.

This time around we’re going to do a little traveling again, with two musical releases from Sacramento’s The Kennedy Veil, and Austria’s Belphegor, and then we’re going to take a look at the crowdfunding campaign from Lansing, Michigan’s own Dagon and their latest quest to write more ocean-themed death metal.

THE KENNEDY VEIL

It’s been some time since we last heard from Sacramento’s hyperspeed death metal group The Kennedy Veil. In the time since 2014’s Trinity Of Falsehood, The Kennedy Veil have seen the addition of a new vocalist, Monte Barnard, whose resume includes a ton of live vocalist work for groups like Alterbeast, Fallujah, and Thy Art Is Murder, in addition to having been the vocalist for The Antioch Synopsis and the short-lived Soma Ras. Last week the band were finally able to release details about their new disc, Imperium — which is due out October 20th — as well as release a new song, which premiered at Decibel. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): OMEGA, ANTICHRIST SIEGE MACHINE, SEITA, SLOWLY BUILDING WEAPONS

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Aug 242017
 

 

Suppressing the nagging worry that we’re once again overwhelming you with too much new music, I present Part 2 of today’s two-part round-up. Part 1 included recordings by five bands, and this one has music from four more.

OMEGA

I begin with a song called “Sidera” off the debut album by a band ambitiously named Omega. Entitled Eve, it will be released by Dusktone on Oct0ber 1, and it’s apparently based on the 15th century Voynich manuscript, an illustrated volume written in a language that to this day has never been deciphered (read more here).

The participants in Omega are reportedly members of such other bands as Hanging Garden, Nostalgie, Deadly Carnage, Ashes of Chaos, and they’ve been working on the album for four years, with the aim (according to a description on Bandcamp) of creating “a subconscious experience, an atavistic expression that tends to destroy our deepest convictions, which are always limiting and promising”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): REX DEMONUS, ONIRISM, IMPLORE, KRIEG, ROTTING KINGDOM

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Aug 242017
 

 

I know I posted a round-up of new music just yesterday, but there are far more discoveries I’d like to share, and these go a bit deeper into the obscure realms of the underground than the ones I picked yesterday.

Lots of interesting stuff here, so much that I’ve divided this post into two parts. You may need to skip a meal and a bathroom break to get through both parts, but you’ll be glad you did, even if you begin gnawing your fingers and wetting yourselves. That ain’t fake news.

REX DEMONUS

The first band here is Rex Venomous, they are a multinational group, and the debut two-song EP you’re about to hear is Tenetur et Relicta. I looked up those two Latin words, and they translate as “bound and abandoned”. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ASTRAL BLOOD, ALTARAGE, KAWIR, SACRILEGIOUS RITE, KAUAN, SHADOWMASTER

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Aug 182017
 

 

And so we come to the end of another work week. Three days have passed since the last round-up of new music I pulled together, and those have been eventful days for the release of new metal, not even counting the many excellent premieres we introduced ourselves. I’ve had to resist the temptation to cram a big mountain of them into this post (instead of a small mountain), in part because I’m off to the airport again for a long weekend in the Rocky Mountains, capped by the coming of a black sun on Monday.

I hope you’ll enjoy the picks I’ve made for this truncated round-up, and that you’ll enjoy the two more premieres we’ll be bringing you later today. I think I’ll have time to pull together some more new music this weekend despite being away from the forested NCS fortress near the Puget Sound.

ASTRAL BLOOD

I’m beginning this collection with a new single by Minnesota’s Astral Blood, in part because it gives me the opportunity to post not one but two pieces of artwork by Luciana Nedelea that will cover the front and back of the album from which it comes. The album is named SYZYGY, and the front piece is above. This is the piece for the back cover: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: IN TWILIGHT’S EMBRACE, THE HOWLING VOID, WAR POSSESSION

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 152017
 

 

Non-blog life is rapidly encroaching on me, so I’m forced to make this round-up short. But it’s sweet. It’s short but sweet. I just made that up… pretty good expression, don’t you think?

IN TWILIGHT’S EMBRACE

For me and many others, The Grim Muse by Poland’s In Twilight’s Embrace was one of 2015’s highlights — a multifaceted and uniformly strong melodic death metal album loaded with fantastic riffs, memorable lead-guitar melodies and solos, powerful performances by the rhythm section, and absolutely ferocious vocals. We had the privilege of premiering the full album stream, and then last year we also debuted a full stream of their next release, an EP named Trembling that also consisted of tracks from the recording session for The Grim Muse.

Today I was excited to learn through an announcement at DECIBEL that the band’s fourth album, Vanitas, will be released on September 22 (through their longstanding label partner Arachnophobia Records). At the same time, DECIBEL premiered a track from the album named “The Hell of Mediocrity“. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST UPDATE: MORE BANDS ANNOUNCED FOR 2018

 Metal News  6 Responses »
Aug 142017
 

 

The 16th edition of Maryland Deathfest will take place in Baltimore on May 24-27, 2018. In June, MDF announced the first round of confirmed bands for the festival and added 19 more in July. And today, about an hour ago, they named 13 more, including My Dying Bride, Misþyrming, Dødheimsgard, and Mantar. Here’s the full list of new names:

My Dying Bride (UK)
Misþyrming (Iceland)
Dødheimsgard (Norway)
Viscera Infest (Japan)
Arkhon Infaustus (France)
Mantar (Germany)
Mortal Decay
Pavel Chekov
Torn the Fuck Apart
Fluoride
Bandit
Neolithic
Bestial Evil Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 3): CAUSTIC, HELPLESS, IMPALERS, THE BODY AND FULL OF HELL, SERPENT COLUMN, MANGLER

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Aug 122017
 

 

Yesterday I launched the first two parts of a week-ending round-up (here and here). As promised (every now and then I do keep a promise), I’m continuing the flood of new music today with Part 3. There’s more to come tomorrow, but the remaining songs I picked out will be packaged in our usual Sunday SHADES OF BLACK feature.

Some of what you’ll find below are full album streams, though I’m just sketching out some brief thoughts about them and hoping you’ll be intrigued enough to dive deeper into the releases. Wish I had time for more complete reviews, but in the words of American clergyman Robert Schuller, “Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.”

CAUSTIC

I admit that my current mood (fairly black and pissed off) may have influenced the first three picks in this Saturday collection. It certainly influenced my decision to listen to Caustic’s new two-track single… because it’s named Murder the World. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): ENSLAVED, ANTARKTIS, AETHERIAN, CLARET ASH, SATOR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 112017
 

 

In this post I continue an end-of-week round-up that I began here earlier today. I’ll post a third installment on Saturday. In this one, we have new music from five favorites of our site, all of whom are returning this year with new releases.

ENSLAVED

I’ve already published two previous posts about the new Enslaved album, E, even without any music to share with you. Now we finally have an advance track, “Storm Son“, which arrived today in the form of an animated music video designed by Josh Graham.

The song is a 10-minute beguiler, described as follows by songwriter/guitarist Ivar Bjørnson: Continue reading »

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