VIDEOGRAPHY: AMENRA, MONARCH, CANVAS BLACK, DE PROFUNDIS, FJORDS, CONCRETE AGE, RAW IN SECT, TEETHGRINDER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 092017
 


Amenra photo by Stephan Vanfleteren

 

As I mentioned in yesterday’s Overflowing Streams round-up, my plan was to pull together another compilation of recent recommended music under the SEEN AND HEARD header. By the time I finished, I realized that almost everything I had picked came in the form of a video, and the one exception was close enough that I decided to change the heading for this post.

I arranged these videos to achieve a kind of flow, or an arc — not seamless, to be sure, but in a way that made sense to me. Things begin in very dark fashion with the first three videos, then we have some death metal necrophilia as a transition (necrophilia is always a good transition, right?), and then a trio of high-energy tracks that have ethnic musical elements mixed in with otherwise diverse sounds, and then we go out in an explosive bonfire. And with that, let’s begin…

(P.S. My usual Sunday SHADES OF BLACK feature will be posted on Monday.)

AMENRA

The Belgian band Amenra are returning with a new mass, five years after the last one. Mass VI will be released on October 20 by Neurot Recordings, a date that seems very far away, but at least it’s on the calendar now. The video below isn’t a full song (sadly), but it’s a very effective teaser for the new album nonetheless. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: PARADISE LOST, FLESHKILLER, ABHORRENT DECIMATION, TWO LABEL SAMPLERS, AND A BUNCH OF LINKS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jul 082017
 

 

I’ve been recovering from a concussion I suffered last Sunday night. Based on the experience so far, my advice to you is this: Never get a fucking concussion. Between the persistent headache, the nausea, and the general feeling of debilitation that forces me to nap in a dark, quiet room as often as I can, it has put a real dent in my usual scouring of the interhole and our e-mails for new music to recommend. Just in case you were wondering why there were no round-ups this week.

I’ve been feeling (slightly) better over the last 48 hours, so I’ve been looking at what I missed — and damn, did I miss a lot. I’ve picked a trio of things to stream and comment on specifically, and a lot more things to just point you to. I’ve also included two new worthy label samplers. I also plan to write a SEEN AND HEARD post to cover a handful of other new songs and videos.

PARADISE LOST

I haven’t heard the new Paradise Lost album, Medusa, but a couple of trusted friends who write for print zines have heard it, and they have a high opinion of it. The album comes out September 1st on Nuclear Blast. Yesterday brought the debut of the first single from the album, “The Longest Winter“. Continue reading »

A ROLL OF THE DICE: DENY THE URGE AND ART AGAINST AGONY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 012017
 

 

Happy Saturday to one and all. My original plan was to take the day off, but I began to experience that needling feeling of urgency, the one I can’t ever completely suppress — sort of like that feeling you get in your bladder soon after drinking a gallon of beer, except in my case it’s the urge to post new music at NCS.

But it’s late in the day or well into evening for most people who might read this, and later than usual for a Saturday post here in the Pacific Northwest, so I decided to hurry this along by just posting two new songs. I decided to pick music by bands I didn’t recall hearing before, and I decided to make the selection a random one, like a roll of the dice. And so these are the first two good songs I heard this morning by bands I hadn’t heard before.

DENY THE URGE

When I saw this band’s “verb-the-noun” name I guessed they would be a deathcore or metalcore group and nearly skipped past them. I’m glad I didn’t.

When I saw Dan Seagrave’s album art, I realized my guess based on their name was most likely wrong, and the music definitely proved me wrong. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (WEEKDAY EDITION): MYRKUR, KOSMOGYR, WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, THETA, VULTURE INDUSTRIES, ASAGRAUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Jun 302017
 

 

I began writing this post on Tuesday, intending to finish and publish it the next day. Events conspired against that plan, and I was defeated again yesterday by technical problems ironically created by malfunctioning software installed in our web-host server by the company we pay to armor us against malware.

I’ve resisted the temptation to make this burly collection even bigger by including more new music I’ve spotted in the days since I started it. I also resisted the temptation to just shove this column into its usual place on Sunday, especially because I’ve taken a few liberties with the usual configuration of SHADES OF BLACK. Posting it today will also me to harness different new audio assaults to char the coming Sabbath.

MYRKUR

I stay away from metal message boards for fear of losing IQ points, which as you well know are meager enough already. But I could guess that the people who think they are the trve keepers of the holy black flame are gnashing their teeth all over again because Myrkur has released a new song and soon enough will release a new album. Based on experience, I presume that the readers of this site will take the music as it comes and assess it on its own merits, which is what I’ve done — and I do like what I hear. Continue reading »

SAVE THE DATES: ANNOUNCING NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2018

 Metal News  2 Responses »
Jun 292017
 

 

The first edition of Northwest Terror Fest came to an end late Saturday night, the 17th of June, 2017. The response of both the bands and the audience was so enthusiastic, and the festival went so smoothly, that before the last of the festival organizers had left for the final after party, we put down a deposit on the two main venues for Northwest Terror Fest 2018. And today we can make it official: Northwest Terror Fest will take place again next year in Seattle on May 31-June 2, 2018, at Neumos, Barboza, and Highline.

NCS co-presented this year’s NWTF, and I had the fascinating (and sometimes harrowing) experience of being directly involved in it from the earliest planning stages straight through to helping load out the backline gear on the Sunday after it ended. It was exhilarating to watch everything come together as well as it did — and I still plan in the very hear future to share some more detailed thoughts about that experience.

In the meantime, I encourage you to read the beautifully written show reports (and check out the concert photos) that have appeared this week (here and here) at Invisible Oranges (whose editor Joseph Schafer was likewise directly involved in NWTF 2017 from start to finish). Continue reading »

A DGR SEEN AND HEARD: DISTASTE, LENG TCH’E, ABORTED, THE HAUNTED, SAMAEL, THE RITUAL AURA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 272017
 

 

(DGR once again takes over round-up duties at our metallic fortress, presenting news and new music from six bands.)

This weekend was glorious if you were in a death grind sort of mood, as it felt like Friday was the first crack in a dam about to burst from a small handful of bands. Austria’s Distaste put out a new EP entitled Todt (which is curently name-your-own-price), and Belgium-based grinders Leng Tch’e and their fellow countrymen in the restless Aborted both began streaming new songs from their upcoming releases.

In fact, in compling this roundup I felt I had to temper the blade a little bit by tacking on something that wasn’t just raw fury from front to back, so Samael find themselves paired up alongside an EP announcement for Australian tech-death wonders The Ritual Aura and an ambient teaser that, were we not aware of just how heavy those guys can get, would be fairly calming. So, if you were looking to start your day without a massive pile of non-stop guitar batterings, relentless drumming, and vocals fired at the speed of a machine-gun, my friend…you’ve come to the wrong place. Continue reading »

MARYLAND DEATHFEST 2018: FIRST ROUND OF BANDS ANNOUNCED

 Metal News  3 Responses »
Jun 262017
 

 

The 16th edition of Maryland Deathfest will take place in Baltimore on May 24-27, 2018. Today, MDF announced the first round of confirmed bands for the festival, and it’s a list that palpitates my heart:

-(16)-
Abhomine
Bloodbath (Sweden)
Blood Incantation
Broken Hope
Coven
Chthe’ilist (Canada)
Destroyed in Seconds
Dead Infection (Poland)
Durian
Enemy Soil
Evoken
Eyehategod Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GIGAN, BENEATH, ERYN NON DAE., ATRIARCH, LIVERUM, THE SHADELESS EMPEROR, RAVENTALE, GYRDLEAH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 222017
 

 

That’s Jinx Dawson’s coffin up there, rising above the stage at Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle last Saturday night. Trust me, she was about as far from dead as you could get, but that’s where she was, inside that box when the lights came up. The crowd went crazy when she came out, and didn’t stop until a while after Coven finished their headlining set on the festival’s last night.

Someday soon I’ll write about the festival, and maybe a little about the chaotic experience of actually helping put on a festival instead of just watching the show. That’s a box I’ve now checked off on the bucket list, even though it wasn’t on my bucket list before the planning for NWTF began last year. As I think back on the experience, I’m lucky I didn’t kick the bucket before the weekend ended. Nevertheless, we’re doing it again next year, and perhaps I will emerge less exhausted, having learned a few things from the first outing, but probably not.

Anyway, since about the middle of last week I’ve had no time to compile a round-up, and am thankful to DGR for stepping into that breach not once but twice (even though he too helped out with the heavy lifting at NWTF). In the meantime, my list of new things to check out became typically overwhelming. To make the job of choosing somewhat easier, I’ve focused on more recent revelations, and perhaps will dig deeper into the last week or two in the coming days. So, let’s begin…. Continue reading »

A DGR SEEN AND HEARD: ABHORRENT DECIMATION, DECAPITATED, OCCVLT HAND, BROKEN HOPE, DECREPIT BIRTH, SCHAMMASCH, QUASARBORN, LEPROUS, THE ZENITH PASSAGE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 212017
 

 

(DGR once again takes over round-up duty, compiling a selection of nine items for your listening and viewing pleasure, culled from the last week.)

 

Clearly nobody got the email that we sent out announcing that we would be incredibly busy late last week Northwest Terror Festing, and therefore decided that it would be a good time to flood the heavy metal world with news. You wouldn’t know that by visiting NCS, because we slowed to a crawl, with writers Gorger and Andy Synn coming through as the heroes keeping the fortress guarded whilst the rest of us rotated between drunk and exhausted.

Now, though, DGR has come to collect his dues, so I have compiled a round-up with every single thing that I kept notes on from Thursday of last week ’til now, and I guarantee you that I’ve still missed a handful of things. Still, though, this collection of music videos, lyric videos, and live performance(s) is gigantic in its own right and it is certified NCS “Fresh”, which means it should only mildly smell like rotting beef carcasses.

Abhorrent Decimation – Conspire

When I first saw the artwork by Karmazid for the upcoming Abhorrent Decimation album The Pardoner, I declared that if the music on that disc could be half as cool as the artwork it bore or the concept behind it, then I would be a happy camper. Well, with “Conspire“, Abhorrent Decimation have shown that they are in good standing on that front — releasing a monstrous six-minute brutalizer. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (BY DGR): SEPTICFLESH, DYING FETUS, BYZANTINE, ABORTED, JACK KETCH, THE FACELESS, KREATOR, ASYLUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jun 152017
 

 

(DGR takes over our round-up rodeo for this Thursday, with a mix of news and new music from 8 bands.)

By the time you are reading this, I will likely be hiding like a coward underneath a fan set on incredibly high as this region of California experiences its first legit summer heatwave of one hundred plus temperatures. Considering that I am a soft wuss who has somehow survived many of these prior, you’d think that attempting to lose weight so that I may one day fit in my freezer with the door closed wouldn’t be the go-to gameplan, but alas, here we are.

You may have noticed by our recent slowdown post that a good chunk of the NCS crew plans to spend the weekend cooped up in a handful of venues in Seattle for the Northwest Terror Fest, enjoying a smattering of different groups. So in order to offset that I’ve made a hefty collection of new music and some album artwork that has slowly been cropping up on the web in recent weeks that have floated by us recently, to be caught in the patented super-porous DGR news net. At the very end I’ll even toss in an album that I came across recently for all of you to enjoy.

So let us sunder forth so that I can quickly go back to attempting to stuff myself onto the second shelf of the freezer next to the frozen lasagna boxes. Continue reading »

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