Nov 152025
 

(written by Islander)

Before I get to the music I’ve picked for this Saturday’s roundup I’d like to alert our followers to something that will happen on Monday, which will involve an appeal for your help.

It’s the time of year when our traditional year-end LISTMANIA series will slowly start lurching forward, building toward a frantic rush. Broadly speaking, it includes three segments: 1) our sharing of YE lists published at certain print mags and “big platform” websites, not because we’re endorsing them but because sometimes they’re useful and sometimes they’re laughable and they provide a gaze into how the broader surface-world of metal reacted to the year’s releases, and in all those way can be entertaining; 2) our posting of year-end lists assembled by our own writers and some special guests; and 3) the one thing I contribute to the exercise — my list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

That infectious song list is the last part of NCS LISTMANIA. I don’t usually begin rolling it out, bit by bit, until after the first of the New Year. But I start thinking about it much earlier. I keep a growing list of candidates all the way through the year based on what I’ve heard, but I don’t hear everything (who could?), and so part of what I always do to get ready for that list is to ask our visitors for their input, for their picks for the most infectious songs they heard that were released this year. Continue reading »

Nov 142025
 

(written by Islander)

This is another rare day when I have no premieres on our calendar and therefore have some free time for other things. Not wanting to spend it paying bills, hand-washing dishes (the dishwasher is busted), doing laundry, cleaning the cat box, or taking calls from world leaders interested in trying to understand what the fuck is going on in the U.S., I decided to get a head start on my usual weekend roundups of new music and videos.

Without further ado, here we go: Continue reading »

Nov 082025
 

(written by Islander)

Welp, I got another very late start on this Saturday. Of course, for most well-adjusted people Saturday is made for getting late starts. Not being well-adjusted, I get anxious when it happens, nervously staring at the clock and realizing I have to hurry or I won’t get roundups like this one finished in time for anyone in quadrants east of here to pay attention before sundown.

Enough of that. I should use my diminishing time to introduce the large handful of things I picked for today’s recommendations, including the semi-usual curveball at the end. Continue reading »

Nov 012025
 


artwork by the legend Frank Frazetta

(written by Islander)

I hope those of you who celebrated Halloween got through it with all your fingers intact. Oh wait, that’s a different holiday. But the wish still holds, even if the risks of losing digits might not have been as great. It all depends on where you put them and what you hold and whether some masked goon is firing rubber bullets at your raised fists.

I got through Halloween with all my digits intact, and the three I use for typing have been busily pecking away at this Saturday collection. It comes later than usual because I got a late start and was really confounded in deciding what to pick.

I was pretty thorough in saving links and files this week, which meant there were a fuckload of them staring at me this morning, and I had only sampled a small number of them during the week. I would say that more than half of them were of the black metal persuasion, so I shoved off a lot of those candidates (but not all of them) for tomorrow, which is also therefore guaranteed to be confounding. And there’s a bit of a curveball at the end, of course.

On we go…. Continue reading »

Oct 252025
 

(written by Islander)

I spent more time than usual last night listening to heavy music and, unlike what often happens on Friday nights, I didn’t get destroyed (except by the music), so I felt pretty good upon awakening this Saturday. Which is why this roundup is as bulging as it is.

In my listening excursion I fell down a rabbit hole, not intending to, but that’s what falling down is about. Except this rabbit hole was like a steep and rapid descent (more jet-fueled than gravity usually powers), with a fuckload of fireworks and sharp edges on the way down, and who knew rabbits had such big teeth and vicious red eyes?

Or to put it more prosaically, there’s a ton of high-speed thrashing and vigorous battering ahead of you. At least until the end, when I indulged something very different, for people who don’t want to thrash their reproductive organs off today or otherwise get their craniums fractured and their grey matter whipped up in a centrifuge. Continue reading »

Oct 242025
 

(written by Islander)

With only one premiere on the calendar today and having completed it, I thought I ought to do something else before beginning to think about tomorrow’s usual roundup of new songs and videos. The something else I decided upon is this brief head-start on that roundup. Continue reading »

Oct 182025
 

(written by Islander)

Life outside the doors of NCS reminded me again that there is life outside the doors of NCS. Which is to say that unforeseen occurrences pushed back the time I wanted to spend listening to and writing about new metal for this roundup, so I’m late finishing it. No need to go into detail but, well, a baseball playoff game last night and needing to get my wife to an early ferry boat this morning had something to do with it.

There’s no baseball playoff games today and my spouse is now out of town, just me and the cats holding down the homestead, so there’s a decent chance I’ll have a more on-time roundup of black(ish) metal ready for tomorrow. As for today’s selections, I think they’ll keep you off-balance as you move through them. Continue reading »

Oct 112025
 

(written by Islander)

For these Saturday roundups I’ve been trying to include a minimum of six picks. I only have four today because I’m leaving the house early with my wife to get breakfast with another couple at a very cool place that’s an hour drive away. Bedtime last night was also unexpectedly late due to a certain excruciating 15-inning baseball playoff game and its delirious aftermath.

Being even more limited today than usual, there was a risk my picks would be even more random than usual, even more like throwing darts at a squirming mass of targets and hoping the few I hurled would impale winners. To mitigate the risk, I picked bands who had won me over repeatedly in the past. As I hope you’ll agree, that turned out to be a good strategy. Continue reading »

Oct 052025
 

(written by Islander)

I thought about deleting the placeholder post I made yesterday but then decided to leave it there so you can see the explanation for why this SEEN AND HEARD roundup arrives a day late. That way, I can get right to the music.

Sad to say, I don’t think I’ll be able to compile a SHADES OF BLACK feature today. Continue reading »

Oct 032025
 


(written by Islander)

It is another Bandcamp Friday. You will already have many suggestions and discoveries that point you toward how you might spend your music-oriented money today. Poor you, here are some more. (And I’ll have more tomorrow, so you can start complicating your life in advance of the final Bandcamp Friday of 2025 on December 5th.) Continue reading »