(written by Islander)
My selections today were guided by strong memories, many of them quite distant and others more recent. And the music below is strong enough to make new memories. I’ll explain as we go along.
P.S. Be forewarned: There’s more than a little singing in this Saturday’s collection, especially in the closing segments, and it’s all very good! Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
Friday nights inexorably flow into Saturday mornings. There is also a cause-and-effect relationship between them. For many of us, Friday nights tend to be a time for “blowing off steam” after the work week, though my history of them has often been more like arson, with my own self as the target. Realizing through painful experience that I am not flame-retardant, I don’t ignite myself on Friday nights as much as I used to. But the cause-and-effect relationship persists.
Late yesterday afternoon my spouse and I began crossing the water to Seattle to attend a celebration of a friend and former colleague’s 10th year of recovery from being struck by a Seattle emergency vehicle through no fault of her own, an event that nearly killed her and inflicted a severe traumatic brain injury. Her long, gradual recovery defied all medical prognoses. She still has deficits compared to who she was before the accident, but looking back over the last 10 years, what she has achieved through pure strength of will has been astonishing.
It was a great gathering of herself, her family, and her friends, not just locally but from around the country. But we forgot about the ferry schedule, missed a 10 pm sailing back to where we live, and waited around the ferry terminal with a bunch of other exhaused and/or wasted people ’til the next one left after midnight. By the time I got home and to bed, the clock was not far away from 2 am. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
As I often do, I made a list of links for new songs and videos I wanted to check out in anticipation of this Saturday’s column, i.e., things that had surfaced or that I had noticed since last weekend. Having done that, I counted the number of links, and there were 69 of them (I swear that number is completely coincidental!), including a few I noticed for the first time this morning. It wasn’t even a complete list; I had a bunch of other tabs open on my desktop that I didn’t add to the list because I knew time was running short.
I recognize this is odd behavior. Why make a list that long when you know you won’t make it through even a quarter of the items? Why make a list that long when you know it will only knot up your brain in deciding which of them to check out? I have no answer, though perhaps a trained therapist would have some theories.
As usual, I resorted to impulse. The only calculated part of the process was a desire to mix up bands I already like and others that were new to me, and a further desire to mix up the genres so that visitors here will be at least somewhat caught off guard if they move from one choice to the next and the next. Continue reading »
photo credit: Artemis II crew and NASA
(written by Islander)
As you can see from the post title, I decided to pack a lot of new songs and videos into this week’s SEEN AND HEARD column. To make that possible (because I got another late start and my free time this morning is limited), I’ve had to skimp on the verbiage and truncate this introduction — which ends now. Continue reading »
(This is DGR’s review of the swan-song release by Die Like Gentlemen from Portland, Oregon. The eye-catching cover artwork is a painting circa 1910 called “The Drinker” by German artist Erich Plontke.)
Many, many moons ago, in an era before space and time, when the world was just an idea in the eyes of the gods, we published an interview with Portland, Oregon’s Die Like Gentlemen.
That’s it, just wanted to check in and point people to an interesting interview we did about five years ago as we have some new readers on the site and sometimes it is nice to highlight the fact that we’ve been publishing stuff for a while at this point and there are plenty of rabbit holes to fall down. You can go about your day from here.
Actually, here’s the thing. While diving around the underground world and exploring music I saw the name and cover art for Die LIke Gentlemen’s recent self-titled – and apparently final – album go floating by and it must’ve re-lit some incredibly old neurons in my brain because it is one of the few times where I found myself doing the CSI detective thing of tapping the desk and going “why do I know this, why do I recognize this, why is this familiar?” over and over until I would soon discover that the primary suspect was well… us.
For some reason, be it the name, excellent choice of outfits, or the fact that I do make a valiant attempt to scroll through everything here, that previously mentioned interview for Die Like Gentlemen stuck with me enough that years later I would find myself very interested and intrigued by the group’s newest release, the self-titled Die Like Gentlemen, at four songs and nearly forty-minutes of prog-metal weird and avante-garde doom exploration at its most adventurous. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley”. Once again those immortal words of Robert Burns come to mind on this Saturday. I’m not thinking of our regime’s war plans in Iran, because they clearly weren’t “best laid”. No, I’m thinking of my own plans for this roundup of new music, which were extensive but then doomed by my own misbehavior last night and the steep price paid for them this morning (I’m not in jail or a hospital, and I’ll just leave it at that to avoid further embarrassment).
I gave serious thought to just abandoning all plans, but decided that a feeble effort late in the day would be better than none at all, so I made four choices that I hope you’ll enjoy (the music is most definitely not feeble, and the selections will provide something of a musical roller-coaster ride as you make your way through them). Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
This past week has provided yet another flood of new metal, maybe even more than usual. I’m staring at dozens of new open tabs on my beleaguered computer, stacked on top of dozens more from the previous couple of weeks, and getting that anxious feeling that comes from the certain knowledge that I’ll barely make a dent in what’s there.
But I did have time to make a small dent today, thanks to waking up even earlier than usual and with a relatively clear head. No matter the clarity, I don’t have a very well-understood reason for why I picked the following three selections. They just kind of jumped out at me, I guess because they’re all very recent and from bands who’ve got a very appealing track record, at least for me.
With any luck, I’ll make some bigger dents in this weekend’s NCS roundups. For now, get your heads dented with these: Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
I took a break from NCS last weekend, a short vacation that led me to eastern Washington. That means I now have twice the usual number of new songs and videos sitting in front of me as I ponder what to feature today. But rather than try to go back and figure out what I might have done last Saturday, today I focused mainly on what surfaced within the realms of metal over just the last week. It was a lot, and so I’ve made this roundup a bit bigger than usual.
I’ve managed to pull out eight new songs, six of them accompanied by videos. I think they provide considerable variety, and I’ve arranged them in a way that made sense to me as I listened to everything. Of course, they’re also a reflection of the darkness inside my head these days.
Tonight I’m going to a retirement party for a close friend. She’s too young to be stopping work altogether, just closing one chapter in her life and starting a new one, but I still want to be there. Doubtless, it will keep me out late, with probably a three-hour round-trip on the travel alone. I don’t know if that will impact tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column, but it might. Another reason why today’s collection is bigger than usual. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
I’m writing this on Friday morning. My spouse and I are about to begin the long trek from where we live to Sea-Tac airport. From there we’ll fly to Walla Wall in eastern Washington to spend a long weekend with two other couples who are a lot of fun to hang out with. And hanging out is what we’ll be doing, along with going on winery tours, dining in the town’s excellent eateries, and doing our best to forget all the fresh hells that are besetting the world.
I do not plan to spend time putting together either the usual SEEN AND HEARD roundup for Saturday or the usual Sunday SHADES OF BLACK column. I know myself well enough that I’ll probably get anxious about leaving a two-day void at the site, and so there’s a chance I’ll scramble something together at some point, but don’t bet on it.
I’ll be back in action here on Monday morning for sure, or as sure as anyone can be about air travel these days. In the meantime, here’s a mysterious video for a scary, heart-aching, and bone-throbbing new song by Erdve that I enjoyed this past week. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
Technology is treacherous. I had this post written five hours ago, but a glitchy security feature prevented me from accessing the site and posting it. Our web host fixed the problem just minutes ago. Which is why this roundup is appearing so late.
Other than weeks ending on a Bandcamp Friday and weeks that include Halloween, my perception is that weeks ending on a Friday the 13th tend to be the most bulging with new metal. That was certainly true of the past week (and the few days before it began). You want proof? Well, here are 10 well-known bands who released new songs and/or videos during that period:
ALLEGAEON (U.S.)
EMPLOYED TO SERVE (UK)
HELLRIPPER (Scotland)
IMMOLATION (U.S.)
INFERI (U.S.)
MONSTROSITY (U.S.)
PORTRAYAL OF GUILT (U.S.)
SARCASM (Sweden)
SIX FEET UNDER (U.S.)
VOMITORY (Sweden)
I easily could have included any of those songs and videos in this column, because they’re all damned good. And you won’t go wrong going after them, which I’ve made it easy to do via those hyperlinks. But I decided instead to do what we often do around this place, and that’s dig deeper under the ground. Continue reading »