SEEN AND HEARD: MORDBRAND, TCHORNOBOG, LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR, JUPITERIAN, JUSTIN C.

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 062017
 

Mordbrand – photo by Łukasz Jaszak

 

It’s been a busy week here at NCS, one in which I’ve spent many (many!) hours readying year-end lists for posting, as well as starting the roll-out of our (i.e., my own) list of last year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. We’ve also had some premieres and interviews and other things. And on top of all that, I got slugged yesterday by a nasty cold. The combined effect of all this has been to prevent me from preparing our usual round-ups of new music.

I’ve still been watching the appearance of new songs and videos and adding them to a list. It’s a long list. I picked a few items off of it for this post. Since the weekends at NCS are essentially all my own, I might prepare some more round-ups for Saturday and Sunday. It’s also possible this cold will cause me to curl up in a ball on the floor and whimper in misery until Monday.

By the way, it looks like we’ll finish LISTMANIA next week. I still have a few excellent lists in hand to post on Monday and Tuesday, and a few more might arrive, but I think we’ll be done soon. The Most Infectious Song series will of course continue until I pick some arbitrary stopping point, which will probably be January 31.

That’s it for an update. Onward to new music…. Continue reading »

THE BOOK OF BLASPHEMOUS WORDS — A REMINDER

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 062017
 

 

(Last fall we published a post by NCS contributor Grant Skelton about a then-forthcoming anthology of weird fiction, horror, and speculative fiction named The Book of Blasphemous Words, in which one of Grant’s own stories had been accepted for publication. The publication date of the book is now fast approaching, and we agreed to let Grant provide a reminder, along with some other benefits — including scatterings of metal music.)

Hello readers! I’ve been a contributor here at our beloved metal blog for a little over 2 years. In that time, I’ve done my best to bring you metal-related content that’s relevant, engaging, and thought-provoking. And since you’ve put up with my madness for that time, I’ve got a little treat for you. A way to say thanks for reading all the nonsense in my reviews and Seen & Heard contributions. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: A TOP 10 LIST FROM KEVINP

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jan 062017
 

 

(KevinP returns to NCS after being missing in action for a while, bringing us his list of the Top 10 releases of 2016 — and manages to include some names that haven’t appeared in LISTMANIA so far this year.)

Hey it’s me.  Yeah, I’ve been pretty much absent from the site since March (besides some behind the scenes stuff here and there).  Combo of busy with work, life, other hobbies (yes, they do exist) and the crush of trying to listen to 30+ releases every month for the past 2+ years leads to a bit of burnout (#RoughLifeAlert).  But I figured I’d stick my head in here and give my two cents.  I normally do a Top 25, plus various other things, but I’m sticking with 10 releases, nothing more, nothing less.

Onward and upward in 2017 (no promises). Continue reading »

SEPULTURA: “MACHINE MESSIAH”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Jan 042017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli wrote this review of the new album by Sepultura.)

Sepultura have been undergoing something of a renaissance since Dante XXI, with an oddly conflicted sense of identity. They have one foot in the past of their primal thrash intensity, another foot in their pioneering tribalistic groove metal days of Chaos A.D. or Roots, and are busy trying to play twister bending over backwards to put their hands into progressive inclinations and avant-garde adventurism. That has resulted in albums that’ve been interesting to listen to, while not exactly 100% all killer no filler.

Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t think Sepultura at this point gives a fuck about that, and they aren’t obligated to produce masterpieces with every record. I think we’re witnessing a band who are simply choosing to explore themselves to their limits on an almost spiritual level. Continue reading »

OUR LAST POST OF 2016… AND OUR FIRST OF 2017 (PART 2) — WITH NEW MUSIC FROM DEVIL’S FORCE, AURI, PHRENELITH, GRAVECOVEN, NORSE, CURVED BLADE, HOODED MENACE, ALGOMA, SPECTRAL LORE, TEMPLE OF NIHIL, AND GATH ŠMĀNÊ

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jan 012017
 


Partied hard, smiling big.

 

Happy New Year to one and all. I hope you survived whatever you did last night, intact and with only a modicum of blood loss and brain-cell death. I would tell you in detail what I did but I’m not sure you could stand the excitement. Even I was so drained after both putting down the robot uprising and preventing the savagery of the loris horde’s celebration from overflowing their compound, armed with nothing but a few blow darts, that I was asleep by 10:30, stone cold sober and vomit-free.

I’m beginning the new year at NCS the way I ended the old one (here), by assembling a giant batch of the new music I heard in recent days that I thought would be worth your time, plus one older release I came across only recently.

As a trained medical professional (ha!), I’ll warn you that if you did suffer more than a modicum of blood loss or neuronal cell death, you might want to wait another day before exploring what awaits you below. It won’t help your recovery, and it’s no sane person’s idea of a hangover cure. Damned good metal, though.

I’ll also mention that because this post takes the place of my usual Sunday Shades of Black feature, the music is mainly in a blackened vein, though not entirely. Continue reading »

OUR LAST POST OF 2016… AND OUR FIRST OF 2017 (WITH NEW MUSIC FROM MIDNIGHT, THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT, MISERIST, MIDNIGHT ODYSSEY, VIELIKAN)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Dec 312016
 

 

Yes, of course, it’s just an arbitrary date, one that has no intrinsic meaning. The arrow of time moves inexorably forward, the segmentation of its path into old years and new ones solely our own creation, one more effort to impose some kind of communal order on chaos. The effort fails, but as an occasion for remembering good times and bad, and perhaps kindling hope for a better tomorrow, the clicking of the clock past midnight tonight serves a laudable purpose. Even as simply an excuse for a cathartic blowout, it’s a good thing, if that’s your thing.

The calendar will flip over, but I’ll just keep writing as if nothing is about to change. Why the hell not? I have a lot of new songs and videos I’ve discovered over the last 48 hours. I’ve collected a few of them — the result of hard choices — and will make some of them the subject of this last NCS post of 2016, and the rest the subject of our first post of 2017 tomorrow.

Happy Fucking New Year to all of you from all of us. My resolution, over which I have no control, is to be here with you one year from today, saying the same damned thing. Continue reading »

AN NCS UPDATE — AND NEW MUSIC FROM DREAMING DEAD, SULPHUROUS, AEGRI SOMNIA, CONTAMINATED, VINTERSEA, SOLITUDE, BLACK KNIFE, PRAY U PREY, AUBE GRISE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Dec 282016
 

christmas-new-year-week

 

Well, here we are at the mid-point of an odd week, a week that falls between two big holiday weekends in a year when both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve fall on Saturday nights, enhancing the opportunity for revelry. Lots of people are having to work this week, but it feels like no one really has their heart in it. Others are on vacation. The usual flood of PR e-mails has slowed to a trickle; most of metal blogdoom is snoozing. As the new year rapidly approaches, people are beginning to fantasize about 2017 being better than 2016 and wondering what other well-loved celebrities will be cut down by the Grim Reaper in the few days before it arrives.

Obviously, we’re still forging ahead during this limbo week, and I thought I’d provide a forecast of what lies ahead at our site.

LISTMANIA will continue into the new year. This week we’ll finish rolling out the year-end lists by NCS contributors Grant Skelton and Wil Cifer and we’ll post year-end lists from our old friend SurgicalBrute and from three more invited guests —  Johan Huldtgren (Obitus), Ken Sorceron (Abigail Williams), and Seb Painchaud (Tumbleweed Dealer).

And then LISTMANIA will continue next week with some big brutal lists compiled by our old friend Vonlughlio from the Dominican Republic, as well as lists from a few other invited guests that I’m anxious to see. I trust that I’ll also receive the annual Not-Metal List from ex-NCS slave BadWolf (aka Invisible Orange’s editor Joseph Schafer) along with Andy Synn’s list of favorite 2016 songs. And undoubtedly there will be a few other LISTMANIA surprises before next week ends. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT: A TRANSCENDING OBSCURITY SAMPLER — AND A CHANCE TO WIN A FREE SHIRT

 Free Shit, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  29 Responses »
Dec 262016
 

transcending-obscurity-sampler

 

Those of you who have been hanging around our putrid site for more than a few weeks will recognize the name Transcending Obscurity, since we’ve been regularly highlighting albums on that label for years — and even more frequently over the last year or two as they’ve been dramatically expanding their roster of international bands. Today we have some exciting news about an immense free sampler of music just released by Transcending Obscurity, along with a chance to win a Mark Riddick-designed shirt.

The sampler features 55 tracks from 55 bands, spanning a wide range of metal sub-genres and an equally expansive geographic coverage. All of the bands are signed to Transcending Obscurity and include such names as Officium Triste, Paganizer, Ursinne, Echelon, Henry Kane, Stench Price, Sepulchral Curse, Fetid Zombie, Infinitum Obscure, Altar of Betelgeuze, Veilburner, Jupiterian, and Rudra, among many others whom we’ve written about at NCS. Continue reading »

HOLIDAY CHEER: SVART CROWN, DAEMONIAC, TURIA, TÓXICA, DESTRIERS, UNDRASK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 242016
 

sol-invictus-daniel-gautier

 

Once upon a time everything seemed to slow down during the holiday season… or at least everything other than the consumerist frenzy of gift-buying. But now in many ways the final weeks of the year seem as busy and eventful as all the other weeks, both at work and almost everywhere else. This year we even got announcements of a new nuclear arms race that no one asked for — what better way to celebrate peace on earth and good will to men!

I did notice a fall-off yesterday in the flood of messages arriving in the NCS e-mail in-box, but there were still a lot of new-music announcements, and I found even more in my Facebook news feed. There’s a risk that much of what I saw and heard will be overlooked, with many metal-oriented sites and blogs taking time off and many fans diverted from their phones and computers by holiday activities. So I decided, for the hell of it, to devote this Christmas Eve round-up exclusively to news and music streams that appeared (or that I discovered) for the first time yesterday.

Mind you, what follows isn’t everything I noticed, or even everything I enjoyed. I’ve made these selections to provide diversity of sound, and I’ve saved a few nasty things for tomorrow because NCS always does its best to reduce Christmas Day to a smoldering ash heap — praise and glory to Sol Invictus! Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: THE TOP 10 SONGS I HEARD FOR THE FIRST TIME YESTERDAY

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  20 Responses »
Dec 222016
 

shaarimoth-temple-of-the-adversarial-fire

 

This time of year there are always a few people who ask whether I’m going to post my own list of the year’s best releases. Again, the answer is no, because making the effort would be too paralyzing. I have enough trouble deciding whether to wash my underoos or let them ferment for another week.

On the other hand, I do kind of feel left out of the year-end LISTMANIA frenzy, so I thought I’d put together a Top 10 list, but one that’s a bit easier for my overtaxed brain to process. These are the 10 best songs I heard for the first time yesterday.

Hey, don’t laugh! It wasn’t that easy — I listened to more than 20 new songs yesterday, so I did have to make some decisions. Of course, I couldn’t be bothered to rank these 10 tracks; there’s a limit to how far I’m going with this.

SHAARIMOTH

The first song is “Faceless Queen of Bloodstained Dreams”, which is from an album I’ve been anxiously awaiting — the second full-length by Norway’s Shaarimoth, which is arriving more than a decade after the first one. Continue reading »

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