SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GIGAN, OLD MACHINES, FURNACE, SOLUS REX, ENDLESS CHAIN, LUSCA, KOBOLD, THE HYPOTHESIS, NARKOSE

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Aug 242024
 


Gigan

(written by Islander)

Poor you, I had lots of time on my hands yesterday, and so made my way through a lot more music than I’m usually able to do, and even had enough time to spill a bunch of words, like kernels from a violently ruptured grain silo.

With this much music in a weekly roundup, I often default to mentally un-taxing organizational strategies like alphabetization. But not today. I made these choices because of connections, and organized them in the way they connected for me. You’ll get it or you won’t, but as always, I hope you find one or more things you’re really glad you found, in whatever order it comes. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: KILLING SPREE, RÅDDEN REKTALVÆSKE, ODIO DEUS, MELTED BODIES

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Aug 172024
 

Getting a late start today. Went on a bit of a bender yesterday. Paying for it today. Lots of new stuff to get through, my mental trawler forging through frothy musical waters. Still frothy, even after my mid-week roundup (4 songs, but could have been 14). Thought that sacrificing complete sentences here in the intro might help accelerate things. Now, to hit the accelerator harder:

KILLING SPREE (France)

A rarity for me to include a cover song in these roundups, and even more rare to start with one. But this isn’t an ordinary cover. It shot lightning into my nerves and simultaneously scrambled my brains like swirled eggs on a hot pan. The live, unedited video (“filmed in the historic trenches of the Maginot Line in Alsace”), is quite cool too. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SCHAMMASCH, DEFEATED SANITY, PAYSAGE D’HIVER, MAN’S GIN

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Aug 142024
 

(written by Islander)

It’s only Wednesday and the week has already seen the release of a lot of notable new songs and videos. Taking advantage of the fact that I only had one premiere on the calendar for today, I decided to pull together some of the new sights and sounds so that the usual Saturday roundup this week might not be as obese as the one I did last Saturday.

SCHAMMASCH (Switzerland)

Yesterday Prosthetic Records announced the sixth studio effort by the Swiss band Schammasch, and the second in their The Maldoror Chants series, which draws upon a 19th-century surrealist book entitled Les Chants de Maldoror. The new album is named The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean, and it’s set for release on October 25th. The themes of the album, based upon those texts, are captured in these words: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (TOO MANY BANDS TO NAME IN THIS TITLE)

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 102024
 

(written by Islander)

What’s a good metaphor for having too many attractive things to choose from? A kid in a candy store? Maybe, except a lot of the sweet things I’m looking at this morning are also poisonous.

Wandering the aisles of an animal shelter trying to make a connection with a small feline you might adopt? Yeah, but some of these small beasts I’m seeing will suddenly swell up and try to claw out my jugular.

How about a child wide-eyed at a pile of presents under a tree on Christmas Eve, wondering what to open first? Sure, except some of these gifts will explode when touched, or might break your heart.

Here’s what I chose to share from the array of musical delights and dangers I surveyed today. As you can see, I grabbed with both hands, pockets stuffed and both hands overflowing. Presented alphabetically, because trying to figure out how to organize this in any other way was too damn taxing. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: OPETH, OMINATION, ORANSSI PAZUZU, THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR, AGRYPNIE , MAUL, TRIBULATION

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Aug 032024
 


Opeth photo by Terhi Ylimäinen

Raise your hand if you’re surprised that I’m starting this Saturday’s roundup with Opeth‘s new song.

Okay, I see no hands. Well, almost none; I see my own because I’m a self-taught typist and therefore hunt and peck.

But I’ll try to be more surprising after we talk about Opeth.

OPETH (Sweden)

Based on the small dose of social media I’ve seen, Opeth‘s first single from their next album is proving to be divisive. (I can only stomach social media in small doses, like beets or eggplant). In one camp are people who are unhappy with the dominating return of Mikael Åkerfeldt‘s death growls for the first time since Watershed. In the other camp are those who’ve welcomed the return with open arms and gleeful grins. Can you guess which camp I’m in? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GOJIRA, MALAMORTE, GLACIAL TOMB, MORCAINT

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Jul 272024
 


photo by Weiyi Cai/The New York Times

Yesterday was a day of firsts. Among other things, it was the first time a heavy metal band performed in the opening ceremony of the Olympic games. And the first time memes took off about a U.S. vice-president candidate fucking a couch. Less exciting, I’m also pretty sure it was the first day since I started this blog 14 1/2 years ago that we failed to post anything on a weekday.

I made a whirlwind driving trip with a friend to Vancouver, heading north on Thursday and coming back to Seattle yesterday. In between, we attended a blowout celebration related to our day jobs that left me not enough clear-headed time yesterday morning to do anything before beginning the trip home, even though I had a couple of interviews ready to publish.

I’m getting a late start today, and that whirlwind trip didn’t give me any time for listening to the kind of music we focus on here (my road-trip companion isn’t into that kind of music, and anyway, I didn’t bring with me my list of new stuff I wanted to check out). So I did some whirlwind catching up today, and here’s what I hurriedly picked to share with you. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, THE SHIVA HYPOTHESIS, FÖHN

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Jul 202024
 


Photo Credit: Francesco Esposito

For those of you who don’t treat our posts as among your daily essentials of life, or at least like a free oxygen mask in the vicinity of a chemical train derailment, I’ll mention again that I won’t have much time for metal this weekend.

Today is the start of an annual two-day outdoor gathering of toilers at my day job and their families. For some of us it began last night, something akin to an alcohol-fueled pre-fest for concert-goers. It was jolly, and left me somewhat jumbled this morning.

That relatively mild mental affliction, coupled with the fact that the real festivities will begin soon, have left me constrained in what I can do in this Saturday roundup. If you don’t see a Shades of Black collection tomorrow, you’ll know that my Sunday-morning affliction was more severe and my sleeping-in more prolonged. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GAEREA, HAR, HAMMERFILOSOFI, LAGO, CAGED BASTARD, THE SPIRIT, ARA SUBVERSOR

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Jul 182024
 


Photo Credit: Chantik Photography

I’m so far behind in pulling together roundups of new songs and videos for NCS that I can’t even think of an appropriate metaphor. Maybe like a marathon runner who takes an arrow to the knee just as the starting gun goes off and is still writhing on the ground when the last runner crosses the finish line — but I’m even more behind than that.

Another metaphor comes to mind, the one about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step. This is a journey I won’t finish, if finishing means catching up, but here’s a single step (actually 7 steps, to be less metaphorical and  more precise).

P.S. I decided to lean pretty hard into black, death, and blackened death metal on the especially incinerating and obliterating end of the spectrum, with something dark and hallucinatory more or less in the middle. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GOD DETHRONED, TRIBULATION, AGRYPNIE, WORMED, VAFURLOGI, RÖTUAL

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Jun 292024
 

Last weekend I didn’t pull together new music for a Saturday SEEN AND HEARD or a Sunday SHADES OF BLACK. I was away from home at a Pacific Northwest beachfront on a short vacation with family and friends. That led to late nights and late mornings and a desire to pay attention to physically-present human beings instead of communing with headphones and computers.

The consequence is now staring me in the face: Two weeks’ worth of new songs and videos to choose from for today and tomorrow, instead of one, when even one week’s worth is usually overwhelming. I made lists of links but of course could only listen to a small fraction of them. I was first drawn to some familiar justified names and then just threw mental darts, though the aim was not completely random. Here’s the result:

GOD DETHRONED (Netherlands)

No matter how deafening the racket or how urgent the whispers around the mouldering halls of the NCS HQ, we’ll always make time for new God Dethroned, and count ourselves lucky that Henri Sattler & co. are still alive and kicking. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, BURIAL OATH, WHITE STONES

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Jun 152024
 

For this currently foggy-headed writer yesterday was a hell of a day and last night was a hell of a night. There was food grilled near hot coals, copious drinking, fire, and conversation far into the night among people who could barely understand each other. Deep underground with the oxygen cut off, a bigger bed of hot coals started cooking some things; today we will reconvene to discover the results.

Depending on those results we may eat grass and go our separate ways early, or it may be another late night. But yeah, it’ll probably be a late night regardless; there’s still plenty of beer, wine, and dry wood on hand.

And that’s an explanation for why this usual Saturday roundup is appearing so late and is so short, and a preview that Sunday’s black metal roundup may befall the same fate.

Continue reading »

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