Jul 172016
 

Argonauta-Devouring the Mountains Vol III

 

As explained yesterday, I intended to take a break from blogging this weekend. I have paused a few times in my eating, drinking, and merry-making long enough to scan what’s happening on Facebook, and I happened to see a status which revealed that Italy’s Argonauta Records just released a free compilation of songs from 16 bands on the Argonauta label, which tends to focus on sludge, doom, post-metal, stoner, and drone. The name of the comp is Devouring the Mountains (Vol. III), and the songs come from Argonauta releases over the last 12 months.

We’ve written previously about half of the bands included in this comp (Hollow Leg, Beneath the Storm, Among Gods, Surya, Wows, Filth In My Garage, Return From the Grave, Eyes Front North), praising them all, and that gives me high hopes for the songs from the other eight bands. Continue reading »

Jul 162016
 

Badr Vogu-Wroth

 

Happy Saturday, motherfuckers (and I say that in the fondest possible way). I hope it will not make your Saturday less happy by telling you that what you’re reading now will probably be our only post this weekend.

I’ll be spending the rest of today and all day tomorrow at an annual two-day outdoor party with the people I work with at my fucking day job. They are great people and they know how to party, and I’m looking forward to it. However, it will be difficult for me to prepare anything for our putrid site until Monday, and since I’m usually the only NCS slave who ever posts anything on the weekends, that means we’ll likely be going dark for two days.

That means we probably won’t have a Rearview Mirror post or a Shades of Black post for this Sunday. I say “probably”, because my blog compulsion is so great that I might figure out some way to post something — but probably not. I do want to leave you with one new music stream before I check out, because I hate posting anything at NCS that doesn’t include some metal. Continue reading »

Jul 132016
 

Near-Our Sun

 

This is the delayed second part of a two-part collection of blackened metal that I began (here) on Sunday. The sharp-eyed among you will notice that I now have music from six bands instead of the four that I said would be included in this second installment. I actually wanted to add many more than two, but that would have caused the same problem that led me to split up Sunday’s post, so I’ll save them for another day.

This collection includes four full albums or EPs for which I haven’t written the kind of complete reviews that they deserve or that you might prefer. As usual, I’m squeezed for time. But please don’t mistake my meager write-ups for lack of enthusiasm — I’m very high on everything included here and hope you’ll explore all of them.

NEAR

Once again I must thank my overseas comrade Miloš for sending me links to the first two releases in this collection. The first of them is an album named Own Sun by the Italian band Near, which was released last week by De Tenebrarum Principio, a faction of ATMF. This is Near’s second album, following 2010’s The Opening of the Primordial Whirl. (The cover art bears the title “Our Sun”, but the ATMF Bandcamp page identifies Own Sun as the title.) Continue reading »

Jul 112016
 

Neill Jameson-Black Metal-Part 1

 

(We welcome back Neill Jameson (Krieg) with the first installment of a multi-part post devoted to under-the-radar black metal releases worthy of greater attention.)

While it seems a lot of what’s going around in black metal these days is more driven by aesthetics and shock value than ever, it still has a certain potency that other genres within metal don’t seem to be able to match. That being said, I can’t think of a lot of current bands that I obsessively listen to the way I would when I was younger and potentially more full of shit than I am now at this ripe old age.

Elderly bitching aside, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about records and bands that went somewhat under the radar at the time of release and sit in relative obscurity now, mostly because people have shitty taste (myself included), so I figured I’d use a column or two and shed some light on some records in the genre I’ve never been able to walk away from for whatever reason, the sort of releases that if I ever came into an excess of money I’d love to release on vinyl so that they would sit in my office unsold while people download it along with some weird virus that broadcasts Russian incest porn to their e-mail contacts. Here’s a few to start with: Continue reading »

Jul 102016
 

Make-Pilgrimage of Loathing

 

Ms. Islander and I were at an outdoor wedding and reception yesterday. It began in the late afternoon and continued late into the night around a fire with an intermittent misting rain. We had a great time, but it has caused a slow start for my Sunday blogging.

I had collected music from eight bands to recommend in this latest Shades of Black post, but because it’s already early afternoon here in the Pacific Northwest I’ve decided to split up the collection into two parts. Otherwise, this post would be appearing even later than it already is; also, eight may be too much music to digest in one sitting anyway. With luck, I’ll get the second half finished in time to post on Monday. Hope you enjoy what’s included here.

MAKE

I’m going to start and finish this collection with music from two bands I discovered thanks to tips from my friend Miloš. The first of these is a trio of songs from an album entitled Pilgrimage of Loathing by a North Carolina band named Make. The album, which is their third full-length, will be released on July 15 by the Portland (OR) label Accident Prone. Before hearing the music, I was enamored of the cover art by Fritz Silberbaur — and then became enamored of the music, too. Continue reading »

Jul 092016
 

ADE-Carthago

 

If you’re reading this, it means you survived another week. Congratulations. That seems like good cause for celebration, since about 155,000 people die every day on average.

To help you celebrate, here’s a collection of new music I sifted from the never-ending torrent of new metal over the last 48 hours, presented in alphabetical order by band name.

ADE

The Italian death metal band ADE, whom we last mentioned in these pages almost four years ago, have a new album headed our way on July 15 via Spain’s Xtreem Music. Like its predecessors, Carthago Delenda Est again draws upon themes from ancient Roman history, and the title suggests that its focus is on Rome’s efforts to destroy the North African city-state of Carthage in the Punic Wars. The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us: Continue reading »

Jul 072016
 

Inquisition-Bloodshed Across

 

The always compelling black metal band Inquisition have just revealed another advance track from their new album Bloodshed Across the Empyrean Altar Beyond the Celestial Zenith, which will be released by Season of Mist on August 26. I thought briefly about including the song in a round-up that I hope to finish and post later today, but then decided not to delay.

The song premiered not long ago at Revolver’s on-line site. Revolver chose not to provide any comment about the song itself, perhaps having concluded long ago that such commentary is a waste of time since people can listen to songs for themselves and most listeners probably wouldn’t strain their eyes reading before pressing “Play”. I, of course, can’t resist the urge to comment. Continue reading »

Jul 072016
 

Dore

 

(Kaptain Carbon returns to NCS with this feature on black and death metal demos. Kaptain Carbon operates Tape Wyrm, a blog dedicated to current and lesser-known heavy metal. He also writes Dungeon Synth reviews over at Hollywood Metal as well as moderating Reddit’s r/metal community.)

Islander and No Clean Singing have been champs regarding my sometimes insane focus when it comes to articles. I remember at the last Maryland Death Festival I met Islander for two seconds and the first thing I mentioned to him was “Thanks so much for letting me write about Dungeon Synth.” I am in the process of writing the second part on that series but I have decided to do an article more in line with the site’s ethos. Black and death demos. Hopefully he will let me keep being weird.

Demos have been of immense interest to me because they are an entity whose intent has changed over the years, particularly since the era of the digital internet landscape began. Artists can release full-length albums to fans without the need for a record label intermediary. Demos were originally intended as a demonstration to labels, which could lead to albums and further releases with that label’s support. While this seems like a dream of the halcyon days of big labels, the process of demo to album still exists in underground metal, albeit slightly different in intent. Continue reading »

Jul 052016
 

Belakor-Vessels

 

(DGR presents this round-up of new music, which completes a two-part post that he began here.)

I joked in the previous collection that I wrote that the flood of music which hit in June was a little hilarious. There’s been so much that it feels like I’ve become a giant net in which news lands and then I dump the whole thing upon this site for users to romp around in, and guess what? The comedic flood of music continues unabated with Round Two of our roundup.

We posted Round One last week, and the dredging of the internet continues as we dig for more music videos/song streams/full album streams to talk about. This time around the collection is actually pretty Europe-heavy, with our one huge divergence being a trip out to Australia — which happens to be our lead-off as well. The collection of bands this time around also features one newer discovery and also a check-in with a band who haven’t had some stuff out in some time.

Be’lakor – Smoke Of Many Fires and Vessels Album Stream

We’ve reviewed Be’lakor’s Vessels already, and I share Andy’s opinion that Vessels is a really good album, but recent weeks have brought even more news — though I can now keep this a little more truncated. One is that the band premiered a lyric video for the song “Smoke Of Many Fires” over at Horror Society, and two, if you prefer your music streams less lyric-video-heavy, Bloody-Disgusting grabbed a whole album stream here. Continue reading »

Jul 052016
 

Harakiri for the Sky video clip

 

This is the third and final Part of a post that I began on Sunday focusing on black metal (and music influenced by it), thinking it would just be a two-parter featuring six bands instead of what it has become. As the days have passed, I’ve continued to come across advance tracks and full releases that I want to support, and the total has now reached 13 bands. Honestly, I could do this every day, but I’m going to make myself stop until next Sunday so I can devote attention to other things. Like eating and sleeping.

I’m going to begin with a couple of videos, one brand new and one not so new (but newly discovered), both of them created for Austrian bands. And then I’ll turn to a new split, a recent album, and a couple of new songs from a band with some famous names attached to it that aren’t really black metal but I want to mention them without further delay.

HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY

The new album by this Austrian band, III: Trauma, is fantastic. We’ve already featured one of the new tracks (here) and premiered a second one (here), and yesterday the band debuted a video for a third one. Continue reading »