Feb 202016
 

Iskra-Famine Fest-2

 

I drove from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, yesterday with my friend Joseph Schafer (Invisible Oranges) for the purpose of attending the 2016 edition of Famine Fest. The festival began last night and resumes again tonight. I’m going to quickly mention two bands I saw last night that made big impressions, and then toss some new music your way.

ISKRA

The chance to see this band from Victoria, British Columbia, was one of the main draws of Famine Fest for me. I really liked their 2015 album Ruins, and I had missed out on other chances to see them in the past. Continue reading »

Feb 182016
 

KZOHH cover art

 

I mentioned yesterday that this week has brought yet another flood of new music. Continuing to sift through what I’ve been seeing and hearing, I’d like to share and recommend new songs and videos from five bands today. Lots of diversity here…

KZOHH

The Ukrainian black metal band KZOHH includes members of such other excellent groups as Khors and Reusmarkt, among others. In early December I included some words about a great song named “Alousia et Pestilentia Ignearia” from their just-released second album, Rye. Fleas. Chrismon.

Yesterday the band released a multi-camera, pro-shot live video of their performance at the Via Sinistra III Festival in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on December 6, 2015. The name of the song performed in the video is “Massebegravelser”, which is also from Rye. Fleas. Chrismon. Continue reading »

Feb 172016
 

Mordbrand-Hymns of the Rotten

 

Man, the flood of enticing new metal just doesn’t stop. In only the last couple of days I’ve found so many new songs I’ve become excited about that I could write a half-dozen of these round-up posts just for today, and by the time I finished I’d probably be able to find just as many new things for tomorrow. Sadly, my time is not completely my own, and my fucking day job is nagging at me, so this will have to do for now.

But before I get to a few of the new songs that have peaked my interest (two of which are well-earned exceptions to our “Rule”), I’ll start with a new compilation of previously released songs that’s well worth your time.

MORDBRAND

Mordbrand will be a familiar name to regular NCS visitors — because I’ve written about virtually every one of their releases. And I’ve done that because everything they’ve done to date has been so damned good. And now they’ve revealed a new release that provides both an efficient jumping-on point for people new to the band and a welcome collection for existing fans. Continue reading »

Feb 172016
 

Sargard ST

 

June 29, 2015. That was the date of the last MISCELLANY post. Pathetic. I can say that, because I’m saying it about myself — anyone else does that and there will be brutal repercussions, which are the only kind of repercussions we know at NCS.

You probably need a refresher about the MISCELLANY process: I pick a song or two from a release I’ve not heard in advance, usually chosen at random from e-mails or suggestions by readers and usually recorded by bands I don’t know much about. I write up my reactions, and then I stream what I heard so you can make up your own minds. Unlike all the other music-related posts we write at NCS, where we focus on what we’ve heard and want to recommend, this series is an experiment.

I admit that sometimes I pick from suggestions that come from pretty reliable sources, and that’s where most of the bands in this post came from (many from my Serbian friend “M“). But even then, it’s still a shot in the dark. Also, this post is obviously twice as long as most of the past episodes of MISCELLANY, and maybe I should have split it into two parts. But I figured that lots of our readers are as gluttonous as I am when it comes to new discoveries, so just get ready for a big fuckin’ feed.

SARGAD

Sargad are a foursome from Örebro, Sweden, and they released their self-titled debut EP three days ago. I listened to the first song on the EP, “Ur Jord”, and that was so damned good that I listened to the second one, too. Continue reading »

Feb 162016
 

Black Fast art

 

I seem to have the attention span of  a fruit fly. I was working on a “Seen and Heard” round-up of newly discovered music and decided to pause and take a quick spin through the NCS in-box. There I discovered a new video and more new songs, prolonged my break long enough to give them a quick listen — and then a longer listen — and then it occurred to me I could package them together under a clever post title. Sometimes having a short attention span is not all bad.

The bands are Black Fast, Casket Raider, and Casket Robbery.

BLACK FAST

This first song isn’t new, but it happens to be one I’ve liked a lot since I first heard it last year, and this time it’s packaged in the form of a new lyric video. Continue reading »

Feb 152016
 

Dungeon Synth copy

 

(Kaptain Carbon returns to NCS with a feature devoted to Dungeon Synth”.  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. We’ve heard that he is also a fantastic dungeon master and has some wonderful EDH decks.)

If you have been following my exploits and research into dungeon synth, this article should come as no surprise. For the past year or so I have taken a swan dive into this genre without any hesitation or thought of the consequences. If you are new to dungeon synth, allow me to give you a proper introduction.

Continue reading »

Feb 152016
 

Mantar-Ode To the Flame

 

I had originally planned to post this yesterday, to make the Sabbath blacker, but didn’t quite get it finished. I’ve collected five new songs from forthcoming albums and a brief review of an EP released last month. The songs are stylistically diverse — in fact, this is one of those installments of this column where not all of the music is even going to fit the broadest definitions of black metal — yet there is a shared “depressive” quality among many of the songs (and I use the term in a genre sense). And of course I found everything very good and very memorable and hope you’ll enjoy it, too.

MANTAR

As I’ve previously written, Mantar’s new album Ode To the Flame is one of my most eagerly anticipated releases of 2016, both because I thoroughly enjoyed their debut album Death By Burning and because I was so blown away by their live performance at last year’s Maryland Deathfest. A few days ago we got our first full glimpse of the new album via the premiere of a song called “Era Borealis“. Continue reading »

Feb 122016
 

Death fetishist-Lucifer Descending

 

I usually post collections such as this one on Sundays, to make the Sabbath blacker. But I’m sitting on so much good new metal in a blackened vein that I decided to share this collection now. I’m hoping to put together another one for Sunday.

DEATH FETISHIST

Just a couple of days ago, the eminent Debemur Morti Productions announced the signing of a new band from Portland, Oregon, named Death Fetishist, whose debut album will be released by the label later this year. To commemorate the blessed event, Death Fetishist released a single-song EP entitled Lucifer Descending yesterday — which follows a two-song EP (Whorifice) released on the first day of this month. Both EPs are available on Bandcamp.

The person behind Death Fetishist is the prolific Matron Thorn, who is also the principal driving force in Ævangelist as well as the protagonist in a large number of solo projects, including Benighted In Sodom. He is the vocalist in Death Fetishist and performs all the instruments other than drums and percussion, which are handled by Grond Nefarious. Continue reading »

Feb 112016
 

Wormed-Krighsu

 

I didn’t pounce on some of the songs in this round-up as fast as I would have liked, but it seems that there are people who still manage to discover new music through these collections even when the songs aren’t piping hot right out of the oven. But I’ll start with a couple of tracks that actually did just premiere today, before getting to the ones that appeared earlier in the week.

I’m sad to say that this is a day when I’m pressed for time, and so I’m unable to whip together the mini-reviews that usually accompany songs I’m enthusiastic about. I’ll say only that I’m REALLY enthusiastic about all of these.

WORMED

Today Revolver Magazine hosted the debut of not one but two new songs off Krighsu, the new album by Spain’s Wormed. The tracks are named “The Singularitarianism” and “Eukaryotic Hex Swarm”, and are accompanied by this description from the band: Continue reading »

Feb 082016
 

Amiensus art

 

As regular NCS readers know full well, we’ve been following and supporting Minnesota’s Amiensus for years, because they’ve been consistently delivering such fine music. Last year they released their second album Ascension (reviewed here), but they will have even more new music for us in 2016, and we’re giving you some tantalizing tastes of it below.

The band tell us that they have plans to release a new split in the first part of the year, then an EP in September, followed by another split in December — and in the player below you can check out excerpts from three of the new songs, with music that ranges from jolting, to majestic, to mystical. Continue reading »