By now, when I say that Mgła’s Exercises In Futility is an album for the ages, I expect no argument.
Yesterday these Polish magicians posted a video of a live performance of the song “VI” from that album. The video, which was filmed during the the Nidrosian Black Mass Aftermath tour in December, is as much a work of art as that magnificent album — and I bow my head in respect to Woda i Pustka, who filmed and edited it. Continue reading »
I guess I went overboard with this collection of new metal in a blackened vein. Believe it or not, even though eight bands are featured in this round-up, I made a lot of hard choices, leaving behind many other new releases I also heard over the last week that I thought were good. But eight is still a lot for a single post. Hope you won’t be deterred by its length from giving everything here a listen.
I organized these songs with a quartet of full-throttle assaults at the start, followed by a trio of more ritualistic, strange and/or atmospheric selections, and concluding with one final head-crusher.
SVARTTJERN
Norway’s Svarttjern signed with Soulseller Records for the release of their fourth album Dødsskrik, which our friend eiterorm tell us is Norwegian for “Scream of Death”. The song I have for you is the first advance track from the album, “All Hail Satan”. Continue reading »
I woke up this morning to find a link to this song waiting for me on Facebook, and this note from DGR: “Obviously the most important thing to happen this week and partially why I’m alive. Grooves harder than your favorite nine string wielding plural name band of the week. Also sings better. Probably raps better too.”
We’ll probably lose a few readers because I’m posting this. But you have to understand that it’s almost obligatory that I do it, since more than one of us here at NCS have been writing about BabyMetal since 2011, back when they were not a lot more than a curiosity, back in the halcyon days when Phro made our site more deranged. Continue reading »
Here are a few new things I spied over the last 24 hours that I thought you might like, because I sure as hell did.
GORGUTS
There’s been a running joke in the comment sections of our annual LISTMANIA series over the last few years. It dates back to a comment left in December 2013 when I re-posted a list from Rolling Stone that named Deafheaven’s Sunbather as the best album of 2013. Not having paid attention to the title of the post or the text that also identified Rolling Stone as the source of the list, some nitwit wrote: “Deafhaven. That’s laughable. Gorguts put out the best METAL album this year – don’t deny it. Stop trying to be different – you’re only appealing to hipsters. Have fun with that. I thought I’d found a credible metal music site to frequent – apparently not. Laters.”
That comment has now jokingly been repeated in our comment section so many times in the subsequent years that I can almost recite it from memory. I shudder to think how often it will appear this December, when there actually IS a new Gorguts release in the year-end running — as it surely will be. Continue reading »
Well, today isn’t going quite the way I planned. To follow my musings earlier today about last weekend’s Famine Fest, I had planned to bring you the premiere of a full album stream for a hot-as-hell new release. However, Soundcloud decided to block all of the song streams under a notification of copyright violation. I’m too stupid to realize this is always a possibility, and therefore I didn’t upload the tracks a few days ago to allow time for that to happen, to file my protests, and to have the blocks cleared. Now I’m sitting around waiting for the tracks to be released from bondage.
In the meantime, I thought I ought to whip something else up to pass the time away. So here are a few things I noticed this morning, beginning with a couple of exciting announcements.
SCHAMMASCH
No secret that we are big fans of this Swiss band. Also no secret that we’ve been very curious about the contours of the band’s next album. Andy Synn tried to pry some details from the band’s main man CSR in this interview last month — and received these cryptic answers: Continue reading »
Welcome to a new edition of Shades of Black. Today I’ve collected five new songs, one new video, and a snippet from the studio for an eagerly anticipated new album. As I sometimes do with these posts, I’ve included some things that aren’t black metal in the strictest sense of the term (or at all).
YLIASTER
Although I didn’t know it at the time, I first learned of Marcel Polit through his starring role in an excellent video for the song “Notion” by Poland’s Vesania that we premiered in December — which you can and should watch HERE. It turns out that Polit is a musician, too, and he has recorded a debut album with Dariusz ‘Daray’ Brzozowski (Vesania, Dimmu Borgir, ex-Vader). The name of this project is Yliaster, and the album is Soliloquy. Continue reading »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »