SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WAYFARER, ASHTAR, HOUSE OF FLOWERS

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jul 292023
 

Dear friends and complete strangers, greetings to you on another diēs Sāturnī. I must be brief today because of an Event I must attend, which begins soon and will extend until the stars come out, when the congregants will have to see each other by firelight.

That Event continues tomorrow, beginning early on dies Solis and again proceeding past nightfall, and so don’t be surprised if my next usual round-up of new music, the blacker one, is also brief or goes missing altogether, even if I don’t fall into the fire.

WAYFARER (U.S.)

Denver-based Wayfarer‘s next album, American Gothic, is said to serve as “a funeral for the American dream”. “Caked in dust, and buried deep in blood and gunpowder, it paints a brutal and beautiful portrait” — so says Profound Lore, which will release the album on October 27th. “What we have now is a world full of oil drillers, and railroad barons. Cattle thieves and company men. This is the new American Gothic”. So says the band.

Along with these announcements came a video for a new album track named “False Constellation“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WALDGEFLÜSTER, SECRET POISON, PHANTOM WINTER, SECRELICT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 272023
 

Busy week, busy day, on the home front here, but just enough spare time to take a very quick spin through some bookmarked new music. Not entirely random choices, since I focused on two bands I already know I like and followed the recommendation of a trusted source in another instance, but also made one startling new discovery.

WALDGEFLÜSTER (Germany)

I have yet to be disappointed by the music of Winterherz (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a festival many years ago, introduced by Austin Lunn), and based on the first song from the new Waldgeflüster mini-album, he and his friends still aren’t about to let me down.

The brightness of the strummed chords and the liveliness of the tumbling drums at the outset of the song provide a welcome measure of beauty and hope, and the peals of hopefulness continue, even after the roiling riffage and wrenching screams and yells begin to blaze and the drums launch their barrage. Continue reading »

BIZARRE PLAYLISTS TO PISS OFF YOUR NEIGHBORS – SUMMERTIME EDITION

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Jul 252023
 

-Good morning, my neighbors!
-FUCK YOU!!!

(In March of this year Axel Stormbreaker brought us a two-part “Bizarre Playlist to Piss Off Your Neighbors“. as a way of welcoming Spring. Being seasonably adjusted, he now returns with a Summertime Edition.)

Oh my, oh my. Thank you very much. It’s true these past few months haven’t been good (life’s shit, currently), hence why you haven’t seen any proper reviewing work on my behalf. Not that I’m looking for pointless sympathy from strangers, it’s just that several bands have asked me to review their work. And I should have done something weeks ago, at a time I wouldn’t feel like I could put together a concrete sentence, even if that’d save my own life. And then guilt came along, spreading its bleak, bat-shaped wings all over my entire subconscious.

Or maybe I should just blame my enjoyment for promoting music, even if it’s just a dumb, occasional hobby. I even started this blog in a hopeless attempt to lift my spirits; mostly for publishing conceptual work that bears no relation to NCS, such as fictional tales, ’90s TV show reviews, Japanese jazz, and other bizarre concepts. Sadly, so far I only uploaded one fictional tale I wrote right after the initial outbreak of COVID’s pandemic, but I guess I’ll work on it further, sometime.

So. enough with my senseless mumbling. You’d better enjoy the following muzick, or else. I’ll only recommend six, six, six releases for now, ‘cos I’m a horrible person and words don’t seem to flow anyway.

Here we go. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS ON A SATURDAY: ARCHSPIRE, DREAMWELL, HUMANITY’S LAST BREATH, KUNSTZONE, SLEEPWALKER, CHOSHECH, SWARRRM, SYLOSIS, TRIVAX, WORMHOLE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 222023
 


Archspire

Someone wrote they get by with a little help from their friends… don’t tell me… it will come to me….

I got by with some help from my friends this morning. It was one of those especially distracting weeks when I had almost no chance to claw my way through the hundreds of e-mails we get every day, so I didn’t have much new music bookmarked to check out over the last 24 hours and really wasn’t eager to do the catch-up chore. However, DGR and Andy Synn pitched five new songs and videos at me, and I also noticed a few recommendations from some other valued influencers.

Collectively, those became my main targets… and like the blind squirrel who found an acorn, I did stumble across a few nuggets of musical nourishment myself. The result is the very big collection I’ve assembled below, organized alphabetically by band name and with fewer words than usual for Saturday round-ups. Surely you will find something to enjoy….

The Beatles! Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: BAXAXAXA, BLUT AUS NORD, CELESTIAL, DECOHERENCE, FABRICANT, FORTIÐ, FREYA, HARM’S WAY, MANTAR, SKÁLMÖLD, THY CATAFALQUE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 182023
 


Baxaxaxa

Today is the 199th day of 2023. On this day in history, among many other instances of idiocy and abuse, the First Vatican Council decreed the dogma of papal infallibility and Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf. It’s also the birthday of Nelson Mandela, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Hunter Thompson, Vin Diesel, Geno Suarez of the Seattle Mariners, and maybe you, as well as the death-day of Caravaggio, Jane Austen, Benito Juarez, Machine Gun Kelley, and hopefully not you.

It also happens to be a rare weekday when I had time to pull together a roundup of recommended new songs and videos, which has nothing to do with commemoration of any of the preceding events. There’s so much here that I’ve throttled my usual descriptive verbosity (Satan knows there’s more than enough hot air in the atmosphere today already) and left aside some of the cover art until I can upload it later today. (Presented alphabetically by band name, which led to some interesting juxtapositions).

BAXAXAXA (Germany)

Prepare for: low-end rumbling and thrumming plus grim vibrating riffage, immense jolting chugs and ethereal gothic synths, dragging tones of agony and fanatical serrated-edge yells. The experience is menacing and morbid, feral and ferocious, infernal and infectious…. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOE, 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 142023
 

Here we are at another Friday, with yet another big pile of new metal staring us in the face and not nearly enough time to make much of a start in selecting recommendations before the sun gets high in the sky (or is replaced by the moon where you might live).

I’m reminded of the statement attributed to Laozi about how the journey of a thousand miles begins, a proverb that usually doesn’t motivate me at times like this, when a thousand-yard stare is all I can usually muster. But today I tried harder to take the proverb to heart, and actually made two steps. Unless like puts a bog in my path, more steps will follow tomorrow and Sunday.

WOE (U.S.)

My first selection is a new song from Legacies of Frailty, a new album by Woe and the first one since 2017’s Hope Attrition. Since then, it’s hard to deny that the human world around us has slid backward, more rapidly and in more disgusting ways than even the pessimists among us had contemplated, and the natural world has suffered for it as well.

These developments certainly weighed on the mind of Chris Grigg, who for the first time since 2007 made this Woe album by himself (albeit with additional drumming on three tracks by Lev Weinstein). The result is a concept album, described by Grigg in these words: Continue reading »

DEADSPACE: NEWS AND NEW MUSIC

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Jul 142023
 


Deadspace

Those of you who have been following us a long time know that for a long time we have been following the band Deadspace (as the many reviews collected here will demonstrate), as well as the Exitium Sui solo project of Deadspace front-person Chris Gebauer (those reviews collected here). There was a time when we thought Deadspace had been interred forever when Chris moved to Europe, but thankfully the reports of their demise proved to be premature:

In 2021 Deadspace released the single “Moksha“, and about one month ago Immortal Frost Productions announced that on September 22nd it will release the band’s seventh album, Unveiling the Palest Truth. But even before then Deadspace will release another record, and it’s our pleasure to announce that today, as well as to provide a reminder about the first single that surfaced from the new album about a week ago and to spread the word about a couple of upcoming live shows. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CRYPTOPSY, GRIDLINK, RINGWORM, PHANTOM LUNG, CLOUDS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Jul 082023
 

I don’t work regular hours for my “day job” (in quotes because it can require night hours too, because it’s irregular). The upside is that it usually gives me time for NCS in the early part of the day when I do most of what I do around here. The downside is that it sometimes inserts itself unexpectedly, like on a Saturday morning of all fucking times, which is what happened to me today, never mind that it’s also my birthday (please hold your applause).

So, getting a late start on this roundup means it’s not as fulsome as it should be. I was able to manage more than two songs (which was the sum total of what yesterday’s roundup provided), but not many more. But they’re good ones!

CRYPTOPSY (Canada)

Cryptopsy are one of those bands that I think all of the steady contributors to our site have enjoyed for a long time (at least I can speak for myself, DGR, and Mr. Synn). So the news of a new Cryptopsy album and song popped up in our secret discussions very quickly. So that’s where we’ll start… with the video for that new song, “In Abeyance” (especially because it gives us a chance to show off some more of Paolo Girardi‘s artwork at the top of the page). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: PANOPTICON, BEYOND GRACE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jul 072023
 

My stack of links to new songs and videos is so high it would fall over and crash if they were dominoes. Here are just two, by good friends, that I’ve enjoyed which came out during the week that’s about to end. Barring unforeseen disasters, I’ll pick many more to share tomorrow and the next day.

PANOPTICON (U.S.)

Austin Lunn encouraged Panopticon fans to send messages to the county commissioners with permitting authority over Wyoming’s Fire in the Mountains festival by promising to release a new song if 100 or more such messages were sent. That goal was more than met, and so true to his word, Austin released “Cedar Skeletons“, which will appear on Panopticon‘s new album The Rime of Memory. As Austin has explained, the song includes some very talented guest performers:

“It features guest vocals by my friend Victor Sanchez and a choir comprised of many of my collaborators (Andrea from Exulansis, William from Dalla Nebia, and Andy, whom yall know as the bass player from our live band.) Patrick Urban (Dämmerfarben) wrote and performed Cello, Charlie Anderson returned to collaborate on this album on fiddle, and we had a great time recording and arranging together.”

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: INCANTATION, KATAKLYSM, OSSUARY, CRUCIBLE OF HATE, GHOST HOLLOW

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jul 012023
 


Incantation

When I started this blog 13 years, 7 months, and 10 days ago (but who’s counting?) I had very few ambitions. One of them was to continue posting about metal straight through the weekends for as long as this NCS lark might last, no days off.

Back in those days of the internet’s infancy, blogs devoted to metal were few in number (none of them were fancy enough to call themselves “web sites”), and I thought being the only such place with something new on the weekends would attract a few more visitors. But my main motivation was to tangibly demonstrate that NCS wasn’t a business, and writing for NCS wasn’t a job, and never would it be. Because if it were a job you’d get the weekends off, right?

13 years, 7 months, and 10 days later, I’m still not pausing NCS on the weekends. In all that time we’ve had some weekend days where nothing new went up, but not many. Maybe a dozen days, certainly not more than two dozen. Illness, injury, and apocalyptic hangovers have taken their tolls, but not nearly as often as you might think. However, weekends like this one pose a special challenge. Continue reading »

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