SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: WARCRAB, KRONREST, JUST BEFORE DAWN, CVINGER, AFTERBIRTH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Aug 052023
 

Hey there, how’s your weekend shaping up? Is it shaping up like this, or like this? Either way, after you make your way through what I’ve picked for this Saturday’s roundup it may be re-shaped into something like this.

I decided to arrange the following new songs and videos in reverse alphabetical order by band name, mainly so I’d be able to start with…

WARCRAB (UK)

When I think of WarCrab‘s music I think of the kind of whumping sound that would be produced by a giant battering ram pounding against concrete pylons and ejecting the rebar out the other side. I also sometimes think of Bolt Thrower and Crowbar, and not just because Transcending Obscurity Records refers to those bands in the context of describing WarCrab‘s forthcoming album The Howling Silence.

But in the case of the first two singles from the new album, those aren’t the first impressions that come to mind. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BANDCAMP FRIDAY: CHOROSIA, NOTTURNO, BODY VOID

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Aug 042023
 

Bandcamp Friday’s are ideal days for roundups such as this one, because people can immediately act on what they like in a way that yields more money to labels and bands from that platform.

Unfortunately, the random chaos of the cosmos often seems to conspire against me on these days (forget about the fact that conspiracies aren’t random), and it has happened again today, thanks to a huge distraction from my fucking day job.

I’ve managed to pick a few — a very few — recommendations in the small slice of time available to me. I’ll have more tomorrow, perhaps enticing enough to go on your wish list for the next time Bandcamp lets more money slip through their sticky fingers.

CHOROSIA (Austria)

I’m leading off with a just-released video for a song by Chorosia from their new 35-minute EP, and I’ve made that choice for two reasons: First, it lets me put Orion Landau‘s stunning artwork for the EP at the top of our page. Second, the song is an out-of-the-ordinary blend of sludge, doom, and progressive metal that proves to be thoroughly captivating. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CAVEMAN CULT, CULT BURIAL, MAIRU

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Jul 312023
 

On Saturday morning I mentioned that I would be involved in an Event that I expected would consume the weekend, and so it did. I didn’t fall into any fires, which is a minor miracle given the volume of intoxicants I consumed, but I didn’t have time for NCS after that brief Saturday morning roundup.

In a rare display of wisdom, I didn’t agree to do any song premieres today, anticipating that I would still be trying to recover from a weekend of debauchery. But of course I did feel the old obsession today – how could I let a day go by without recommending something musical at the site, even though we did share Andy‘s latest Synn Report and a good interview by Aleksey? Well, as you can see, I couldn’t.

CAVEMAN CULT (U.S.)

Eventually, my eyes were able to focus this morning, so I decided to take a quick look at what landed in the NCS in-box since Saturday morning. There I found a notice of a new post at the starkweather SubStack. I slowly read through it and bookmarked some music I hadn’t been aware of, to explore when my brain was less fogged in. Then it dawned on me that something I discovered there would probably blow the fog away like a hurricane, along with my brain itself. A rough cure, to be sure. Continue reading »

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)

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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 »

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