SEEN AND HEARD: THE AMENTA, HARM’S WAY, VIOLENT LIFE VIOLENT DEATH, NO DIVINITY, GRUZJA, INTO THE DEEP, INCANTATION

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Aug 172023
 

Oh look! Another mid-week roundup of new music, and it’s even more voluminous than the one I managed yesterday.

To give you a bit of a roadmap to what’s ahead, I’m starting with a perennial NCS favorite from Australia, then moving into an absolutely devastating block of U.S. metallic hardcore, then veering off in all sorts of other different directions.

THE AMENTA (Australia)

The Amenta decided to record a bunch of cover songs by a very eclectic group of bands, ranging from the black metal of Nazxul and Lord Kaos to Alice In Chains, Diamanda Galas, Killing Joke, Wolf Eyes, Halo, and… wait for it… My Dying Bride.

As if the prospect of these covers wouldn’t be titillating enough on their own to pique our interest (because we know a band like The Amenta aren’t going to play it straight with any of those songs), the 40-minute “EP” that includes the covers also presents a new original song, which is the subject of a video that debuted yesterday. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, PRIMORDIAL, PERMADEATH

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Aug 162023
 

Happy Hump Day. To help you celebrate the crest of the week before we all fall down the other side, here’s a very short but pretty damned sweet roundup — just three brand new songs, but one of them is long.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM (U.S.)

To begin, here’s “Twin Mouthed Spring“, a breathtaking new track from a new EP by WITTR named Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: RILE, TRANSGRESSOR, I HELVETE, TORPOR

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Aug 122023
 

What do you get when you mix a lingering cold, nighttime cold medication, and way too much wine on a Friday night? In my case I got 12 hours of sleep and coma-like brain fog when I woke up this morning.

Strong coffee has amazing restorative powers, but this morning was nearly all gone before it started to work, and unfortunately it’s not a cure for colds, nor is anything else. This infection just refuses to crawl away, and there’s nothing I can do to make it retreat. It even seems to have laughed off 12 hours of sleep.

On wrecked Saturdays like this one, which thankfully have been rare over the last 13+ years of NCS, I usually just throw in the towel and accept that we’ll have a day with nothing new on the page. However, I’m just obstinate enough today that I turned seething anger over the virus into a selection of angry music, even if it arrives here much later than usual.

RILE (U.S.)

A link to this first song, “Climb Out“, landed in our in-box three days ago, and the comparative references to Converge and Trap Them caused me to bookmark it. The reported fact that this Salt Lake trio includes members of Cult Leader and that the song is from a debut album which will be released by Church Road Records provided extra incentives. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KRIEG, SULPHUR AEON, TORPOR

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Aug 082023
 

The time I have available for NCS activity today is rapidly slipping away, so this roundup will be relatively short — just three new songs — but I wanted to jump on these while they’re still “hot off the presses”.

KRIEG (U.S.)

Krieg haven’t been moribund since the release of their last album of new songs, 2014’s Transient. They’ve filled the intervening years with splits, compilations, and shorter releases, and we got the “Bone Whip” flexi-disc single just last month. But at last there’s a new Krieg album on the October horizon, and yesterday brought the first streaming single, “Solitarily, A Future Renounced”. Continue reading »

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

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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

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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 »

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