SEEN AND HEARD: ATHANATHEOS, DESERT STORM, BROUILLARD, AMPUTATION SPREE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 032023
 

It’s another Bandcamp Friday today. From my perspective, that’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s good for bands and labels because Bandcamp doesn’t take their usual cut from sales. On the other hand, my e-mail in-box (which is also the main address for NCS) gets deluged with Bandcamp-related messages and notifications, and that’s on top of the usual traffic of 200-300 e-mails to NCS per day. Trying to thoroughly crawl through all that takes more time than I have.

Still, because it’s a Bandcamp Friday I thought I ought to make at least a feeble head-start on the usual Saturday round-up. So here’s what I picked. Mind you, the songs definitely are not feeble.

ATHANATHEOS (France)

This French band is returning with a concept album named Cross. Deny. Glorify. It’s described as one “that follows the paths of three generations of Roman soldiers as they watch their empire decay from within in the wake of Emperor Constantine’s adoption of Christanity as its official religion”. All the songs are described as distinct and different in character, befitting this generation-spanning narrative. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VENOMOUS CONCEPT, THE BLACK MORIAH, AUSTERE, OROBAS

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Feb 012023
 


Venomous Concept

 

I have just enough time for a quick mid-week round-up of recommended new songs and videos. There have been a lot of new things this week so far, but that’s par for the course. These four happened to be among the ones I impulsively checkws out this morning. Hope you dig ’em all!

VENOMOUS CONCEPT (UK/U.S.)

I have a soft spot in my head heart for Venomous Concept, so I’m beginning with the new video for “Fractured“, the third one released in the run-up to their new album The Good Ship Lollipop.

The song was inspired by some troubles Shane went through during the upheavals of the pandemic and his efforts to pull the pieces back together. He wrote this, which will explain the imagery in the video:

“Music was always my comfort, but during this time my family needed me to be strong and I really wasn’t. I was breaking apart and trying to figure out how to put myself back together, and hopefully leave some of the bad bits behind. “Memories came—my childhood, my parents, my family, my children, my friends. Then the words to ‘Fractured’ came… I am still piecing myself back together, trying to be just good enough.”

Continue reading »

WEEKEND BLOG BREAK (SORT OF)

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Jan 282023
 


Astriferous

I’m taking a break from NCS this weekend, so there won’t be a big roundup of recommended new songs and videos today or a SHADES OF BLACK column tomorrow. I’m involved in a big party that’s going to happen tonight, and there are things I need to do to help make it happen. I also know from past experience that I won’t get back to the NCS island HQ until sometime early Sunday morning, and I won’t get back stone-cold sober either.

On top of that I hope to spend a little time trying to figure out which songs to include in the final two days of our Most Infectious Song list next week. (If you don’t know what that is, you can find everything I’ve chosen so far via this link). I’m hoping to figure out some way of doing that without losing my fucking mind, because I’ve still got dozens of songs I’d like to include.

Of course I recoil at the idea of posting anything at NCS without including music, and so although the main point of this post is to keep people from wondering whether a big blank space for this weekend isn’t the result of some personal catastrophe, here’s some music: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): ENSLAVED, MAJESTIES, MARIANAS REST, ROTTEN SOUND, UNEARTH, OBRIJ, DEATH FEAST, CRONENBERG

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Jan 262023
 


Enslaved

Yesterday I promised that today I would post a Part 2 of a mid-week roundup of new songs and videos, even though I hadn’t yet made the choices, much less written it. I hate to break promises, but I’m rapidly running out of time before I have to do some paying work. And my dirty laundry isn’t going to wash itself, nor are our cats going to clean their own litter box. So, although you’ll find lots of good new metal below, you won’t find artwork or as many words as I normally like to dish out.

ENSLAVED (Norway)

“Forest Dweller“: Prepare for big gloom-ridden stomps and exotic Eastern melody, soft strumming and somber and soulful singing, elements of mystery and mesmerization, and plenty of brazen racing and ravaging. Gorgeous video, I assume shot in Iceland.

From the album Heimdal, due out March 3rd on Nuclear Blast. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): MAZE OF SOTHOTH, ANOXIA, STREET TOMBS, TENTACULT, ISOLANT

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Jan 252023
 

As of last night I had this round-up all ready to go. I mean, I still needed to do the writing, but I had picked a selection of music from five new releases that I thought would go really well together, and they all had fine cover art too. And then this morning I found some more just-released gems within the Niagara Falls of e-mails that crashed into our in-box overnight. What to do?

As you can tell, I decided to turn this mid-week round-up into a two-parter. Part 1 sticks with what I decided to do last night. Part 2 will include the new stuff I spotted this morning. Part 2 isn’t written yet, which means you won’t see it ’til tomorrow. Something else will probably hit our in-box overnight that will make it even longer.

MAZE OF SOTHOTH (Italy)

We’ve had a six-year gap since this band’s debut album Soul Demise, which we premiered here and reviewed here. But at last they have a new full-length named Extirpated Light that’s headed our way on March 24th via Everlasting Spew Records. And based on the first single, it sounds like the intervening years have brought some changes in their sound, which Metal-Archives previously labeled Technical Death Metal, even though that label was missing a lot of necessary nuance. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ONDFØDT, MAN MUST DIE, MORS SUBITA, VERTEBRAE FETISH TOTEM, CHOIR

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Jan 212023
 


Ondfødt

I’ve concluded that sleeping late is a luxury to be indulged, probably because I’ve done so little of it. I still never do it during the work week, and pre-pandemic I was so habitualized to getting up before the ass-crack of dawn revealed itself that I awakened very early on the weekends too, even when there was no sensible reason to do that. The pandemic caused lots of us to re-think lots of things, and for me one of those things was the habit of crawling out of bed at 5 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

I mean, hell, I’m not a farmer, just a compulsive blogger. Still, the compulsion is strong and I’ve had to make a concerted effort to re-train my subconscious mind, convincing it not to wake me up, or when it does, training my conscious mind to just close my eyes and let the sleep take me again. And man, does sleeping feel good, even if the robot part of my brain still feels a little anxiety when I do eventually wake up, under the illusion that I’ve been wasting time.

Well, that’s an absurdly long-winded way of getting to the point that, once again, I slept late today. I still wanted to find some new songs and videos to recommend before the small number of people who actually visit NCS on a Saturday just vanished altogether. Here’s what I chose: Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: SIEGE OF POWER, MEMORIAM, GOD DISEASE, OAK, UNFATHOMABLE RUINATION, DEVANGELIC, THUNRAZ, DAWN RAY’D, VELNIAS, LAMP OF MURMUUR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 142023
 

 

No, this isn’t a weather report on what’s happening in California this Saturday. The post title is just a sign that I decided to “go big” with today’s collection of new songs and videos.

The time it takes me to write up each day’s selections for our 2022 Most Infectious Song list (and surely you’ve been looking at those, haven’t you?) has prevented me from doing any “Seen and Heard” round-ups since January 4th, and consequently the pile of new things has grown to mountainous proportions. Hence the temptation to make this roundup a big one, even though what remains still looks like a mountain.

On the other hand, today IS a Saturday, and coming up I have both a work meeting and an NFL football playoff game I need to watch, even though the odds of our local team winning are remote, so to save time I’ve mostly dispensed with album art and order links, and cut back on the usual verbiage. I’ve organized these according to genre and style. Don’t forget I’ll have another column tomorrow, devoted to shades of black metal. Continue reading »

FIVE FILTHY THRASH METAL SINGLES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A TOTAL BADASS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 052023
 

(Axel Stormbreaker has rounded up some badass 2022 thrash for you today.)

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…”. Oh, enough with that crap already. Not that I bear any distaste for the Christmas spirit, or any celebration for the matter. We just deserve every day to be considered a holiday, if only for breathing the toxicity of life, whose tarnished beauty you gotta grab by the hair in every waking moment.

Only thing certain, if you’re looking for fun, you just gotta stop bitching about it and go ahead to make some yourself. Because, simply, if you won’t help yourself, no one else will even bother. So, to be a good Samaritan, I thought I should lend you a hand instead, in order to compile a playlist for your ultimate fun metal party. I present you 2022’s filthiest thrash metal singles; solely, the utterly obnoxious kind that makes you feel like a total badass. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SUM LIGHTS, THUMOS, AORTES, LIMBES, AZKEN AUZI, VITAE CRUCIS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jan 042023
 

Like yesterday I found myself with a little extra time this morning before having to turn to other tasks that are un-connected to NCS. The music I chose to recommend goes in many different directions, but one thing they have in common (with one exception) is the terrifying intensity of the vocals.

SUM LIGHTS (Germany)

I’ve mentioned before that Rennie Resmini (starkweather), one of my constant sources of new musical discoveries, has a fairly new SubStack blog where he writes about his own new musical discoveries. I have found it to be a blessing and a curse, a blessing because it’s packed with good shit, a curse because I was already deluged with new music to check out before I started reading there.

I’ve decided to book-end today’s round-up with music I found via Rennie’s newest SubStack newsletter. The opening salvo is a song by the German black/death unit Sum Lights, who came roaring out of the gates in late 2021 with an album named Emanating Fulguration. I can only hope that the new song, “The Sense Of A Sun“, is sign of more to come soon. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CONTRARIAN, DECEIVETH, SKINEATER

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jan 032023
 

 

This round-up of new music will be short, but of course I think it’s also sweet. I have just enough time for three recommendations before my gilded carriage of a morning turns into the rotting pumpkin of my day job.

CONTRARIAN (U.S.)

Until I looked I had forgotten how many premieres we’ve done for Contrarian‘s releases (four of them, going back to 2015). What I didn’t forget was how head-spinning their music has been, and so I jumped at the chance to listen to the first single from Contrarian‘s new album Sage of Shekhinah. The remarkable cover art by Guang Yang just sweetened the pot. Continue reading »

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