Because it’s getting late in the day I’ll spare you the usual intro comments. Because it’s late in the day, I’ve also made fewer musical selections than usual. Tomorrow I’ll do better.
LIGHTLORN (Sweden)
Today this Swedish duo have released their debut EP These Nameless Worlds. I’ve already raved about the EP’s first two songs when they were released, “Unmapped Constellations” (here) and “Through the Cold Black Yonder“ (here). Now we have the other two. Continue reading »
Here’s some breaking news: Nuclear Blast has announced that it will release a new Demonaz-led Immortal album named War Against All sometime next year, with Ice Dale (Enslaved) on bass and Kevin Kvåle (Gaahls Wyrd, Horizon Ablaze) on drums. I also got a Bandcamp alert about a new release here today by Teitanblood called Purging Tongues – 2022, though it seems to be a repress of the band’s 2011 single-song EP (Purging Tongues) combined with some kind of variation on that track named “Purging Tongues – Demon 1990“.
In other news, I still feel like shit — though slightly less shitty than over the past weekend. This has hung on long enough that I no longer think it’s the after-effects of dangerous levels of wildfire smoke that plagued my area over the preceding week, and more likely a nasty cold I picked up somewhere. First one of those I’ve had since the outbreak of covid. I’m vaxxed to the max and have pretty much given up masking, and I guess that was a dumb move. Those masks protected against more than covid.
In still other news, I feel like writing about new music anyway (in fact I already did that today), though like yesterday’s Shades of Black column this one will be shorter than usual (on top of everything else, my fucking day job is demanding a chunk of my time). I think of the songs in this collection as musical red meat for metal carnivores. Continue reading »
“Metatron’s Cube” by Talon Abraxas
It’s been another very busy week for the release of new songs and videos, and leaves me with a typically daunting task of trying to pick some to recommend, made even more daunting by the fact that the old fucking day job didn’t allow me to compile a round-up earlier this week. To make the task a bit easier, I decided not to write about new songs and videos from the following bands, because they’re all fairly well-known, but I do really like all of what you’ll find via the links below.
DEFLESHED (Sweden)
DJEVEL (Norway)
EXHUMED (U.S.)
GOATWHORE (U.S.)
WOODS OF DESOLATION (Australia)
As for what I did choose to write about today… Continue reading »
Last weekend I was able to compile and write about a typhoon of new songs and videos, but this weekend will be different. The Seattle Mariners baseball club made the major league playoffs for the first time in 21 years, and won the first game of their first playoff series yesterday in Toronto. The second game is this afternoon, and I’ll be glued to the TV watching that with friends.
Afterward will be a dinner party in Seattle that will likely go late, and that won’t bode well for Sunday morning work on Shades of Black whenever I get back to my island home. Also ominous is the fact that I’ve got to do shit for my fucking day job tomorrow, which makes tomorrow’s usual column even more unlikely. So don’t be surprised if I have to skip it this week.
I’ve got to make my way to Seattle pretty soon for that ballgame, so I’ll have to make the following collection short, but hopefully sweet. I wish I could have done more, and really wish I could have done it yesterday when there was an extra incentive for fans to spend money on Bandcamp, but my job hammered me then too. So it goes. Continue reading »
Imha Tarikat
Last night the Seattle Mariners beat the Texas Rangers with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning, clinching a place in the Major League Baseball playoffs and ending what most of us long-suffering Mariners fans simply referred to as The Drought, i.e., the longest span of years (21 of them) that any team in any U.S. professional sport has had to endure in between playoff appearances.
Along with a few million other Mariners fans in this part of the country, I celebrated the historic event. I might have par-tayed a bit too much. That’s a conclusion one might draw from the fact that I slept for 11 hours, as if in a coma. Well, I had a rough week at my fucking day job too, which produced steam that needed to be blown off last night. But even after dragging my ass out of bed late in the morning I still spent a lot of time continuing to wallow in the glory of that Mariners win, taking in videos, photos, and lots of articles.
But the NCS Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (a specific syndrome now recognized by the American Psychiatric Association) is still a thing, and so I couldn’t bear to leave a complete blank spot on the site this Saturday. Had to daub that spot with at least a few splatters of musical paint. Continue reading »
Fell Ruin
Yesterday, September 23rd, was the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere, as defined by the September equinox. And so we begin the inexorable march toward the Winter Solstice (with the autumnal equinox in between, when all the spooks come out).
I thought about focusing today on music with a cloudy and wintry cast, but it still seems too early to be that blinkered in the choices. I also thought about focusing solely on music released on the first day of fall, especially since I did a shit job keeping up with press releases and other sources of new music this past week. It would have been easier just to make selections from the top of the pile. But this morning I did manage to do a lot of catching up, and made some selections from earlier days too.
FELL RUIN (U.S.)
We’ve been waiting with bated breath for something more from this Detroit band over the five long years since the release of their debut album, To the Concrete Drifts. At last that “something more” is here, in the shape of a new album intriguingly named Cast in Oil The Dressed Wrought. Last week brought the first song from the album, “Stain the Field“, along with a video that makes a frighteningly intense and extravagantly twisted song even more nightmarish. Continue reading »
This was supposed to be “Seen And Heard On A Saturday (Part 3)“. Even when I mentioned the idea for it on this past Saturday I knew in my heart of hearts that the odds of getting it done were vanishingly small. Completing two parts was tough enough. At least this time I didn’t toss the idea in a mental dustbin, never to be recovered.
The idea for this one originated last Friday night, with most of it taking shape during a regular Zoom confab among metal writers that I sometimes drop in on when my spouse is out having fun without me. I can’t exactly reconstruct how all these songs popped into my head during that conversation. Free-flowing gin might have had something to do with that, both the surfacing of the songs and my inability to explain how it all happened.
I’m also not sure this assemblage of music is going to connect with anyone else (it begins with some new things but then tunnels far back in time), but fuck it, worth a try. Continue reading »
Lo and behold I got Part 2 of today’s round-up finished, so I didn’t completely embarrass myself. I may still be embarrassed if I can’t complete Part 3 before having to turn to personal chores and begin thinking about tomorrow’s Shades of Black column. I guess it will be like having my pants part-way down but not showing the full plumber’s crack in all its hideous glory.
MACERATION (Denmark)
In a time when metal re-births seem increasingly common, the resurrection of Maceration still seems worth an extra measure of attention, in part because for their new album Dan Swanö has again stepped in to fill the session vocal role, as he did under the name Day Disyraa for Maceration‘s first album 30 years ago.
Original guitarists Jakob Schultz and Lars Bangsholt are also back, together with bassist Robert Tengs and drummer Rasmus Schmidt (Illdisposed, ex-Myrkur). Continue reading »
Eternal Helcaraxe
Oh shit look what I’ve done. I learned the hard way that I should never call one of these weekend round-ups “Part 1” when Part 2 is still just an idea. Too many times in the past, I never got around to writing Part 2, even when I was damn sure I could. So I vowed to myself I’d stop doing the Parts thing. If I got another Part done, it would just be a surprise instead of the culmination of an announced plan.
You know what makes the situation even riskier (i.e., stupider) today? I have ideas not just for Part 2 but also for Part 3! I could spell out those ideas right now. But there’s a limit to how dumb I’m willing to be. I’ll just say that if they come to pass they won’t both be a continuation of choices from among fairly recent songs and videos. Continue reading »
Thundering Hooves
This was a hell of a week for new metal. All of the following bands released new songs and/or videos (or in Darkthrone’s case just a little Fenriz teaser) and you can check them out by clicking on the names, if you haven’t seen and heard them yet:
I thought all the items linked above ranged from decent to excellent, but I’m not writing about any of them today. I decided instead to focus on music from less well-known names. It was a hell of a week for promising new releases by more obscure groups too. Here’s just a small handful. Continue reading »