SEEN AND HEARD: MOTHER OF GRAVES, FACELESS BURIAL, SACRILEGIA, FAUSTIAN, EXORDIUM MORS

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Aug 122022
 

 

Yesterday I took the first step in a journey of a thousand miles — an only slightly exaggerated metaphor for the task of wading through all the recent songs and videos that might yield selections for these roundups. Today, as you can see, I managed to take a second step. By rough count that leaves about 2.5 million additional steps.

I’m beginning with artwork, unaccompanied by music (the column is called “SEEN and Heard”), but then moving into some new sounds and videos (and more cool cover art).

MOTHER OF GRAVES (U.S.)

This Indiana death/doom band released their debut EP in January of last year, and Todd Manning gave it a very good review for us. He concluded by hoping that a full-length would be close at hand. The hope is now fulfilled, because Wise Blood Records will be releasing the band’s debut album Where the Shadows Adorn on October 14th. And for that album the maestro Paolo Girardi created the stunning cover art you see above.

But what you see above is only half of the full painting. Here’s the complete work: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLOODBATH, BLACK DEATH CULT, THE ANTICHRIST IMPERIUM, DISILLUSION

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Aug 112022
 

 

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” That well-known saying attributed to the Chinese sage Laozi (but sometimes erroneously attributed to Confucious) came to mind today as I gazed bleakly at the massive backlog of new songs and videos that would provide the source material for this roundup. Getting through it feels like a journey of a thousand miles, but that old adage encouraged me to make this first step. Will I be able to make another one tomorrow, or instead trip and fall on my face? Time will tell….

BLOODBATH (Sweden)

I know Bloodbath need no help from our fetid little corner of the interhole, but I’m beginning with a lyric video for their grisly new song “Carved” anyway. It’s just too damned much hellish fun to ignore, and Luc Lemay makes a guest appearance on it too. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BLACK ANVIL, DEAD VOID, PARIUS, BONES, BLODKVALT

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Aug 052022
 

Today we’ve already presented a pair of raunchy reviews, the premiere of some dismal and nightmarish black metal, and another evocative installment of a Fire in the Mountains festival report. But even with all that, I thought I’d still try to squeeze in a roundup of new songs and videos, just to somewhat lighten the load on me for the usual Saturday roundup. It will still be a crushing load, but maybe getting the following five items out there mow will leave a few vertebrae intact tomorrow.

BLACK ANVIL (U.S.)

Let’s begin with something bracing, something that’s both chilling and muscular, a song that creates tension and tightens it, becomes scathing and sweeping in its portrayal of despair, stampedes in a fury, and raises its voice in proclamations of hellish reverence. Continue reading »

A REDEFINING DARKNESS ROUND-UP: HERUVIM, ROTBORN, CONCRETE ICON, ORBICATE

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Aug 042022
 

Regular visitors to our site are aware that roughly once a week we compile round-ups of new songs and videos that have seized our attention. The round-up you’re staring at now, however, is different from the usual ones.

In this instance we’re putting the spotlight on four recent or forthcoming releases from a single label — Redefining Darkness Records. And there’s another difference, because in some instances what you’ll be discovering are premiere streams of the music.

HERUVIM: SHADOWHEART EP

The first release we’re spotlighting has goals that go beyond giving you something (very good) to listen too. It’s the debut EP by a death metal band from Odesa, Ukraine, named Heruvim, and all proceeds from digital sales are dedicated to the support of the Ukrainian army in their fight against the Russian aggressors. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ARMED FOR APOCALYPSE, BRUXAX, COLDWORLD, CREDIC, CRUZ, ELLENDE, FIRTAN, HADAL MAW, THE HIRSCH EFFEKT, LOUDNESS

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Jul 302022
 

 

A couple of updates for you weekend visitors: First, I’ve had to rush today’s roundup, thanks to a late start on the day and way too many new songs and videos to go through in order to make these choices. Due to the rushing, I had to leave lots of good stuff on “the cutting room floor”, despite how many choices I made.

Except in the context of deadly sins and circles of Hell (the violent and bestial one), 7 is a lucky number, so I initially decided to stop there. But I couldn’t help myself, and so pushed it to 10 instead, presented alphabetically by band name.

Second, I’m going to a big party in Seattle tonight. It was originally scheduled to happen in January, but last winter’s covid surge fucked those plans. It will be very late before I get back to the NCS island headquarters, and there’s at least a 50/50 chance I’ll wake up on Sunday with a hangover, and a 100% chance that most of the morning will be gone by the time I open my red eyes. Which means we may not have a Shades of Black column tomorrow. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: DEATH BREATH, VORLUST, CONSUMPTION, ILUNA PERPETUA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, Movie Reviews, Premieres, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 232022
 

 

Would one four-song roundup yesterday have been satisfactory? Were two of them too many? Is it overkill to add music from four more bands today, for an even dozen of them? I hear your answers to those questions, all those deafening howls of “NO!!! WE WANT MORE!!!””

So, on we go….

DEATH BREATH (Sweden/U.S.)

It took me almost a week to catch up to Death Breath‘s two-track EP, The Old Hag, but once I did I haven’t been able to get enough of it. It does its dirty work in just a bit more than 7 minutes, which makes it really fucking easy to keep going back to it whenever I need a musical riot to rocket me out of the doldrums and make me feel like fighting the bastard world. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): NOCTEM, CULT BURIAL, INNUMERABLE FORMS, CRIPPLED BLACK PHEONIX

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Jul 222022
 

Welcome to Part 2 of this Friday round-up of new songs and videos. It includes perhaps even more musical scatter than what I collected in Part 1 (be forewarned, there’s singing in the last of these tracks!), which may increase the odds that you’ll find something to like. And if you don’t, try your chances tomorrow when I’ll have one more collection to throw at your head.

NOCTEM (Spain)

We’ve been following the twisting and turning path of this Spanish band for a lot of damned years. It has been something of an adventure to witness their musical evolution, but a generally exiting one, and now we get to discover their next steps through an album named Credo Certe Ne Cras that’s coming out in late October via MNRK Heavy. Just today they released a video for the album’s first single, “We Are Omega“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): STRIGOI, THE LOVECRAFT SEXTET, KRISIUN, UZUMAKI

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Jul 222022
 

 

This was a humongous week for new music, and my head is overflowing with round-up selections, so many that I decided to present them in two Parts today. Beyond those, I also have aspirations to compile another collection for publication on Saturday. Without further ado, here are the first four choices.

STRIGOI (UK)

In case you might have forgotten, Strigoi is the band formed by Greg Mackintosh (Paradise Lost) after he interred his previous project Vallenfyre. Joined by Vallenfyre bassist Chris Casket, he released a debut Strigoi album named Abandon All Faith in 2019, and we devoted significant attention to it, including a lavish review here by DGR.

It was thus exciting to learn that Strigoi are returning with a follow-up full-length named Viscera, which is set for release by Season of Mist on September 30th. The first advance track from it — “Hollow” — is how we begin today’s round-up. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ÓSSERP, ACEPHALIX, WITCHDEN, I AM, THRONEUM

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Jul 202022
 

 

Everyone reading this, if they live long enough and care about living even longer, will one day do what I’m doing early today — undergoing a medical procedure that involves a doctor shining light in the snaky tunnel where the light don’t shine, and the snip, snip, snip of tiny scissors. It won’t be so bad — I’ll be in The Land of Nod when that happens. It’s yesterday that was bad, an ugly process intended to turn my intestines into a barren wasteland. But at least I had a fitting soundtrack to the ordeal:

Actually, truth is I was in the midst of yesterday’s ordeal when I wrote most of this. But don’t worry, that didn’t affect my musical judgment, which is as brilliant or as damaged as ever, depending on your perspective. I was just forced to take running breaks to the bathroom in between blocks of tracks I was interested in exploring for this roundup. The ones I picked, unlike my current mood, are definitely NOT shitty. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: BLOODBATH, MORBUS GRAVE, HERIDA PROFUNDA, GRANDIOSA MUERTE, IRON DEATH, MONOVOTH

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 162022
 

“Pocket” is a Mozilla app that you can easily install in Mozilla’s Firefox browser. When you do that, a small Pocket icon shows up in the toolbar of Firefox. Wherever you happen to be on the web, if you click that icon it saves the page to your Pocket list. When you then navigate to your Pocket list, you see all the links you’ve saved, along with thumbnail images of the linked pages. Even better, you can access that list from any device that includes the Firefox browser.

This is not an ad for Firefox or Pocket. I mention it because it has made my work for NCS on these Seen and Heard roundups much, much easier.

I used to make endless lists of band names with links to their new songs and videos that I was interested in checking out. Even just typing band names into an online document and copy/pasting the links was time-consuming, since I was usually adding more than a dozen per day, or much more if I fell behind. Not to mention that I kept dozens of tabs open in my browser until I had time to write those lists. Now I use Pocket, and don’t have to type a word or copy any links or keep any tabs open. Continue reading »

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