Apr 092026
 

(This is DGR’s review of the swan-song release by Die Like Gentlemen from Portland, Oregon. The eye-catching cover artwork is a painting circa 1910 called “The Drinker” by German artist Erich Plontke.)

Many, many moons ago, in an era before space and time, when the world was just an idea in the eyes of the gods, we published an interview with Portland, Oregon’s Die Like Gentlemen.

That’s it, just wanted to check in and point people to an interesting interview we did about five years ago as we have some new readers on the site and sometimes it is nice to highlight the fact that we’ve been publishing stuff for a while at this point and there are plenty of rabbit holes to fall down. You can go about your day from here.

Actually, here’s the thing. While diving around the underground world and exploring music I saw the name and cover art for Die LIke Gentlemen’s recent self-titled – and apparently final – album go floating by and it must’ve re-lit some incredibly old neurons in my brain because it is one of the few times where I found myself doing the CSI detective thing of tapping the desk and going “why do I know this, why do I recognize this, why is this familiar?” over and over until I would soon discover that the primary suspect was well… us.

For some reason, be it the name, excellent choice of outfits, or the fact that I do make a valiant attempt to scroll through everything here, that previously mentioned interview for Die Like Gentlemen stuck with me enough that years later I would find myself very interested and intrigued by the group’s newest release, the self-titled Die Like Gentlemen, at four songs and nearly forty-minutes of prog-metal weird and avante-garde doom exploration at its most adventurous. Continue reading »

Apr 042026
 

(written by Islander)

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley”. Once again those immortal words of Robert Burns come to mind on this Saturday. I’m not thinking of our regime’s war plans in Iran, because they clearly weren’t “best laid”. No, I’m thinking of my own plans for this roundup of new music, which were extensive but then doomed by my own misbehavior last night and the steep price paid for them this morning (I’m not in jail or a hospital, and I’ll just leave it at that to avoid further embarrassment).

I gave serious thought to just abandoning all plans, but decided that a feeble effort late in the day would be better than none at all, so I made four choices that I hope you’ll enjoy (the music is most definitely not feeble, and the selections will provide something of a musical roller-coaster ride as you make your way through them). Continue reading »

Apr 032026
 

(written by Islander)

This past week has provided yet another flood of new metal, maybe even more than usual. I’m staring at dozens of new open tabs on my beleaguered computer, stacked on top of dozens more from the previous couple of weeks, and getting that anxious feeling that comes from the certain knowledge that I’ll barely make a dent in what’s there.

But I did have time to make a small dent today, thanks to waking up even earlier than usual and with a relatively clear head. No matter the clarity, I don’t have a very well-understood reason for why I picked the following three selections. They just kind of jumped out at me, I guess because they’re all very recent and from bands who’ve got a very appealing track record, at least for me.

With any luck, I’ll make some bigger dents in this weekend’s NCS roundups. For now, get your heads dented with these: Continue reading »

Mar 282026
 

(written by Islander)

I took a break from NCS last weekend, a short vacation that led me to eastern Washington. That means I now have twice the usual number of new songs and videos sitting in front of me as I ponder what to feature today. But rather than try to go back and figure out what I might have done last Saturday, today I focused mainly on what surfaced within the realms of metal over just the last week. It was a lot, and so I’ve made this roundup a bit bigger than usual.

I’ve managed to pull out eight new songs, six of them accompanied by videos. I think they provide considerable variety, and I’ve arranged them in a way that made sense to me as I listened to everything. Of course, they’re also a reflection of the darkness inside my head these days.

Tonight I’m going to a retirement party for a close friend. She’s too young to be stopping work altogether, just closing one chapter in her life and starting a new one, but I still want to be there. Doubtless, it will keep me out late, with probably a three-hour round-trip on the travel alone. I don’t know if that will impact tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column, but it might. Another reason why today’s collection is bigger than usual. Continue reading »

Mar 202026
 

(written by Islander)

I’m writing this on Friday morning. My spouse and I are about to begin the long trek from where we live to Sea-Tac airport. From there we’ll fly to Walla Wall in eastern Washington to spend a long weekend with two other couples who are a lot of fun to hang out with. And hanging out is what we’ll be doing, along with going on winery tours, dining in the town’s excellent eateries, and doing our best to forget all the fresh hells that are besetting the world.

I do not plan to spend time putting together either the usual SEEN AND HEARD roundup for Saturday or the usual Sunday SHADES OF BLACK column. I know myself well enough that I’ll probably get anxious about leaving a two-day void at the site, and so there’s a chance I’ll scramble something together at some point, but don’t bet on it.

I’ll be back in action here on Monday morning for sure, or as sure as anyone can be about air travel these days. In the meantime, here’s a mysterious video for a scary, heart-aching, and bone-throbbing new song by Erdve that I enjoyed this past week. Continue reading »

Mar 142026
 

(written by Islander)

Technology is treacherous. I had this post written five hours ago, but a glitchy security feature prevented me from accessing the site and posting it. Our web host fixed the problem just minutes ago. Which is why this roundup is appearing so late.

Other than weeks ending on a Bandcamp Friday and weeks that include Halloween, my perception is that weeks ending on a Friday the 13th tend to be the most bulging with new metal. That was certainly true of the past week (and the few days before it began). You want proof? Well, here are 10 well-known bands who released new songs and/or videos during that period:

ALLEGAEON (U.S.)

EMPLOYED TO SERVE (UK)

HELLRIPPER (Scotland)

IMMOLATION (U.S.)

INFERI (U.S.)

MONSTROSITY (U.S.)

PORTRAYAL OF GUILT (U.S.)

SARCASM (Sweden)

SIX FEET UNDER (U.S.)

VOMITORY (Sweden)

I easily could have included any of those songs and videos in this column, because they’re all damned good. And you won’t go wrong going after them, which I’ve made it easy to do via those hyperlinks. But I decided instead to do what we often do around this place, and that’s dig deeper under the ground. Continue reading »

Mar 072026
 

(written by Islander)

I’m experiencing technical difficulties. For the second time since February 1st, our DSL service shut down. The last time we waited two weeks for the DSL company to send out a repair technician. He got it going again. He explained that a pair of wires in the main line to which our house was connected had shorted out. He connected us to a different pair, but said there were a bunch of other pairs in the line that were also shorted out.

He said he would report the need for maintenance, but I got the impression this need for maintenance is widespread around the island where we live and that we shouldn’t get our hopes up. I guess there’s not enough money to be made here for the DSL company to spend money. And so, 16 days after the last repair, the DSL service stopped working again. It’s been out since last weekend. A repair technician is supposed to visit us again on Monday. Just a one-week wait this time instead of two weeks.

No DSL means our TV is useless for streaming. It also means no internet connectivity except what I can get from my phone. I’ve been using that as a hotspot for my desktop computer. The cell service is good enough that I can get online and do most of what I can do when the DSL is working. But there’s one drawback: a lot of the time the cell service isn’t good enough to stream music and videos, in part because my wife piggy-backs on my phone too since she uses a different cell service that’s borderline useless where we live. Kind of a big drawback for a music blog like ours. Continue reading »

Feb 282026
 

(written by Islander)

I did a better job than usual this past week going through NCS e-mails every day, compiling a list of what I thought might be worth checking out, and digging through that list with sharp ears. I still had to leave a lot behind, but made a voluminous 8 picks for this Saturday’s column.

And then… I went out last night to party without writing anything, and woke up very late today. I thought about cutting my planned column in half so I could get it finished before sundown, but then decided, fuck that, I’ll keep everything but cut way back on the verbiage — to the likely consternation of music scholars who will be studying my writings for decades into the future (yeah, that wasn’t serious).

If my plan for the day works out, these 8 choices (many of them with good videos) will leave you with whiplash and a scrambled brain if you manage to make it through all of them. Continue reading »

Feb 212026
 

(written by Islander)

Today’s collection will be shorter than usual, because I need to leave house and computer fairly early this morning for a day-long outing with my spouse. We have a ferry departure we need to make, so I won’t have any wiggle room.

I suppose my first choice for today is an obvious one, for reasons I suppose I’ll identify in case it’s less obvious than I think. After that I settled on a couple of “proven commodities” who are proving their worth again, and one new band that drew attention because of its lineup. I hope these songs and videos get your weekend off to the right start, as they did for me. Continue reading »

Feb 142026
 

(written by Islander)

I felt a cold coming on yesterday when I woke up, and that was quickly followed by the discovery that anyone trying to get to NCS experienced frantic meltdowns from their browsers, which warned people that our site was insecure and might expose all their personal finances and identities to theft, might turn their children into ghouls, might cause cats to have sex with dogs, etc., etc. In other words, it seemed our site’s SSL security certificate had expired.

Or at least that’s what I concluded based on some googling, because I hadn’t received any advance notice or warning. I had forgotten what an SSL is, had no idea when we implemented it, and was completely clueless about what I was supposed to do to fix the problem. I e-mailed our IT consultant, who I think must have implemented SSL for NCS years ago (I still haven’t heard back from him).

I also opened a support ticket with our security provider, because our web host told me they maintain the site’s security certificate. I haven’t heard back from them either — though late yesterday afternoon the scary browser warnings stopped, so I guess they remewed our certificate, but I really am still in the dark about the whole incident. Which means I’m also in the dark about how to prevent this bullshit from happening again.

Oh, and my cold was also in full bloom by late afternoon yesterday. Continue reading »